Engineering My Faith

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

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

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 By the Middle Ages, this was interpreted to mean that Christianity has replaced or superseded Judaism.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samuel Wells

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

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

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

Kat Armas on Clergy Coaching Network

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proverbs 9:1-6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Watch a video of the worship service:

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