title: The Prodigal Son and the Ministry of Reconciliation

series: Lent

themes: reconciliation prodigal-son divine-mercy repentance scripture-interpretation

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 15:1-3, 11-32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
**Series:** Lent

> God's reconciliation through Christ is unconditional and complete — like the father who runs to embrace the prodigal — and those reconciled are in turn sent out as ambassadors to reconcile others.

**Illustrations:** tax-collectors-idolatrous-coins, jesus-as-your-child, meditation-as-prodigal-son, meditation-as-father, meditation-as-older-sibling, splanchnizomai-bowels

---

# March 30
## 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
## Luke 15:1-3, 11-14

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. - 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable…Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.”- Luke 15:1-3,11-14 NRSV

Today's reading is the famous parable of the prodigal son. Jesus lays out these three great parables in chapter 15, preceded by a brief introduction, which I read earlier. This is the third in that chapter and it occupies three times the space of the other ones.

Tax collectors and sinners come up to Jesus, and this frustrates some others in the community. I love how we have these two groupings of people: tax collectors and sinners, as if the sinners aren’t tax collectors and vice versa. Tax collectors were despised not just because they were weasily and skimmed from the top, but because they handled idolatrous coins with the face of Caesar on them. This may seem moot today with the strange images on our currency, but it mattered deeply in that time. Tax collectors were impure and folks were up in arms.

Pharisees and scribes are coming up to Jesus and saying, “this man eats with sinners and welcomes them.” Scribes could also be writers. It is people who know their letters. Educated people. The educated people are offended by the people that Jesus hangs out with. If we shift perspective a little bit, imagine Jesus is your son or daughter, and he is meeting with sinners and idolators. And you notice this and you say something about it. Don’t think the Pharisees are wicked or out to get at Jesus. They are concerned that this person in authority is mixing with the wrong crowd.

Jesus responds with the three great parables of Luke 15. The parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and finally, the parable of the lost son. The heart of the good news of Jesus Christ is found here: it's not about what we do. It's what God does for us.

Today, as we go over the parable of the prodigal son, I want to do it a little differently. I want us to rest and pray in this story that Jesus tells. I didn't read the full passage before because I want to read it now. I'm going to read part of it, and then I want us to close our eyes and have a little guided reflection.

11. Then he said, a certain human had two sons.
12. And the younger one of them said to the father, “give to me the portion of the estate (οὐσίας) falling (ἐπιβάλλον). Now he divided the wealth.
13. And with not many days, having gathered it all together (συναγαγὼν), the younger son went into a far country, and there he wasted his estate, living with abandon (ἀσώτως).
14. Now having spent everything of his, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be behind others in resources (ὑστερεῖσθαι).
15. And having left, he glued (ἐκολλήθη) himself to one of the citizens of that country, and that person sent him into his fields to feed pigs.
16. And he was longing to fill his belly out of the pods the pigs were eating; and no one was giving him.
17. Now to himself having come, he was saying, “How many hired servants of my father have abundance of bread, now I am here perishing in hunger?”
18. Having risen up (ἀναστὰς) I will go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned into heaven and before you,
19. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make (ποίησόν) me like one of your servants.

 We're going to stop there. I want you to close your eyes for a minute. Imagine yourself as the prodigal son or prodigal daughter. Where did you go when you left home? Why did you go? What is something not worthy of forgiveness that you've done or you've thought about doing? Stay in this person. What does it feel like to go back to a place that you've run away from? Okay, now we will read a little bit more.

20. And having risen up (ἀναστὰς), he went to his father, Now still far away, he being distant, his father saw him, and was moved with mercy (ἐσπλαγχνίσθη) and having run, fell upon his neck and kissed him.

The verb used here has to do with the Greek word for bowels, often translated as heart. ἐσπλαγχνίσθη could literally be a bowel movement.

21. Then his son said to him, “Father, I have sinned into heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.
22. Then the father said to his servants, Quickly bring out the best robe and clothe him, and give a ring for his hand, and sandals for his feet;
23. And having brought the fattened calf, kill and having eaten, let us celebrate.
24. For this son of mine was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate.

 Now I want you to close your eyes and put yourself in the position of the father or the mother; gender is not the important thing mercy is. What would it feel like for your child to think you dead and run away? What would you do? How would you cope? What would it feel like when he returned? Would you celebrate or lecture?

Finally I'm going read the last part of the passage.

25. Now his elder son was in the field; and while coming, he came close to the house, he heard music and dancing,
26. And having called one of the servants, he began asking what these things might be.
27. Now he said to him, “Your brother is come and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him in good health.
28. Now he was angry (Ὠργίσθη), and was not willing to enter. And his father was begging him.
29. And answering, his father said to him, “Behold, I serve you so many years, and never disobeyed a commandment of yours, and you never gave me a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.
30. Now when your son, the one having consumed your wealth with prostitutes (πορνῶν), came, you have killed for him the fattened calf!
31. And he said to him, son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
32. Now it was necessary to celebrate and rejoice, since your brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost and is found.

Now, put yourself in the story as the older brother or older sister who never left, who always obeyed while the younger sibling did what younger siblings do. What do you think when he left? Did you ever expect him to come back? What are you going to do when he does get back?

One of the great powers of the parables is that we can go back to them again and again and again and still receive a different lesson, receive a different message. It is a new message that does not contradict the prior one.

When I read the parable as the father, it does not destroy my reading of it as the son. If I read it as a straight allegory where the prodigal son represents the gentiles and the older brother represents the Jews and the father is God the father, this reading doesn't destroy other readings. These words are holy and all these readings are fair because they point to the God who is here. The God who welcomed his son home.

Some days we are that prodigal son. Some days, we are the ones who have turned away from God, who have forsaken our family and our friends and lost our way and only return home out of desperation, but in that desperation we receive mercy and grace.

Some days, we're the older son who did not stray, who grew up and stayed on the path of God and we may look with jealousy at the younger son who went off and had his fun before coming back. Or we may be like the father who feels betrayed, but our love is greater and love washes over a myriad of sins.

In all this, we must rest in the reconciliation promised by Paul in 2 Corinthians. True reconciliation. Not conditional. Not partial. No catch. Fully reunited and together.

>From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

Here is where Paul takes reconciliation a step further. We are not only welcomed home, but sent out again to reconcile others. Others in our lives. Others in our past. Those we have wronged. Those who have wronged us. Paul writes:

>So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness, the justice of God.

May it be so.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


site: sermons

title: The Reign of the Spirit

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

themes: holy-spirit kingdom-of-god fruit-of-the-spirit baptism growth-in-grace non-judgment

text:
**Scripture:** Acts 2:37-42; Luke 17:20-21; Acts 2:43-47; Matthew 7:13-14; Romans 14:17; Galatians 5:22-23

> The reign of the Holy Spirit, begun at Pentecost, is an embarkation point whose milestones are the ordinary, inward fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace—present here and now rather than in observable externals or judgment of others.

**Illustrations:** milestones-road-markers, preachers-birthday, english-railroads-coal, wesley-whitefield-1744, pascal-you-would-not-seek-me, frost-road-not-taken, gift-on-the-shelf

---

# October 19, 2025
## The Reign of the Spirit
## Acts 2: 37-42
## Luke 17:20-21

“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
” - Acts 2:37-42

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” - Luke 17:20-21

![](attachments/Holy Spirit.81fca4b3b82044d4b97b91c94fddc4bb.jpg)
I recently had a birthday. It wasn't one of the big ones. It wasn’t one of those birthdays that people call milestones. You know, when you turn 40 or 50 or pretty much any birthday that ends with a zero. That's a milestone. Or your 10 year, or 25 year, or 50 year wedding anniversary. That’s a milestone.

Or when you move to a new town, get a new job, have a kid, lose a kid, have a divorce, lose a spouse, Milestones.

I find it so amusing how this metaphor of Milestone has turned into major events in someone's life. Oh, that's a real Milestone for you. Major event in your career. You win this national award. What a milestone. You're elected to a special body. What a milestone.

The irony is that in places that use actual stones to mark the miles, or milestone, the milestones themselves were incredibly average and normal things. If milestones were only set in eventful places, they would not function as they were intended. People would get lost.

In England in the early 19th century, very few roads were paved. Most travel was by river or by boat, sailing around the island. The first railroads in the world were installed because a cart of coal was so heavy that a team of mules couldn’t pull it across the muddy, washed out roads of England.

The same issue happened for milestones. After rainstorms, roads could easily be washed away, but the stone would not. The milestone would mark where the road should be so that when travelers started back up after the ground dried, they would know the proper path to take.
Milestones weren't put down to mark significant moments of the road, but to mark the road,to help the traveler not be lost. But in order to find a milestone, you've got to start somewhere and be going somewhere.
That's the real key of it. In the literal way, when you hit a milestone, it means you're going somewhere; you're on a journey, which means there also has to be an embarkation point.

## Series Intro
My friends, we are finishing our series on the stained glass windows at Covenant. With this window over here, the reign of the Holy Spirit. The reign of the Holy Spirit marks an embarkation point for the Christian faith.
It's not the last window, but it sets us on our way. It sets us out on our way to the Kingdom of God, but also in the Kingdom of God.
As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, Seek and you will find. He doesn't say this to tell us to stop seeking, but that in seeking we find.

As the French philosopher Blaise Pascal put it through the mouth of Jesus, you would not seek me if you had not already found me.

Jesus describes this partially in the reading from Luke 17.
The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed. Look, it is already here. The Kingdom of God is among you.
Now this is an act of faith. Think about your own life. Think about the people in your life, think about how you spend your time, does it look like the kingdom of God to you right now? Does it look like completed thing right now?

In 1744, the Methodist movement was struggling. There have been a number of controversies over the previous few years. Controversies between John Wesley and a man named George Whitfield had originally been friends but started to get into a big controversy about faith. Whitefield was a very popular preacher, much more popular than John Wesley. He preached up and down the Colonial America. Some scholars have argued that the unity of the 13 colonies in the American Revolution was in large part due to the revivals led by George Whitfield across colonial boundaries. But Whitfield was very reformed and predestinarian. He believed that God predestined some to salvation and some to damnation, and John Wesley could not stomach this scripturally. The Methodist movement split in part between those who followed Whitefield and Wesley.

There was also a controversy for Wesley with the Moravians. Moravians were a group of German Christians who had heavily influenced John Wesley early on his journey to Georgia as well as when he came back to London. They had helped guide him toward his experience of Aldersgate when his heart was strangely warmed. But John started to disagree with the direction that movement was going, as well.

So we are back to 1744. John Wesley and the other ministers and preachers who made up the Methodist movement came together in London to start talking about what it meant to be a Christian. What did it mean to be justified by faith?

One of the things he wrote about that time

>We are not to think that the work of grace is finished it when it begins. Grace is a growing thing.

Grace grows because of the reign of the Holy Spirit, because of what happened at Pentecost, because the kingdom of God is not only what we are seeking but is present here. We grow by grace in seeking it.

As Jesus says in our gospel reading:

>The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

We don’t seek what is external to ourselves but what is deeper than ourselves because of the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Trinity, sent at Pentecost, to inaugurate a new way of life on earth revealed by Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

## Pentecost
The reign of the Holy Spirit began at Pentecost. Folks asked Peter what they should do. And this is how he responded:

>“Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
Acts 2:37-42 NRSV

They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to eating together and to praying together. It went deeper.

>“Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Acts 2:43-47 NRSV

This is the starting point for the church. It is not an end point, that is different, but it is a possibility, thanks to the Holy Spirit. God is greater than the sin that keeps from this sort of life. The Reign of the Holy Spirit is the reality that we are offered a portion of the kingdom-building God is doing now. We are not just given a free pass after we die, we are included now. And seeking Grace, we find it, and it grows with us.

The church is a place to check the milestones on this journey, the markers which let us know that we are on the right path.

There are so many roads we could take, some more and some less traveled. Robert Frost’s famous poem of two roads diverging is a paraphrase of the words of Jesus from the sermon on the Mount:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.- Matthew 7-13-14

Here is the beginning of the Frost poem:

>Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

What Frost helps us see is the desire to go down both roads. The desire to be two travelers at the same time. This, though, is an impossibility. We can’t be in two places at once. The ordinary mile stones of faith help us take note of which path we are on. The path that leads to life or the path that leads to destruction. The milestones are the visible markers of the path.

In the time of Jesus and up through today, people have looked for markers of faith. Jesus says that a good tree bears good fruit. What is the fruit produced by faith? Is it looking a certain way or acting a certain way? Is it eating the right things and dressing the right? Is it having the right job, the right spouse, the right kids? As Paul would say, By no means.

It is so easy to fall in the traps of seeking this sort of assurance, but these externalities do not mark the reign of the Holy Spirit. As Paul says in Romans 14, “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” - Romans 14:17  Justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. These are the milestones. It doesn’t have to be cosmic justice or world peace to be a milestone of the kingdom of God.

In Galatians, Paul goes deeper into the fruits of the spirit by listing nine: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There are a number of ways to hold these together, but I want us to connect them all back to the Gospel passage.

>“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

Here and now, dear brothers and sisters, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control is possible thanks to the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We receive this gift at our baptism. Sometimes, though, we can receive a gift and say our thank yous, but really put it on the shelf and forget about it. We may think love and joy and peace are not for us. The thing about a true gift is that we never deserve it. Nobody deserves a birthday gift or a Christmas gift or an anniversary present. Deserve has nothing to do with it.

We don’t deserve the Holy Spirit. We don’t deserve the third person of the Trinity coming to us, and yet we are still given the gift.

The mile stones of the reign of the Holy Spirit is not found on mountain tops or ecstatic manifestations. It is not coming with things that be observed, no matter how often we wish that it were so. We want to be able to judge someone else’s path, but that is a different kingdom all together. No matter how many churches have been built on judgment, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”  “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” Look for love in your life! Look for joy. The simplest of joys act as milestones. Look for peace. That moment of peace. That encounter with peace, when your heart is at rest is a mile stone of your path.

We should also expect the milestones of the kingdom of God to change in our life. The joys of our youth are not the joys of our latter years. and yet we grow in Grace by seeking it. As Peter says an Acts, “repent convert, forgive, be forgiven, receive the Holy Spirit in humility. The Kingdom of Gods in you. You are already loved. You are already forgiven. You are already worthy. Do not try to see the milestone of others. Look for the milestones of the path that God has for you; your peace your joy, your love, your self-control.

As you enter this holy place and see this window. As you see all this windows, may you remember Christ’s love for you. May you remember that the Holy Spirit reigns in this world. Even in the midst of darkness and doubt and lies. And the mile stones of our life aren’t found in the externalities and judgements of others.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: The Rescue

series: Christmas Season

themes: incarnation grace divine-providence self-justification identity-in-christ regret-and-counterfactuals gods-unconditional-love

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 2:1-14; Titus 2:11-14
**Series:** Christmas Season

> Because the birth of Christ is the great contingent moment that changed the world's direction, our worth no longer hangs on the forks and counterfactuals of our own lives — God loves us unconditionally and takes from us the pressure to save ourselves.

**Illustrations:** mcclellan-antietam-lost-orders, one-word-generals, gettysburg-contingent-moments, chattanooga-ridge-assault, walker-of-the-year, seventh-grade-offensive-guard, almost-music-major, trombonist-audition-cartoon, whirlpool-of-counterfactuals

---

# December 24, 2025
## The Rescue
## Christmas Eve
## Titus 2:11-14.  Luke 2:1-14

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. o gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds. - Titus 2:11-14

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.
Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
- Luke 2:1-14

I've long been fascinated by military history because of the nature of contingency. All military history plays on this balance of contingency versus inevitability. In hindsight, almost every battle result looks inevitable, but in actuality, they are all contingent circumstances.

A great example of this is the battle of Antietam in the Civil War, when George McClellan, the worst officer, and in my perspective, the worst officer in US military history, any branch. One of his soldiers stumbles upon the Confederate Battle plans and McClellan falls into victory, but he doesn't press his advantage.

The famous names of military history are filled with the people who pressed their advantage. They have one word names: Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon. Wellington. They found an advantage and they pressed it. McClellan did not. But it was contingent. The battle could have gone in a different direction. Gettysburg is another great example.

The country is on a precipice. Every history of Gettysburg is built around these four incredibly contingent moments where the results could have gone in another direction and the confederate army could have marched on Washington.

The first is the first day of Gettysburg, when Oliver Howard rallies the First Corps, and they hold strong and make a strategic retreat to Cemetery Ridge. The second day on Little Round Top, on the southern end of the battlefield, when the flank is held by the charge of Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine Volunteers, with the 1st Minnesota, when 250 men charged the 1700 strong Alabama brigade and forced them to break ranks. And on the third day, on Cemetery Ridge, and Pickett's charge, another extremely contingent moment. Many lambasted the foolishness of Pickett and the Confederates in charging up a fortified position, yet less than a year later, at Chattanooga, the Union Army will do an even greater assault on a well defended ridgeline, and take it. So it was a feasible moment, a contingent moment, but the southerners failed. It could have crushed the Union line. The troops were fresh. But the line held and the direction of the country changed. Historians call it the high water mark of the Civil War. These contingent moments, it could have gone one way, it could have gone another.

## Christmas Eve
Now, we're here on Christmas Eve. It is not a history lecture. But the reason why we're here on Christmas Eve is that there was another even greater contingent moment that we are remembering and celebrating where the world could've gone a different way, where our lives today can go a different way, and that is why we are here tonight.

On the surface, this doesn’t feel like one of those contingent moments. You could have stayed home and your life might have been the same. You might have had an extra drink or prepped for tomorrow or got some dishes out of the way, it doesn’t feel like a fork in the road moment in world history like Picket’s charge.

We often feel contingent moments in our own lives. Moments when the trajectory of our life could have gone in a different direction. Maybe the moment when we meet a future spouse, when we pick which college to go to, which major to commit to. Even in high school when we decide how much to study, what grades we are comfortable with.

# Walking
I grew up in College Station, Texas. I went to A&M Consolidated High School. I was the child of a faculty member at A&M. Most of my good friends or children of faculty members at A&M. They were quite impressive people. They did really well in school and got lots of awards.

At the end of Senior Year, we had an award ceremony at the high school, to honor people who had been gotten different awards, National Merit Scholar, different scholarships. I was surprisingly invited to this event.

So were my friends, who were off to Stanford and Yale and places like that. They were getting their fancy awards.
Friends who were accepted into the Naval Academy and West Point were being honored. It could have been a contingent moment.

I was honored that night, not because of a scholarship I was going to receive or as National Scholar. I was honored because I had earned Student of the year in a class. Each of the teachers was able to name a student of the year. Often, it would be padded on to all the other big awards.

I didn’t get any other honors, only one. My award was Student of the Year in walking.

There was a PE class that I could get for a credit. It was one semester long called Walking. And you can imagine what we did. We walked. I was not in any varsity athletics in high school. I had tried football in seventh grade. They placed me as an offensive guard because in seventh grade, that's where you put the least athletic people. So my, my athletic career did not continue.

I still needed a semester and a half of PE credits to graduate high school, so I took walking and I was named Walker of the Year, not because I was the best walker, there were people who are better at walking than me, but because the coach liked me.

When I think back at the trajectory of my life, I could have tried harder in high school. I could have got better grades. I could have been more successful than I was. There's this contingency; my life could have gone in a different direction. I was blessed to be able to get into UT. I don't think I would've gotten into UT today.

In college, I picked the major that would let me get out of college as soon as possible, which was English and History. I had had some AP credits, so I was able to finish that in three years. But doing that limited what I could do going forward. All this was before my call from God, my vocation. That took place in the summer after my freshman year.

I was on this trajectory that was contingent. It could have gone another way. I could have decided to go to Engineering school. I could have done pre-med. Once I chose not to do those majors, those options were off for me. I couldn't go to medical school. I couldn't be an engineer. I couldn't be an accountant. There are options I could have had with my liberal arts degree, but it was contingent and choices were made. I had another choice about whether to major in music.

I even got all the forms signed and I was going to switch to a performance major and switch out of the liberal arts college. I was excited, I was earnest about it. I was really good. I felt like I could be successful in this music.
And there was a moment, a crossroads where my life could have gone one direction and it didn't. And part of that was remembering this old cartoon that I had seen on another professor's door when I was taking music lessons. The cartoon had two trombonists sitting in a chair next to each other. The caption was, remember the person sitting next to an audition has practiced an hour more than you every day of their life.

I thought to myself: I don't know if I want that life, but it was a contingency, it was a fork in the road.

All of us have had moments like this. I just share mine to illustrate this point. All of you have had these moments of contingency, whether or not you were looking at your own resumé and seeing the resumes and the people around you and they're like, oh my gosh, look at all these scholarships and awards and I'm just Walker of the year.

And you may think my life could have been like this. I could have done this. I could have done that. You get stuck in this whirlpool of hypotheticals. I think for a lot of people who've had challenges in their work life, they think about, what if I had done this? What if I applied to this job? A lot of people with challenges in their married life. What if I had done this? What if I made this decision earlier?
People challenged in grief. What if I had said this? What if I had done this?

These counterfactuals can be suffocating because we can always home in on these contingent moments in our life when we could have gone in a different direction but it didn’t.

## Christmas
One of the great hopes of Christmas is that the world changed direction at the coming of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, to give us life, to heal the brokenness of sin in this world. When we encounter Jesus, the pressure of the contingencies of our own lives can fade away. We are no longer defined by our jobs, our families, our kids. Our worth is not in relation to our peers or are neighbors.

Whether your list of accomplishments is a full page long or you are just Walker of the Year, you are loved and forgiven by God. Whether your marriage is successful or broken, you are loved by God. Whether your relationship with your kids is amazing or not, you are loved by God.

Your worth and your value is not based on a decision you made when you were 16 or when you were 20, or when you were 23 or when you were 28 or 38 or 68. Those decisions shape us. They do not define us. You are not defined by how you acted as a child. And if you are younger, you are not defined by what you do right now. There's more to you than every decision you make. And we see that at Christmas.
You are loved so much that God took the pressure off your life so that you don’t have to save yourself. That's what Jesus does. By coming to us, he takes the pressure away from us so that we no longer have to save ourselves. The anxiety that we are not good enough need not rule us.

And so the contingent moments in our lives, the battlefields of our lives, where our path could have gone one way but went another, these moments no longer carry the same force.
Christ's love has been offered to you. Whether your CV is six pages long or it is empty, you are loved. That is what Christmas is. Accept that love. There are no conditions. Accept it, receive it, hold it. In the darkness of the night, remember that at your worst, God loved you and came for you.

This night is not accidental. It isn’t simply happenstance. The axis of the world swerves with a child born who is love incarnate.

And when you are lost, God will find you and bring you home.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: The Ten Commandments

themes: ten-commandments torah-and-law covenant new-commandment wealth-and-greed grace-not-merit sanctification

text:
**Scripture:** Exodus 20:1-17; Luke 12:13-21; Matthew 5:18; Colossians 2:9-10; Micah 6:8; Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18

> The Ten Commandments are a starting point, not a destination; their power lies not in the words but in the covenant God who freed Israel and raises us by grace, calling us beyond minimal law-keeping to be rich toward God by loving God and neighbor.

**Illustrations:** covenant-stained-glass-windows, sainte-chapelle-paris, egyptian-glass-beads, colleagues-old-window-upkeep, donor-in-stained-glass, college-freshman-bible-reading, maimonides-613-commandments, eight-decalogue-numbering-systems, mixed-fibers-vs-murder, wesley-almost-christian, never-murdered-but-fail-to-love

---

# August 3, 2025
## Exodus 20:1-17	Luke 12:13-21
## The Ten Commandments

Then God spoke all these words,
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water underthe earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it. Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” - Exodus 20:1-17

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” - Luke 12:13-21

![](attachments/Commandments.fd0aaf47437c44929d87481a64bcf066.jpg)
I want you to take a moment and look around the sanctuary. There are a series of 12 stained glass windows circling us and two up behind the altar. Over the next few weeks, we are going to do a series on each of these stained glass windows, what they represent, what they point to, and how they shape our worship experience at Covenant UMC.

They were designed by a stained glass artist in Brady, Texas, back in 2003. The technique of stained glass has gone back for centuries. It is older than most written languages. A Greek historian recounts a legend of the discovery of Stained Glass.

> The earliest known manmade glass is in the form of Egyptian beads from between 2750 and 2625 BC. Artisans made these beads by winding a thin string of molten glass around a removable clay core. This glass is opaque and very precious.[^1]

Some of my favorite Christian art is stained glass, like Sainte Chappelle in Paris.

I know colleagues at other churches who have nightmares about stained glass windows, because they're 100 years old, are enormous, and difficult to maintain, as well as letting in all sorts of air, It's a rough situation.

One of the lovely things about our windows here is that they're small and contained and specific, and, in a way, timeless. They're not filled with things. They're not too busy. They're focused. There's not a picture of a donor in the stained glass window. walking hand in hand with Jesus, which I have seen before in both a church built in the last 20 years, as well as a church built 500 years ago.

Our series starts with the Ten Commandments. We have here a representation of the Ten Commandments. The original tablets would not have had Roman numerals. In fact, they aren’t even numbered in Scripture. The phrase Ten Commandments isn’t found in the Bible. If they had been numbered, it would have been in Hebrew letters, which Hebrew arithmetic started with the Hebrew alphabet. So aleph would be one, bet would be two, and so on and so forth.

One of the big personal discoveries I made when I first read through the Bible, when I was a freshman in college. was that in the Bible, the Ten Commandments aren't that important. Growing up, I was taught in a confused way, and I don't really blame the preachers I had because it was the air they breathed. I was taught that when Paul or Jesus talk about the law, they talk about the Ten Commandments. That is not what a Jew in 1st century. Roman Palestine was talking about.

Instead, the law was and is every word of the five books of Moses, Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Maimonides, a thousand years after Jesus, divided Torah up into 613 commandments, but there were many Jews who were frustrated with Maimonides for doing this, because by even numbering the commandments, it took away from the whole. He was a focusing on the trees instead of the forest.

Leaders in the Early Church began to differentiate the ten commandments from the rest of the Old Testament. These are the commandments that come from the voice of God. As well, a few of them are mentioned by Jesus, even though, as many of us know, Jesus sums up the law and the prophets with the love commandments. One from the Deuteronomy, you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, then from Leviticus, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But it really wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that the Ten Commandments were truly lifted up on their own pedestal, so to speak. Yet there was still disagreements. There are at least 8 different numbering systems of the Ten Commandments that have existed in the past, whether you follow the Septuagint, the Talmud, the Ashburnham Pentateuch, the Samaritan Penteteuch, Calvin, Augustine, Luther, or Modern Catholics.

For Protestants, the point of lifting up the Ten Commandments was to differentiate the law that Christians should follow from Torah, from all the rest of what was described as ceremonial and ethical laws that we don't need to follow anymore. This was another breakthrough I had reading the Bible from Genesis to Exodus. There is no separation in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Deuteronomy, in Exodus, in Genesis, between moral law, ceremonial law, or dietary law. There's no separation. It's all law. Don’t mix fibers in clothes is on the same footing as don’t murder.

When Jesus says, For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.[^2], the law here is the whole thing.

The Ten Commandments aren’t the central texts of the Old Testament, as they are often portrayed to be, but there is deep power here. The power of the Ten Commandments is in the covenantal relationship between God and the people of Israel. God the Father resurrected the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt as God the Father will raise Jesus Christ from death on the cross. The Ten Commandments mark the word of God speaking to Moses and kindling a new covenant. The word of God spoke these words to Moses, and we Christians call the word of God by another name: Jesus.

Now this brings me to our gospel reading for today. which is not about the Ten Commandments, but about misunderstanding the law. It is the parable of the rich man at the storehouse. There was a rich man who did well in life, he accumulated a lot of stuff. So much stuff that he had to build more storehouses for his stuff. But God said, to him, you fool, this very night, your life is being demanded of you. In the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.

Another way to translate Torah is the way. It is the gift of God, the creator, to the people of Israel, for them to follow a way in order to love God. As Christians. we see that way is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. This is the line from Colossians.

>For in Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him

The fullness of Torah, the fullness of the Way of God, dwells in Christ and is witnessed to us in Christ. Not the minimum, the fullness.

Getting back to the parable, the rich man probably followed every one of the Ten commandments. There is no reason to think he didn’t. And all that following got him right to where he was that night. His life was taken from him. There's nothing in the Ten Commandment that keeps him from gathering enormous amounts of wealth, and ignoring his neighbors, and ignoring God.

The Commandments start off with a declaration about God’s existence, then not having idols, taking the Lord’s name in vain, remembering the sabbath, and honoring mother and father. This the first table. The second table is the other five: You shall not murder, shall not commit adultery, shall not steal, shall not bear false witness, shall not covet your neighbor's house or wife.

And still, the man Jesus speaks about gathered too much stuff and wasn't rich towards God. The Ten Commandments don't get us to the good life. They don't get us to holiness. They don’t save us. They don't even get us to being an almost Christian, in John Wesley's language.

They are a starting point, not a destination. Their power is not in the words themselves. but in the God who freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and will free us from slavery to sin and death through Jesus Christ. When Jesus summarized the law, he wasn’t summarizing Ten Commandments (they are already fairly succinct), instead, he was summarizing the first five books of the Bible. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn’t take long to realize that the Love Commandments are much more difficult to follow than the Ten Commandments. I can confess that I have successfully not murdered anyone my whole life. I must also confess that there are times when I haven’t loved my neighbor as myself. It is a different challenge.

They also transform us. We could not end up like the rich man in the parable if we followed the love commandments.

And yet the words of God the Father to Moses on Mount Sinai still resonate today.

When we walk into our church on Sunday morning, and we see the Ten Commandments over here, it means something. It points to the God who brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. I am the Lord, your God, I am one. That means something here in this holy place. God, the father, raised Jesus from the dead, having previously raised Israel from Egypt.

And God can raise us from the dead places we find ourselves in.  We don’t earn our salvation through works or the law but by grace alone. God raises us when we don’t deserve it. And God can raise our loved ones. We are not lost or alone. We are found by the God who is love, who gave words to his people from a mountaintop log ago, who still has words for us today. Be rich towards God. What does that look like? It isn’t the minimum. It isn’t a starting point, even as great as the Ten Commandments. I think the Prophet Micah points us in the right direction

>And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

If the rich man had done this, his life would have turned out differently. When we do this, by grace, our lives turn out differently.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[^1]: [https://stainedglass.org/learning-resources/history-stained-glass](https://stainedglass.org/learning-resources/history-stained-glass)
[^2]: Matthew 5:18


title: Trouble in River City

series: Easter

themes: why-we-worship resurrection holy-spirit-as-advocate worship-and-liturgy hymnody lords-day-worship transformation

text:
**Scripture:** Acts 16:9-15; John 14:23-29; Isaiah 40:31
**Series:** Easter

> We worship because Jesus rose on the Lord's day and sends the Holy Spirit—the Advocate who stirs up good trouble and transformation—calling the church to gather in a Spirit-shaped pattern (greeting, scripture, table, sending) rather than to preserve comfortable sameness.

**Illustrations:** music-man-trouble-river-city, wesley-tis-love-hymn, in-the-garden-hymn, jesus-freak-movement, hank-williams-johnny-cash-gospel, lydia-baptism-macedonia, pentecost-tongues-of-fire, wings-of-eagles

---

# May 25, 2025
## Trouble in River City
### Acts 16:9-15
### John 14:23-29

During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
We therefore set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the Sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us. - Acts 16:9-15

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.
“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur you may believe. - John 14:23-29

Why does worship at Covenant look the way that it does? This is a good and important question. If you've been a member for a long time, you may not think much of it. If you have only been here a few times or it's your first time, like, what on earth is going on?

A lot of the source of the question depends on what tradition you come from. If you've never been a part of a church, the whole thing might seem very strange. If you used to be Catholic, there's a few things that are similar, but it feels kind of strange. If you're Presbyterian or Lutheran, there's a lot of things that are pretty similar. If you're non denominational, it's very, very different.

Each of these Christian traditions have their own liturgies or patterns of worship. And each of them are very intentional and structured. Even non-denominational or Pentecostal or evangelical worship, it's highly structured. Every beat of the service is planned, including transitions between moments.

But really, in order to get to what we're doing on Sunday morning here at the specific location of this particular place, we need to understand the question: why worship God in general?

If we can't answer that question, it's not going to matter what we do. Jesus was crucified and buried and three days later, he rose from the dead. This is why we worship. If Jesus didn't raise from the dead, then none of it matters. We're all just wasting our time. We may like the nostalgia of the patterns in the hymns, but ultimately it's pointless.

In the season of resurrection, we need to start with resurrection. Jesus rising on a Sunday, which radically shifts the liturgical emphasis of the Christian faith, distinguishes Christians from Jews.

Instead of worship being about the Sabbath, worship is about the Lord's day, the Eighth day, the day of resurrection. Yes, there are only seven days in a week, but for the early church, Easter came on the eighth day, the day of new creation. Christ was inaugurating, was beginning something new for us, for the world, for all of creation, new life is possible. It's not just the same pattern. Over and over and over again, a new pattern has emerged.
And worship is no longer just about duty, but about the connection to the Holy Spirit and to the Cross.

This is why today's scripture from John 14, is really à propos. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.

Jesus is sending the Advocate to be with us. The word commonly translated here as Advocate is Paraklates, or paraclete. It literally means, the called to one. The one called to someone, called for a purpose, not just called. It was an ancient legal term. When someone was in trouble, they found a paraklates.

Jesus sends the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit has got a job to do. The Holy Spirit is called because we are in trouble. The Holy Spirit causes trouble, but a good kind of trouble. The trouble that shakes us out of selfish lives and opens us up to God’s love.

Worship can only exist because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it is also about the presence of the Holy Spirit and about how the Holy Spirit calls us to gather together.

The Holy Spirit is mischievous. The Holy Spirit is not about the status quo or keeping things the exact same forever. There's always people in the church who like things to be the same. There's a comfort in sameness, but that's not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not about sameness but about transformation, about that new creation.

I think we see that mischievousness, that wildness, in the baptism of Lydia in Macedonia. Paul is called to cross the border into a new land in order to baptize Lydia and her household. Lydia, a woman, she is seen as worthy.
She is understood as made in the image of Christ. Lydia and her children are baptized. Baptism is not just for people who are older. As well, we see here in Scripture that a woman has value apart from her husband.
The Holy Spirit is doing radical things 2,000 years ago. The church has so often attempted to push against that, keeping power authorities in familiar ways.

Today we're going to focus on Sunday morning and not baptism and the rite of baptism. But I think it's helpful to read this passage from Acts as the Holy Spirit pushing Paul to do something he wasn't expected to do. And I think that's how we should understand that God is pushing us through the Holy Spirit to do things we don't expect to do, even if they follow a pattern that is familiar.

Worship was a major part of the early Methodist movement in England and across the United States as it spread. And it was patterned around singing hymns together, praying and then preaching.

It would be very similar to a lot of non denominational traditions, not with the hymns, but with the praise music. And praise music is basically what hymn singing was, except hymns were much more theologically and scripturally based.

If you look at the hymn books of the 18th and 19th century, deep theology is going on there. They are digging deeply into who God is and sharing poetically the biblical text in ways that broad groups within the population could learn and understand who God is but also our need for God. Here is the a verse from one my favorite hymns:

’Tis love! ’tis love! thou diedst for me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee:
Pure, universal love thou art;
To me, to all thy passions move;
Thy nature and thy name is love.

It's in the mid 19th century that we kind of get more camp meeting hymns that have less theology and more emotion. They're less about who God is and more about the feeling we're trying to elicit. Think about the hymn, In the Garden.

Verse 1]
G
I come to the garden alone,
                  C                         G
While the dew is still on the roses;
                D                            G     Em
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
        A                       D        D7
The Son of God discloses.

Chorus]
             G                                   D
And He walks with me and He talks with me
            C            D7          G
And He tells me I am His own
               G      B7                  Em     C
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
            G             D           G
None other has ever known.

It is lovely as sentiment and melody. Worship has become about feeling. About the sentiment of being saved. It is a good thing to feel loved and protected. The connection to the Bible, though, is nonexistent. Nor is there much actual theology going on.

The Jesus Freak movement of Southern California helped to inaugurate a new worship style using the medium of a guitar led ban, though Hank Williams and Johnny Cash had already shared gospel songs with their country audience, like the song we sung earlier.

We all have different experiences with hymns and praise songs and the worship styles of different traditions.

But wherever it is, there's a similar pattern. We have a greeting, some kind of opening with worship. We have Scripture and Scripture proclaimed the table of the Lord whenever we can share it. And then we have a sending. These are the four marks of a worship service.
Again, a lot of traditions limit the times the communion table is served. Some are able to do it every week or every time they meet. But this greeting, scripture, preaching, sending follows every Christian denomination.

Covenant follows a more detailed pattern similar to a lot of Protestant churches and Catholic churches in that it was influenced by the rediscovery of this document from the early church, called the Apostolic Constitution. In the middle of the 20th century, during what was called the ecumenical movement, when churches were talking more about how much they were alike than separate, a lot of the denominations followed started following these ancient patterns more and more.

All of this, though, is because Jesus rose from the dead, because the Holy Spirit with us, because God created everything out of nothing, because we are forgiven and offered new life in Christ.
This is why we worship. We are not alone. We are forgiven. We are called to new creations, building a new kingdom. Let us hear all of that: Jesus tells us to gather.
The early church gathered together. They read these words, they sang hymns, they sent each other out. They had presbyters and apostles who focused on study and speaking. They had deacons who focus on service and taking communion to the homebound.
The pattern of the early church is a pattern worth following because of how close they were to the time of Jesus.

So if you want to get out your bulletin, we can talk through specifically what is going on.

Prelude - Steve Wottrich
Opening Hymn – What a Friend We have in Jesus #526
Welcome and Announcements
Call to Worship

Passing the Peace
Song of Praise – Calling You, Praise Team
Time for Children – Rev. Brenda Dowell
Noisy Offering
Offering
Offertory – Steve Wottrich
Doxology - #94
Dedication of the Offering
Joys/Concerns
Silent Prayer
Prayer with the Lord’s Prayer
Scripture Lesson – Acts 16:9-15 NRSV Lay Reader:
Hymn - Be Thou My Vision UMH 451
Gospel Lesson – John 14:23-29 NRSV
Sermon – Rev Wilson Pruitt, “Trouble in River City”
Apostles’ Creed
Closing Song: Brokenness Aside, Praise Team
Benediction
Sending Forth – I’ve Got Peace Like a River, TFWS #2145(verse 1 only)
Postlude: Steve Wottrich

Any form of worship can feel stifling or stuck. Whether at a big mega church or a small country church. Most churches don’t merge styles like we do here, but each part of the service is there for a reason so that something beyond our control can enter this space.

To truly worship, we all have to let our guard down and let the spirit in. The early disciples let the spirit in at Pentecost and fires of tongues burned across the city in transformation. Paul let the spirit take him to Macedonia.
May you let the spirit meet you today in worship. May you encounter your risen Lord. May you be renewed as on wings of eagles. May you run and not grow weary. May you walk and not grow faint.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Under the Wing

themes: humility self-examination citizens-of-heaven facing-death-without-fear sympathetic-reading-of-pharisees christology

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 13:31-35; Philippians 3:17-4:1
**Series:** Lent

> Christ willingly embraces humiliation on the way to Jerusalem and transforms it into glory, so Lent calls believers to face their own humiliation honestly, set their minds on their heavenly citizenship, and stop fearing what the world fears.

**Illustrations:** uil-orchestra-onstage-alone, ut-am-tip-off-play, pharisees-fair-sadducees-sad-mnemonic, mother-hen-under-the-wing, heavenly-tow-truck

---

# March 16, 2025
## Under the Wing
### Philippians 3:17- 4:1
### Luke 13:31-35
“Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”
“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”

Philippians 3:17- 4:1

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ””
Luke 13:31-35 NRSV

I don't think anybody wants to be humiliated. It is not a desirable outcome for any situation. Humility is one thing. Humility is a virtue. Humiliation is something radically different.

One time, when I was in orchestra in High School, we were performing in San Antonio for UIL. If you have never been in a musical ensemble before, what usually happens is that before a performance, the musicians wait in the wings backstage or on the side of the theater by the stage. This was a large venue with a lot of groups performing that day, so we waited on the side. At one point, I was convinced that it was time to walk on stage. and so I just walked on with my bass. I was first chair of the bass section and we usually walked on first because our instrument was four times the size of the cellos and thirty times the size of the violins, so there was basically nothing they could do to stop us. It was a position of influence and authority that I enjoyed in my adolescent way.

So I went out, put my music on the stand, got my bow out to warm up, and I was by myself on stage. No one was with me up there. I was all alone and there was an audience about 300 people and they were just staring and confused. My skin tone can turn as red as my beard and I turned as red as my beard and slowly walk back off the stage. I did not feel good. I was humiliated. I would not like to ever replicate that moment nor would I want to have anybody go through with it.
Most of us have had moments of humiliation in our lives. Being humiliated is this mix of busted expectations and shame and guilt, all thrown together. I think expectations is a major part. What do you expect of a situation? You thought it was gonna be one thing but it's the other thing.

In the gospel today, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He’s not there yet. Surprisingly, some Pharisees are going to warn him about a threat. This feels like if, during the UT-A&M football game, someone tips off the other team about what the next play will be. It feels almost like cheating. It goes against everything we’ve seen so far.

Pharisees, usually his rivals in ministry, come out and give him a warning. “Hey buddy,” they say, or something of that nature. “Herod is trying to kill you. You should watch out. I know you're going to Jerusalem. I would avoid it for a little bit, buddy.”

Jesus's response is very strange:

>Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’

Jerusalem is where prophets go to speak God's truth. It is also where prophets are killed because they spoke God's truth. Jesus knows this. Jesus is unafraid of the future. Then he uses this rich metaphor:
>How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’

Jesus compares himself to a mother-hen, desiring to protect her children.

The whole passage is fascinating, with many levels of allegory and metaphor and foreshadowing. It's so interesting that the Pharisees are the ones who bring this danger up. The Pharisees are not accusing Jesus of anything. They're not trying to trap him.

The Pharisees also hate Herod so they would rather Jesus survive if it means Herod doesn’t get a win.
It is important to mention that Pharisees were not a priests nor of the priestly caste. They were very religious Jews who sought to follow the law to the utmost and study the law. They did not see Herod as the rightful king but a usurper who traded Torah for Roman authority.

The Sadducees, another famous group of religious Jews, are of the priestly caste, and they have made an agreement with Herod and with Rome to maintain authority. A little English pneumonic is Pharisees are fair (because they are so legalistic), while Sadducees are sad (because they made a deal with the devil, ahem, with Rome).

The Pharisees and Jesus have the same enemy in Herod and in Rome, but Jesus is not afraid of Herod. Jesus is not afraid of what is going to happen in Jerusalem. Jesus desires a way for all to be one apart from the cross, but it is not possible.

And so, to bring about God's kingdom here, he has to go to the place where prophets die, where prophets are humiliated, where prophets are laughed off the stage, but he doesn't go with hesitation.

His purpose is true in this walk. He is willing to be humiliated for our sake. Like I said earlier, humiliation is an issue of expectation. If you expect to be cheered and lauded and instead you are mocked and despise, it is going to hurt.

In Paul's letter to the Philippians, we can understand more deeply the purpose of the humiliation of Jesus. Paul has this wonderful passage that we read earlier that inverts humiliation .

 >But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

Our humiliation will be transformed into Christ's glory because Christ's humiliation was transformed into our salvation.

Jesus will be humiliated at Holy Week. He will be mocked and tried and beaten bloody. He will be given a false crown and facetiously called king. He is ultimately taken as a joke. It will seem like a bad dream to the disciples. It will seem like a humiliating nightmare.

And yet Jesus turns this humiliation into victory on Easter morning.

But for us during Lent, we need to stay with humiliation.

It is one thing to be humiliated in a crowd with people you respect or at work or those kinds of things. It's another thing to be humiliated with yourself. Sometimes, that means looking honestly at yourself because this world has a way to get us to lie to ourselves over and over again.

My brothers and sisters, the Lenten Season is an opportunity to cut through the lies we tell ourselves because we don't need to live by lies. You don't need to pretend to be something you're not. You are all loved. Humiliation is not weakness. Humiliation is a path to the glory of God. If we are humiliated by the world, let us remember that our citizenship is not of the world. Our citizenship is in heaven, it is from there that we are expecting a savior.

May we not keep our minds on earthly things, but on the things of God. This mind-keeping takes practice. Setting our minds on the things of God takes practice. It's difficult to wake up one day and think, “I'm gonna think Godly things today.” Earthly things are tempting because there's good there, there is good on the earth. There is good in relationships. There is good in creation. There is good all around us. The issue is not that everything on this earth is bad but does our mind stay planted on satisfying our desires or do our minds rise up to the place of God from where everything has come.

Are you rising up or stuck in the mud?

My friends, my hope for you all in this season, on this day, is that you can get out of the mud. The heavenly tow truck can come and attached cables to your car that is stuck, that is spinning out in the mud, and you can drive freely on the road towards where you need to be. You don’t need to fear what other people fear. Even if they were well meaning, the Pharisees did not aid Jesus. He did not need to be warned about Herod. Whether Herod was out to get him or not did not change his mission.

Whether you face adversity in your life or not, God is with you. You are not alone.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: We are One

themes: christian-unity denominationalism new-creation eschatology holy-communion methodist-identity

text:
**Scripture:** John 17:20-26; Acts 16:16-18; Acts 15
**Series:** Easter

> True Christian unity is not administrative, denominational, or institutional but eschatological: oneness gathered around the risen Lord Jesus Christ, who receives sinners at his table in the new creation.

**Illustrations:** computer-i-cant-fix, prom-movie-vs-star-wars, moving-vs-still-water-baptism, professor-property-reunion, umc-disaffiliation-property, great-divorce-researching-ghost, scripture-swaddling-not-sword

---

# June 1, 2025
## We are One
### Acts 16:16-18
### John 17:20-26

One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. - Acts 16:16-18

“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” - John 17:20-26

The most uncontroversial claim anyone can make about Christians is that they are not united. There are a lot of different kinds of Christians all over the world and they disagree about a lot of stuff. Most people have no idea why one church says Church of Christ and another says Presbyterian and another says Methodist? What does any of that mean? Sometimes it feels like understanding different denominations is like understanding how a computer works. I mean, I use a computer, but, I don't know how it works. And if it breaks down, don't look at me to fix it.

Yeah, I go to church. But if it breaks down or something happens, I’ll probably just go to a different one.

Jesus talked about oneness a lot. So did Paul. This was an important concept for the early church. Oneness. Unity. Unity is another term for oneness. Togetherness. Jesus says, “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

Why are Christians so bad at listening to the words of Jesus here? I think this is important to state that question. One reason, and a generous interpretation, is that the reason why there's so many disagreements and so many different groups of Christians in the world is because what we're talking about matters tremendously. We're talking about life and death. We're talking about the creation of the universe, who the ultimate being is, and how we are to live based on what that ultimate being has revealed to us through various ways; the stakes were very high. This isn't the kind of movie where it's just like set in a small town and it's about whether, you know, the prom queen and prom king end up together, or if, you know, the cute loner is going to end up with the prom king or something like that. Right? Like, the stakes for that kind of movie, very low. The stakes for this is, you know, Star Wars, the universe is in the balance based on the decisions we make.

Now, this may be true on a theoretical level, the reality on the ground is that the reason why different people are in different denominations and are in different churches has much more to do with, you know, the happenstance of personal experience, then with the intentional study of the creed and theologies of these different traditions No one can ever stand outside a tradition or a community. You can pretend to, but it's not possible. You're always in the community. You're always being shaped by a community and a tradition, whether explicitly or implicitly. And it shapes your understanding. of what is worthwhile in life. It shapes your understanding of what is worthwhile in a church. Christ said, we should all be one. The disagreements of the earlier church had to do with who could be a Christian. Could it just be Jews, or could Gentiles be Christians? Did men have to get circumcised before they were baptized? This was a deep and serious debate. The books of Acts digs deeply into this. Acts 15 shows an amazing experience at the Council of Jerusalem where Apostles had their minds changed by the experience and evidence of others.

Other debates had to do with the nature of Jesus Christ, whether Jesus Christ was all God, or partially God, whether Jesus Christ was a demig God. debates around the Holy Spirit, whether the Holy Spirit came from the Father and the Son, or from the Father alone. When we say the Apostles’ Creed together, it is a way to assert an answer to the questions asked during these debates.

As we get later, debates around the papacy and the Pope, and whether or not the Bishop of Rome had ultimate authority. debates around communion, whether communion could just be bread or could bread and wine be offered to all people? Was the Bible just for scholars, or was it for everybody? Was holiness just for monks and nuns, or was it possible for everybody? All these debates have taken place throughout the history of the christian faith.

In the modern period, churches have split over slavery. over women in ministry, over how to understand sexuality and gender.

The funniest split I know was in a brethren church in Pennsylvania that had a schism over baptism. There were two different churches in the same tradition.  One church said that you had to be baptized in moving water and the other church said you could be baptized in still water. Coincidentally, the church said, moving water was next to a river and the church that said still water was okay, happened to be miles from a river. So if they were going to baptize in a river, if that was the only valid baptism, they'd have to travel nearly six miles every time to do it.

It seems absurd when I retell it in this way, but for the people involved in those debates, it was the most important thing in the world. Was there baptism valid or invalid? Was Christ accepting that person or not?

What all these schisms and divisions come down to, though, are administrative splits. They are splits based on who is in authority and who is not in authority. Not what documents are authoritative, as people like to proclaim, but who are the people who are given authority to read the documents authoritatively?

Who can make decisions for you and who can't? Who is in control?

A lot of divisions come down to property. I had a professor once who told me this is why he thought the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches would never come together: they would never agree to who controlled the property. A lot of churches left the United Methodist Church over the last few years explicitly not because of any issue of human sexuality, but about property. People who left told me this explicitly. It was about who has control over the property and whether the local church can do whatever it wants. But Jesus wanted us all to be one?

Now, I’ve spent a good portion of this message talking about the ways we are separate and apart. And I think this is important, because if I'm gonna talk about unity, we need to understand what we're talking about. That is, what is the unity that Jesus Christ is talking about.

I don't think it's administrative unity. I don't think Jesus is seeking for every Christian pastor in the world to be paid in the same way, to have the same name on the check or the direct deposit, to have a unified bureaucracy or administration or denomination. All of this stuff has nothing to do with our life to come in Jesus Christ in the new creation. There are no pay checks or insurance or pensions or bylaws or mortgages in the new creation. All of these are marks of our fallen world.

We're often deceived into imagining our life, our future life with God as continuous with our life now, and continuous with our relationships now. The Bible never says this.

Our relationships matter, though. This is clear. I'm not saying our relationships are  going to be dissolved in the life to come. They are going to be transformed as our bodies are transformed, as are the world is transformed.

And our denominations aren't going to make it. Our individual churches aren't going to make it. They are going to be dissolved. Who paid whom is not a question of eternity. What name is on the sign is not a question of eternity.

Who are you serving? Who are you worshiping? Who are you feeding? Who is feeding you? These are questions of eternity. Where are you building up your treasure? These are questions of eternity. These are questions of unity.

My brothers and sisters, I think this is what Jesus is getting at. This is the prayer that Jesus says.

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

This is it. It's about being with Jesus in the new creation eternally.

CS Lewis, in his wonderful book, the Great Divorce, offers this allegory of the life to come. It's nice and short, it's beautiful. I highly recommend it as a provocative, very scriptural understanding of what our future can look like. And one of the characters in it is this preacher who decides he doesn't really want to go to heaven yet, because there are too many questions that need to be answered. He's doing too much research. He's got a lot of research he has to get to.

This is a very relatable figure for me. Focusing on the question instead of the one whom we are seeking. The one who is the path and the gate. The shepherd who is the gateway. The one who is the answer to every question, to everything worth seeking. The alpha and the omega, the beginning, and the end.

Now, I am a proud Methodist. I'm proud of our tradition, of what this church is doing, where we come from, where we are going. I think these things are important. But they're not the most important, these are not the aspects of unity. Unity is around the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, who calls his sheep and his sheep hear his voice, who calls you. To come and be one, worship around the throne. This is Unity, not in organization, in government ID, in EID, in tax system, in liturgy, unity around the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is and who was and who is to come. Unity around where Christ is found in the Scriptures. The scriptures are not swords to beat people with, but the swaddling clothes in which hold the baby Jesus offered for us. Unity is not a finished thing. It is something we must seek continually.

We don’t come here to this table perfect. We don’t come here with it all together. There are many differences to be found between us gathered here today. Many sins we have all committed. God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called. God doesn’t seek the righteous but sinners. We come to this table as sinners and we are welcomed by our one Lord in unity around him. Around his Gospel word for us. Around the Good News that Jesus is Lord.

>And that is what the church is. Sinners drawing near to hear Jesus speak to us in his Word. Jesus receiving sinners in baptism and eating with us in his Supper. The Spirit of life giving once unloved people to dance for joy in the feast. The Father himself, great of heart, singing over his children, pleased as punch in the obedience, victory, and grace of their brother his Son.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: What We Remember

themes: comfort-in-grief remembering-the-dead resurrection-hope truth-telling

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 6:20-31; Psalm 149:1-9; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57; Matthew 5:4; Isaiah 25:6; Luke 24:13-35

> On All Saints Day, faithful remembering of those we love who have died is not the cold regurgitation of fact but an act of love that, grounded in resurrection hope, inspires how we live now.

**Illustrations:** duke-dog-boat-ride, ephraim-combined-memory-story, airport-trip-every-detail, borges-one-to-one-map, borges-pierre-menard-quixote, wearing-black-mourning-customs, isaiah-feast-no-weight-gain, emmaus-unrecognized-resurrection, dementia-confabulation, stalin-death-tragedy-statistic, inspiration-inhale-incense, wise-men-incense-gift, bob-weeks-bob-fossick

---

# November 2, 2025
## What We Remember
## Psalm 149	Luke 6:20-31

Praise the Lord!
Sing to the Lord a new song,
    his praise in the assembly of the faithful.
Let Israel be glad in its Maker;
    let the children of Zion rejoice in their King.
Let them praise his name with dancing,
    making melody to him with tambourine and lyre.
For the Lord takes pleasure in his people;
    he adorns the humble with victory.
Let the faithful exult in glory;
    let them sing for joy on their couches.
Let the high praises of God be in their throats
    and two-edged swords in their hands,
to execute vengeance on the nations
    and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings with fetters
    and their nobles with chains of iron,
to execute on them the judgment decreed.
    This is glory for all his faithful ones.
Praise the Lord! - Psalm 149

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.
“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. Do to others as you would have them do to you. - Luke 6:20-31

We got a new dog in the spring. His name is Duke. He is a Bernese and St. Bernard mix. We got him from the St. Bernard Rescue in Liberty Hill. He is a soft, fluffy giant who likes most other dogs. But sometimes he may have an issue with another dog and he wants to make sure they know about it.

This summer, we took him on a motorboat ride for the first time. I grew up with dogs all my life. None of them ever really liked being on a boat. It was not something I was excited about, but Dominic and Ephraim really were focused on getting Duke on the boat. They really wanted to see if he would like getting on the boat.

There were some signs that he would enjoy it. One being that he likes to sit in our front yard and let the breeze just flow on his face. In the summer, we would try to take him on walks during the day, and he would get about 50 feet and just plop down in the shade and feel the breeze.

So we get him on the boat. It's an exciting time. He actually enjoys it. Everybody is really, really happy.

Now, a few weeks ago, Ephraim had to write a story. Ephram is 10 years old. He's in fourth grade. He had to write a story. And so the story he wanted to write was about Duke going on the boat for the first time. But he wanted to make it a little more exciting. And so, he changed the memory a little bit. He combined two memories to make a better story. We had taken a boat ride with Duke, and we had taken a boat ride to a restaurant. He wrote a story about taking Duke on a boat route ride to a restaurant.

He did this naturally, without much forethought. Most of us, when we tell stories. exaggerate bits, and lessen bits. The bare delivery of facts is not very interesting.

Moments have to be summarized to tell a story. Things have to be made concise or even cut. depending on the time constraints. When people ask how a trip went, they're not asking for every detail,

>We got to the airport an hour early. We grabbed our luggage from the car. Security went swiftly but we didn’t pick the right line for the x-ray machine. We were pre-check but….

When you ask how a trip went, that isn’t the story you want to hear, because in reality, to relay every detail of a two day trip would take two days.

Jorge Luis Borges has this brief short story called On Exactitude and Science, where he describes an empire that demands that all maps be made with a one to one comparison. So every map of the land is the size of a land with no concision, no brevity. The map takes up the entire empire.

Borges has another story that’s applicable for this. It's called Pierre Menard, the author of Quixote. It's about this French writer who is obsessed with Don Quixote by Cervantes. So much so that he doesn't want to only do a new translation, or be inspired, but to offer a line by line recapitulation. Which is basically to just publish Don Quixote in his own name. What is a copy? What is inspiration? What is a story? What is a life? How do we tell a story of a life? How do we tell the story of someone who's no longer with us rightly? Does that mean to be faithful to the memory?

# Series Intro
My friends, today is All Saints Day. The day that we remember the Saints, the Holy Ones who came before us. The word saint comes from the Latin word for holy.

Sometimes when' I'm translating, I like translate as holy ones to not be confusing for those of you who grew up Catholic. In a little bit, we're going to have a time in our service to remember specifically the members of this church who have passed away in the last year. As well as a moment for all of us to remember those who are dear to us, who have passed away. Catholics have this distinction between All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, but we put them together, focusing on the saints in our life.

Many cultures have patterns of grief, seasons of mourning, like wearing black. People often respond to that negatively. People say to me, I don't want people crying at my funeral. I don't want them wearing black or being sad. -I don't know a person who wants another person to be sad. But, gosh, I hope they're really sad when I'm gone. I've never had that conversation in the hospital. People who were about to go want joy for their loved ones; they want peace.

In the Christian faith, our consolation is life eternal with Jesus Christ, but grief is not something that should be avoided. It is not a negativity.

Jesus says blessed are those who weep. In a more literal translation, Jesus says, "Happy are those who weep. It's the starkest contradiction.

In Matthew it is even stranger: happy are those who mourn for they will be comforted. It's the starkest paradox within the Sermon on the Mount. Happiness and grief next to each other. Again, the comfort and consolation of Christianity is that our loved ones are not suffering anymore. They are present with God, in a way, like Isaiah 25, where there's a great feast and you can eat and not become bloated or gain any weight. You can just enjoy the bounty of the Lord fully.

The Bible is not super clear about the life together to come. But one thing it is clear about is that the life to come is not like this life. It is different; it is a transformed life. On the road to Emmaus, followers of Jesus did not recognize his resurrected body. He looked different. Our ultimate future is resurrection. Paul shares this in 1 Corinthians 15.

>“Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
1 Corinthians 15:51-57 NRSV

This is our joy, our longing, our desire. It's our own future and the future of our love wants to be present with God in this kind of way.

So what does that leave for us now? Who can we be? What can we do now? But specifically, how do we remember? Or what do we remember? There can be a challenge, sometimes, amidst grief to remember honestly. There can be a challenge when we want to just remember the good things. What we remember of those whom we love is not about the past, though, it is about the present. It is about how we are going to live now. What kind of life is there for us, now.

That's what the sermon on the plain is about. That's what the Beatitudes, found here and in Matthew 5, are about. That's what Psalm 149 is about. How are we going to live now? What kind of person are we going to be?

If you've ever experienced a loved one suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's. memory loss is something that's, commonly expressed. But another symptom is confabulation. Confabulation is an unconscious combining of memories and stories. Putting them together, not for a dramatic emphasis, but because that's the only way that you know to tell them. Sometimes, if you're not used to it, when someone confabulates in front of you, it can be frustrating. I often have to batten down my own desire to correct people. People are not wrong when they confabulate. The point of communication with someone you love is sharing a story, sharing a memory, it is not the cold regurgitation of fact. It is the connection there.

When we remember those whom we love who have died, we don't need to be cold recorders of fact.

We grieve because we love. When you don't love, you don't grieve. This is the connection of the famous quote from Joseph Stalin, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths, a statistic. As humans, we can't relate to a million deaths, we can relate to one death. We see a child killed, we think of our own child. We see a person suffering. We think of a loved one suffering. We connect it. As a church, one of the things we must do is remember together. Those who are grieving remember, but the rest of us sometimes think, ohh, it's too sad to bring up. But again, grief and sorrow are a sign of love, not weakness. We grieve because we love. And in actively remembering, we continue to love. When we are inspired by the lives of those who went before us, we are actively remembering them. Inspired comes from the Latin word inspirare, which means to breathe in. or more literally to inhale. When we're inspired by someone we inhale them. That's why we light candles. And this is why, today, I wanted to try something a little different and have incense in worship. Incense has been a part of Christian tradition since the very beginning. The wise men brought incense to the baby, Jesus. Incense helps us to actively inhale, to actively be inspired.

I was blessed to know Bob Weeks and to remember him dearly. I heard many stories of Bob Fossick and I'm grateful for them. In then this time to come, I hope to inhale and be inspired by what I remember and not struggle to find the important thing or the best thing, or the most truthful thing, or the most honest thing, but to inhale and let the memory come so that my life now will be inspired by God, by their faithfulness, kindness and love, grace and humor.

For those whom you all have lost, for the members of this church and for those outside of it, may you be inspired this day. May you remember this day. May you tell stories. May you remember the stories they told you. May you inhale the stories of their lives so you can inhale Christ’s story in their life.

May you remember that grief is a sign of love, but our consolation is in our risen Lord, from whom nothing can separate us.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen. Amen.