title: What Does God Ask of Us?

series: Praise

themes: doing-gods-will self-denial faith-as-risk justice-and-righteousness transformed-desire facing-death-without-fear works-of-piety

text:
**Scripture:** Psalm 85:8-13; Matthew 14:22-33; John 12:25; Matthew 16:26; John 14:1-3
**Series:** Praise

> A sermon on Psalm 85 and Matthew 14 asking what God truly requires of us. Using The Godfather's quid-pro-quo favors as a foil, the preacher argues God is not a power-hungry extractor but the giver of new life. God asks for peace and justice to embrace in us (Psalm 85), and to step out of the boat in risky faith (Peter walking on water). Drawing on Bonhoeffer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the call is to die to old desires and the fear of death, trading the girdle of security for the belt of faith. What God asks is ourselves, lived out in works of mercy and piety, and the freedom this brings.

**Illustrations:** godfather-don-corleone-favors, schadenfreude, sea-of-galilee-storms, bonhoeffer-come-and-die, sir-gawain-green-knight

---

# August 13

## What does God Ask of Us?
I have probably watched The Godfather too many times, but I still enjoy it. The dramatic transformation of Michael Corleone from war hero to mob boss. It is a story of how good intentions can take you to the very place you don’t want to be.
The Godfather begins in a strange way. Not in gunfire or clever witticisms, but a wedding.  Don Corleone’s daughter is getting married. The ceremony itself is not important. What matters are the people. They have come to ask a favor of the Don on the day of his daughter’s wedding. He will give them this favor, but at some point in the future, the debt will come due.
Now, I've never known any mob bosses in my life, just to be perfectly frank. I also don't like asking favors of anyone in general, so I definitely wouldn't ask a favor of mob boss. One important aspect of a favor is the return, the quid pro quo. You don't know when the Don is going to ask a favor of you and you have to be ready for it.

God the Father is not a mob boss. This is important to be clear about. I think there are some perspectives of God, some theologies that make him out to be. Some theologies make God to be this all powerful, all knowing puppet master, only concerned with working the puppet strings of power, watching you, judging you, controlling you from the shadows. That is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is powerful but the nature of God is not power. That is not the nature of the God of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Today, I want us to think about what God asks of us. The example of the mob boss can be enlightening in this way. The mob boss is the most worldly person imaginable. It's just business. It's just power. It's just making a profit, no matter who dies to the death. Family in the mafia is an extension of profit-making. There is no limit to the profit motive in the mafia. Honor holds a certain level, but even that can be dismissed to make a profit.
 When we see who God is, what God has done, what God has offered for us in Jesus Christ, this new life that is given for us, this new life that is not just an opportunity to desire the same things we did before or to want the same things we did before, to do the same things we did before in much the same way.
The Christian view of heaven, the biblical view of heaven is not just this life as it is…eternally. The Christian view holds that in the direct presence of God, there will be no more weeping or crying or gnashing of teeth. This is the renewal of all creation through Jesus Christ. The word made flesh.
There is no bigger or greater gift. With that great gift, we may think that there is a catch.
What does God ask of you?
It is different from what Don Corleone asks of you. It is different from what your job asks of you. It is different from what your spouse or your children ask of you. What does God ask of you?
We see a few examples today in these readings from Psalm 85 and from Matthew.
# Psalm 85
The Psalmist says:  the Lord God must speak peace to his people. This is something that God asks of us, not peace outside of his people, not peace on our borders, peace to his people.
If you have violence in your heart, if you have sin in your heart, peace is going to be an abhorrent concept. If your joy is in another’s pain or another’s loss, the German term Schadenfreude. If you delight in schemes that extract resources from others and feel great about making others feel bad, peace will be scary. If you see yourself as the hands of justice in the world, peace is going to be an important concept. It will be a challenge. Peace can seem unfair unless we have faith in God’s peace and God’s Justice.
We can only receive the peace of God when we see and believe and have faith in the justice of God: God will have justice.
In verse 10 of psalm 85, steadfast love and faithfulness will meet, righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Righteousness and justice are the same word in both Hebrew and Greek. Not a similar word, but the same word. So another way to read this is: justice and peace will embrace.
That is what God asks of us. A way of life where justice and peace embrace. It is a different way of life than the life of this world; this life of scarcity, of limitation. This world of Don Corleone asking a favor at some future moment. God never asks a favor. God never needs a favor. God created everything and offers us life.
## Matthew
In Matthew, we get another perspective. The disciples are on the sea of Galilee and there is a storm. The Sea of Galilee is a large body of water where winds can change quickly. There are steep hills on the sides. And so a storm front can come in and just rest there for a long time. The disciples are used to this. Many of them growing up fishing on the sea of Galilee. They're much more familiar with storms than they are with Jesus.
I think that's the case for a lot of us. We may have grown up in the church, but we are more familiar with storms than with Jesus. The storms of life, the storms of self-doubt, the storms of tragedy, maybe the storms of success, the storms that confuse us into thinking we are the rulers of this world.
The disciples were more familiar with storms than with Jesus. And so when they saw Jesus walking on the water, they did not know what to do. Peter tried. I think he felt obligated to do something. Peter tried. Jesus asked them to do something strange. Jesus asked them to get out of the boats, their place of security, and to walk on the water, a place of risk. The boat is solid. The sea is not. The boat is sure. The sea is not. This is what Jesus asks of us.
According to the world, it is absurd. The world tells us to stay in our boats. We should stay in our safety no matter what Jesus says, because the storms are going to pass and then we will be fine. We have more faith in the passing of the storm than in the word of God. Many of us do and we should humbly admit it. We have more faith in the passing of the storm than in the word of God.
But Jesus offers us something beyond the storm. In Jesus, we find not just safety but transformation.
We worship the Lord on Sunday as little Easters, remembering the resurrection as often as we can, the new life Christ gives us.
But this new life is not just the old life with a new coat of paint. It is new life with new desires. And our desires need to be consistently changing if we are going to continue in this new life, if we're not going to fall back on those old habits of self-destruction.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor/theologian who died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, said, “when Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.“ That's not an easy sales pitch. It doesn’t have to be. Jesus isn’t selling anything. It isn’t an easy sales picth, but it is true.
When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die. Die to the desires of the world. Die to the desires of Don Corleone and the mob boss. Die to the desires of self-preservation at the expense of those around us. Die to the desires of self-preservation at the expense of the word of God.

My favorite illustration of this is found in an unlikely place.
## The Green Knight
The great medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is about a strange game that takes place in a castle. There is a New Year’s feast at Camelot and a strange night comes forward. He holds an ax in one hand and a holly branch in the other.
The Green Knight sees the people of Camelot weak but he offers them this game: someone may strike him once with his axe, on the condition that the Green Knight may return the blow in a year and a day. Sir Gawain, the youngest of the knights, eventually comes forward. He attempts a light blow but takes the knight’s head. Gawain thinks that the situation is under control, but this is no mortal knight. After the head is gone, the knight picks up his head and says, in a year's time, I will do the same to you. Come to the Green Chapel. And so this fear of death takes hold over Gawain. What would you do if you knew you would die in a year?
A few adventures ensue, including the temptation of a lady who gives him a magical belt to protect him. He is told if he wears this belt, he won't die.
Sir Gawain is given a belt to stay safe as he comes to the Green Chapel.
He falters as he faces the Green knight. He falters. He clings to life. He is trapped to fear. Until, that is, he takes off the belt. He lets go of his clinched fist clinging to life, and when the axe of the Green Knight falls on his neck, the blade leaves only a scratch. He goes back to Camelot a free man.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a profoundly Christian poem. Jesus says in John 12, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
Or in Matthew, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

What does God ask of us? What does Jesus ask of us? It is different from what the world asks.
In John 14, we see consolation in this. Do not let your heart’s be troubled. In my father's house, there are many dwelling places. Were it not so, I would not go to prepare a place for you.
For where I am there you will be also.
What does God ask of us?
God asks us for ourselves.
It is at once the greatest request and the most freeing for when we offer ourselves, when we step outside of the boat, when we step outside of the expectation that God is Don Corleone or our boss or anyone else who just seeks to extract from us, we realize that God doesn't want to extract from us. God doesn't wanna take from us. But in the asking God gives us life.
When we take off that girdle of security, we receive the belt of faith. And when we do that together, we are the body of Christ.

Let us step out of the boat together. Let us follow the example of Peter but not fall in the same way as Peter. Let us look to Jesus more than to our feet. God gives us a path that is clearer than Peter’s. It is the path of mercy: visiting the sick, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry, and giving generously to the needs of others. It is the path of piety: studying the scripture, praying, sharing communion, worshipping together.

What does God want from us? God wants our pride, our doubt, our pain. God wants those desires to die that we might live. God wants peace and Justice to embrace in us. May it be so.

Let us worship the God who gives himself to us so that we might be free. If you feel trapped in life now, God asks you to be free. Let go of what needs to die and step into Christ’s freedom. That is what God wants of you.

Let us pray,

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your mercy. We thank you for your peace, let it abide in us. Wash us clean by your blood so that we may be continually made new.

In the name of the Father, and


site: sermons

title: Who am I in Christ?

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: Identity

themes: identity-in-christ curvatus-in-se take-up-your-cross love-of-neighbor repentance servanthood christian-community

text:
**Scripture:** Jeremiah 15:19-21; Matthew 16:21-28; Isaiah 53:4-5
**Series:** Identity

> Concluding a three-week identity series, this sermon asks 'Who am I in Christ?' Pairing Jeremiah's call to turn back with Jesus's rebuke of Peter and command to take up the cross, Wilson uses physics vectors and Augustine's curvatus in se to argue that the self-centered life is a lie to be destroyed. To save one's soul is to lose it for Christ's sake by standing upright and living for God and neighbor, the deserving and undeserving alike. The church exists so this outward-vectoring service can be done together, culminating in a call to concrete acts of service as a gift of God's transforming grace.

**Illustrations:** band-of-brothers-epilogue, animal-house-epilogues, physics-vectors-forces, augustine-curvatus, basketball-lebron, food-pantry-service

---

# September 3, 2023
## Who am I in Christ?
### Jeremiah 15:19-21
### Matthew 16:21-28

Therefore thus says the Lord: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.
And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, says the Lord. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.
		- Jeremiah 15:19-21

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.
	 - Matthew 16:21-28

I am not a big fan of sequels, but I love when movies tell us what happens after the movie. A where are they know clip. The HBO series Band Of Brothers about Easy Company from the 506th regiment of the 101st airborne during the D-Day invasion, shows the real men each of the characters was based on. It is heartwarming to see the men who fought so hard and were able to have their story told.

An earlier movie that does this, in a slightly different genre, is Animal House, from 1978. It shows how all the bad guys have horrible lives and all the good guys succeed, even to the point of John Belushi’s character, Bluto, becoming a Us Senator.

Movies are about conflict and when the conflict is resolved, we want to see the effects. Do they change? Who are they now?

For each of us, when we go through challenging times, it would be great to look forward and see who we will become. When Jesus meets us, he doesn’t leave us in the same place.

Over the past three weeks, each of the sermons has connected to each other in a series about identity. On August 20th, we talked about the question: who am I? How do we know ourselves? We spoke about how we can't know ourselves just by how we feel or how we look in the mirror by, by what we do. And God gives us grace and strength to do great things and to be more than we think we are capable of. But it's not just about this feeling. Then last week we talked about the question: who is Christ? In an ideal world, we start with Christ as our source, as the rock from which we are hewn, as the prophet Isaiah says. Christ is the example of humanity at its best, and Christ shows the possibility that each of us can live in this kind of way. Christ does this as well as being our savior, the one who redeems us.

Today, I want to finish this series on identity with this question, who am I in Christ?
In some ways, the Christian faith is about getting to know Christ, but also about getting to know ourselves at our fullest. In that quest for knowledge, we see that we are incomplete apart from Jesus. Yet we are also incomplete apart from our neighbor. And this is really what I want to hone in on today.
## Jeremiah
In our Old Testament reading, the prophet Jeremiah begins with this great call, therefore, thus says the Lord, if you turn back, I will take you back and you shall stand before me.
To turn back, you have to realize that you've turned away. This is the first step to ever being found: you have to admit that you are lost. To ever be saved, you have to admit you need help.
And yet the story of faith, the story of God, acting on your life does not end in you. It doesn't. It's not all about you. We are not the heroes in our own movie, whether it be like Band of Brothers or Animal House, our life is not like that.

What I remember most from High school physics was about vectors in physics and the directionality of forces. How we understand the power of forces in certain directions, centrifugal and centripetal forces, for instance. Also how to actually calculate it and not just throw it out there: how forces come in all sorts of directions. And even at that point, when I was 18 and taking AP physics, I remember thinking about how so much of life consists of these vectors: we're never stagnant. Even when we feel stagnant, we're not. We’re constantly moving in one direction or the other. Sometimes vertically. Sometimes horizontally. Always moving. And forces on our lives and on our hearts are rarely ever just straight lines. They come from all directions. They affect us in all directions.
This language of physics connected to me to theology and talk about God once I started reading St. Augustine and other fathers of the early church. St. Augustine would talk about our life before Christ as if our heart was curved inward or curvatus. That is, our desires, our thoughts, our will, everything is turned towards itself. It's this constant centripetal force going in and in and in and in.
By this view, we are the center of the story. We are the center of the movie. We are the center of the novel. Everyone around us is a supporting character for our story. When we meet someone, they matter as much as they affect our story. This is life before Christ.
What Christ does on our life is to take us from Curvatus to upright orrectitudo. We go from turning inward to standing upright, seeing the world as it is, and we are no longer the center of our story because that centrality was a lite. The idea that the world revolves around us is a lie that deserves to be destroyed. But more than just quashing the lie, God has included us in the greatest of stories.
Who are we in Christ? We are a part of the inbreaking new creation of the world. We are a part of the world being made new. In the words of Jeremiah, If we turn back, Christ will take us. We have many reasons to turn back. Matthew gives us
a few of them.
## Matthew

This is just a continuation of the reading from last week where, where Peter said to Jesus, you are the Messiah. And, Jesus said, “Peter, you are the rock upon which I will build my church, my ecclesia, my assembly of people, the body of Christ.” And yet right after Jesus starts preaching about the suffering that's going to come and how he's going to Jerusalem, Peter doesn't like it. Peter sees him as the Messiah, but he doesn't want the Messiah to suffer. That's when Jesus says, Get behind me Satan.
Satan is the accuser; the one contrary to the will of God. Jesus isn't calling Peter Satan or Satanic. Jesus is saying that Peter is currently acting contrary to the will of God if he is not able to conceive of the Messiah suffering. Isaiah speaks often of what will happen to the Messiah
>Surely he has borne our infirmities
   and carried our diseases,
yet we accounted him stricken,
    struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
    and by his bruises we are healed.

Peter is setting his mind on human things and not divine things. He is limited in how he sees. He is not standing upright in that moment. A few moments ago, he was standing upright. He could see Jesus for who he was. And then he lost it.
 I think that happens to a lot of us. Sometimes, we’re standing upright and we see Jesus for who he really is, and we are thankful and we are grateful, and we praise God. And then life happens.
It can be easy to fall into the rut of thinking that the avoidance of suffering is the most important goal in life. This is what Peter was going for when he told Jesus, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
Jesus has harsh words about this. Peter was missing the point and we miss the point when we act in this way, too. The good news of Jesus Christ is not just on the surface, but goes all the way down. Jesus says, if any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it. And those who lose their life, for my sake, will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?
Or what will they give in return for their life?

The word translated here as life, psyche, is often translated as Soul. It is the root of the word psychology. Often life and soul are interchangeable. It's not a bad translation. The stakes of the line deal with our essence, our very being.

For those who want to save their soul will lose it. And those who lose their soul, from my sake, will find it.
This seems like a contradiction. What do you mean if I want to save it, I should lose it?
What Jesus is talking about is two ways of living: there's living in Christ and living for ourselves. If we want to live, we want to live in Christ. And that means standing upright, which means letting go of pride of place of ourselves in our stories. Because what will it profit if you gain the whole world, but lose your soul, is it worth it? Even if it's what everyone around you tells you to do.
When we encounter the risen Lord, we hear the call to return, to turn back our lives, to turn our lives around, to stand upright, and then to live in a different way.
In that different way, we live not for ourselves, but for God and our neighbor.

It is a both/and. There is no living for God in which you don’t live for your neighbor. And you can’t pick and choose which neighbor to love. This is why the way of Jesus is narrow. The world tells us to love the likable people, the deserving people. Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, the deserving and the undeserving.

It may seem hard or even impossible. You think about all the unlikable people Jesus wants you to love. Surely not that person, Jesus?

We can do it, but we've gotta start right where we are.

It's like you don't wake up one day, decide you're gonna be good at basketball, and then become disappointed when you can't play like LeBron James. You start where you are, but you gotta keep moving. The vector has gotta keep going outward. We need to go from Centripetal force to centrifugal force. And in that, we see who we are in Christ when the vector keeps moving outward, when our life and our soul is not for ourselves, but for others. And as we do that, we encounter God again and again. We encounter God as love, and we are healed and redeemed and forgiven and strengthened, and we are offered this honor of doing it together. And that's why the church exists, so that we can do these things together, so that we can receive the grace of mercy and forgiveness and salvation, and then act together to be who we were created to be in Christ and serve our neighbors, to bear our cross together, to stand upright together, to see as God sees, to have our heart cry as God's heart cries, let us do these things together.

Our days our full and our evenings are short. Few of us are over flowing with free time. We have teams for volunteers around the church starting up. We have continual volunteer opportunities of service with the food pantry, including at 5:30pm for clean up.

I am looking to have other chances during the week and weekend for us to serve our neighbors. We go from the biblical to the theological to the practical. It was one thing to nod and say, yes preacher. It is another thing to sign up and show up and receive the grace God offers us in participating in God’s kingdom building here. Service is not a chore but a gift. Service is not a burden but an opportunity. It is not about making ourselves feel good but being continually made new through God’s transformative Grace as we vector ourselves outwards. This is who we are in Christ.

My brothers and sisters, let us be confident in the grace God has given us. Let us turn back, remembering that Christ will receive us and will stand with us. Let us stand upright, offer ourselves to God, and offer ourselves to our neighbors.

Let us pray,

Heavenly Father, thank you for the blessings of grace which saves us. Thank you for life of Jesus which shows us how to live. And thank you for your presence with us that stands us upright and reveals the reality of the world and your love for the world, even in brokenness. Inspire us to move beyond what is comfortable into a life of love.

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: Who Am I?

themes: identity-in-christ doers-not-hearers justice-and-righteousness prudence grace-not-merit humility syrophoenician-woman

text:
**Scripture:** Isaiah 56:1, 56:6-8; Matthew 15:21-28
**Series:** Identity

> First in a three-week series on identity (Who am I? / Who is Christ? / Who am I in Christ?). Using the mirror's distortion and Jean Valjean's confession, the sermon argues identity is found not in origin but in what we do. Isaiah 56 calls us to maintain justice and do what is right as a practiced, grace-infused habit, while the 'Martian observer' tests us by our deeds. Yet works alone breed a works-righteousness that forgets the weak; God gathers the outcasts. The Canaanite woman's persistent, humble faith models seeking mercy from the one who can grant it. We discover who we are by those to whom we humble ourselves, coming to the Lord's table by grace, remembering we were known and loved by God before the world began.'

**Illustrations:** mirror-shaving, les-miserables-jean-valjean, martian-observer, habit-practice-skills, good-tree-good-fruit

---

# August 20, 2023
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Matthew 15: 21-28

Thus says the Lord:
    Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come
    and my deliverance be revealed.
	And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
    to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
    and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it
    and hold fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
    will be accepted on my altar,
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
    for all peoples.
Thus says the Lord God,
    who gathers the outcasts of Israel:
I will gather others to them
    besides those already gathered.
	Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.
Matthew 15: 21-28

I have never been a big fan of mirrors. The time I look in a mirror the most is when I am shaving, which as you can see, doesn't happen very often. I shave my neck, from time to time. But otherwise it doesn't happen.

All of us have different relationships with our own reflection, different comfort levels with what we see in the mirror. Maybe there was a time in your life when you were very confident in what you saw in the mirror. There might also be other times when you were not.
One of the curious things about a mirror is how it never gives you an exact image of yourself. It is a reflection. It has been inverted.
It's almost impossible for us to see ourselves as we are. We can feel ourselves, we can feel our internal reality. We can try and describe what that is, but when we look at ourselves in the mirror, there's always this distortion.

This question, who am I? is a very important question for all of us to ask. It is usually one of those questions we ask a lot during adolescence or young adulthood, but which we don’t ask a lot at other parts of our life who am I? It's not very much a finished question.
## Les Miserables
I think about the the musical, Les Miserables, and this question comes up a lot.
There's a song, in fact, where this question is central. The main character thinks hears that someone has been arrested as him. Someone is arrested as Jean Valjean.
If you haven’t read the book or seen the musical, when the main character was young, his sister was starving and he stole some bread. Then he was arrested for it and he goes to jail. He keeps on escaping from prison and so he's be arrested again until he finally is paroled.
He wanders through the country and decides to steal some silver from a bishop. The bishop, though, was a true man of God. He catches Jean Valjean, though instead of just the silver candlesticks, the bishop gives him the silver plates as well. The Bishop gave him more, he transformed his life. Jean Valjean turns his life around. He turns the silver into a small business making beads in the north of France. He becomes a very rich man. He becomes the mayor of the town. But then there is this one detective who is always trying to find him, Javert. Javert thinks he found Jean Valjean and arrests the wrong man and takes him to trial. And so Jean Valjean is in this challenging mental place about what to do and he sings a song.

>He thinks that man is me
He knew him at a glance
That stranger he has found
This man could be my chance

>Why should I save his hide?
Why should I right this wrong?
When I have come so far
And struggled for so long?

>If I speak, I am condemned
If I stay silent, I am damned

>Who am I?
Can I condemn this man to slavery?
Pretend I do not feel his agony?
This innocent who wears my face
Who goes to judgement in my place

>Must I lie?
How can I ever face my fellow men?
How can I ever face myself again?
My soul belongs to God, I know
I made that bargain long ago.

>He gave me hope, when hope was gone
He gave me strength to journey on

>Who am I? Who am I?
>I'm Jean Valjean

Jean Valjean refuses to let another man suffer for him, that is what he learns about himself by asking this question. By continuing to ask the question, he confronts not only himself, but God’s grace on his life, and once he seriously asks himself the question, he cannot take the easy way out.

Who am I? What kind of person am I?
Where are the situations where we can actually come up to that question? The deep questions of who we are in our identity.
Over the next three weeks, that's what I want to look at. It's our identity, our individual identity and communal identity. These three central questions. Who am I? Who is Christ? Who am I in Christ?

We start with the Bible and we start with where we are.
## Isaiah
The section of the Bible most focused on identity is the prophets. Every prophet in the Bible has the central question of the identity of the people of Israel: are they following through with who God called them to be? Are they remembering God's promises to them? Most often they're not. What kind of person are you? What kind of people are you?
The prophet Isaiah says in chapter 56:

>Thus says the Lord…
    Maintain justice, and do what is right, Hold fast to my covenant.
Let the foreigners join themselves to the Lord.
Keep the Sabbath. these I will bring to my holy mountain
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer

Maintain justice and do what is right.
Identity in the scriptures is not found as much in where you are from as we may think. Identity is not found as much in when you were born or who your parent is as what you do.
There are many people born of the best families who walk away from God in the Bible. 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles are about kings who were given the greatest opportunity and squander it because of who they are. We see who they are because of what they do. They do not maintain justice. They do not do what is right.
Maintaining justice is not an easy thing to do. It is a habit. Doing what is right is a habit. You need to build a virtue of prudence. Prudence is knowing what is good and what is not good.
You habituate prudence. It's like learning to ride a bicycle. You have to practice it. It's like driving a car. You have to practice it. It is like playing an instrument. You have to practice it. No one is born with an innate ability to maintain justice and do what is right. You have to receive wisdom from the people around you and put it into practice. It is an infused habit which means God gives us the Grace to do it, but we have to actually do it.
When I think about the moral life, I like to think about martians. Not that I want to go to Mars or visit aliens or anything like that, but just to think about this completely objective observer looking in at us and looking in at our life. What would they say? Someone who's never met a human and they decided to observe you in all the things that you do, what would they say about who you are? The evidence they would have is what you do, not your excuses, not your reasonings, not your parents, not your culture, what you actually do.
Who am I to the martian? Who are you to the Martian?
Now if we stop there with only what we do, we've built a wonderful works righteousness religion, where the strong will maintain strength, and the weak are forgotten. But even in Isaiah it says that God gathers the outcasts. Outcasts are inherently weak. They don't have a society to support them and God's holy mountain is not for the people who are most supported, but for the people who maintain justice and do what is right. You don't need to be successful to do that. Sometimes it's easier to not be successful in order to be just because you have a lot less to lose.
If you are quite wealthy and you're given a business opportunity, but it is immoral, I would assume it might be trickier to say no to it. Or if you find out that a lot of your money came from a really bad, wicked situation, it'd be hard to give all that up. To give up your standard of living and tell your kids you can't afford the college anymore because of this situation. If you don't have any of those resources, you don't lose anything. This isn’t to say God doesn’t want us to succeed but that each stage in life brings its own challenges.
Who am I? Am I a person willing to maintain justice, to do what is right? Jesus says  that A good tree bears good fruit. We know the goodness of the tree not by its roots, by where it comes from, but by the fruit that it produces.
## Matthew
But none of us can do it on our own. And this gets us to Matthew 16. The Canaanite woman comes up to Jesus, “have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon,” but Jesus did not answer her.
This Canaanite woman, this non-Jew, this dirty person, sees Jesus as important, “have mercy on me. Oh Lord.” Jesus does not answer her. The scripture doesn't say he didn't hear her. It says he did not answer her. The disciples respond and tell Jesus to send her away for she's keeps shouting at us. She is getting annoying.
Then Jesus replies, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” She does not give up. She comes and kneels before him saying, “Lord, help me.” He says, “it is not fair to take children's food and throw it to the dogs.” But she says, “yes Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. To which Jesus replies, great is your faith.
I don't think Jesus is calling her a dog. I think Jesus is offering her a chance to show great faith, to really show who she is and show the disciples what great faith looks like. Great faith doesn't look like a Jew of the finest house. It looks like someone seeking God, seeking justice no matter what because that is what she's seeking.
This demon has possessed her daughter. She is seeking justice. She is seeking to make it right with the person who can make it right: the son of God. Even though she is not a Jew, even though she does not know the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the stories of Moses and the Exodus, she sees Jesus for who he is and seeks him. She seeks mercy.
That is ultimately how we can respond to Isaiah and the word of God there. Maintain justice and do what is right. We must seek mercy. Isaiah doesn't say, make justice, but maintain justice. Don't make it worse. Seek mercy. Have more faith in God's justice than in your own. A good tree bears good fruit. God infuses us with grace when our own root system is trash so that through God we can bear fruit
This is how we find out who we are, by the people to whom we're willing to humble ourselves.
Where can you be humble? In what way can you be humble like the Canaanite woman? That's where you find out who you are. That was with Jean Valjean. He was able to be humble, to admit who he was even if it cost him his worldly freedom. He asked himself Who am I? And realized he couldn’t live a lie anymore
For us, for this church, for you and whatever walk of life you're in, whether you are faithfully following Jesus or you're still curious about who this Jesus person ends. Start with the humility of this question: who am I? and admit that maybe you don't know the answer and you need to find the answer. You find the answer by what you do. What do you do?
What would the Martian say you do? Are you the kind of person that does these things? Do you want to be the kind of person that does these things? Think for a moment. If an alien looked at your life, what are the five things that would notice? The five things you do the most? Is that who you are? And if it is not, do you have the humility to change that? The humility to admit it, to come to the table of the Lord and say, have mercy upon me. We're not saved by our works, but by grace. And we reach out to grace because the wisdom that God has given us to see humbly our need for God, that we cannot maintain justice on our own. We cannot do what is right, but thanks be to God we have an opportunity in Jesus Christ.
Next week, we're going to talk about who Christ is, but we need to start here with ourselves. Start humbly. Start by looking at yourself. It might be in a mirror, it might be on a page of a journal. Look at yourself and ask this question, who am I?

And remember that whatever answer you come to, before everything, before the world began, you were known and loved by God. When all else passes away, God is there for you.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, your great love offers us hope in a hopeless world. Help us to look at where we are and to let go of the lies that keep us from loving you and our neighbor. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Who is Christ?

themes: christology son-of-man image-of-god messiah-anointed-one sermon-on-the-mount sanctification identity-in-christ

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 16:13-20; Isaiah 51:1-3; John 1:1-3; Genesis 1:26; Matthew 5:3-9; Matthew 5:48
**Series:** Identity

> Drawing on Isaiah's call to 'look to the rock from which you were hewn' and Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi, Wilson explores the two-fold identity of Christ. Jesus is the Human One (Son of man), the very image and pattern from which humanity was created, and the Messiah (anointed one), the Savior who reconciles us to the Father. Knowing both aspects matters in different seasons: in loss and doubt we meet the merciful Messiah, and to learn what new life looks like we look to the Human One, supremely in the Sermon on the Mount. Its command to 'be perfect' (teleos, completed) is not an impossible ideal but a promise: through the Holy Spirit that anointed Christ and dwells in us, our not-love desires can be purged so we become the children of God we were created to be.

**Illustrations:** sallman-head-of-christ, michelangelo-marble-sculpture, pour-one-out-not-love-desires, wesley-and-can-it-be-emptied-himself, holy-people-in-your-life

---

# August 27, 2023
## Who is Christ?
### Isaiah 51:1-3
### Matthew 16:13-20

Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness,
    you who seek the Lord.
Look to the rock from which you were hewn
    and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham your father
    and to Sarah, who bore you,
for he was but one when I called him,
    but I blessed him and made him many.
For the Lord will comfort Zion;
    he will comfort all her waste places
and will make her wilderness like Eden,
    her desert like the garden of the Lord;
joy and gladness will be found in her,
    thanksgiving and the voice of song.
	- Isaiah 51:1-3

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
 - Matthew 16:13-20

Jesus holds an interesting place in our culture. Who is Jesus Christ? Now, whether people are believers or not, most have some awareness of Jesus Christ. Some idea that he lived long ago. Often an image of him that comes from this German immigrant to the United States in the 1950s who won a contest in Chicago and whose portrait of Jesus has become one of the most reproduced works of art in world history, even if it is completely ahistorical. For a lot of people, that is the image of Jesus.
Who is Jesus Christ?

Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name, Joshua. Joshua and Jesus are the same name. Sometimes you'll see the name Yeshua on billboards and things like that. Yeshua Ben Joseph, that is Joshua son of Joseph, this is the name of Jesus if we are trying to make his name sound more exotic, as if being exotic makes it more authentic.

Who is Jesus Christ? Joshua was the patriarch of the Old Testament who brought the people into the promised land.
It wasn't Moses or Joseph, but Joshua. The one who had faith, was bold, and did what God asked of him and led the people across the Jordan River.
Christ was not the last name of Jesus. Just gonna say that. It's important to say. Last names weren't really a thing in Judaism until the 19th century. Sometimes people would be referred to by their father’s name in conversation, but that wasn't a last name. Christ is not a last name but the Greek form of the word Messiah, which means in  Hebrew anointed one.
Christos means anointed one.
Throughout the Old Testament, there's word of an anointed one of God who will come and set things right, come Meshiach!
There's also a language of Son of man within the Old Testament, especially the Book of Daniel, but it shows up in Ezekiel and a few other places, huio anthropou, in Greek.

In the Jewish faith, there was no assumption that the Messiah would be the son of God or would have any relation to God. It's really hard to fathom within Judaism a relation to God. God is one. Totally one without part or variance.

Christians, since the very beginning of the faith, have been able to look back at the Old Testament and see predictions of the coming of Christ. Not only predictions, but a testimony if Jesus.?That's the reason why the Bible is structured as it is. The Old Testament is the older testimony of Jesus Christ. The New Testament is the newer testimony of Jesus Christ, the newer witness to him, but who is Christ.
I want us to take our jumping off point from the prophet Isaiah when he says, look to the rock from which you were hued.  Look to the rock.

Genesis describes the creation of humanity as made from the dust and the mud: and God formed Adam from the mud and the dust.
Isaiah tells us to look to the rock from which we were hewn. Which begs the question: where did the model for Adam come from?

I haven't done a lot of sculpture in my life. I like the medium. I think it would be amazing to be able to work with stone and carve stone or carve marble. I love the idea of what Michelangelo said about looking at a block of marble and how the marble itself contained the sculpture and he would just cut out everything that was unnecessary. What was left behind was the sculpture inherent in that block of rock.
Look to the rock from which you were Hewn.
How did God know how to make Adam? Leaders of the early church understood creation through the Trinity. That God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And that the Son, Jesus Christ, was in the beginning with God. Jesus Christ didn't appear at Christmas for the first time. The celebration of Christmas was not the creation of Jesus but the incarnation of Jesus, the enfleshedness of Jesus. God became human in the person of Jesus Christ, but the Son of God was there from the very beginning of existence and time.
As John says at the beginning of the gospel: “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and all things came into being through him and without him. Not one thing came into being.”

The word of God is both the language out of which creation is spoken, but also the model for the creation of humanity.
When Genesis says, let us create man in our image, this is the image from which humanity was created. The first example of humanity is found in looking at the Son of God; in the image of the Son of God. This is the rock from which we have been hewn.

Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is the human one. This is a more recent translation of Son of man, the human one. Jesus Christ is the epitome of humanity. What we were created to be, the possibility of what we were created to be.
Jesus Christ is also the Messiah, the anointed one of God. Jesus Christ is both image and savior. God the Son is sent by God the Father at Christmas.
God the Son is anointed at the baptism when the clouds open up and a voice is heard: This is my son and whom I am well pleased.
Christ is the Human One, the rock from which we were hewn, the pattern from which all of our creation has followed. As well, Christ is the Messiah, the anointed one, the Savior.
This is what Peter means in the Matthew passage for today when he says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter puts these two aspects together and he is praised for it.

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Peter is the first to name these two aspects of Christ and the church is built on this rock of who Jesus is.

These two aspects of the identity of Christ are more relevant to our lives at different seasons of our life.
In moments of conversion, of transformation, in moments of of doubt, of discouragement, of loss, we see Christ as the Messiah, the Meshiach, the merciful one who comes from the Father, bringing peace, making straight the road, the way to God, offering us reconciliation with God the Father and forgiveness of our sins so that we can have new life.
We also have seasons when we look to the human one aspect of Jesus Christ. And this is really important. We look to Jesus to understand what this new life can look like.

Last week, I spoke about the Isaiah passage and call to maintain justice and do what is good. For the words of the prophet, the idea of the good wasn’t whatever makes you feel good or what you think is good. There is a specific content in mind of justice and the good as well as what this new life can be. We find it in the life and teachings of Jesus.

The great example of this is found in the Sermon on the Mount. Here is what this life can look like. The Sermon on the Mount, roughly Matthew chapter five through eight, is not an idealistic text. The most famous parts are at the beginning with the beatitudes.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

The Lord's prayer is also found in the Sermon on the Mount as are our instructions to turn the other cheek and not worry about things of the world.
For some, the Sermon on the Mount seems an impossibility, an ideal. Sure, it's good for Jesus. He's perfect, but what about me? I am decidedly not perfect.

The Sermon on the Mount even says, be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.  Again, these seem like high expectations that nobody can reach. And yet, if we have that view, we misunderstand who Christ is. We don't realize that Christ is the rock from which we have been hewn.
But looking to Christ offers us is a view of a life without sin. A life without a distance between God and humanity.

In the language of Charles Wesley and his great hymn, And Can it be that I should gain, emptied himself of all but love. If you look at your life, look at all the things in your life, all the desires of your heart. Now let's just dump out every desire that is not love. All of them. Dump them out on the floor. Just keep on pouring 'em out. Pour one out. Pour one out for anger. Pour one out for frustration. Pour one out for loneliness. Pour one out for jealousy. Pour one out for pride. There's more. There's a lot more. Some of us would feel like we're pouring ourselves out for days. That's precisely what Christ teaches us and offers us: all these not-love things are not who we are. The pride, the lust, the loneliness, the despair. That's not who we are. That's not who you are. You are not your anger. You are not your frustration. You are not your mistakes. You are a child of God, made in the image of God, hewn from the rock of Jesus Christ,
Reconciled with God through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Offered new life with the Holy Spirit, and that's the key. That's the missing link. What takes us from here to there, from being this mass of desires, both good and bad, to being transformed into true children of God who can read the Sermon on the Mount and say, Amen. That is me, What takes us there is the Holy Spirit acting in our lives.

Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. The word for perfect in Greek is teleos. It really means be completed, be finished, which means: be who you are created to be. You are not created to be a person of hate, a person of wickedness. You are created to be a person of love, of overflowing love. Not a general feeling of love, but a specific form of love.

What does that look like? It looks like the life of Jesus Christ. Is that impossible? No, it is not impossible because we have seen it with our own eyes. We have seen holy people in our life. You have seen holy people in your life. Maybe not completely transformed. John Wesley would talk about entire sanctification, people entirely made holy.
I'm not pushing for that right now, but I am saying that you have seen people who are holy in your life, who have done things because of who Christ is, because of who God is. If they can do it, you can do it. Because what allows them to do it is not being better than you or having some genetic predisposition to kindness: it is because that Holy Spirit that came down and anointed Jesus Christ, that Holy Spirit that it is one with God the Father, and God the Son. That same Holy Spirit is with you and calling on that Holy Spirit can help you purge those not loves and live a full life. That is who Jesus Christ is. If you don’t know Jesus like this, he offers himself to you this day.

Let us worship him because he saves us, he transforms us. He shows us a way of life beyond the despair of this world. Let us serve him. Let us model Christ’s life. Let us show others that life. Let us live in such a way that people look not to us, but to God for how God has changed our own life.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day and the gift of Jesus Christ. Let us continually meet your Son again as our model and redeemer who saves us and shows us how to live a life of love not just in the future, but here and now.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Why Do We Worship? The Assembly and the Bread of Life

themes: why-we-worship christian-community feeding-the-five-thousand bread-of-life holy-communion hymnody magnificat-reversal

text:
**Scripture:** Psalm 145:8-21; Matthew 14:13-21; John 6:32-35; Leviticus 8:3; Deuteronomy 4:10
**Series:** Praise

> Preached on August 6, 2023, this sermon presses the question 'Why do we worship?' beyond habit, comfort, or getting one's cup refilled. Centering on Psalm 145, the pastor finds the why in who God is (gracious, merciful, abounding in steadfast love), the who in all people (not just those already present), and the what in God upholding the falling and raising the bowed-down. Drawing on ecclesia/assembly language from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, he argues the church is a gathered people, not a place. The feeding of the 5,000 (Matthew 14, with John 6's bread-of-life discourse) shows a crowd so hungry for the word they forget their bellies, and Jesus offering himself as the true bread. At the Lord's table worship becomes transformation, not convenience. Closing with Wesley's rules for singing and words of assurance — you are loved, forgiven, gathered — God meets us where we are but does not leave us there.

**Illustrations:** cup-refilled-at-church, playoff-elimination-slumped-shoulders, rumbling-bellies-long-sermon, wesley-rules-for-singing

---

# August 6

>The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made. The LORD upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing. The LORD is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings. The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of all who fear him; he also hears their cry, and saves them. The LORD watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD, and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.

Psalm 145:8-21

>Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; as send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." And he said, "Bring them here to me." Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Matthew 14:13-21

Why do we worship God? Why even come to church on Sunday? For many people, we are here because it is what we’ve always done. It is our practice. It is our habit. It is what is familiar. Church is a location of comfort and peace, where we see our friends, where we reconnect with God and feel refreshed for the rest of the week.
I've heard a lot of people over the years talk about how they pour themselves out all during the week and that they need to get their cup refilled at church. It is a good idea, but we should go a little bit deeper with this question of why.

Why gather together? Why assemble as the body of Christ here on Sundays? Why not on Tuesdays? Why together, why not separately? The pandemic made this question more acute. When we're not gathered together physically, it can be a challenge to start gathering together again.
This question of why is really important because it allows us to put in our minds the people who haven't grown up in the church, who haven't been a part of this congregation or any congregation, and the questions that they might have. The future of the church is not just found in people who move to the area or in people who are dissatisfied with their own congregations, but in those in our greater community who are hurting or lost, and to whom Jesus sends us out to find.
For people who have never experienced Christian worship in any capacity, questions of contemporary or traditional or hymns or guitars or all those things that seem so important are secondary to this question of why: what are we doing here? What is going on?

What I want us to do is to look at this question of why in worship from the perspective of those scriptures. I'm gonna center on this reading from the Psalms 145. We're gonna come back to Matthew, but I want us to hold on to the Old Testament reading because the God of Jesus Christ is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Old Testament doesn't mean the passé testament. It's the the first testimony, the first witness of Jesus Christ. We have these scriptures because they witness to Jesus Christ, and we see that witness in the Psalms.
Jesus quotes the Psalms more than any other book of the Bible. The Psalms are the largest book of the Bible. The Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible.
The Psalms offer us songs of praise. But in these songs of praise, they offer us this why for worship. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love.
This verse begins to get to our why because of who God is.
Every single question of worship needs to be sublimated to this question of who God is. God is gracious and God is merciful. God is slow to anger and abounding that steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that He made. The Lord is not just an authority over people who are already here, but over all.
We have a why because of who God is.
In verse nine, we have our who. God is not just the God of those who are already here, but of all.
In verse 14, we have our what. What does God do? What does God do in worship? God upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.
This is so important for us to understand. You know what God does. Who is God looking out for? God has care over all, but God lifts up all who are bowed down and upholds all who are falling.
Now, bowing down is a sign of worship and offering. We bow our heads in prayer. The bowing down is also a sign of desperation. When you give up, you hang your head. You always see it at the end of play off games when a team is eliminated and the camera pans to fans with slumped shoulders and tearful eyes as hope for victory is lost.

You hang your head when it seems like nothing you do can change the outcome or circumstances of your life. You hang your head, your posture breaks down.

God is there for all who hang their head, whether because of life or prayer. God saves us in ourselves but God also gathers us together.

This is what God offers us in worship. The word the church, comes from the Greek word ecclesia, which means assembly. The earliest or use in the Bible of Ecclesia is in the Old Testament is in the book of Leviticus, when God says, assemble all the congregation at the door of the tent of meeting
Assemble, we need to gather together. The assembly is not a place. A Temple is a place. An assembly is a people.
In Deuteronomy, God says to Moses, assemble the people before me and let them hear my words.
The people need to be gathered together in order to hear the word of God together. There is an added benefit to listening together.
In Matthew, we have the story of the feeding of the 5,000. It's a one of the few stories of Jesus that take place in all four gospels.
The people have gathered together to hear the word of God. They're hungry for the word of God. They're so hungry for the word of God that they don't notice the hunger in their bellies. Now, this is something I've never experienced. I've been in churches all my life and everybody notices the hunger in their bellies. There's not many things that would get people up in arms as fast as missing lunch. A preacher goes on too long and the bellies start to rumble. But specifically here, it was evening and nobody in the crowd has noticed that they haven't eaten. You know, verse 14, there's a great crowd and Jesus has compassion for them, and he cures them.

It's not the people who are complaining, “feed us, feed us” The disciples notice that nobody has left.  and say, this is a deserted place. That means there's not a community around to support the people. There are no services for the people to use so they think to send them away,
Send them away so that they can eat. I mean, they also have to relieve themselves. It's a lot of people.
But then Jesus says, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. The disciples say, we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish. In another version, it is the boy who brings it forth.
But then in this one, Jesus says, bring them to me. And he offers himself to them. He breaks the bread, he prays for the fish, and he gives it to the people.
In the Gospel of John, the feeding of the 5,000 takes place much earlier in the story. Jesus also relates the miracle more directly to himself, worship, and communion. He first connects it to the manna that the Hebrew people received in the wilderness. Jesus says,
> “Jesus told them, “I assure you, it wasn’t Moses who gave the bread from heaven to you, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. The bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”” “They said, “Sir, give us this bread all the time!” Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
John 6:34-35 CEB

The people in Matthew weren’t hungry for food but for the bread of life. They didn’t ask for food. They had gathered together to hear Jesus.

At the table of the Lord today, we will receive food. We will also receive the bread of life. It is not just a matter of convenience but transformation. The God who created everything offers himself to us as we gather here; as we assemble.

The why is because of who God is, because of God's love for us. The who is all the people, the what is the downtrodden, the broken, the bowed. That is us here today on Sunday morning, the Lord's day. We worship on Sunday because on Sunday Jesus rose again. Every Sunday is a little Easter, a little reminder of resurrection.
As a church, we need to be a place where transformation not only happens, but is expected on Sunday morning. Where we come humbly to the table, where we come humbly as a gathered body, where we welcome those who are unfamiliar with our practices and draw them in with our excitement and our energy, our desperation for God.
If you have forgotten what that desperation is like, think back this day to a moment in your life of desperation, of absolute need.

This desperation is true for how we pray in worship. How we listen to the scriptures and the sermon. How we come to the table. And also how we sing.

At the front of your hymnal is a list of John Wesley’s rules for singing.

> Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
> V. Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.

> VII. Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your Heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve of here, and reward when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

We gather together because of who God is and what God has done and what God is still doing.

The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made. The LORD upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.

May we gather together with full hearts. May you meet God here. May we be a place where others meet God. You are loved. Before you knew God, God knew you and loved you and made a place for you. You are loved.

You are forgiven. Your past is not your future. Your mistakes are not your identity. You are offered life. And you are gathered together. The church is not a gathering of perfect people. Jesus didn’t come to save the righteous but the unrighteous.
God meets us where we are, but God does not leave us there.

May we have mercy on those around us as God has mercy on us all.

Let us pray,

Heavenly Father, you gather us together out of love for us. Your triune life overflows so that we might have life. Help us to worship with full hearts and see worship not just as a date on a calendar but a date with you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection

series: Easter

themes: bodily-resurrection scandal-of-particularity resurrection death-and-resurrection resurrection-changes-everything discipleship victory-over-death

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 16:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15:32; Matthew 5:3-5; John 20:11-18
**Series:** Easter

> An Easter sermon on Mark 16:1-8 framed by Paul Simon's '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,' arguing that we 'leave our lover'—the God who created and died for us—through twelve ways of avoiding resurrection: six ways of saying 'no' (myth, swoon theory, bias, empiricism, anti-supernaturalism, mere metaphor) and six ways of saying 'yes' while still dodging its claim. Drawing on Ratzinger, McCabe, Updike, and Chrysostom, Pruitt insists the resurrection is not metaphor but the bodily action of God, the scandal of particularity that changes everything, calling hearers to confront the risen Christ and start on the road of discipleship into the kingdom of the Beatitudes.

**Illustrations:** fifty-ways-to-leave-your-lover, resurrection-as-myth-like-hercules, burgess-kingdom-of-the-wicked-swoon, hume-no-supernatural, ratzinger-faith-stands-or-falls, mccabe-easter-meaning-of-cross, updike-seven-stanzas-at-easter, chrysostom-christ-is-risen, instagram-worthy-meals

---

# Easter Sunday
## 12 ways to avoid resurrection

 ”When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Mark 16:1-8 NRSV

Every year, I’m getting older. But I like to stay relevant with my cultural allusions. So I’ve got a great one today. It comes from the geologically very recent year of 1975.

>The problem is all inside your head She said to me
The answer is easy if you Take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle To be free
There must be fifty ways
To leave your lover…
You Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
>
That’s right, Paul Simon’s, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, a song Mr. Simon never expected to be preached on Easter Sunday. The song is cheeky but the point should be serious today. This is what we do when we avoid Resurrection. We leave our lover. Not our lover as a fling with whom we've grown tired, but the lover who seeks us when we are lost, who comforts us when we are broken, who created us for life and love. We leave the one who loves us and gave everything for us when we avoid resurrection.

Today, I want us to think about 12 ways of leaving our lover. 12 ways of avoiding resurrection. These ways aren’t exhaustive but specific for today.

Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Here are six ways of answering no.

1. No, just a myth like Hercules (Joseph Campbell and Hans Urs von Balthasar)
2. No, because he didn't really die (Anthony Burgess Novel Kingdom of the wicked)
3. No, the only evidence is from Christians and they are biased, confirmation bias (attestations)
4. No, can't be empirically proven (empiricism history)
5. No, nothing supernatural exists so it couldn't have happened (David Hume)
6. No, not literally, but he did metaphorically rise in the hearts of believers (a resurrection in our hearts cannot defeat death or wipe the tears from our eyes)

Now, there six ways to answer yes to the question of resurrection and yet to still avoid it.

1. Yes, but I learned about it as a kid and never really thought about it. it happened a long time ago so it can't effect me now
2. Yes, but the world is still a nasty place so it must not have mattered
3. Yes, but it only matters on Easter
4. Yes, but Jesus isn’t the only way to get to God so resurrection is not that big of a deal
5. Yes, but just to save me and people like me, not for all people. We change.
6. Yes, but Jesus' resurrection doesn't effect my pain

These are ways of avoiding resurrection. These are ways of leaving our lover.

Resurrection is not just a metaphor or myth but the action of the God of all Creation to reveal that life conquers death. To claim that love conquers evil and that everything is different now.

The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth...that Christ is risen from the dead. If this were taken away, it would still be possible to piece together from the Christian tradition a series of interesting ideas about God and men...but the Christian faith itself would be dead. Jesus would be a failed religious leader who...remains great and can cause us to reflect. But he would then remain purely human, and his authority would extend only so far as his message is of interest to us...Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. (241-42)

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. But if there was, everything changes. The resurrection is either a nice idea to share between instagram worthy meals on a Sunday, or all of cosmic reality being overturned.

## The Disciples had moved on
On that first Sunday, the disciples thought it was over. They had moved on with their lives, but not everyone did.

Mary Magdeline came to the tomb early on the first day. She was expecting nothing more than to honor the man who had shown her mercy. She had not forgotten what was lost on Good Friday. She cried and continued to cry once she encountered the risen Christ. He had died on the cross and then he was there before her.

"Easter is not a cancellation of the cross. It does not...celebrate anything different from the cross. It is the meaning of the cross...Because this man Jesus carried his obedience and love to the point of accepting destruction (not just the torture of the cross, but death, and ending, a total failure), because of this, he has been raised up beyond death to love which is the life of God. The resurrection of Jesus was the creation of the new bodily world, the new way of being human, the new way of being bodily. The risen Christ did not enter paradise. He is paradise...it is because we belong to this bodily world of the risen Christ] that we conquer death, that we are able to live not for ourselves but by love, the love that Christ brings to us from God.”[^1]

Easter is the miracle that in the absolute depths of pain, we are not lost. In the depths of grief, we are not forgotten. In the depths of fear, we are not alone. God has done all so that we can have abundant life. God has given all for you, for us. God has given a way to follow, a means to see God and live joyfully in this broken world despite its brokenness. We do this through prayer and praise, service and study. God offers us new life together, not as metaphor or parable or idea. Christianity is not just a universal morality. Jesus was a particular man at a particular time. It can seem scandalous. It is easier to speak of generalities than particularities.

Easter is not a salve on your conscience. Easter is about a world made new. Resurrection is not about a philosophy or worldview but the particular action of God to become flesh, a particular kind of flesh, Jewish flesh, in a particular time and place. To serve humbly, to love, and to be killed for it. Then to rise again, defeating sin and death and claiming all for love.

We need not avoid the scandal of particularity. Jesus didn't rise spiritually but bodily, totally. We need not avoid scandal of resurrection, of the resurrected flesh of Jesus Christ.

As John Updike writes,

> Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall...

>Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

In order to not avoid resurrection we must confront it, we must truly encounter the risen Christ. We cannot look away. We cannot dismiss it as something old or irrelevant to our lives. If it is true, if Jesus rose from the dead, everything is different. The resurrection is the scandal that hope is not just a nice idea but a person, that love is not a sweet thought but a person willing to die for us, to take from us our sin and self-destruction, and to give us friendship and love and joy and peace.

We avoid resurrection when we love ourselves and nothing more. When we love those who love us back and no one else. We avoid resurrection when we avoid the cross. We avoid resurrection when faith is about maintaining the old ways. Resurrection brings about something new.

This new life is offered for you this day. The angels said to the women, why do you look for the living among the dead? Life is offered. Grace is offered. You don’t have to look for the living among the dead anymore. Christ meets you here. You don’t have to be your old self. You can start on the road to life we call discipleship.

To be a disciple is to be confronted by the reality of the cross, to be confronted by the reality of resurrection and to realize that everything has changed. We must change also. We must be a people who live into this new kingdom where the poor are blessed where those who mourn are comforted, where the lost are found, where no matter my sin or past, there is room, there is comfort, there is love. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. This is the kingdom of heaven here for us, offered for us because of resurrection. Death is not the end point so life can be more than just avoiding death. Life can be about sacrifice and gift because of resurrection.

Or as John Chrysostom said 1600 years ago,
>Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, may we feel the warm embrace of your love on this sacred day. May the glory of Jesus’s resurrection remind us that with You, nothing is impossible or without hope. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[^1]: Herbert McCabe, 90-91.


title: 2nd Sunday in Lent: Taking Up the Cross and Costly Grace

series: Lent

themes: take-up-your-cross cheap-grace us-vs-them self-denial peters-confession

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 8:31-38; Matthew 16:13-18; Psalm 27:1
**Series:** Lent

> A 2nd-Sunday-of-Lent sermon on Mark 8:31-38. Opening with the preacher's biased Astros fandom and the sign-stealing scandal, it shows how we instinctively divide people into good and bad buckets and always place ourselves among the 'us.' Peter rebukes Jesus and is called 'Satan' (deceiver) for setting his mind on human things; our decisions have consequences. Drawing on Vonnegut's Mother Night and Bonhoeffer's cheap-vs-costly grace, the sermon argues that losing one's soul is a consequence, not a trade, and that cheap grace imagines Jesus dying only for the already-righteous while costly grace has him dying for all, including us. Taking up the cross becomes light only when we lay down envy, ambition, and the need to always be right; in costly grace we find true freedom (Psalm 27:1).

**Illustrations:** astros-cheating-scandal, astros-radio-childhood, vonnegut-mother-night, bonhoeffer-cheap-grace

---

# Feb 25, 2024
## 2nd Sunday in Lent

”Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”“
Mark 8:31-38 NRSV

Pitchers and catchers reported on Ash Wednesday for the 2024 Major League baseball season. I don't think they were attempting to follow the calendar of the Christian year, but it turned out that way. Spring training is here and the new season is coming soon and hope springs eternal every spring for baseball fans.
I grew up as a baseball fan. My father was a Houston Astros fan. I grew up listening to the Astros more than watching them. Listening to Milo Hamilton and Larry Dierker on every car ride I had as a child.
Now, two years ago, the Astros won the World Series, and that was really exciting. I was very excited. A few years before that they also won. They've won it twice at this point.

Now, when I was growing up, this seemed like the furthest thing in the world from a possibility. We had a solid team, but kept on running into the buzz saw that was the Braves. And then after the Braves declined, it was Albert Pujols and the Cardinals. Then the owner sold the team and the team bottomed out and was built up from scratch.

Now, if you are not an Astros fan, the first word that comes to your mind when someone mentions the Astros is probably cheater. And when the scandal of Astros sign-stealing came out a few weeks after they lost the World Series to the Nationals, (a game that I attended and had to slowly drive home from. not a fun night) my first reaction was to defend the team that I support. I'm biased in this. When I saw the reports of the trashcan lids and everything, I was like, “where is this scandal? Like why do people have signs that are so easy to interpret? I mean, they aren't taking drugs. Nobody is snorting cocaine, unlike one team that that beat the Astros in the National League Championship series in 1986. I'm not gonna name names, but if you know you know.

So when someone would attack the Astros or even mock them, I would defend them. But among fellow of fans, I would often be very critical of what was going on within the organization. Well, we've got a major issue with late in the count batting, especially late in the order, and some curious decisions on stealing bases and other things like that. I don’t understand the contract decisions they make and the desire to not keep stars or always assume you will grow up new ones.

Now, just to be clear, I am a total sports hypocrite. If the Yankees or the Red Sox get caught cheating, they are scoundrels to the core. No excuses accepted. Even if they did the same thing the Astros did. It would be cheating for them but not for us. Notice the us, as if I am on the team. Dividing sports teams into good or bad is one thing. Dividing people is quite another.

If someone came up to you and said, you're a bad person, I think most of us would in an instinctive way, react by saying, no, I'm not. And trying to list off things we do that makes us not a bad person.

Like sports teams, we often see this quality of being a good person or a bad person as descriptive of ourselves or others, instead of being the consequence of our actions. We think we're in one bucket or the other. Now, to ourselves, sometimes we can be critical, even hyper-critical.
But if someone is going to start accusing us randomly of almost anything, we're gonna stand up for ourselves.

In the reading from the Gospel of Mark today, Jesus gives a summary of what is going to happen to him on Good Friday. And Peter is not having it. He feels like his friend is attacking himself and he needs to stand up for his friend. Jesus rebukes him. Get behind me Satan.
Satan is the name for a deceiver, the one who deceives, get behind me, deceiver. The Gospel makes know distinction between the Satan between the description of Peter as Satan and the Prince of Darkness.

This Peter on whom Jesus will build his church, Jesus calls him Satan. In the gospel of Matthew, this happens right next to each other. In Matthew 18, Jesus asks, who do you say think that I am?
And Peter eventually says, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. And then Jesus responds, well done, Simon. From now on, you shall be called Peter. And on this rock I'll build my church.
And then he goes on to describe what is going to happen to him. And Peter boldly says, no, no, Jesus is not happening to you. And Jesus says, get behind me Satan.

Our decisions have consequences.

After calling Peter Satan, Jesus then offers this lesson,
>if anyone is to become my follower, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it. And those who lose their life, for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it for what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life.

Our decisions have consequences.

The Kurt Vonnegut novel, Mother Night, is about an American in Germany who finds himself as an asset of the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, and he's working undercover for the Nazi communication service as a radio host. basically, a n Nazi shock jock to be sent across to England and America, and yet he uses his transmissions to get information about Nazi troop movements over to the OSS that will help the allies.
Most of the story, though, takes place after the war in the situation where the main character’s handler, the only person who knows his true identity, has died. There is no record of his existence. No one sees him as a war hero. The only people who see him with any kind of kindness are former Nazis. He is stuck living the lie because the truth is lost to history. The book has this great line: be careful of who you pretend to be, because in the end, you are who you pretend to be.

What does it gain you, If you get the whole world, but lose your life or lose your soul? What does it gain you? What if you didn't want lose your soul, but you lose it anyway? Nobody intends to lose their soul, the essence of who they are, their life. It's not a trade that happens. We have these Faustian bargains in literature, but it's not a trade that happens. It's a consequence of actions. As a result, the consequences are hard to see ahead of time.

For Jesus, it starts with this willingness or unwillingness to pick up your cross.
If you're unwilling to pick up your cross, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you're only satisfied with cheap grace. Bonhoeffer describes cheap grace in the following way.

>Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?...

>Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Bonhoeffer contrasts cheap grace with costly grace.
>Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

>Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

>Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.

The point of my talking about the Astros was not that they're good or that they're bad, but that I see them as good and other people see them as bad, and neither of us want to change our minds. We don't want do the work of looking into whether they're good or bad.
I root for them. Others root against them.
There's a base level of irrationality in all sports fandom, but I think it maps onto our morality a lot more than is comfortable or right. We have people in our life whom we think are as good. And people whom we don't. There are people in this world whom we see as righteous, and there are people whom we do not see as righteous.
Cheep grace has Jesus dying only for the already righteous, costly grace has Jesus dying for all, including us. Whenever we divide the world into us and them, we invariably put ourselves into us.
But again and again throughout the gospels, Jesus is trying to break us the habit of division by reminding us in hard language that we are the ones in need of grace and mercy, and God is not finished with us yet.
Taking up the cross is only a heavy burden when we refuse to let go of the not loves in our life and in the world. If we're desperately trying to hold onto envy and jealousy and ambition at the same time as picking up the cross of Jesus, we are going to be crushed by that weight.
If we're desperately trying to hold on to always being correct, having the right answers, knowing what to do, being on the right team, never making a mistake, as well as grasping for the cross of Jesus, we are going to be crushed.
Instead, what Jesus is telling us to do when we pick up our crosses is to lay down everything else: we don't need those things. And in that way, the cross is light because the cross is freedom and grace and purpose and love and hope.

This is the freedom the psalmist describes in psalm 27:

>The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?“
Psalms 27:1 NRSV

May you see that in the costly grace of Jesus Christ, you find true freedom.
You may lose the world, but you'll gain your soul. The world wanted to crush you anyway.
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, thank you for calling us to something greater. Help us to not cling to dearly to the things that pass away so that we may be carried by your love into paradise. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.