title: Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus

themes: denominationalism christian-unity letting-go-of-control self-examination welcoming-children repentance methodist-history

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 9:38-50; James 5:13-20
**Series:** After Pentecost

> Preached on September 29, 2024, this sermon pairs Mark 9:38-50 with James 5:13-20 to address denominationalism. Wilson explains the meaning of 'denomination' and 'ecclesia,' surveys the English-Reformation roots and Oxford origins of Methodism (including the egalitarian Methodist physicians who rivaled Galen), and argues the differences between churches are real but secondary. The Markan text is 'the most ecumenical scripture' because Jesus relinquishes control: whoever offers a cup of cold water is rewarded, and the church's divisions today are really about property and control masked as theology. Yet Jesus raises the stakes by turning the question inward, away from policing others toward one's own conduct: do not scandalize a child (the millstone), cut off what causes you to stumble, and do not become flavorless salt. The sermon closes in the gospel of grace and incarnation, calling not for the perfect denomination but for repentance and a salted, lived-out faith.

**Illustrations:** neighboring-churches-on-block, mlb-vs-nfl-sports-orgs, henry-viii-church-of-england, wesley-brothers-oxford-origins, methodist-physicians-vs-galen, ms-brenda-confirmation-class, flavorless-chili-powder, newborn-baby-bundle-of-needs

---

# September 29

## James 5:13-20
## Mark 9:38-50
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth yielded its harvest.

My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
 - James 5:13-20

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
“If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
- Mark 9:38-50

There are a lot of denominations today in the world. More are being made every year. Denomination just means something that is named. Nomine is the Latin for a name. It refers to churches of different names. Denominationalism seems absurd, right? Like even this block, we have a Baptist church next to us and then, a block later, there is a Church of Christ. And then if you go a little further up, Duval past the Buddhist temple, there is an Imani community church. Four different churches with different missions histories, theologies.

The English word for church comes from the Greek word Ecclesia, which means assembly. It's an assembly of people. There were ecclesias before the church. The Senate in Rome was an Ecclesia of sorts. It was an assembly. People assembled together. The early Christians used the term to designate the different gatherings of Christians in different towns

So there are lots of different denominations. And one of the questions I often get when people come and visit is: what is a Methodist? What's the difference between Methodists and Lutherans? Maybe you grew up Catholic or Presbyterian or Episcopalian or any one of these different denominations, these different named religious organizations, and you don’t know what is different about them. It is an understandable question.

Assuredly, there are differences. We can make a long list of what are the distinctive things between them.

On one level, the main difference is organizationally. They are organized in a different fashion. Like the difference between Major League baseball and the NFL? On one level you could say, they're totally different. They're playing different sports. On another level, they're both sports organizations. In some ways they collaborate. In some ways they are rivals; in other ways they are allies.

In October, I'm going to talk about some of the unique aspects of Methodist meditation in a spiritual formation class after worship, but I want to just share a little bit of that here so we don’t come away thinking there are no differences.

Methodists come out of the Church of England tradition. Henry VIII wants to divorce his wife, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer want to reform the church, and thus a new church is made based in England upon the divine authority of the king of England.

There are a lot of changes in England over the next 150 years, including a civil war, a regicide, a Calvinist protectorate, the return of the king, a nearly bloodless coup where the the new king’s brother is kicked out in favor of his sister, and bunch of Germans named George eventually taking the thrown, but out of that tradition comes Methodism.

The specific beginning of Methodism was in the 1720s at Oxford. As Ms. Brenda teaches in confirmation class, Methodists started as a group of teenagers who were tired of the hypocrisy around them, that is, people claiming to be Christians, but not acting as such, not living out their faith. And so they looked to an older brother who had already graduated Oxford to help them. The group of teenagers was made up of Charles Wesley and some of his friends, and the older brother was John Wesley. And that's how Methodists began.
They were coming to grips with this question: what if we take these things about Jesus as true and we live our lives as if these are true? Methodist was an insult. It wasn't an earnest like branding exercise. They weren't wordsmithing until they came to the right name.

The snobby boys at Oxford called people Methodists in order to compare them to this ancient group of doctors who were rivals of Galen. Galen was the ancient doctor whose theories held sway even up until the 18th century. Galen thought doctors should be of a certain quality of family that it mattered where they came from. But the Methodists had a different view of medicine. Methodists thought that anybody could be a doctor and they had a method to teach them medicine,
It didn't matter if you were the child of slaves or even a slave yourself, you could be a doctor. It didn't matter if you were Roman or Scythian or Gaul, you could be a doctor.
And it was that sort of solidarity that sparked the Methodist movement. They were called Methodists at Oxford because all these rich people were like, wait, you guys think you can be holy? You all aren’t rich, how could you be special. The Wesleys and their friends thought, “The Holy Spirit could do amazing things. Even I could be holy. Let us live lives set apart for God now, not based on what are bullies say, but based on what God says to us. Let’s spend our weekends in the jails and our mornings feeding the hungry. Let us pray and talk and live as if these things are true.”

## Mark
In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples come up to Jesus and say, people are casting out spirits in his name, but they're not his followers. I think this passage points directly to the challenge of denominations today.
It is the most ecumenical scripture because Jesus lets go of control. Jesus is not seeking control and he is not asking the disciples to have control. Instead of being frustrated or saying, oh, they need to pay their licensing fee. Oh, they need to do this. Oh, they need to do that.

Jesus says, “Great, if they're doing the things.” And the example Jesus gives is perfect. He's not saying that they're only doing spiritual actions. He gives the example of giving a cup of cold water to a little one in my name. If someone does that, they have received their reward. That's the example. Jesus offers
A cup of cold water in my name. We should find common ground like that in what we're doing.

We're not trying to be in control because cynically, the divisions of the church today are so much about control, so much about property. Who owns the buildings? Theology is often used as a scapegoat for control.

But Jesus goes one step further. This isn't just a kumbaya moment in Mark where it doesn't matter what you do. I
Jesus stops the disciples from trying to seek control, this is true, but then he says, There are stakes involved in this thing of faith. The issue is not what they are doing in my name. It is what you are doing.
And that is why one of the least Christian things you could possibly be is be a busy body and be concerned with the behavior of others. At least if you're reading the gospels. Jesus is concerned with your behavior right now. You Y O U? You. How are you living? How are you acting?

If any of you trip up a child in their faith, in their life and they fall, it would be better if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. You can trip 'em up in a lot of ways, if you act like a hypocrite, if you don't care for them, if you ignore them, if you dismiss them, it would be better for you that a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. A millstone weighs over a ton. If a millstone is on your neck and you're in the sea, you are drowning. You are dead. You are dead from drowning. And Jesus says that this is the better result than if you trip up a child. The consequences and stakes of tripping up a child, of scandalizing a child is monumental.
And then he goes into this detail. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. If your foot causes you to stumble, pluck it out. There are stakes and involved in following Jesus.

And he finally ends with this description of seasoning salt which has lost its saltiness. What use is it? If you claim to be my follower and you're not?
It's like salt that has no flavor, that has been completely dried out.
I think today Jesus would use the metaphor of chili pepper. chili powder if chili powder has lost its flavor so that it's no longer spicy. And we all have been in those situations where we've had a jar of chili powder in our kitchen for five years
And you sniff it and there's nothing, nobody sneezes. There's no spice. The capsicum is gone. Sometimes the recipe says chili powder. This is chili powder. You put it in, it adds nothing.

The stakes are high. God throws out useless, flavorless powder that trips up children.

My brothers and sisters, this point is that the issue with denominations is not what are the differences between them, but how are you following Jesus? How are you receiving the call of Jesus? How are you realizing that your life has been redeemed by God?

So live different now. It's not about maximizing different organizations that follow in Jesus' name or criticizing or tearing down. Are you offering a cup of cold water? Great. Are you tripping up a child? You better stop. It's not about what they do, it's about what you do.
But thanks be to God. There is grace this day. That is not the end of the story. Even if you have been tripping up children all your life, hopefully not, but if you have, there is grace and mercy offered by God. But you need to repent.
You need to repent of that, not seek the perfect organization, the perfect denomination, but repent and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That God saw us in this broken state. A broken state evident in how the followers of Jesus have been disagreeing about how to follow him for two thousand years. A broken world where so many Christians have claimed Jesus with their lips and tripped up children with their lives. Nevertheless, God who created everything, saw us and did not leave us to have, but sent his son, who emptied himself of his divinity to take on our humanity being born as a child, being born in the most vulnerable position possible.
There's nothing needier in this world than an infant. They're all, it's the bundle of needs. There's nothing less productive than a newborn baby. They never get work done on time. They never do any chores. Newborn babies are horrible workers, horrible soldiers, horrible football players. They can't sew. That is how God came into this world, that humbly, so that even if you have been in a state of despair, you may find hope in God. You may find hope in Christ because the despair did not end.
The moment Jesus was born. He bore our despair. He took it upon himself. He took upon the hatred of the world. He loved and they killed him for it. But that did not end his story, nor does that end our story. For three days later, he rose again opening the gates of heaven to all who seek him. This is offered for you this day, so don't seek out a millstone.
Don't trip up a child. Don't block the cold water from those in need. Don't let your hand or your eye cause you to stumble, repent and believe the good news of Jesus Christ. You are loved, you are forgiven. God has offered his life for you. Take it, live it, and then give it. Give that life to others. Don't let the saltiness lose its salt.
That's what Jesus is talking about too. You need to live it out.
That is how you keep the flavor. Use it, live it out, and God will be with you throughout.

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


site: sermons

title: Whose Name?

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: After Pentecost

themes: spiritual-deception almost-christian idolatry cost-of-discipleship attentiveness-to-jesus second-coming faithfulness-amid-trials

text:
**Scripture:** Ruth 4:14-17; Mark 13:1-8; James 1:27; 1 John 2:3-6; Matthew 25:35-36; Exodus 32:1-4
**Series:** After Pentecost

> Preaching on Jesus's warning in Mark 13 that 'many will come in my name' and lead people astray, Wilson asks how we distinguish true Christianity from idolatry without falling into the no-true-Scotsman fallacy. He turns to James, 1 John, and Matthew 25 for substantive marks of faith, warns that following Jesus means trials rather than a trouble-free life (illustrated by frank talk of campus security and backpacking calm), and names idolatry, via Calvin and the golden calf, as getting what we want instead of what we need. Citing Bonhoeffer, he calls hearers to abandon old attachments and take up the cross, and closes with Ruth clinging to Naomi as the image of clinging to Jesus, found in the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and imprisoned.

**Illustrations:** atheist-conversation, no-true-scotsman, covenant-security-plan, backpacking-dont-panic, calvin-idol-factory, golden-calf-focus-groups, bonhoeffer-discipleship-cross, ruth-the-foreigner

---

# November 17
## Whose Name?
### Ruth 4:14-17
### Mark 13:1-8

Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom and became his nurse. The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David. - Ruth 4:14-17

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. - Mark 13:1-8

I had a conversation with someone recently there was a surprise that was unexpected. It was the first time this person had ever talked to a pastor. He was in his forties and he was pretty aggressive towards me. He was a strident atheist. He said that the only Christians he knew were drug addicts or moochers asking him for money. He thought it was all fairy tales. He was a grown up and he didn't need to believe in the Tooth fairy or Jesus Christ. There were other factors going on in this conversation. I didn't spend the conversation trying to dissuage him of his opinion. I tried to love on him. I tried to listen. I tried to offer the possibility of relationship and further conversation.

Jesus says many will come in my name. Beware. They will lead many astray. Just because someone uses the name of Jesus, doesn't mean that they're good. Just because someone claims to be a Christian, doesn't mean they are. There's power in the name of Jesus. But, like anything good, there's opportunity for abuse. We need to be humble and honest about this if we're going to live by faith in 2024. There are many people whose only experience of Christians is negative They are not lying or wrong to have those experiences There have been many who have been led astray.

Even still, there's this temptation for the no true Scotsman fallacy. This is a logical fallacy. I'll just do it in a Scottish accent because it's kind of fun to do it, sooooo.

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

The no true Scotsman fallacy posits that there is a a version of your argument or your point that you can endlessly qualify so instead of defending your argument, you're challenging the person you're talking to.

This can happen with Christians. No Christian wakes up after 9 AM. My uncle Hamish wakes up after 9 AM. Well no true Christian wakes up after 9am.

What is the thing that we think true Christians do that others don't? The Bible gives us a few different answers. James makes this distinction:

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
James 1:27 NRSV

John makes a different distinction in his first letter:

“Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. Whoever says, “I have come to know him,” but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk just as he walked.”
1 John 2:3-6 NRSV

The challenge is, how do we distinguish true Christianity from idolatry, worshipping the false god, from the beliefs of those who have been led astray, as well as not fall into this trap of the no true Scotsman fallacy, by just defending the idea of being a Christian again and again and again without actually positing a substantial account of what that means.

This is not only an apologetic question, that is, it is not only about defending the faith. Jesus’s focus on being led astray concerns people who have already decided to follow Jesus but who are deceived and tempted to go in a different direction.

The book of Ruth offers us a seemingly benign example that is deeply connected to what Jesus says. Orpah and Ruth both marry sons of Naomi. Both of their husbands die. They are faced with a challenge. Naomi doesn’t understand who she is, and in this way she differs from Jesus, but Naomi still offers the path to God. Orpah leaves it. Ruth clings to Naomi. Ruth clings to her and does not let her go.

Jesus knows who he is. Jesus goes to the disciples and says, follow me. He leads them, but not in a direct path. He says, “Many will come in my name.” He doesn't say who it is who's coming. He could have. He doesn't give specific warnings. He says many will come in my name and they will lead people astray. There are going to be wars and strife.

There are going to be challenges. There are going to be trials. And that is not the end There are going to be challenges answering the call to follow me. Responding to Jesus is not accepting a life without challenges. Were it only so.

Sometimes we're blessed with seasons without challenges and we should give thanks to God for that, but that is not what we sign up for. The God of all creation has been most fully revealed in the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and has offered you life in the midst of this brokenness of the world. There is healing. There is new life. There is eternal life. There is resurrection. There is power. There is purpose. But there will still be challenges. There will still be trials. There may be challenges here during worship. It's not especially likely, but it's possible. It's much more likely to be hurt in a car accident on the way to church or be struck by lightning, but that doesn't mean we need to ignore it. The reality is that we have a large campus at Covenant. We try to keep it as secure as secure as possible. One aspect of that is trying to prevent people who have ill intent from entering the church.

We're also aware that that black swan event, that unpredictable thing can happen. As I tell my boys when we go backpacking, the first rule of any challenging situation is: don't panic. There's no moment where panicking resolves a situation or makes it better. If God forbid, something does happen, whoever is on the stage will be alerted and will calmly communicate for you all to move to this far side of the sanctuary near this exit that is always locked and is more likely to be safe and secure. It's not with comfort that I talk about this, but it's the reality of the brokenness of this world that it needs to be named. We’re not blindly pretending that it can't happen to us. It is unlikely and we shouldn’t be afraid, but we can be prepared.

Jesus said the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. Even if we do all the things God puts in front of us. Even if we do it all correctly, there is still injustice that enters our life because that is the state of this world before Jesus has finished with us all and the new creation has been brought forth. Christ is making all things new, but it is not done yet, and it is not a steady state growth. Just like history world history doesn't move in a steady upward trajectory. It is tempting to think that it does and sometimes history is taught in such a way that all of human existence has been progressively leading up to 2024.

Somethings are better and some are not.

The same goes for the salvation of the world. There's spurts and declines. There's revivals and great awakenings and separations from the church.

As well, in every season, there are people who are lead astray. So how do you know that I'm not leading you a string? It's a good question. Is an important question? I think this is why we have the church together. Why Christ sends the disciples out 2 x 2, why gatherings, assemblies, are the heart of the Christian faith,  where we read the Bible together, to discern together what God has for us. not to declare it by ourselves apart from everyone else. We are to serve together, to make sure that our service is to God. We worship together to make sure our worship is of God, to make sure we don't fall prey to the temptation of idolatry. John Calvin said the human heart is an idol factory. People being lead astray is about people falling prey to idols, to golden calves.

The story of the golden calf is not a simple one. It is often presented as, look at these gullible Israelites, but that’s not the case. The people were impatient. They were looking for God, and they couldn't wait until Moses got down from the mountain in order to worship God. So Aaron wanted to give them something to do. He responded to the people. It was like they had focus groups and he like listened to the focus groups and he responded. He wanted to give the people what they want. And what resulted from the focus groups was a golden calf. Now, with hindsight, it may not be the best solution, but it's an understandable one, trying to give the people what they want. That's how we get let astray. We often get led astray by getting what we want. instead of getting what we need.

We need to continue to let go of the old desires which pull us from love. The desire for glory, for personal safety over communal safety, the desire to be satisfied at the expense of those around us, the desire to be glorified and honored in ourselves. We need to abandon those attachments to the cross.

As Dietch Bonhoeffer said in his great work, Discipleship,

>The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Those are the times when we know we are not led astray, when we are on the path of Jesus.

Advent is coming soon. The Christian new year December 1. I'll have a devotional on waiting on God. Advent is about waiting for the coming of the baby Jesus, but it's also about waiting for the second coming of Jesus. As we say in the creed, when he comes to judge the living and the dead, the quick and the dead. Christ’s judgment over this world is coming, over the injustice in this world, over the people who are abusing others, they will have their due.

 Ours is not to enact justice. It's to look for God's justice and to offer life this day and this season. Ours is to abandon attachment to destruction and cling to life.

Ruth followed Naomi back to her home. Ruth was a stranger. Ruth was an alien. Ruth was a foreigner and she was welcomed. She became the grandmother of King David. She could have been spit out of society, but she became the cornerstone for the coming of Jesus Christ. She loved Naomi. She stayed with her. She stood with her. and she was blessed for it. Let us cling to Jesus, as Ruth clung to Naomi. Where he goes, may we go. And we know where he is by Matthew 25. for when I was hungry, you gave me something to eat when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink when I was naked, you clothed me, when I was sick, you visited me, when I was in prison. you cared for me.

Let us cling to Jesus in the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, and naked, the sick, the imprisoned, let us cling to Jesus, and then we will stay with him. In this season and this life even the life to come.

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

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: A New Commandment

series: Easter

themes: works-of-love new-commandment means-of-grace works-of-piety spiritual-formation grace-not-merit discipleship

text:
**Scripture:** John 13:31-35; Acts 11:1-9; Matthew 7:24-27
**Series:** Easter

> Jesus' new commandment to love one another is not a feeling but Christ-shaped action—lived out through the means of grace—given by a God who loved us first so our souls are built on rock rather than sand.

**Illustrations:** no-candles-in-the-pool, no-confetti-karaoke-rule, i-love-cake-spinach-tamales, carver-what-we-talk-about-love, conservation-of-energy, augustine-loved-first, preschool-wise-mans-house

---

# May 18, 2025
## A New Commandment
### Acts 11:1-9
### John 13:31-35

Now the apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ - Acts 11:1-9

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” - John 13:31-35

Something I'm often amused by is when you go to an establishment, a restaurant, a hotel or something, and they have very specific rules. There are general rules that seem reasonable for most places. Let’s think of a pool, for instance: don't run by the pool, no diapers in the pool, this is understandable. And then there are the unique rules: no candles in the pool.

Hmm. That is very specific. It makes you think about what situation caused the No Candles rule.

Another rule like this was at a karaoke place we used to live by when Alina and I were first married. There were only three rules: no drugs, no assault, and no confetti. One of these things is not like the other ones. At that point, before I ever had to clean up confetti, I thought, what's the big deal against confetti? But some situation must have forced the establishment to be explicit in their rules in this particular way.

You have a really bad confetti night and you're like, I'm done with confetti. Or there's a wedding and they put like 6,000 candles in the pool. The pool loses functionality for a few weeks and the owners think, you know what? We don't really don't need candles in the pool anymore.

Usually, when new rules are instituted, it is based on specific negative behaviors. A commandment is a rule. Of course there are layers of nuance that I could go into , but at its basic level, how we understand the language of rules in contemporary English is how the word commandment would be understood in Greek. and in Hebrew.

You can imagine a situation where Jesus is very frustrated with the disciples' behavior, and he’s like, you guys aren’t listening to me so I have a new rule for you.

 But that's not what he says. He says, a new rule, a new commandment, I give to you, love one another. Now, love, in English, is ambiguous enough that it can mean anything and it can mean nothing I love my wife. I love cake. I don't actually love cake, but I do love my wife. I love spinach tamales. This is true.

In English, we have hollowed out the word love. What do you mean by love? The great Raymon Carver story, What We Talk About When We Tall About Love gets to this ambiguity.

Love one another does not seem like a rule. Don’t steal. That’s a rule. No speeding. Another rule. How could you make loving a rule?

In some ways, an English love has become more about my will and desire and less about the actions I do. I'm gonna tease this out because I think this is really important. So, when I say I love something, it's not about what I do or my relationship to this thing, but my desires about it, my thoughts, my will, how I see myself in relation to it.

That's not what Jesus is saying here. That's not how Jesus understands love. Love is not the feeling in your gut. Love is what you do. What are you doing? How are you living? How are you acting? What is your posture towards this person? Love one another. Love each other. It's incoherent if we're talking about feelings and emotions. It is coherent if we're talking about actions, about the way Christ shows us to love each other.
John 13 is the same passage where he washes the disciples's feet. This is. The Maundy, the mandatum, the command of Maundy Thursday, love one another. One of the ways we love one another is washing each other's feet, caring intimately for each other. Sharing at the table, the Lord together, doing these things. Jesus isn't commanding everybody his disciples to all have mushy gushy feelings for each other. It's mostly irrelevant. The point is, what do you do about it? And I think we can see this new commandment in a similar way to no confetti in the karaoke place or no candles in the pool. Jesus is responding to the actions of the disciples. They didn't want to wash each other's feet. They didn't want to have him wash their feet.

There's an implication of a why here. Why should we do that, Jesus? I think there's a few ways to answer that why and each is valid.

One is because Jesus said so. Especially at Easter, this should be a valid point for a Christian. The words of Jesus guide us because Jesus rose from the dead to save us. So why should we not listen to what he's gonna say?

The second point is that we harm ourselves when we don't love one another. It's like confetti in a karaoke room. We’re causing harm if we don't love one another, it's like there's a million pieces of confetti that God has to pick up or another person has to pick up and it is exhausting. So let's just not use confetti. Right? Make a new rule. No confetti. We'll make a new rule. Love one another.

And ultimately, like every rule, law, and commandment; it is teleological. It has a goal. It has a purpose. There's some overarching reason for it, whether it's the laws of the state of Texas, of the United States, of the United Nations, of the Old Testament of the New Testament, each law has a focus in the future.

Jesus helps to give us that, understanding here. He says, "Little children, I'm with you, only a little longer. " Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

 People know that you follow Jesus when you love one another. And the converse is true. People will not know you follow Jesus when you don't love. People will not know where you're going when you don't love. And then you just come down to the question: is it really worth it? You know, I guess confetti is fun. You know, it's like, yay, look at all the little pieces of paper. Woo hoo! Party!  Is it worth it? In the short term, selfishness can be enjoyable. Yay, I'm the center of the world, Yay, don't have to think about anybody else. Woo hoo!

Is it worth it? No we're not just left to our own devices to be moral heroes and fight the selfishness taught to us by the world. No, we are offered grace. We were offered the Holy Spirit to form us and transform us to love one another, so that in loving each other, we're shown as the disciples of Jesus Christ.

As well, we are not the originators of love. We are not the creators of love. There is a heavenly conservation of energy going on. With that physical law, energy is neither created nor destroyed. For us, we neither create nor destroy love. Our wills can direct for good or ill. We know what we should love when we look to who loved us first. Or as Saint Augustine put it:

> We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the apostle John: We love him, because he first loved us. The source of man’s love for God can only be found in the fact that God loved him first. He has given us himself as the object of our love, and he has also given us its source. What this source is you may learn more clearly from the apostle Paul who tells us: The love of God has been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.[^1]

There is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. Not love as a feeling but love as an action, a verb, an incontrovertible activity. This is it.

God has loved us first. We see that on the cross with what Jesus did for us. We see that through his teaching, through his welcoming of sinners and healing of the sick, that he could love even us. We see that new life is possible because he rose again. What are you going to do with that love?

This is the context for the new rule Jesus gives. He knows what the question is and he supplies the answer: love one another. We know what he means by love because we know how he lived: he served, he gave away, he healed, he broke bread, he celebrated, he sacrificed. Our tradition has put those together as the means of grace. The means of grace are the way Jesus lived. They aren’t focused on what we consume with our bodies, as the heavenly voice makes clear to Peter in Acts 11: ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ They are how we love ourselves and love our neighbor.

We call these the means of grace. There are some we can do by ourselves: prayer, studying the scriptures, Fasting, Not being controlled by our body. There are some we can do with others. Worship, Communion, holy conferencing, which has gathered together as Christians and talking about what matters, How is it with your soul?
As well, there are some we can do for others: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick. These acts aren’t charity as a separate thing. They aren’t ways to feel better about ourselves, but how Jesus shows us to love.

These are usually divided between works of piety (spiritual works) and works of mercy (charitable works) but there is no true division. And the works of mercy are just for strangers. It starts right where you are. It starts with your spouse, with your children, with your siblings, with your neighbors. Are you caring for the people in your love? Are you following the new rule? It is for your own good. Jesus gave it to us to help us, not to burden us with expectations. There is also mercy. Mercy is a means of love the Jesus shows us. A means of grace that lets us love one another.

Love one another. If you don’t love, you’re dead. Your soul wastes away. Sure, the false safety of selfishness may cover you for days or weeks or years even, but the storms will come.

This was the last week of the Covenant Preschool. They are off for the summer. Brenda and I had the privilege to spend two days a week teaching chapel to the kids. One of the songs we often sang was about the parable of Jesus where he says,

>The wise man built his house upon the rock
And the rains came tumbling down

This comes from Matthew 7

>24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

If you don’t love, your house is built on sand. Your house will not survive. Your soul will not survive. Jesus knows this. That is why he gives us a new rule. The new rule is so we can built on the rock of his love and sacrifice. Love another. Do this. Give of yourself. Give of your money. Give of your time. Do not hoard yourself. Love one another.

May we receive this new commandment. May we put it into practice here and now.

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

[^1]: Saint Augustine


title: A Service for Good Friday

series: Lent

themes: passion-of-christ the-cross congregational-decline repentance anti-supersessionism

text:
**Scripture:** John 18:1-19:42
**Series:** Lent

> A Good Friday liturgy centered on the reading of John's Passion and 'The Reproaches,' in which the crucified Christ laments his faithless church, calling the gathered congregation to repentance before the cross.

**Illustrations:** the-reproaches, exodus-and-baptism, manna-bread-of-heaven, grafting-and-persecution-of-israel, least-of-these

---

# A SERVICE FOR GOOD FRIDAY

GREETING

Let us pray.
Almighty God,
your Son Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross
so that he might draw the whole world to himself.
Grant that we, who glory in this death for our salvation,
may also glory in his call to take up our cross and follow him;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"What Wondrous Love is This" UMH 292

PROCLAMATION AND RESPONSE

PROCLAMATION OF THE PASSION STORY John 18:1 –19:42

"Our Darkness"
Our darkness is never darkness in your sight.
The deepest night is clear as the daylight

MEDITATION AT THE CROSS

SILENT MEDITATION

During Silent Meditation and The Reproaches, persons may be invited to come forward informally to kneel briefly before the cross or touch it.

THE REPROACHES:
CHRIST'S LAMENT AGAINST HIS FAITHLESS CHURCH

1) O my people, O my Church,
what have I done to you, or in what have I offended you?
I led you forth from the land of Egypt
and delivered you by the waters of baptism,
but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.

Holy God,
have mercy upon us.

2) I led you through the desert forty years and fed you with manna;
I brought you through times of persecution and of renewal
and gave you my body, the bread of heaven;
but you have prepared a cross for your Savior. R

3) I made you branches of my vineyard
and gave you the water of salvation,
but when I was thirsty you gave me vinegar and gall
and pierced with a spear the side of your Savior. R

4) I went before you in a pillar of cloud,
but you have led me to the judgment hall of Pilate.
I brought you to a land of freedom and prosperity,
but you have scourged, mocked, and beaten me. R

5) I gave you a royal scepter, and bestowed the keys to the kingdom,
but you have given me a crown of thorns.
I raised you on high with great power,
but you have hanged me on the cross. R

6) My peace I gave, which the world cannot give,
and washed your feet as a servant,
but you draw the sword to strike in my name
and seek high places in my kingdom. R

7) I accepted the cup of suffering and death for your sakes,
but you scatter and deny and abandon me.
I sent the Spirit of truth to lead you,
but you close your hearts to guidance. R

8) I called you to go and bring forth fruit,
but you cast lots for my clothing.
I prayed that you all may be one,
but you continue to quarrel and divide. R

9) I grafted you into the tree of my chosen people Israel,
but you turned on them with persecution and mass murder.
I made you joint heirs with them of my covenants,
but you made them scapegoats for your own guilt. R

10) I came to you as the least of your brothers and sisters.
I was hungry but you gave me no food,
thirsty but you gave me no drink.
I was a stranger but you did not welcome me,
naked but you did not clothe me,
sick and in prison but you did not visit me. R

HYMN Were you there UMH 288 v.1-4

GOING FORTH

All depart in silence, except those beginning a prayer vigil.


title: A Sign

themes: judgment self-examination repentance bearing-fruit loving-enemies need-for-a-savior self-deception

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 13:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-5; Matthew 7:1-5
**Series:** Lent

> Lent calls us to turn our impaired, judgmental gaze away from others and inward to ask 'where is the fruit?' — discovering we cannot bear fruit or save ourselves, but only Jesus can, and our God seeks rather than destroys us.

**Illustrations:** anesthesia-aesthesis-etymology, speck-and-log, judges-scoring-competitions, glengarry-glen-ross, jesus-galilean-accent, judging-others-judgments, lost-sheep-prodigal-return

---

# March 23
## A Sign

“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.”
1 Corinthians 10:1-5 NRSV

“At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ””
Luke 13:1-9 NRSV

I'm always fascinated with words and the history of words: the study of etymology, where a word comes from. Sometimes there are words that are so common that we don't think about where they come from. For me, one of these is anesthesiology. There is also anesthesia and anesthesiologists, the doctors who come in and knock you out to give you the gas or the epidural.

I remember when I was in seminary and I came to the realization that anesthesia and aesthetics have the exact same root. It's the same word. It comes from the same Greek word aesthesis, one of the ways of which to translate is judgment. Aesthetics is the study of judgment. Anesthesia or anesthesiology is the study of a lack of judgment; how to make someone not judge: the study of not judging. That's why anesthesia keeps you from judging the pain in your body, whether that pain comes from childbirth or a broken arm or a root canal: anesthesia uses methods to impair your judgment for a medical purpose, for reasons that your judgment needs to be impaired.

There are non-medical ways of impairing our judgment, as well; limiting our judgment, making it more difficult for us to see and understand ourselves and our world around us. In fact, a lot of the world today are tools of impairing our judgment. I'm sure we could all list things in our lives that cause this, that cause our judgment to be impaired. One thing I think we often miss is that judging others is a way of impairing our own judgment. It takes our attention away from ourselves.

Jesus said a lot of really smart and wise things. One of my favorite things he ever said was: do not look for the speck in your neighbor’s eye, and miss the log in your own. When we fixate on the errors of our neighbors, we can be blinded to our own. Judgment itself has a difficult meaning in English. There's a judge who sits in a court who makes a ruling of judgment.  There are judges in MMA or boxing matches, who score the fights. Or at the Olympics who score the gymnastics routine. There's the judgment of a piece of art. There's also judgmentalism, which is not a good thing.

If someone says, “Oh, you're being so judgmental. I love it!” This is not a positive description of a person. Judgmentalism is judging for the sake of judging.

The more common Greek word for judgment is krine. This is the judgement that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 7 when he says, judge not, lest ye be judged. This is the critical form of judgement but it is not the only one.

As humans, at a base level, we are judging all the time. We judge the world around us.  We're judging the pain levels of our bodies. Are we in pain or not? And this is why anesthesia gets us back to Luke chapter 13.

Luke 13 starts with this passage about other people. Folks bring up to Jesus some scandalous things that have been going on. Pontius Pilate has done something dramatic: he killed 18 Galileans while they were preparing the Passover sacrifice. Any other sacrifice only takes place at the temple, so it has to be Passover. Jesus is also a Galilean to the folks near Jerusalem. Nazareth is near Galilee and the first miracles took place around the Sea of Galilee. Jesus most likely spoke with a Galilean accent, which may be hard for some of us to imagine. I think most of us imagine Jesus talking to us with a voice similar to our own. To many of the people in his time, Jesus was a healer or miracle worker from Galilee and hearing what terrible things that Pilate, the agent of Caesar, was doing to Jesus’s people should have riled him up with righteous anger.

“Jesus, did you hear about the Galileans whose blood got mixed with their sacrifices?”

They were killed while sacrificing the lamb, so the bloods were mixed. People are murdered and the sacrifice is defamed. The people are making a judgment about Caesar, about Jesus, about justice, but their judgment is impaired.

Jesus is already on his way to Jerusalem. They don’t know what is going on.

They are angry at Pilate and they want Jesus to have the same anger. They see Jesus as a revolutionary of sorts who is about to take on the wicked Romans and who should be as outraged as they are about the actions of Rome. Instead, Jesus is outraged by anyone’s death. He compares the people killed by the Romans to those who died by an accident in Jerusalem when the tower fell.

They want Jesus to affirm their judgment their aesthetic choice. They want Jesus to be with them on this. And he's like, “Nah, what they are doing is not good but you need to look at yourself.”

Then he tells a parable about a fig tree.

>“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ””

The focus is really about fruitfulness and judging the fruitfulness of a thing. Again we come back to judgment and a lack of judgment. How does Jesus judge and how should we judge? How much fruitlessness do we tolerate before we chop down a tree that is sucking up all of the water in our yard?

What Jesus points out here and elsewhere, is that judgment is always at least a two-way street. More often, though, it is a three or four-way street. Judgment is not just between me and you but between me and you and others looking on. Judgment does not take place in a vacuum. We judge the judgments of others.
“I can’t believe they thought this was a good restaurant?! I can’t believe they thought this was a good movie?!”

Judging their judgments is, in fact, something easier than judging another person. And in this, like in so many other things, we are impaired. We are anesthetized. We think we know what we are doing but we are confused and mistaken.

The fig tree doesn’t seem as much like a parable as the other parables of Jesus, but Luke introduces it as such. As a parable, a figurative story, we must read it carefully and also read into it. Who are we in the parable? Are we the master, the gardener, or the fig tree?

The overarching question is: where is the fruit?

On the surface, this seems like a results oriented MBA sort of parable. What outputs are we getting? Is our market share growing or shrinking?

It could remind me of David Mamet’s great play, Glengarry Glenross, about salesmen in Chicago, which was turned into a movie in the nineties. There are three salesmen. What are they selling? We don’t really know, but the corporate guy comes in to tell them what they could win if they sell the most.

As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

Any time stakes are involved, I am more concerned about third place than first. I am more concerned about being the fruitless tree that is chopped down than the fruit-filled one heavy with produce. It can be tempted to read it in a zero-sum way to think that Jesus is going to chop me down if I don’t produce anything soon. Sure, I could win a set of steak knives, but I’ll most likely be fired.

With all the parables, though, the context is important. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He knows what he must do. He knows that we cannot save ourselves. If it were merely a question of optimizing human fruit production, he would be a different god entirely. The mission of Jesus is different.

On his way to Jerusalem, he has been told about the people killed in Galilee. The people come up to him wanting a judgment on Pilate. He undercuts their point by speaking about other folk killed in Jerusalem. He does that to take our gaze from others and the lives of others and our judgment over the lives of others, whether they be righteous or wretched.

Jesus responds with a parable that turns the gaze inward. No matter where you find yourself in the parable, the question: where is the fruit?, is applicable.

Where is the fruit?

The fruit is not salvation here. Remember, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to save us. The fruit is holiness. The fruit is the glory of God. The fruit is love. The fruit is sacrificial love. The fruit is loving our enemies. The fruit is actually loving our friends.

What Caesar does matters in that his rule impacts the lives of people, but Caesar and the rule of Caesar should not exhaust our gaze. Our judgement is clouded when we focus solely on the actions of others and when we are blind to our own actions. We focus on the speck and ignore the log.

Looking inward doesn’t save us. It shows us that we can’t save ourselves. We need Jesus to remove the log. We need Jesus to bear fruit. We need Jesus. When Pilate leaves, another Roman will return and rule and control the lives of the people. Replacing Caesar will not make life worthwhile. As Paul said in our reading from 1 Corinthians, even the Hebrews who immediately saw the glory of God in the wilderness and through the Red Sea, and yet it still wasn’t enough. The miracles weren’t enough. The sacrifice wasn’t enough. On our own, they couldn’t bear fruit and we can’t bear fruit. We need Jesus.

(Almost Christian)

Lent is a time to be willing to ask the question “where is the fruit?” And to not be afraid of the judgement. We don’t need to numb ourselves from looking inward for any judgement here is temporary.

As we say in the creed, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. Ultimate judgment is not ours to make, on others nor on ourselves.

Ours is the simple question for ourselves: where is the fruit? If we don’t find it, we shouldn’t point to the lack of fruit of other people, but start or restart doing the things that bear fruit: study the scriptures, pray when we aren’t expected to, fast, give our time, give our money, invite, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, share your faith. These actions are the fertilizer but the fruit only comes from Jesus and our good God will not chop us down. Like a shepherd whose sheep is lost, our God will seek us and find us. Like a father whose son has forsaken him, our God will celebrate our return.

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


title: Ash Wednesday

themes: repentance hidden-piety humility outward-appearance-vs-heart freedom-in-christ

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 6:1-21; Joel 2:1-2; Matthew 28:19
**Series:** Lent

> True faith is practiced in secret before God rather than performed for others, and Lent's penitence and humility free us from the lies we tell ourselves.

**Illustrations:** loudest-in-the-room, texas-town-church-membership

---

# Ash Wednesday
## March 5
## Joel 2:1-2

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
   sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
    for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—
a day of darkness and gloom,
   a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains,
   a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
   nor will be again after them
   in ages to come.

Joel 2:1-2

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” - Matthew 6

Christianity is both public and private, but often in ways that run against common perception. If you talk to non-Christians in America in 2025 and ask them what they think about Christians, the first answers are probably having to do with politicians who talk about their faith in public or who claim the mantle of Christianity in public. This is what people see. People see and hear the loudest in the room. In the Bible, Jesus never tells his students to be the loudest in the room. Jesus says, Go, therefore, and make disciples, make students, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
“To baptize someone is to lead them to the point of incredible self-abnegation that they seek to cover themselves in the blood of Jesus. This is a radical act of humility. It is literally otherworldly. You are entering a kingdom not of this world.

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has words for those who are the loudest in the room. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.

In the places where the world is calling us to be loud, Jesus tells us to be quiet Practice your faith in the quiet of your secret place. The secret place could be a space in your house. It is often also an interpreted as your soul: the interior life. Practice there. It is the place that no one else can see. There are so many ways to justify face based on the expectations of others, but those don’t have anything to do with Jesus. 70 years ago, if you moved to a town in Texas, you joined a church. Whether you were close to God or not, you joined a church. Everything was closed on Sundays. There was nothing else to do. People would look at you funny. The world today is different and the expectations are different, but the temptation of external validation is still there.

Jesus goes over these ways in Matthew 6 about how we must orient ourselves to God independent from the world. And this gets us to Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is the historic beginning of the Season of Lent. It is historically the great penitential season of the church. Penitence is the act of showing regret for our actions and seeking mercy. If you never feel like you have done anything wrong, you never have to seek forgiveness. The words of Jesus cut through the lies we tell ourselves in order to never have to say that we are sorry. The lies about our actions, but also the lies about our acts of faithfulness. The lies about prayer and giving.

The hope of Lent is that God will free us from the lies we tell ourselves as we walk with Jesus on his way to the cross. Humility is freedom. Penitence is freedom. Let go of the pretense of who you think you need to be. God has already seen you and loved you and forgiven you. You are free. Walk in freedom this season.

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


title: Ask Me Anything

themes: mercy-not-sacrifice power-as-domination good-samaritan secularization responding-to-injustice early-church-community discipleship

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 10:25-37; Amos 7:14-17; Acts 15:1-21

> The true sign of a Christian is not a symbol, structure, or denomination but active mercy toward the neighbor, calling each person to take their next faithful step toward who God created them to be.

**Illustrations:** cross-vs-fish-symbols, christians-accused-atheists, amos-plumb-line, priesthood-roughneck-rotation, rulers-abuse-gospel-for-power, jesus-teleportation, council-of-jerusalem-james, denominations-in-heaven, amos-awkward-dinner-party

---

# July 13, 2025
## Ask Me Anything
### Amos 7:14-17
### Luke 10:25-37

## Question 1
I read that a Roman emperor chose the cross as the sign of Christianity instead of the fish that was used by early Christians. This evokes the real question, how did the early Romans try to influence Christianity to meet their needs, to control the masses or promote other vices?

Okay, this is good. This is a very normal Sunday morning kind of conversation. So we think about early, early Christians. And one of the great things about our scriptures is that we have an example of what early Christians did in the book of Acts and the letters of Paul. And so we see what happened after this great event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We also see in that space, early on, people trying to use this event for their own advantage. So much of the early church is people trying to either use Christians or to send them away when they find they can't use them.
One of the earliest accusations against Christians was that they were atheists. A lot of Romans would accuse Christians of being atheists because they didn't believe in the Roman gods and they wouldn't bring. They wouldn't bring sacrifices to the Roman gods. That's what Theos was, the language in Greek for pagans. And it wasn't until about the 230s that any Christian would ever call themselves a theologian, because that word itself was so invested in pagan culture.

So to try and get to some of this question, to connect it here, we have these two symbols of Christianity, of the ichthus, of the fish and Jesus the fisherman, and the other symbol of the cross. Both of these symbols are found sporadically within the early church. There's not a universal symbol that every single church that was discovered or dug up has this kind of symbol, because there really wasn't an authority over all of the early churches. And communication wasn't that great around the ancient world.

It really was these individual churches that were started and planted by these people like Paul, like Barnabas, like Apollos, who were going around and sharing this message, this good news, that there was a carpenter in Roman Palestine who was the son of God, and he shared love and he taught love, and the Romans killed him for it. But he rose again and death did not defeat him. And death does not have to defeat you, and you can live a new life right where you are.

It was a message for not just the elites, but for Roman women and Jewish women around the region. One of the most amazing aspects of the New Testament is all the women that Paul mentions, that the book of Acts mentions who were leaders in the Christian church. The church was not simply for those already in power.

If we go back in time to the age of the prophets, Amos is one of the earliest prophets. He spoke in the time before the exile. He tried to tell Israel, you're going in the wrong direction. Over and over, throughout the book of Amos, it's Amos the prophet saying, I have a word of God to you. Bad things are gonna happen if you keep on doing this.
Earlier in chapter seven, he has this great image of the plumb line. It's an ancient architectural device. You have a weight on a string. You hang it down and you know if something is square or not.
If you build a building and you hang a plumb line off one end, and if there's a gap of a foot, you know,  you need to rebuild it in a straight way. Or if you drop the plumb line and it just hits the wall immediately, you know, you didn't build it straight. You need to rebuild it and put it upright.

This language of upright and building it straight is the language that was used in the Old Testament and especially used in the New Testament for what's translated as justification and righteousness. Diakosuné is this Greek word that means justice but also standing upright. And this is what Jesus shares and what the early church was trying to live out, what does it mean to be just?

And there were Roman emperors who were like, this is great, let's use this. We can control masses with this stuff. This abuse continued throughout history. Whether it was Constantine in the 300s or all the leaders during the Reformation who thought, okay, if we become Protestant, that we don't have to listen to the Pope, that's great. I don't know if that was God's name, but I love having power.
Throughout all of history, there's always been people who are trying to abuse the good news of Jesus Christ. Just like in the Old Testament, there were people trying to abuse the good word of Torah, of God's word for Israel. Yet throughout, there is a consistent witness of faithfulness. And I think that is for us, what we see in this parable of the Good Samaritan: faithfulness is not found in the most ostentatious places at all.

In this era, Priests and the Levites were known as the holiest people in their society. They were going down from Jerusalem and so in to Jericho. And that's such an important part of that passage. Jerusalem is built on these hills high up, elevation wise. And so when you leave, you're going downhill. And if a priest and a Levite are leaving Jerusalem, that means they're leaving their time of work in the temple and they're going back home. That work in the temple was kind of like being a roughneck. You could go like two weeks on, two weeks off. So they stayed in Jerusalem and worked at the temple. And working in the temple was this bloody business of sacrifices and all these kinds of things.

Now they are leaving. They're not even rushing to work. The priest and the Levite go and they see a man beaten on the side of the road and they pass him by. But the Samaritan doesn't follow their lead. The Samaritan doesn't look like the others. The Samaritan doesn't look like a person of importance, but he is the one who shows the ultimate sign of justice and righteousness and power: mercy.

Whether the sign is the cross, whether the sign is the fish, the ultimate sign throughout Scripture, throughout the tradition of the Church, the sign of being a Christian is mercy. The sign of following Jesus is putting it into practice. Go and do likewise. When even the first the lawyer recited the love commandments. Jesus says, go and do likewise. That, for us, is what matters; that is the heart of faith. It's not just being in the right place. It's not just having the right clothes on or having the right symbol on our car. All of that falls away. But who are you following? What are you doing for others?

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

Okay, question number two.
All right, question number two. Is organized religion how Jesus envisioned the church? How do we get to the next tier of spirituality as accommodation?
Okay, so what kind of church did Jesus envision? That is a great, great question. So church in Greek is ekklesia, which we translate to church just means assembly. It's a gathering. And over time, this gathering that was kind of like ad hoc, we see throughout the New Testament of people, you know, Jesus started talking crowds coming, and it just grew and grew.
It was not this super logistically complicated structure. Right? And Jesus doesn't even want it to be. A few times I call these, like, the teleportation narratives, that Jesus is in a place and a lot of people come to him, and then he's like, I'm out and leaves, and he just disappears. And suddenly he's on the other side of the lake.
But Jesus doesn't. He doesn't exhibit this need to hear everyone, to fix everything all the time. I think that's an important aspect of what Jesus vision of the church is. But there wasn't this organized structure. This happens over time.
We see it in the Book of Acts in a few different places as it builds in. We see it in Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem. So in Acts chapter 15, if you have your Bible, you can turn to it. It's a wonderful little passage about what does it mean to be the church? Because all the main leaders of the church have gathered together in Jerusalem and they're trying to figure out what should they do for Gentiles, how should they treat Gentiles?
And it's a really pointed question, especially for men, because the question is, do you need to become Jewish before you become a Christian? And for men, that means, do you need to be circumcised before you can be baptized? Which is, again, would be a very compelling question for many people about what do I actually have to do? And they take it very seriously. And so in Acts chapter 15, we have this question, this challenge brought together.
The elders and the apostles come together to discern what direction they should go. And kind of James is in this kind of leadership position, and he thinks the church needs to just kind of focus on Jews, that people should become Jewish. But this is an amazing thing. I think this might have been one of two Places in the history of the church where a church leader changes their mind, they discern that the Spirit is moving in a different way than their own conception, preconception of the way things should be. And he's humble enough to let it happen.
And it's this powerful moment, but we're already in this space building the structures of organized religion, of organizing around. Okay, so I'm sticking. The question is still in the back of my mind. And I think it doesn't matter. What is the church that Jesus envisions and what does it mean for us today?
And how are we. How can we get more to a place like that? Because this continues through time, this structure that is being built in the book of Acts, that is being further built in the letters of Paul and in the early church, in the early church as an underground religion again, like a church that's persecuted in more places than it is lifted up. And then it becomes the official religion of the Roman empire in the 4th century. And then it kind of spreads around the world.
And then throughout. In the early modern period, in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, it becomes even more invested in the nation. And then we come to, you know, the founding of the United States, and it's founded as explicitly as a place where there is no official state, state religion again. In some ways, religion becomes more organized once it leaves the state, and it becomes this kind of other entity that's lifting around. Because one of the issues, and this is even of running a church today, is you got to deal with ability, you got to deal with a budget, you have to deal with all of these organizational things that what do we do to cover the costs of existing in the modern world?
And this is one of those ways that I think, you know, I don't think Jesus was envisioning church council meetings or leadership board meetings, talking about, you know, the interest rate on the mortgage. That. That wasn't. But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. That just wasn't a conceptual aspect.
And usually when we talk about organized religion, it's more about, like, the strictures of it, the spiritual, the ways that sometimes spirituality can be suppressed by the organizational mentality of a lot of structures. But I do think it is important to lift up that we're organized in a way to survive at a time such as this. And of course, there are other things that we can do. If money were no object, we would have a different focus in those conversations. We would have a different idea.
If the building didn't flood or lights didn't go out those kinds of things. What does it mean to be stewards of our resources? There'd be different conversations. I think for us, it's like, how are we? It's more a question not of how the church is organized in Jesus vision, but how are we organized in our own spiritual vocation as individuals within the church, because God calls us both to come together, but also to lay out our nests with Apollo.
And the call oftentimes, all the time, the call is oftentimes easier to make to tell organizations to change than to tell our own parts, to change, than to convert. And I think for, you know, this is the same thing with the story of the Good Samaritan, the hero of the Good Samaritan. Like what the power that Jesus is trying to convey is that the lawyer who comes up to Jesus asks what he must do. Jesus said, you must do is not just what you believe. It's how you act.
It's how you give mercy. And for us today, the point is not to build the ideal ecclesial structure that is going to solve all our problems, because then we're going to be looking for that structure instead of looking to Jesus. The point is not to make the purest denomination that has the fewest problems, because then we'd be worshiping that denomination and not worshiping Jesus, but instead to see that these structures we have are really limitations. There's not going to be denominations in the life eternal. We're not going to have like, okay, this is the Methodist sweater, and here's the Episcopalian section over here.
And this kind of. It all drips away and loses relevance. It's all a sign of the brokenness already of this world. Instead, it's what are we doing with what God has offered for us? Where are we finding space to connect with the risen Lord in Jesus Christ?
I think that is always the most interesting and challenging question. It's a challenging question not just of when will we as a denomination get to a different spiritual plane, but when will I take my next step towards who God created me to be? When will you take your next step towards who God created you to be? And sometimes in order to take that step, we need to hear harsh words, like from the prophet Amos.
I bet Amos didn't get called back to a lot of parties when he gave his prophecies. It's like, oh, no, Amos is coming. I think I'm sick. I think I just can't make it tonight. It's going to be an awkward dinner party.
He's going to speak the truth about the direction our nation is going.
There are amuses too. Sometimes God speaks to us as individuals like that in the direction our life is going. We need to change direction in that as well. So my encouragement with that is that for all of us. How are we stepping forward in our faith?
How are we stepping forward to being the type of Christian that Jesus Christ envisions? The type of person filled with neighbor love so much that we can't help but stop to care for the person on the side of them.
Okay. Whoa. It's 17 minutes. Okay, I think we're good. If you have more questions, please, please send them to Brenda.
I'll try to address more than two next week, but we're going to be doing this the next three weeks. And so I hope you will join us in seeing what God will reveal through this time. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time to come to you and to discern your word. We thank you for those who have asked questions, those who still have questions, and all the ways that we seek you.
Bless us all in your space in Christ's Lord. Amen.
And now, as you're able, can you stand and join me as we say the words?


title: Ask Me Anything

themes: attentiveness-to-jesus distraction-and-busyness famine-of-the-word discipleship

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 10:38-42; Amos 8:9-12

> Choosing the 'better part' of attentively listening to Jesus over anxious busyness is the one needful thing, especially in a time threatened by a famine of hearing God's word.

---

# July 20, 2025
## Ask Me Anything
### Amos 8:9-12
### Luke 10:38-42

On that day, says the Lord God,
    I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your feasts into mourning
    and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on all loins
    and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
    and the end of it like a bitter day.
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,
    when I will send a famine on the land,
not a famine of bread or a thirst for water,
    but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea
    and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
    but they shall not find it. - Amos 8:9-12

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” - Luke 10:38-42


title: Ask Me Anything

themes: prayer lords-prayer persistence-in-prayer baptism union-with-christ forgiveness holy-spirit

scripture: Luke 11:1-13; Colossians 2:6-15

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 11:1-13; Colossians 2:6-15

> Because believers are buried and raised with Christ in baptism and forgiven through the cross, they can boldly and persistently ask the Father, who delights to give the Holy Spirit to those who pray.

---

# July 27, 2025
## Ask Me Anything
### Colossians 2:6-15
### Luke 11:1-13

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Watch out that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by the removal of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. - Colossians 2:6-15

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” So he said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, may your name be revered as holy.
May your kingdom come.
   Give us each day our daily bread.
    And forgive us our sins,
    for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” - Luke 11:1-13


title: Baptism

themes: baptism prevenient-grace infant-baptism christian-perfection sacraments baptismal-covenant

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 1:1-5; Luke 3:21-22; Genesis 3; 1 Peter 2:9; Romans 6:3-4

> Baptism is pure gift and the action of God initiating us into the covenant family, grounded in creation's waters and Jesus' own baptism, which is why the tradition baptizes infants, refuses re-baptism, and trusts God's grace over our sin on the way to perfection.

**Illustrations:** big-bend-carrying-water, oreo-dunked-in-milk, jewish-mikveh-ritual-bath, by-water-and-the-spirit, ordination-perfection-questions, seashell-baptism-symbol

---

# September 14, 2025
## Baptism
## Genesis 1:1-5	Luke 3:21-22

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. - Genesis 1:1-5

Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” - Luke 3:21-22

![](attachments/Baptism.5d493b44c9074fafae8786a500a2b0ce.jpg)
My family loves to go out to Big Bend at least once a year. We often go backpacking in the Chisos Mountains in the backcountry.

One of the big challenges of hiking in the Chisos and hiking in Big Bend in general, is that you have to carry your own water. There's a spring that's sometimes running, sometimes not running in the backcountry, but it's incredibly unreliable. And so you need to bring your water. It's a little cooler up in the Chisos than it is on the desert floor. It's a completely different biome than the rest of the park. You still have to carry your water.

When you carry your water, it teaches you to appreciate how precious your water is: how much water is used to clean your dishes, how much water is used to climb up a mountain, how much you need to have a sip in the middle of the night and to have enough water to make it home down the mountain.

## Series Intro
Today we are continuing our series on the stained glass windows at Covenant with this window over here signifying baptism.
Baptism is a practice that has been controversial for at least the last 500 years. Baptism is one of those things we do as Christians without fully understanding it.
There is a wonderful doctrinal statement of the United Methodist Church on baptism called By Water and the Spirit, which I would be happy to share with people, and I agree with, and I think it's lovely. It starts with our condition.

>As told in the first chapters of Genesis, in creation God made human beings in the image of God -- a relationship of intimacy, dependence, and trust. We are open to the indwelling presence of God and given freedom to work with God to accomplish the divine will and purpose for all of creation and history. To be human as God intended is to have loving fellowship with God and to reflect the divine nature in our lives as fully as possible. Tragically, as Genesis 3 recounts, we are unfaithful to that relationship. The result is a thorough distortion of the image of God in us and the degrading of the whole of creation.

But that is not the end of the story.

>While we have turned from God, God has not abandoned us. Instead, God graciously and continuously seeks to restore us to that loving relationship for which we were created, to make us into the persons that God would have us be. To this end God acts preveniently, that is, before we are aware of it, reaching out to save humankind…Through Christ’s death and resurrection, the power of sin and death was overcome and we are set free to again be God’s own people (1 Peter 2:9). Since God is the only initiator and source of grace, all grace is prevenient in that it precedes and enables any movement that we can make toward God. Grace brings us to an awareness of our sinful predicament and of our inability to save ourselves; grace motivates us to repentance and gives us the capacity to respond to divine love In the words of the baptismal ritual: “All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price”

We then get to our view of sacraments:

>God’s presence in the sacraments is real, but it must be accepted by human faith if it is to transform human lives. The sacraments do not convey grace either magically or irrevocably, but they are powerful channels through which God has chosen to make grace available to us.

Then we get to baptism

>In baptism the Church declares that it is bound in covenant to God; through baptism new persons are initiated into that covenant. The covenant connects God, the community of faith, and the person being baptized; all three are essential to the fulfillment of the baptismal covenant. The faithful grace of God initiates the covenant relationship and enables the community and the person to respond with faith.

When we look at the Scriptures, there are a number of different things going on at baptism. For instance, in the passage I read today, we have Jesus being baptized. We have John the Baptist baptizing those who come before him, and then Jesus is baptized.
Now, sticking to the word itself, baptizo in Greek, simply means to putting into water. Baptism was John the Baptist getting the people into the water. This is important because not every time the word baptize is used in the Bible should we be thinking about the sacrament of baptism. For instance, if Oreos existed in ancient culture, the act of dunking an Oreo in milk would have been baptizo.

So that's what the plain meaning of the word is, but something changes with Jesus. In ancient Judaism and even in present-day Judaism, there is a step of ritual purification that takes place if you're to convert to Judaism. It is called a mikveh. There are excavation sites in Israel of these old synagogues that have what looks like baptismal fonts. This doesn't mean that they were Christian churches. They were for the mikveh. Christians took this practice and transformed it.

We see from the beginning, in Genesis, creation was blessed through the water.
The waters were there. The Spirit flowed across the dark waters and brought forth light. Water and our relationship with water go back to our very beginning. It wasn’t a new thing for Christians to be into water

Getting back to John and Jesus in the Jordan, in the act of baptism, the water was sanctified as Jesus submitted to it. And I really want to hold onto this for us, this astonishing aspect that in Jesus Christ, the God of all creation became human, not just a human, a child. An infant, a bundle of needs, as I like to say.
And when he grew to a certain age, submitted to another. The God who created everything submitted to someone in creation in order to take on this calling, to sanctify this action.

Now, that question Christians have had about since that time is, is the baptism that Jesus received the same baptism that we receive? I think the answer is plainly no. It is not the same, but it is connected. It is made possible because of what Jesus did, both in that first baptism, but also on the cross.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, less than twenty years after the death of Jesus, we have this language of being baptized in Christ's death and rising again in Christ's life. Baptism consists of these twin actions: submission and resurrection. Whether you're a child, an infant, or an adult, to be baptized is to submit to being baptized. To concede it. You can't baptize yourself.

For an infant, the first part of baptism is done as a child. The second part is done later with confirmation. Now it's not contingent, the gift is all there at the beginning, but you have to step into it.
We're baptized into Christ's death and rise into his new life as a new people, as a part of a new people. Baptism marks the entry into the family of God. It is a gift. It is pure gift.

This is one of the main reasons why our tradition baptizes children, because we see baptism as a gift. It's not contingent upon the person seeking baptism. It's not contingent upon their age. It's not contingent upon their awareness. Other traditions, like the Baptist tradition, believe in believer’s baptism. That You have to believe and ask for baptism in order to be baptized, otherwise it doesn't work. In this way, however, it's no longer a gift. It's a work that you do. It's no longer grace.

Another aspect of our tradition other than baptizing children is we don't believe in re-baptism because we don't believe that God makes a mistake in baptism. If Baptism is the action of God, then whether someone is a child or a grown-up, it's still gift and still God's action.
We believe that people can turn away, that God gives us free will, but God did not make a mistake. And our entry into the kingdom of heaven, into the community of the faithful, is still valid. Whether we backslide, whether we turn away from the Church, whether we sin greatly, baptism is valid and given to us by God. Baptism is not an offering to a perfect people, but a mystery given to help us on our way towards perfection. Completeness.
When I was ordained in the United Methodist Church, two of the questions I was asked were, “Are you going on towards perfection?” and “Do you think you will be there in this lifetime?”

I had to answer yes to both of these in order to be ordained. I easily did, and here is why. This is not perfection in a sense of never making a mistake. It's perfection in being completed by God. I struggled with this for a long time before ordination, with this part of our tradition, because it seems so contrary to the empirical evidence of my own life and existence; the sins I know I've done and do.

The claim is not that I'm such a good person that I'm going to get to a point of sinlessness. It's that my sin is not greater than God's love. Let me say that again in a different way. It is believing more in God’s grace than my sin. Do I believe in my sinfulness more than in God’s power to save? If I do, then being perfected in love is impossible. If I believe more in God, then it is a possibility and a hope.

Traditions that speak against perfection lift up human sin and fallibility over God's love and God's power and the possibility of God sanctifying us. And I'm just going to side with God on this one. I'm going to side with God on this one over myself.
Coming back to baptism. Whether you were baptized as a child or as an adult or you haven't been baptized before, you are already loved. I would recommend it. I would offer it. It is a gift. Baptism is a gift. This step of submission, acceptance. This step of new life is a gift.

If you would like to be baptized or if you'd like your children to be baptized, please come and talk to me. If you don't remember your own baptism, remember it through the people who were there. Remember it through your family, through your friends. We have a service of remembering our baptism every January, but I want to do an optional one today.

We have water this morning up in our baptismal font. If you want to take a moment during the last praise song, come forward and touch the water and remember your baptism and be thankful.

And as you come into this holy place and you see this seashell, remember it stands for baptism. And whatever day that is, may you remember yours and be thankful.

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