Engineering My Faith

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 17, 2022. Based on Colossians 1:15-29.

This is pretty close to a statement of faith for me. It encapsulates the essence of my beliefs, which are also reflected in Romans 8:38-39. After I wrote this sermon, I read an article by Keith Giles that is also based on the this passage from Colossians, with a similar conclusion.

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Last month, I threatened to give a full explication of the doctrine of the Trinity. Well, today’s topic is predestination. John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination is the most famous, or perhaps infamous, aspect of Presbyterian theology. These days, Calvinist thought is also studied extensively in Baptist circles as well, maybe more than in Presbyterian seminaries even.

Calvin believed that God made an unchangeable decree from before the creation of the world to save some people, the elect. They were predestinated for eternal life in the glorious kingdom of God. He also believed that the others, the reprobate, would be barred from access to salvation and sentenced to eternal death.

The first problem this doctrine creates is the uncertainty. Am I one of the elect or the reprobate? How could I possibly know? The so-called Protestant work ethic was one response. If you are successful in this life, it must be because you are one of the elect; if you are unsuccessful, it must be because you are one of the reprobate. So people started working hard to be successful to “prove” that they were among the elect.

I find this whole concept repulsive. Why would God choose before the founding of creation to create people who are destined for eternal death, with no hope for salvation? To me, that seems the height of evil, not of goodness. How can I worship a God who has already, arbitrarily, decided to send people to Hell? Calvin made sense of it by asserting total depravity: all of humanity is deserving of Hell, so really it’s good news that anyone goes to heaven. But I just can’t get behind that. I can’t accept a doctrine that claims we are all completely, totally, irredeemably evil. I mean, we were made in the image of God, through Christ. There must be goodness in us.

In the centuries since Calvin put this doctrine forward, many theologians have struggled with it as well. I have come to accept Karl Barth’s analysis. Barth argued that yes, God predestined who would be saved, and chose Jesus Christ. Through Christ, then, all things are reconciled to God. Now, that’s a theology I can accept. In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” This world is broken and sinful, so we experience pain and death. Yet we will be made alive through Christ, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to Godself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Amen.

Barth himself did not believe in universal salvation, but that’s the logical endpoint of his argument. I read a useful analysis that uses sets and predicates and logical contradictions and so forth. I won’t subject you all to that, partly because I didn’t finish reading it. I will instead appeal to love. Through Christ, reconciliation is available to all people and indeed all creation. God’s grace is an unconditional gift. Why would a loving God withhold that gift? I do believe that we need to accept that gift of love and salvation and reconciliation, but where I differ from some of my evangelical colleagues is that I do not believe that death is the end. Death is not the end of the opportunity to accept it. If God’s kingdom is eternal, our lives are just a blink of an eye.

In a way, Calvinist predestination revives the Gnostic heresy. The Gnostics were a faction of early Christianity, in the second and third centuries, who were ultimately cast out as heretics. They believed that the God of Israel was indeed the creator of all material things, but that all material things were inherently evil. Humans have the divine spark within themselves, which is good, but everything else is evil. Jesus came to teach “secrets” to a select few that revealed how to escape the evil of the world. This dualistic worldview was rejected when Christianity settled on early creeds like the Nicene Creed. We believe instead that Jesus was both fully God and fully human, and that all things were created through Christ who is the Word, the divine Logos, who has redeemed creation. The world is broken, but is not inherently evil. God is present in the world just as God is present in the heavenly realm.

But dualistic thinking survives, and Calvinist predestination survives, in part because the concept of grace is so amazing that it seems too good to be true. The New Testament teaches that Jesus offers forgiveness to anyone who asks. Some people struggle to accept that forgiveness, either for themselves or for others who they perceive to be undeserving. I recently re-read The Second Mountain by David Brooks, who grew up as a cultural Jew with a lot of exposure to Christianity, but as an adult was functionally agnostic. As he was working on an earlier book, he came up with the idea of “participatory grace,” which is kind of like meeting God halfway. He thought, Well, maybe if I do some good things and stop doing so many bad things, then God will complete the work. His colleague and future wife rejected this out of hand. There is no participation necessary for grace. God’s grace is a gift, freely given, available to anyone who will accept it. We can choose whether or not to accept it, and when, but ultimately, it is a gift. We don’t need to do anything to earn it. Jesus already did what needed to be done. As Paul wrote to the Colossians, “through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” The work has been done. The gift is waiting to be unwrapped. We can delay and defer entering God’s dominion by accepting this gift, or we can turn towards God now and experience the joy of God’s love. What we can’t do is earn any more love than God already has for us now, nor can we lose our place in God’s family.

We also can’t choose who receives the gift of God’s grace. Apparently, there is a dispute in some Christian corners of the internet about serving communion to the unbaptized. This was a debate in PC(USA) several years ago. Also, there are many churches that only accept certain kinds of baptism as being sufficient to earn a right to the sacrament of communion. Roman Catholics only accept Catholic baptisms; Baptists and many like-minded denominations and non-denominational churches only accept adult baptism. This policing of the Lord’s Table is exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught. It’s exactly the opposite of what Paul taught. They taught that all are welcome at the Table: whether saint or sinner, Jew or Greek. Jesus was criticized for eating with tax collectors and prostitutes, but he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” If our Lord’s Table were only available to those who were worthy, we would never celebrate communion. Instead, we know that Jesus Christ makes us worthy. Jesus makes us “holy and blameless and irreproachable” before God.

Elsewhere, Jesus taught that we must be born again, or born from above. This is usually interpreted to mean that we must have a conversion experience, where we have some vivid encounter and turn our lives over to God through Jesus. In the Pentecostal tradition, this is accompanied by speaking in tongues and other gifts of the Spirit. But again, this is not something that we can choose to do. Did you choose to be born? I know I didn’t. For all of us, someone chose that we would be born, but we didn’t make the choice ourselves. In the same way, we cannot choose to be born anew into God’s family, it just happens. We are given the gift of membership in God’s family whether we like it or not. We can only choose whether to embrace the love that flows from God, or to reject it.

So, why are we here? I mean, why do churches exist, and why are we worshipping together in this particular church this morning? Well, we cannot choose who receives God’s gift of grace, but we can be conduits for it, the tangible expression of God’s love in another person’s life. We come to church in part to experience that love, and in part to prepare ourselves to share that love with others. Pastor Osheta Moore wrote, “The whole of Jesus’ ministry was to establish a community so convinced of their Belovedness to God that they proclaim the Belovedness of others.” We should strive to become ever more mature in Christ, always better examples of God’s love to those we meet.

The whole of Jesus’ ministry was to establish a community so convinced of their Belovedness to God that they proclaim the Belovedness of others.

Pastor Osheta Moore

Let me share a brief story as an example. A couple months ago, I had a conversation with someone who was feeling a sense of despair. She was bombarded by things that she didn’t believe, but that still wore her down. Things like, “Bill Gates engineered the coronavirus so he could use the vaccines to implant microchips in everyone, which are the Mark of the Beast and will doom us to the lake of fire.” I shared with her my theology—my belief in the ultimate salvation of all creation. The central message and core teaching of the book of Revelation, and indeed the whole New Testament, is that in the end, God wins. Things may look bleak right now, but in the end, God wins. I saw her again last week, and she said that conversation was a turning point for her. Instead of despair, she has hope and is investing in expanding her business. I expressed gratitude, then said, That wasn’t me, that was God. God used me on that day to share with her a message of hope that she needed to hear. You never know who you might impact or in what way God may use you to share a message of hope, and love, and reconciliation with someone who needs to hear it.

But also remember that everyone is on a different path and can only hear that message in a certain way that makes sense to them. I’m an advisor to Common Call, the campus ministry that we co-sponsor with Christ Episcopal Church. Common Call is part of the Campus Ministries Association. We are a very small player compared to the Christian Campus Fellowship, the Baptist Student Union, and so forth. We are also theologically quite different from the rest. I stay active in CMA, though, and support the efforts of all of the ministries because each student needs to find a way to God that makes sense to them. Some people need to be told what to believe. Some people need to experience the gifts of the Spirit to believe that they are really accepted by God. Some people need to hear words of absolution from a priest after confessing their sins. But some people also need to hear about a God who loves them already, who welcomes them wherever they may be on their personal journey of faith. We provide a safe place where students can express their doubts and questions, and in doing so, grow into an adult, personal faith instead of a fragile, received faith.

Paul taught us what our role is. The word he used to describe himself is diakonos, which is variously translated as minister or servant or even waiter. This is the word from which we get the term “deacon.” Paul writes that he is a servant of the gospel, for which he toils and strives with all the energy that Christ powerfully inspires within him. Paul had a hard life, and yet all of his writings are filled with love and joy. He knew that the hardships of this world were a part of his education as a servant of the gospel. They toughened him up so that he could reach more and more people, and indeed, his words have inspired billions of Christians for two millennia.

Paul was literally a servant for the gospel, like a waiter bringing food and drink: the body and blood of Christ to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In his time, there was an ongoing debate about whether a Gentile had to become a Jew before becoming a Christian, and he always taught that the answer is no. Christ’s grace is sufficient. There is no longer any need for the cultural markers of Judaism, like circumcision, for through Christ, all things have been reconciled to God. Paul didn’t really need to teach anyone anything in order for them to one day be welcomed at Jesus’s heavenly banquet. But he traveled the Mediterranean sharing the riches of the glory of the mystery of Christ’s gift to all of us. He revealed this mystery to both Jews and Gentiles, a mystery hidden throughout the ages. God has always been present in the world, for Christ is before all things. But until the coming of Jesus, God’s presence was invisible. Jesus came to reveal the glory of his presence in the world, and his presence in each person.

Now, we are called to continue to reveal that glory. Jesus is no longer visibly present, so it is up to us to show his love to all of God’s beloved children. Paul urges us to stay true to the gospel truth, that all things have been reconciled to God, that we are part of God’s dominion, that Christ has made us holy and blameless before God. Let us strive to grow into mature Christians, confident in God’s grace freely given, and acting as conduits for that grace so that all people may know the love and joy that comes from full participation in the kingdom of God. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 3, 2022. Based on Luke 10:1-11, 16-20. Read from NRSV, but Bible Gateway has NRSVue.

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In the last session meeting, we were talking about editing the MIF and someone, probably Susan, said, “As long as you don’t add anything about handling snakes.” I said, “Obviously you haven’t read the lectionary passage for July 3.” Well, I promise you, we won’t be actually passing venomous snakes around today.

But I do want to talk about the animal images in this passage. When Jesus first sends out the seventy, or seventy-two, disciples, he says they are like lambs among wolves. Wolves are apex predators. They chase and test their prey looking for weakness. They will eat small animals, but also large game like deer and elk. When they are hunting large game, they hunt as a pack that separates out and surrounds its prey. Some attack the prey from the rear while others seize them by the nose. Their success rate is actually not very good, but that’s small consolation to a shepherd who has a large flock of sheep to protect.

Later, Jesus says that he gives his disciples power over snakes and scorpions. Both of these animals are venomous and solitary. Snakes prey on small animals like lizards, rodents, and birds. Only the very largest pythons prey on larger animals like a small deer. No snakes actively hunt humans, as far as I know. Scorpions prey on insects, spiders, centipedes, and other scorpions. The largest scorpion species lives in South Africa with a maximum length of about 8 inches. Venomous snakes and scorpions are dangerous and scary, but they will only strike humans in self-defense. They live in dark places, secluded places. Any disturbance seems to be life-threatening to them, so they will sting or bite if they cannot escape.

We humans are not so different in that way. Like all animals, we have the fight-flight-or-freeze response to threats. If you think about things that you fear, the ultimate root of the fear is a fear of Death. Sometimes that’s obvious—I’m not really afraid of heights, but I am afraid of plummeting to my death. Sometimes it’s less obvious. I’m currently doing something that many of you wouldn’t: talking to a crowd of people. For most of human history, being in this position would mean the possibility that I would be cast out of the tribe, and being an outcast was practically a death sentence. We humans need each other to survive. In modern society, if I’m cast out of one group, I can join another, and either way, I still have access to the provisions of other humans. But in prehistoric society, if you were cast out of one group, you had to fend for yourself in a dangerous world, finding your own food and water, defending yourself against predators like wolves.

So even though there is no actual risk to my life right now, many of you would not be willing to do this because of a deep-seated fear. That same fear also prevents us all from talking to people who are different from us. We fear being rejected or attacked. Or if we do talk with strangers, it’s usually about something inane like the weather. We fear being any more open about what truly matters to us. Being rejected over something close to our heart feels like a form of death.

In the face of this fear, Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs. That way, each person always knew that at least one other person accepted them. But at the same time, he told them not to take any supplies or provisions with them. Instead, they were supposed to explicitly rely on the hospitality of others. That put the disciples deeply into a situation that feels the most dangerous, one that depends entirely on remaining in good standing with your “tribe.” He sent them with a message of peace and healing.

Historically, Christian missionaries have traveled the world as colonizers. They went places like Africa and the Americas, intent on converting the “savages” into good European Christians. They sought to change everything about the “savages’” culture. But that’s not what Jesus teaches. He said, Take nothing with you, and eat what you are given. Immerse yourself in the life and culture you encounter. Like Paul said later on, become a Jew to the Jews and a Greek to the Greeks for the sake of sharing the Gospel message of love and peace and reconciliation.

Jesus sent the seventy-two to the places where he was going himself. As they carried his message, they prepared people to receive Jesus. In the same way, we are called to go where Jesus is heading, to prepare people to enter the kingdom of God that is at hand.

But Jesus warned them all that he was sending them out like “lambs among wolves.” For some reason, whenever someone preaches a message of love, reconciliation, and inclusion, they are attacked. We see that all across America. Churches and denominations have split and are splitting over issues related to inclusion. Our politics are dominated by competing visions of who is worthy of inclusion in American society. We are too often led by people who teach hate and fear instead of love.

Yet the disciples survived. They came back joyous at their success. Although Jesus warned them that the evil of the world would be like wolves on the hunt, the reality is that evil is more like a snake or scorpion—not actively hunting us, but reacting when disturbed.

I’ve mentioned that I was once a big Ayn Rand fan. Well, I disagree with most of her philosophy now, but she did have one insight shared in The Fountainhead that I have kept. She wrote,

It was a contest without time, a struggle of two abstractions, the thing that had created the building against things that made the play possible—two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple statement—two forces that had fought since the world began—and every religion had known of them—and there had always been a God and a Devil—only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil—he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, Part 3, Chapter 8

In our work to build a better world, we are not fighting against a great and powerful evil force. The devil we fight is Legion, many and smutty and small. These days, conspiracy theories are rampant—the world is controlled by a Jewish cabal, or the Freemasons, or the Illuminati, who are manipulating financial and political institutions to oppress us all. But the truth is, nobody is in charge. There are just a lot of people who want to control their little dominion, whether it’s something in their workplace or something in their community. The Mission struggles against people in the community who aren’t evil, they just value their own property more than some particular human lives. When threatened, they react. They lash out. They call Ashley to cuss her out, or they call their council representative. They’re not bad people, just misguided or misinformed.

After the disciples have some success, Jesus says, you know what? The world isn’t full of wolves, it’s full of snakes, and you have power over them. The power of God’s love is the antidote to all of the hate and fear of the petty tyrants who seek to control their dominion. The kingdom of God is at hand! People who seek control will one day succumb to God’s reign. It may seem like a loss to them, and so they may fight to stay out of God’s kingdom. But one day, God will win. That’s the ultimate message of the New Testament: in the end, God wins.

The antidote to hate and fear is love. In the passage just before this one, the traveling party is rejected by a Samaritan village and James and John want to call fire down on them. Jesus stops them, and then in this passage teaches us what to do. If someone rejects you, they are actually rejecting God, and their rejection is punishment enough. They won’t enjoy God’s presence in their lives. So just let them be, and move on. Love them, but protect yourself by withdrawing. If you call down fire from heaven, like Brother Jed used to threaten on college campuses around the country, you are simply strengthening their will to resist. If you love them, maybe you’ve planted a seed. Maybe one day, they will be ready to hear God’s message of love. Until then, let them remember you as someone who wanted them to experience the fullness of life in the kingdom of God. Let them remember that God loves them, just as they are, and desires a place in their hearts and a place in their lives.

It’s also possible, though, that when you share God’s message of love, you will be welcomed. Jesus said, Don’t move around from house to house. What he meant was, Build deep relationships. Get to know people, really know them. Open yourself up to them, and let them be open in return. Both of you will leave the encounter a little closer to God. Everyone is made in the image of God and reveals something about God’s nature. Everyone has a different perspective formed by their unique life experiences. As you learn about them, you will see God more clearly. And through the encounter, you will probably learn something about yourself, too.

I just listened to an audiobook called, This Is Day One. Very good book—highly recommended. Anyway, the author makes a point of collecting stories from people. He was on a train asking people about their lives, and a bartender overheard the conversations. One question he asked was, “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned?” The bartender eventually came over to him and told him her answer, and then said, “Until I heard you ask, I never realized I knew it.” As we encounter people, their experiences, their questions of us, and their relationship with us reveal to us something about ourselves, too. Maybe they will challenge some preconceived notion that we need to abandon. Maybe they will remind us of something we learned so long ago that we have forgotten it. Maybe they will force us to consider the consequences of some belief or action from a different perspective that will start us on a growth trajectory. Regardless, if we approach people with open hearts and open minds, we will be changed for the better, and grow more into the people that God desires us to be.

In that way, we experience glimpses of the kingdom of God that is at hand. It’s only available to people who will risk themselves for its sake. Jesus didn’t say to his disciples, Go build a place where people can gather and invite them to hear you preach. He said, Go where I’m headed and join new communities and get them ready for me to come into their lives. Risk yourself. It will be dangerous, but it will be OK because I will be with you by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Another thing I heard recently is this: If you make a choice because of fear, it will feel good now. If you make a choice because of love, it will feel good five years from now. As a congregation, we are at a turning point. We can keep everything the same as it is, out of fear that any change will offend someone or cause conflict. We can focus on people who are just like us, so we don’t have to change how we worship or how we act. We can have a bland image in the community, figuring that way, nobody will have anything to criticize. Or, we can boldly love. We can remember that the Gospel is not just for people who were raised in the church or for people who look and dress and act and think like us, but is for everyone. We can share our love, which is really God’s love, with people who challenge our views, who have different ways of understanding God, who connect to God in different ways. If we act out of fear, it will feel good now, but a few years from now, there will be no First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Instead, we need to boldly love. We need to be filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit. We need to go where Jesus is going and love who Jesus loves. We may encounter snakes and scorpions along the way, but the Holy Spirit empowers us to conquer all of the evil of the world. We will be protected as we continue Jesus’s mission to build the kingdom of God, right here, right now. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Trinity Sunday, June 12, 2022. Based on Romans 5:1-5 and John 16:12-15.

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On this Trinity Sunday, I am going to thoroughly explain the complete theological principle of the Trinity in a way that everyone understands. Oh, sorry, I left out a word in that sentence. I am NOT going to explain the complete theological principle of the Trinity. I don’t think anyone truly understands the doctrine, and I don’t think anyone can really understand it until they meet God face to face.

But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the implications of our belief in a triune God. In our scriptures today, we hear some hints of understanding. Over the centuries leading up to the writing of the New Testament, God revealed their triune nature. We rehearse this revelation in the church liturgical year. Our year starts with Advent: a proclamation that God the Father is sending his son. On Christmas, Jesus is born. Now we have two persons of the Godhead. We learn about Jesus’s early life and ministry, then encounter Lent. Here is where we learn that Jesus came to reconcile the world. Lent builds to the climax of Easter, when we celebrate God’s victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ, his Son.

Wait—what is the nature of God’s son? As in Greek and Roman mythology, is he a demigod? Or fully human, or fully God? The answer that Jesus reveals, throughout the Gospels and especially in his Farewell Discourse just before he is killed, is that God the Father and God the Son are distinct persons, but the same. Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him. We’re starting to see the mystery of the Godhead. Two persons, but one God.

On Pentecost, we meet the third person: the Holy Spirit. Now God has been fully revealed. The Holy Spirit is sent by God the Father and God the Son, and so is a distinct person, but speaks on behalf of the other two. The Holy Spirit has been with us all along—she is Sophia, divine Wisdom calling to us; she is ruach, divine breath giving life to all creatures great and small—but like breath, we didn’t notice her until she appeared like tongues of fire.

Today, we celebrate the full revelation of the mystery of the Godhead: three persons, one God. We will spend the next few months discussing the implications of God’s presence in the world. So today, let’s reflect on what we learn from the fact that the Holy Spirit has been sent to us.

The Overton window is a principle in political theory that describes the spectrum of political discourse. At the center of the window is today’s policy. To make it concrete, let’s use tax policy. On either side of nominal, there are popular policies. Many people would agree on adjusting tax rates up or down a little, especially on other people. On either side of those popular policies, there are sensible policies; in our tax example, these are the kinds of things you would read about in mainstream outlets like the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. Moving further out from center, you get acceptable policies—ones that can be discussed but probably will never happen—then radical, then unthinkable. Nobody in America would seriously discuss a 0% flat tax; hardly anyone in America would propose confiscating all income over a certain level, at least not if they wanted to be taken seriously. Actual change happens at the popular level—slight modifications to present policy—and then the Overton window shifts. That’s why modern American tax codes look so different from, say, taxes in 1800. Along the way, we even had a Constitutional amendment. If a time traveler went back and proposed the modern tax code in 1800, they might be tarred and feathered. We also see the Overton window in action in the current gun policy discussion. There are things that are worthy of discussion; wholesale confiscation is off the table and would just be a distraction. The Senate acts to keep the window from shifting too far or too fast.

Society is like a huge ship that only turns slowly. Institutions are like that, too. Consider the PC(USA) Book of Order versus what John Knox believed and organized. Or consider our Book of Confessions. If you read the Scots Confession and compare it to the Confession of 1967, you’ll see some common threads, but a lot of differences. We no longer find it acceptable to denounce Romanists, for example.

The Overton window is at work in each person’s life, too. I would venture to say that nobody here believes the same things or acts the same way as when they were teenagers. In fact, some would argue that a problem in certain sectors of Christianity is that people have stunted understandings of God that were totally appropriate in their youth but haven’t changed as they matured. Young people latch onto all sorts of strange things. This might surprise you all, but I was a big Ayn Rand fan in my youth. Some life experiences have changed the way I look at the world. I’ve grown in my faith and in my approach to serving my community.

I’ve been volunteering at The Rolla Mission for four years now. Well, before that, I occasionally took overnight shifts, but after Easter in 2018, I started serving lunch on Fridays. Prior to my joining, there were no services at all on Fridays, so we started out just being open for four hours, 10-2. In those early days, I was constantly learning how to plan and how to cook. Some days, I only served seven or eight plates. We used paper plates and plastic silverware. Many days, I was the only volunteer, and at the time, Ashley was the only staff member.

Now, I think there are six full-time staff and two or three people supported by Goodwill. We use real plates because we have enough helpers to wash dishes. I will often serve close to 50 plates at Friday lunch, which is actually kind of a low spot in the week. If I walked in today to volunteer, I don’t know if I could handle it. But because I started when I only had to cook for about twice as many people as my own family, and when there weren’t many crises to deal with, I’ve been able to grow with the Mission and feel comfortable serving there.

The same principle also applies to our interpersonal relationships. I am naturally an introvert. In the old days, Rhonda was the social butterfly and I just tagged along. But over the last decade or so, basically since I moved to Rolla, I’ve gradually emerged from my shell and chat with clerks at the store, or with people passing by my house, or people across campus, etc. I’ve grown in my ability to see God’s spark in the people I meet, and to love them through the Holy Spirit.

A big part of my growth has come from some unfortunate circumstances in our family. As Rhonda’s health and abilities have declined, we have all had to adjust to a new reality. We’re not unique in that way—everyone here has suffered in some way. Paul reminds us, though, that suffering leads to endurance, which leads to character, which leads to hope.

When I first read that, I thought, wait: don’t you need endurance before you encounter suffering? But then I reflected on what I’ve gone through. It was the suffering in my life that strengthened me to endure. It’s like working a muscle, or like any of the other changes I mentioned. As our lives have changed, I’ve grown more endurance, and that endurance has given me the ability to see others as people who also have suffered in other ways. That’s the character that Paul promised, an openness to being in relationship with people who have suffered from the brokenness of this world.

Suffering leads to hope. Wait, what? How can suffering make you hopeful? We typically think of hope as a cognitive thing, a goal-oriented approach to life. I’m going to apply for a job, or plant a garden, or try whatever else, and I hope it works out. That sort of thing. The hope Paul is talking about, though, is hope that flows from God and God’s gifts. When we endure suffering, we realize that God is there with us. God walks beside us, dwells within us, and carries us when we cannot continue. God gives us hope, a hope based on knowing that no matter what happens to us, God will carry us through. We may walk through dark valleys, but God’s promise is that we will make it out the other side.

Just as we have all suffered, we have all been richly blessed. Not blessed with riches—this isn’t the Prosperity Gospel. But richly blessed with relationships to God’s people. If nothing else, we have each other, right? We experience the gift of God’s presence in and through each other as we worship together and join in fellowship together.

God’s presence in our relationships gives us hope because it reminds us that our triune God is still active in the world. God is still creating, still redeeming, still sustaining us all. God was revealed most clearly in the person of Jesus, but continues to reveal their nature by the Holy Spirit that dwells among us.

In the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus say, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” This is again the Overton window at work. Jesus knew that there was no way to explain to that group of first-century Jewish disciples all the glory of God. Even today, two thousand years later, we cannot comprehend the fullness of God’s mysterious glory. So Jesus promised that the Spirit would keep working through God’s people to help them learn more of the truth. Eventually, we will see God face to face and truly comprehend the extent of God’s love. In the meantime, the Spirit flows through us all to guide us.

I had a conversation with my brother recently about a lot of things, one of which was the nature of scripture. There are people who believe that the Bible was essentially written by people taking dictation from God. If you know anything about the history of how the document made its way into the pews here, you know how ridiculous that is. We don’t even know if the letters attributed to Paul are authentic and we have no original copies. We don’t really know who wrote the four Gospels or many of the epistles. The Old Testament is even more murky, in part because of the lateness of its written form after centuries of oral tradition. Plus there’s the issue of language and culture that shaped the Bible.

Instead of being the literal words issued by God, I regard the Bible as an authentic expression of ancient peoples’ encounters with God. Maybe they understood what God was trying to reveal, maybe not; maybe their understanding was correct at the time but doesn’t translate to our current reality. So how do we know what to believe? Well, Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit, whom he called the Paraclete: an Advocate, or a Helper. The Holy Spirit guides us to understand the capital-T Truth. God is still speaking by the Holy Spirit, sometimes directly to individuals, sometimes through committees or other gatherings, sometimes through scripture.

We have hope because we know that God is still speaking. God is still active. God is the great do-er of existence. God is the creative force within us all, the voice of truth, the spirit that binds us together.

God’s primary activity is to pour forth love. How do we determine the Truth revealed in scripture? How do we determine our path in the world? Love. Always love. If there is one word that describes the Trinity, it’s love. When you are considering how to interpret what you read or hear, or considering what church policy should be, or considering what decision to take in a tricky situation, ask yourself: Where is love in this? The Great Commandment is to love God and love neighbor; the New Commandment in John’s Gospel is to love each other as Jesus loved. God is revealed in the way we love each other.

Sometimes you’re confronted by a person you don’t understand, who has different lived experiences and a different perspective. In my work on campus, my volunteer work at the Mission, and my interactions with people in the community, I see lots of people who have led very different lives than I have. I could judge the decisions they make, or the attitudes they have, or the beliefs they hold dear. To the extent that they are hurting themselves or others, judgment is necessary. But if they’re just different, my goal, not always achieved, is to see them as God sees them: with love. How can I be more loving towards them? OK, I don’t understand why they think or act the way they do, but I don’t have to. God doesn’t ask me to judge them, just to love them.

Judge not, lest ye be judged. Jesus was cautioning us that God’s will is that everyone be in loving relationships with each other, just as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in loving relationships with each other, so tightly that they are one God. But Jesus knew how hard that is, this side of heaven, so he sent us the Holy Spirit as a Helper. God is still speaking, still working, pouring forth love, revealing Godself in each person we meet. Let us all seek to be channels for God’s love, to see the divine spark in people who are different from us, and to live into the unity in diversity that our triune God exemplifies. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 2:1-11, Romans 8:14-17, and John 14:8-17, 25-27.

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In Genesis, we read about God interacting directly with certain individuals. Then in Exodus, God speaks with Moses and, through him, creates the nation of Israel. God must have thought their work was done, that they had set humanity on the right path. Like a parent who thinks that once their kids graduate high school or college think that their job is done and their kids are on the right track. But the reality for a parent is that the job is never really done, and the reality for God was that the nation of Israel was clearly not aligned with God’s plan for them. You can almost see God shaking her head through the time of the judges, and through David’s sins with Bathsheba, and through the dissolution of the kingdom of Israel and then Judah. Geez, I told them what to do, and they just don’t get it. Someone’s got to go down there and straighten them out.

A big part of the problem is that we have God’s divine spark within us, but it gets swamped by our sinfulness and brokenness and worldly desires. God the Father just can’t understand that, having never been in human form. So Jesus came down here to experience humanity, in all it’s beauty and ugliness. He was tempted just as we are, so like the recent ad campaign says, he gets us. He learned what life is like as a human being and is now our Advocate to God the Father.

A few problems remain, though. For one, Jesus could only be on earth as a human being for a few short years. Whether he was crucified at the age of 33 or lived to be 100, he would only be among us for a short time in the span of human history. For another, Jesus could only be in one place at a time. He really didn’t travel very far in his life. Some estimates say he walked over 3000 miles, but that was in a region that measures about 100 miles in extent. A region much smaller than Missouri. Then there’s the issue that while Jesus could become our Advocate in God’s realm, we need an Advocate here on earth.

So after Jesus departed, he sent the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can be everywhere at every time. She can work through us to heal our human relationships, and in doing so, she can really learn how humanity works from the inside. Jesus was only one person, but the Spirit can be in and among us as a group.

Today we celebrate the birthday of the Christian church. On the first Pentecost after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the first disciples had a vivid encounter with God. The Holy Spirit descended upon them with a sound like rushing wind and an appearance like fire.

I have never personally had such a vivid encounter, nor have I had any visions like Peter or Paul reported. I’d like to share with you one time that I felt God’s presence in a special way, though. It was June 2015. Jesse and I went to an interfaith worship service at Pride STL. This was immediately after the Obergefell decision on marriage equality, so the mood was jubilant, to say the least. The interfaith service was led by the Metropolitan Community Church, whose choir is great but with a music style that I don’t much care for. Let’s just say the songs they sang would never fly here. There were speeches by secular humanists and a homily by a Polish Catholic priest.

Then Rabbi Randy spoke. He talked about the tradition of breaking a glass at Jewish weddings. That tradition is intended as a reminder of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Why is it a part of a wedding? Well, as Rabbi Randy said, if you ask five Jews, you’ll get five reasons. But he said that he sees it as a reminder that even at a time of ultimate joy over the union of two people in love, this world is broken. I don’t know why, but at that moment, I had a sudden awareness of God’s presence. God was in me, in that gathering of people who all had different understandings of the Divine but who all sought greater unity and to heal the brokenness of this world.

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection was a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in Paris in the 1600s. His schooling was limited at best and he spent most of his time in the priory working in the kitchen. And yet, he was a great spiritual teacher whose writings were gathered into a book, The Practice of the Presence of God. He wrote:

[A]fter having given myself wholly to GOD, to make all the satisfaction I could for my sins, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world. Sometimes I considered myself before Him as a poor criminal at the feet of his judge; at other times I beheld Him in my heart as my FATHER, as my GOD: I worshipped Him the oftenest that I could, keeping my mind in His holy Presence, and recalling it as often as I found it wandered from Him. I found no small pain in this exercise, and yet I continued it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that occurred, without troubling or disquieting myself when my mind had wandered involuntarily. I made this my business, as much all the day long as at the appointed times of prayer; for at all times, every hour, every minute, even in the height of my business, I drove away from my mind everything that was capable of interrupting my thought of GOD.

The Practice of the Presence of God, First Letter, by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection

That is the essence of the Christian life. Continual awareness of God’s presence in the world. God doesn’t live in this building. God isn’t only revealed on Sunday mornings, or only in mountaintop experiences like I had in that St. Louis city park. God is everywhere. God is in all things, and as Brother Lawrence taught, we lack awareness but can develop a sense of God’s presence through continual practice.

Jesus had that awareness and calls us to follow him. In his Farewell Discourse, he first explained that he had to go away, but then promised the disciples that he would send the Paraclete, a word translated as Advocate, Helper, or Comforter. The Greek word parakletos is analogous to a Latin legal term, advocatus. It referred to someone of high social standing who would speak on your behalf. When I read the description of the role, I was reminded of CASA, the Court Appointed Special Advocates who work on behalf of children who cannot navigate the legal system on their own. In the same way, the Holy Spirit works on our behalf in this world that is broken and beyond our comprehension. Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as speaking through us, guiding us. Yet at the same time, the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma that are translated as Spirit both mean wind or breath. Like the wind, the Spirit flows where the Spirit wills. Like breath, the Spirit gives us life and sustains us all.

The global Christian church is in decline. But one segment, one expression of the Christian faith is growing: Pentecostalism. The Pentecostal tradition dates back in one sense to that first Pentecost, but in another sense has its roots in Wesleyan holiness movements. The Holy Spirit started peeking through. In 1817, Jarena Lee was at Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The preacher was suddenly unable to speak, and Jarena was moved by the Spirit to stand and preach. She was the first African-American woman to preach publicly, speaking to mixed-race audiences from the mid-Atlantic to New England and Canada. Remember, this was a time when slavery was legal and neither African-Americans nor women could own property or vote.

The big turning point came almost a century later in 1906 at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. Charles Parham had split from the Methodist Episcopal Church in Topeka and tutored William J. Seymour, who then moved on to Los Angeles. After being rejected by the local church that was meant to be his host, Seymour led worship services that were marked by all of the signs we associate with Pentecostalism, like speaking in tongues. They were able to keep their momentum for about 7 years and then kind of fizzled out. But their legacy was widespread, with existing denominations like the Church of God in Christ and new denominations like the Assemblies of God carrying on the flame of Pentecostalism. Today, there are 644 million Pentecostal and charismatic believers worldwide, 26% of all Christians. While the global population is growing at a 1.2% rate and Christianity as a whole just slightly faster at 1.27%, Pentecostal strands are growing at 2.26%, close to double the population growth rate, and accelerating.

Why? Why are charismatic expressions of Christianity growing so much faster than traditional ones? There are lots of reasons, but I think the critical one is their awareness of God’s presence. They experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in a tangible, sometimes dramatic way.

Now, I’m not suggesting that one must experience the baptism by the Holy Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues, in order to be saved. As I’ve said, I believe in universal salvation. I am suggesting that we can all become aware of God’s presence in the world, and be empowered to share that awareness with others.

There are many ways to experience God’s presence. One path is described by Brother Lawrence, by the anonymous author of another classic work called The Cloud of Unknowing, and others in the contemplative tradition: centering prayer, apophatic prayer, wordless prayer that seeks God as God, not for God’s gifts. I’ll admit that I struggle with that. I pray regularly, but really struggle with contemplative prayer. Another path that I’m working on is kataphatic prayer, wordy prayer, in which I communicate with God whatever is on my mind. Something I started recently is to pause throughout the day and pray the Prayer of St. Francis. That’s a way to re-center myself on God and on the way I want to be more Christ-like. Using a fixed prayer relieves me of the need to think of what to say and just dwell in the moment. You might want to try something similar, maybe with the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer or Thomas Merton’s prayer or any other prayer that speaks to your heart.

Another way to experience God is through scripture. People have different understandings of the nature of scripture, but I believe that it is a recording of ways that people throughout history have experienced God. By reading about their experiences, perhaps you can catch a glimpse of God in the world. There are lots of different ways to approach scripture regularly. I use a book called Year of the Bible that identifies a few chapters to read each day, and I read it every night. Usually, there are two Old Testament chapters and one New Testament, or sometimes a psalm or two instead of the New Testament, or sometimes more chapters if they are short. It takes me about 15 minutes, more or less. That allows me to skim the surface of the whole story. Another way is to use the daily lectionary, which is a two-year cycle that hits the important parts of the Bible just like the weekly lectionary we use in worship. The nice thing about using the daily lectionary is that there are lots of resources available if you want devotional studies or prayers.

But maybe reading isn’t your thing, and maybe you have a hard time centering yourself and quieting your mind for prayer. Why are we here today? So that we can experience God through other people. We experience God through worship, and we experience God through Christian fellowship. Each person reveals to us another aspect of God. Our unity in Christ’s body lowers the barriers between us and allows us to enter deeper relationships with each other and with God.

And above all, we can experience God if we follow Jesus’s new commandment given earlier in his Farewell Discourse: Love one another. Love is from God. Love IS God. In loving, we participate in God’s continuing work to reconcile all people and all things and welcome them into God’s eternal realm. We can experience a glimpse of the heavenly realm HERE and NOW if we have love.

In the Tower of Babel story, we read about people who were self-reliant and productivity-oriented. God said, Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them, and so the LORD scattered the people. We were not created for doing things and building things. We were created to love. On the day of Pentecost, the disciples turned from self-reliance to God-reliance. If we depend on God and God’s love, then nothing will be impossible for us. The Holy Spirit will move with us, bind us together, flow through us, and advocate for us. And we will experience a glimpse of God’s heavenly realm now, God’s eternal presence waiting for our awareness. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 11:1-18 and John 13:31-35.

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The Old Testament book of Leviticus lays out a number of laws about cleanness and uncleanness. Certain foods are proscribed, like pork and shellfish. There are rules about how you butcher animals. There are rules about leprosy, which was kind of a catch-all term for skin diseases. There are rules about women. There are rules about foreigners. Rules, rules, rules.

All those rules are kind of hard to keep track of precisely, so over the centuries, rabbis constructed a fence around the Law. For example, there is a verse saying that it’s wrong to boil meat in the animal’s mother’s milk. Why, I don’t know. The problem is, all the milk from the herd gets mixed together. So to be careful, rabbis said, Just don’t boil any meat in any milk. And just to be certain, don’t allow any dairy products to touch any pots or pans that you use to cook meat.

They extended this fence to exclude people. Table fellowship is an essential part of being in a community. Hospitality is kind of important in American culture, but really critical in Middle Eastern culture, and was even more so in the first century. Who you shared the table with indicated who you valued as part of your community. I have heard it said that the entirety of Paul’s corpus of letters wrestles with one essential question: Should Jews and Greeks eat together?

One argument went that keeping separate from each other enabled Jews to maintain their unique identity. Perhaps that’s why Jews don’t eat pork—to establish that they are different from the other people who live in that region. Eating separately also ensured that no unclean food was consumed and no unclean people came into contact with Jews who were trying to maintain their ritual purity.

In the early days of Christianity, the predominant attitude was that the followers of Christ’s Way were fundamentally Jews first. Simon Peter held that position. He was part of the “circumcision party,” that is, the faction within the movement that believed in maintaining all of the Jewish laws and customs. Circumcision was the physical sign that a man was Jewish. Like most of the early Christians, Peter believed that all followers of Jesus needed to first become Jews by being circumcised, then be baptized, then keep all of the Law.

One day, he had a vision. It’s perhaps a bit difficult for us to imagine a vision of ritually unclean animals, but maybe we can think about foods that are acceptable in other cultures but that we don’t eat. That’s kind of what the ritual purity code was about—only eating the things that Jews eat. Peter has a vision of foods that were repulsive to him, but God tells him that all things are blessed by God, and what God has blessed, Peter should accept. He wakes from the vision of unclean foods and is led to unclean people. Cornelius and his Gentile household would have been considered unclean people that a good Law-observing Jew like Peter should not associate with, let alone visit in their own house. Yet God leads Peter to realize that all things are blessed by God. The gift of God’s love is not meant just for certain people who follow certain rules, but for everyone.

Now, I have not personally had any visions like Peter’s. Some people claim that they have, and others claim to have at least sensed God’s message in some way. We need to be careful in those situations. On the one hand, yes, I believe that God is still speaking to us. The United Church of Christ, one of our sibling denominations, uses a big comma as one of their key symbols to remind them and all of us that God has not stopped revealing herself to us. On the other hand, some people claim to have heard God saying something that is conveniently aligned with their own views. Kind of like the huckster preachers who claim that God is calling you to send them money. As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.”

How are we to know what is good? How can we know whether a prophecy or other spiritual leading is from God or Satan? How can we know whether we are being led towards or away from the divine? Well, we can test it. The test is this: Jesus was the clearest revelation of God’s innate character. Is the prophecy aligned with Jesus’s main message?

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear the opening paragraph of Jesus’s farewell address to his disciples. At this point, he has washed their feet and shared a meal with them. Judas had just left, on his way to betray Jesus and set in motion the process that led to his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. His time with his disciples is waning, so this is Jesus’s last chance to make sure they know what to do when he’s gone.

Jesus had taught his disciples a bunch of things over a period of three years. He taught that the Temple should not be a marketplace. He taught that they must be born again. He taught that he was living water and the bread of life. He taught that one day, Samaritans and Jews would both worship in spirit and truth. And he taught them to wash each other’s feet. Now was the time to summarize all of his teachings. What would he highlight?

Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment: that they love one another. He said, Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. Let’s think about what he says elsewhere in the Gospels, though. Elsewhere, he said that the Great Commandment is to love God and love our neighbor, which is really just plucking a couple verses out of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. So it seems like the new commandment is just the old commandment, with a little spin. Well, the reason for a new commandment is for a new covenant. When we talk about the Ten Commandments, we’re actually talking about the original covenant between God and the new nation of Israel. A covenant is like a contract, in the sense that it has terms and conditions. The conditions of the original covenant were listed out as ten individual rules. Jesus later on distilled them down and said, OK, I know you can’t keep track of all those rules, but if you love God and love your neighbor, you will fulfill your side of the covenant. But then he forms a new covenant, sealed in his blood. What are the terms and conditions of this new agreement? Love one another as I have loved you.

Under the old covenant, love of neighbor was kind of a negative law. To love your neighbor, don’t murder them, don’t steal from them, don’t covet their possessions. Under the new covenant, love of neighbor is a positive law. Serve them as Jesus served his disciples. It’s possible, at least theoretically, to avoid murdering and stealing and so forth if you still draw distinctions between Us and Them. It’s much more difficult to actively serve someone you think of as an outsider.

In the wake of 9/11, there was a surge in the number of hate crimes. There was an Islamophobic attitude in the nation, running so hot it overcame logic and reason. In India, Hindu is the dominant religion with Islam a close second, but there’s also the Sikh religion. Sikhs are monotheistic, though it is unclear whether their God is our God. They know God by a different name, Waheguru. Sikh men stand out in a crowd because they wear a turban as a religious headdress. Those turbans, and their brown skin, made Sikhs convenient targets for irrational hatred, even though their religion is totally unrelated to Islam.

Valarie Kaur, a third-generation American and a Sikh, was a student at Stanford at the time and made a documentary about the surge of hate crimes called Divided We Fall. The first victim was Balbir Singh Sodhi, on September 15 in Mesa, Arizona. Immediately, a Sikh in the community rallied a response. They blitzed the media with information about the Sikh religion and history. Ironically, Sikhs had immigrated to escape religious persecution from Hindus and Muslims in their native country. Balbir himself was a recent immigrant but well-known in his community. The media blitz turned him from an anonymous, brown-skinned, turban-wearing man—the Other—into a human being with a kind heart, who loved his family and community, who was in America seeking a better life. In response, thousands of people showed up for his memorial. His widow, who was still living in India and visited for the memorial, left feeling loved, not hated, by America.

That’s the key. That’s what Jesus asks us to do: to see each other’s fundamental humanity and respond in love. When someone is grieving, like Balbir’s widow, we grieve with them. Through that shared experience of grief, we can see God and experience God’s love. Similarly, when someone is hungry and we feed them, or lonely and we bring them into our fellowship, or oppressed and we free them, we can see and experience God.

Henri Nouwen was a Catholic priest and mystic. He once said, “Telling someone ‘I love you’ means, ‘You are a window through which I can see the infinite love that is God.’” Each person has that divine spark within them, a connection to the infinite love of God. If we can see past the masks that we all wear, we can see our shared humanity in each other, and through that window, we can see the love of God.

I just finished listening to an audiobook by Valarie Kaur in which she talks about making her movie, as well as a wide range of other experiences she had and learned from. She worked as an activist. She toured the country screening her movie and moderating discussions. While in law school, she worked in a clinic and represented a Latinx community that was struggling against the local police. Through it all, she learned that in every encounter, she had a choice. She could respond to provocation in kind, letting her attacker’s anger make her angry in response. Sometimes, that was the only choice—the attacker’s words and actions were so painful and dehumanizing that they stimulated her fight-flight-or-freeze response. In those cases, she had to find a way to release the rage that was provoked, under controlled circumstances to avoid danger to herself or others. Or instead, she could react with a sense of wonder. She could listen—truly listen—to the story beyond the words and actions. She could see a guard at Guantanamo Bay as an agent of an unjust system that systematically dehumanized detainees, or she could see him as a victim of a military structure that gave him no choice and stole his humanity as well.

Each person we encounter has a story. We can choose to flatten people into stereotypes, or we can choose to listen to those stories and find a way to see God in them. That’s what I have tried to do over the past few years. I have lived a pretty sheltered life with a lot of unearned privilege. As a teacher, historically, I just considered my students to be brains on a stick. But they’re more than that, and so are the patrons at the Mission, and so are all the people in the community that I interact with. By learning their stories, I have been able to see the world through their eyes, and I have been able to see God through them. If we only talk with people like us, we only get one perspective on God. By getting to know—really know—people who have different life experiences, we can see God in different ways and broaden and deepen our relationship with them.

Jesus gave us a commandment: to love each other as he loved us. That means that we don’t just have warm feelings towards them, but that we really know them and serve them. As we learn to see God in each other, we are able to serve God by serving them.

A couple weeks ago, I asked the question, Whom do we serve? Well, the basic answer is, the people we love. So today I must ask: Whom do we love? Do we just love people who are like us, people we already know? Or do we go outside our comfort zone to meet new people, to know their stories, to love them, and to see God through them? Again, the world is a big place, and it’s not possible for us to know everyone well enough to love them and serve them. So my challenge to you all, and to myself, is to think about who we are called to reach out to, to learn from, to love, and to serve.

I’d like to close with the Prayer of St. Francis. It’s a reminder to go into the dark places of the world and shine Christ’s light. To go where God needs us to share in his work. I want you to remember throughout the prayer that it is asking God to turn us into people of action, who sow love and who seek to love. Would you pray with me?

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on May 1, 2022. Based on Acts 9:1-20 and John 21:1-19.

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I’d like to start back in the Old Testament, in the early days of Israel as a nation. They had been slaves in Egypt whom God freed. After Moses died, Joshua led them in their conquest of the Promised Land. As Joshua approached death, he gathered the people together to exhort them. He said, in chapter 24 verses 14-15:

“Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

The people all said, Of course we will serve the LORD! Joshua warns them that it’s hard, and that if they turn their back on God, they will suffer. They say again, We will serve the LORD!

At that time, they understood religion in terms of the legal code—the Ten Commandments plus the extensive rules in Leviticus—plus the sacrificial system. They could serve the LORD by bringing burnt offerings and fellowship offerings and sin offerings and guilt offerings to the priests who ministered before the LORD, particularly where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. There were clear rules.

I listen to audiobooks a lot when I run, and one I listened to recently was by Brené Brown. One guideline she gives leaders is this: Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. Well, the Law of Moses and the Temple sacrificial system was clear. If you want to serve the LORD, do this thing. The problem was that it was inflexible.

The Gospel of John was written late in the first century, maybe in the year 90 CE. In March of 70 CE, the Roman army destroyed the Temple in response to a Jewish revolt. Suddenly, these clear rules were no help. It was impossible for the Jewish people to continue serving the LORD as they had for five centuries. They were lost and trying to find their path. Out of this turmoil, two religions emerged: rabbinic Judaism, which was the heritage of the Pharisees, and Christianity. Both religions had to answer the question: what does it mean to serve the LORD?

So that brings us to this morning’s scene by the lakeshore. Remember that Peter was kind of the chief disciple. Jesus never set one disciple over another, but he did say that Simon would be known as the rock upon which his church would be built. In Aramaic, he was given the name of Kepha or Cephas; in Greek, Petros, which we translate as Peter. I prefer to think of him as Rocky. Anyway, Peter, or Rocky, was usually the one we hear asking stupid questions or saying ridiculous things, but he was also the one who answered Jesus correctly when he asked, “Who do you say I am?” Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

In the upper room on the night when Jesus was arrested, Peter promised to follow Jesus even unto death. Jesus knew Peter better than he knew himself, though, and correctly predicted what would happen just a few hours later. Peter accompanied Jesus to the garden and witnessed his arrest. He continued to follow Jesus, as he promised, but he denied being a follower. Three times, he was given the chance to say, Yes, I am one of Jesus’s disciples, I have promised to follow him unto death. Three times, he said, No, I don’t know him! When he realized what he had done, poor Peter was ashamed.

Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. In his shame, and in his grief, he returns to his former occupation. Peter says to his closest friends, I’m going fishing. They didn’t catch anything, but you know, when you’re dealing with grief, fishing isn’t about catching fish. It’s about being on the water, experiencing God’s creation, and staying busy. They fished all night unsuccessfully, and then some random guy says, Try the other side.

Suddenly, everything changes. They catch a ton of fish, and “the disciple who Jesus loved,” which presumably is John, the author of the Gospel, recognizes their friend, their leader, their risen Lord. John sees Jesus and knows his identity, but it is Peter who acts on it. It’s Peter who is so overjoyed that he can’t even wait for the boat to get to shore. Like Forrest Gump, he jumps in the water and swims to shore to see his old friend.

Peter doesn’t recognize Jesus at first, but as soon as he does, he is overjoyed to see him. Yes, he abandoned Jesus once, but now he knows that death and sin have been vanquished. He knows that Jesus truly is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and he is strengthened and empowered to follow Jesus even unto death. Years later, Peter will be martyred, as Jesus warns, but on this day, all that matters is fellowship with his friend, his brother, his Lord.

Now, Peter could and probably should have been ashamed. He had abandoned his friend when the going got tough. It doesn’t matter, though. His love for Jesus was stronger than that shame. Jesus responds in kind. He doesn’t punish Peter. He isn’t some vengeful, tyrannical leader who responds to betrayal with ostracism or harsh words. He offers Peter the opportunity to prove his love and devotion, simply by saying, Yes, Lord, I adore you. The word that Peter uses means a personal kind of love, the love you might have for your closest friend, someone you think of as a sibling because they mean so much to you.

Peter was tested, and failed. He was challenged, and responded by denying that he was one of Jesus’s followers. Still, Jesus knew that the test itself—even the failed test—had changed Peter. No longer was he just the bumbling idiot we sometimes read about in the Gospels. He was indeed the rock upon which Jesus would build his church. He knew the shame of denying Jesus, and recommitted himself to following Christ. So Jesus commissioned him.

Clear is kind. Jesus gives Peter explicit instructions: If you love me, feed my sheep. In the same way, Saul is tested and commissioned. Today’s reading from Acts describes Saul’s encounter on the road to Damascus. He was blinded by his encounter with Jesus. He could have responded by thinking that he was right about Jesus being an agent of Satan. I mean, surely an agent of God wouldn’t do something so terrible to him. But instead, Saul realized that this wasn’t a punishment, but a test. He recognizes that the path he had been on led not just to Damascus, but to a spiritual death. He was getting further and further from God by persecuting the people that God loved.

Saul, also called Paul, needed something dramatic to wake him up. A simple meal of bread and fish wouldn’t be enough for him. He hadn’t been one of the disciples and never knew Jesus before his crucifixion, so he couldn’t just be reminded of the things he had been taught like Peter. He needed to witness the inbreaking of God’s reign in order to learn that Jesus is indeed God.

Let’s imagine being poor Saul. He was some distance from Damascus and blinded. Fortunately, he had traveling companions who helped him get to safety. Still, he was blind for three days. He may have thought that this was just his life now. No wonder he didn’t eat—he was mourning the loss of his sight. At the same time, he was processing the words he had heard and realized that he had been very, very wrong. He had thought that followers of the Way were from Satan and were leading the Jewish people astray. Now he knew that Christ’s Way is indeed the path that leads to eternal life. So perhaps he was also in mourning because of shame and regret over all the evil he had done, erroneously thinking he was serving God.

But that wasn’t the end. Saul was healed, and commissioned for service. Jesus told Peter to “feed my lambs.” Jesus tells Saul instead to spread his message of love and reconciliation “to Gentiles and kings and … the people of Israel.”

Jesus calls everyone to serve him. In Matthew 25, he tells the crowd that whatever they do to “the least of these,” they do to him. In Acts 9, he tells Saul that whatever he has done to followers of the Way, he has done to Jesus. Jesus is in all of us, everyone, the people you love, the people you hate, the people you don’t even know. He is in the powerful; he is in the poor. He is in the strong; he is in the weak. How we treat people is how we treat Jesus.

All of the disciples were given a commandment to love one another. All of the disciples were given a commission to go to all the nations and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But there on the beach, over a simple meal of bread and fish, Peter was specifically commissioned to feed Jesus’s lambs and tend his sheep. There in Damascus, Saul was specifically commissioned to take Jesus’s message to the Gentiles.

So the question to us, each of us individually and all of us as a congregation, is, Whom do we serve? I was talking with my friend Sharon recently about that question, and she said, “It’s God, right? Always remember that.” Well, sure. We all are called to serve God, and like Joshua, we should promise that we will. But what does that mean?

I suppose we could try to find the lost Ark of the Covenant, build a temple, and recruit a kohen to resume the sacrificial system. I don’t think that will happen, and anyway, as Paul wrote, all of those sacrifices and the whole sacrificial system were only temporary. Then Jesus gave himself in sacrifice once for all, so sacrifices are no longer necessary. What can we do instead?

Well, who are Jesus’s lambs and sheep? Everyone. There is no one that you will meet who God does not love. We are called to see Jesus in the faces of each person we meet. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it’s hard. Jesus never said it would be easy; in fact, he warned both Peter and Saul that they would suffer on account of him. He was pretty explicit that Peter would be martyred, but then said, “Follow me.” Being a Christian isn’t supposed to be easy, but it is rewarding. Peter and Saul and the rest of the early church leaders wouldn’t have carried on if they hadn’t been strengthened by the Holy Spirit. In serving God’s people, we draw closer to God and encounter God and are empowered by God.

So the question again is, Whom do we serve? In theory, we should heal all of the brokenness of this world. We should comfort everyone who is grieving. We should feed everyone who is hungry, free every prisoner, help everyone suffering from addiction, heal every human relationship. We should build a new society where each person is valued because they reflect the glory of God. We should tear down systems of oppression, in our community, across the nation, and around the world. We should put an end to violence and war. Wow. That’s a big ask. I can’t be everywhere, and I have certainly been confronted by problems that I cannot solve. Well, as the saying goes, there is a Messiah, and it’s not me.

Only God can ultimately heal all of creation. But for whatever reason, God chose to dwell among us in the person of Jesus, and after his death and resurrection, commissioned us all to carry on the work. God chose to work in the world through us. No longer does manna fall like frost or dew—if there are hungry people, we are expected to feed them. No longer is Jesus here to cast out demons or to heal blindness—that’s our job. Even in those early years, Jesus was working through his followers. After Saul was blinded, it was up to his friends to get him to Damascus and Ananias to heal his blindness.

We are finite. We cannot be all things to all people. Consider our worship style versus, say, Greentree. People who like one won’t like the other. Consider our sanctuary. The things that we all find comforting and holy are instead intimidating and disquieting to some people in the community. All we can do is follow Jesus and be who we are, only a little bit better than we were yesterday, a little more Christlike. A little more transformed by our love of God, which flows through us to love others. That means serving someone, finding out where God is at work and is leading you to help.

I know who I serve, as an individual. I know who we have been serving as a congregation. The question before us is, who will we serve? Where have we been fishing and coming up empty, and where is the “other side of the boat” where Jesus is calling us to fish? The kingdom of heaven is abundant. Jesus fed thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. He changed 150 gallons of water into wine. He casually told his friends where to throw their net and they caught 153 fish. Abundance, not scarcity. The world is filled with God’s people, people who are suffering, who need to feel God’s love, who need to be connected to Christ’s body. Let us all pray for guidance, that we can see where God is at work and is asking us to join in. Let us all pray that we will see Jesus in each person we meet. And let us all pray that we will know, individually and as a congregation, who we will serve. Amen.

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