title: Rest

themes: rest-in-christ admitting-need easy-yoke-light-burden self-deception wesleyan-anti-calvinism grace-as-gift humility

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 11:16-19; Matthew 11:25-30; John 14:6
**Series:** Welcome

> A 'Welcome' series sermon on Matthew 11 arguing that exhaustion is universal and that Jesus's invitation, 'Come to me, all you who are weary,' is addressed to everyone. To receive Christ's rest you must first admit you are tired, lost, and in need of saving; Jesus as the truth cuts through our self-deceptions. Everyone carries some burden (echoing Dylan's 'Gotta Serve Somebody'), and the question is which yoke to take. Rejecting Calvinist limited atonement, the sermon insists God's love is abundant, not scarce. True rest is giving up trying to save yourself, receiving forgiveness and love, and then sharing Christ's peace rather than hoarding it.

**Illustrations:** nazi-pervitin-meth, all-nighter-no-sleep-fantasy, drowning-swimmer-refusing-help, lost-family-vacation, setting-down-heavy-load, bob-dylan-gotta-serve-somebody, texas-sports-team-burdens, gollum-ring-of-power

---

# July 9, 2023
## Rest

>”But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." At that time Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

One of the most universal human emotions is exhaustion. All of us get tired. It doesn't matter if you are an ultra marathoner or a kid who just had his first Mountain Dew, eventually the energy goes away and we all get tired. We all need rest.
Humans have often tried to avoid this reality of our need for rest. It seems like a weakness. Imagine how much we would get done if we didn’t have to sleep. That report that is due in the morning? Done. That video you need to edit by 9am the next day, done at 3am. No repurcussions. That drive to Alaska. Easy, peasy, lemon squeasy. Unfortunately, our need for rest cannot be eliminated so easily.

Though we would like to avoid it, for most of human history, we have been pragmatists about sleep. We know we need it and we build society around it. Throughout history, armies have realized this and set up different guard duties or watches to be sure that someone was on guard all during the day and night.

In World War II, one of the great innovations which led to the early Nazi victories in 1939 and 1940 and at the beginning of the Russia campaign, was the broad use of Pervitin, a methamphetimine. Millions of these little pills were produced and given to all branches of the Nazi government. Their pilots were given Fliegerschokolade or Flyer’s chocolate and the tank drivers were given Panzerschokolade or Panzer chocolate, which gave them lots of energy. They used meth to stay awake for long periods of time and allow for quick conquest. Those tanks didn't go super fast, 25 miles an hour for some, but they were able to cover long distances because so many members of the military were high out of their mind and didn’t need sleep. Until they did and there was a crash.

We all need rest. When we're young, many of us go through periods where we feel invincible. We feel like sleep is a waste of time, and so we limit it. We go out late with our friends night after night. We stay up late studying or watching movies or reading until we're bleary eyed and only reluctantly relinquish any power to sleep. And yet we all need it.
## Jesus
Jesus said, Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. All of us are included in this call, though all of us do not admit it. We are all weary in some forms. We are all laden with weighty things in this life, though we don't all admit it.
To be saved, you need to admit you need to be saved. If you are swimming in a river or a lake or the ocean and someone comes up to you and says, “do you need any help?” You're only going to accept help once you admit to yourself that you need help. If you think you have it all figured out, you’ll say something like, “no thank you. I’m fine.” It's like if you are taking your family on a vacation and your spouse asks you, “do you know where you're going?” You have to realize you’re lost before you're going to say anything other than, “no, I've got it. It's all good.” Even with all our wonderful satellites and phone apps that give us directions, we still get lost from time to time and need help.
In order to ask for help, you have to admit to yourself that you need help. In order to be saved, you have to admit to yourself that you need to be saved. In order to seek rest, you have to admit that you are tired.
For some of us, it's a lot easier to admit that we're tired. It hangs on our faces. It consumes our minds. It seems like there's never enough time for all the things we want to do or even half the things we want to do.
Maybe we are not as motivated as we used to be or we should be. What interests us now is not the same thing as what used to interest us. Or maybe we feel like we are motivated, but our bodies aren’t holding up like they used to and we are plum tuckered out.
>Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

The most obvious form of rest is when you are lifting something heavy and then you have to put it down to take a break. Whether you are lifting weights, carrying or pack, or moving furniture around, you have something that you are carrying and then you set it down to rest. Not all of us lift weights or move furniture or go backpacking, but all of us have burdens that we bear.

What kind of burden do you want to bear? Not the one you are carrying now but the one you want to carry. You gotta carry something. You can't get out of it. There's gonna be some burden you gotta carry.
It is similar to what the great theologian Bob Dylan said about. You gotta serve somebody, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

When you're serving someone or something, you are carrying their burden. And you’ve got to carry some kind of burden in this world. Which one do you wanna carry? Do you want the heavy burden or do you want the light one?
The irony of the life of faith is that often from the outside, the burden of the Christ-follower looks a lot heavier than other burdens. I mean, Jesus asks a lot of us. “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Gosh, those are some high expectations.
As well, the Bible is full of commandments, regulations, rules, all of these. We may think that these burdensome regulations get in the way of our freedom. “The Bible just won’t let me be me.”
But there is a heavy burden for letting you be you.
Remember, you gotta serve somebody, you gotta carry some burden, it may be the devils or it may be the Lord’s or it may be the cities or it may be your jobs or it may be your families or it may be the Cowboys or the Longhorns or the Aggies. You're gonna carry something. It may be your own burden. It may be your own unique snowflake of a burden of your desires and hopes and dreams in this world. You may think that you've got it all figured out. You don’t need anyone else’s burdens. You don't need that rest. You don't need to admit you're lost. You don't need to admit you're tired. When Jesus says, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden,” you don’t think he is talking to you.

In the gospel of John, Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life. If Jesus is the truth, that means he cuts through the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. And that is one of the most amazing things about the Christian faith. Jesus is a warrior against lies. The human heart has this amazing capacity to lie to itself about what it wants, about what it likes, and Jesus cuts right through that.
But when we push away from God, and we're left with our own desires, our own expectations, we're also left with our own lies about the world, about what we want, about what satisfies us, about whether we're tired or not, and what kind of rest we seek.

Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

This passage from Matthew ends beautifully but begins in a seemingly exclusionary way. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Different Christians have read this differently over the years. Traditions influenced by John Calvin have focused on the exclusive nature of Jesus Christ. They talk about limited atonement, that is the idea that God didn’t come to save everybody but only a limited number of people.

But this idea is about us putting limits on God not God only choosing a few. God does not have a maximum capacity. There isn’t a heavenly fire marshall who orders God to limit the entreants to heaven.

God created everything out of nothing. There is no creature who binds God, especially not a fire marshall. So there is no limit to God’s love. God’s love is abundant, not scarce.

When Jesus says, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest, he is talking to you. Are you ready to receive Christ’s rest?

The rest is found in not having to save yourself. you don’t need to be the messiah. That is Jesus’s job. Don’t kill yourself trying to save yourself. Receive a gift of life. You are loved. You are forgiven. Those things you did that nobody knows about, that you never want to say to anyone, God sees that and still loves you. You are loved. Lay down your head. Rest in Christ’s peace.

The peace of Christ doesn’t mean there is no work to be done. It just means now we can do it for others. We can share this peace, not hoard it. We can offer it, not cling to it like Gollum and the ring of power.

It is okay to admit you are tired. It is okay to admit you are lost. Let us rest in Christ and rise with a renewed purpose. Sure, maybe we should go to bed earlier and stop looking at our phones. But also, we should receive peace from Christ. Receive the freedom of humility in Christ, and together share that peace in this world.

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


site: sermons

title: Saying Yes to God

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: Advent

themes: answering-gods-call the-annunciation facing-fear faith-as-risk means-of-grace gods-faithfulness

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 1:26-38
**Series:** Advent

> A fourth-Sunday-of-Advent sermon on Luke 1:26-38 arguing that Mary's 'yes' to Gabriel is remarkable because we naturally expect 'no.' Drawing on the pastor's own fearful courtship of his wife, the sermon frames every faithful 'yes'—marriage, relationship, response to God—as an act of faith against the fear of rejection. Mary says yes not for gain but in faith, trusting the God who freed Israel. God's love is not zero-sum; God's 'yes' is for all, supremely in the Incarnation as God's 'yes' to the world over against the 'no' of the Flood. We respond by living the means of grace daily, and like the shepherds and drummer boy, by giving God our heart, echoing Rossetti's 'In the Bleak Midwinter.'

**Illustrations:** meeting-alina-church-under-the-bridge, counterfactual-gabriel-other-woman, marriage-act-of-faith, no-song-lyric, noah-flood-response-of-no, shepherds-drummer-boy-stable, rossetti-in-the-bleak-midwinter, waterhouse-lady-of-shalott-pre-raphaelite

---

# December 24 (Morning)

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. - Luke 1:26-38

My wife, Alina, and I were set up, but not totally set up. It wasn’t a full on blind date. It was a dinner party. We were the only single people and there were assigned seats, but that did not mean that anything was going happen.

During the dinner party, we talked a little bit. It was nice. She was interesting and beautiful and I wanted to see her again. I found out that she worshiped at the Church Under the Bridge and I wanted to go and join her. So, I very, very, very timidly invited myself to go to church with her. This was definitely not a first date.

Now I don’t like visiting churches, which is one of the reasons why I am so grateful to everyone who ever visits here. It is a vulnerable thing to open yourselves up to a new community. So during the worship service under the I-35 overpass, I stood in a corner very stiffly. And then it was over. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask for her number. I think I waved, that is all.
In hindsight, my behavior seems foolish (and it probably was), but what I was thinking about was that I did not want to put myself out there because she could say no. That is what I expected. Why would she say yes to me?

The story of our relationship goes on and on. It worked out (yay), we celebrated 12 years of marriage a few weeks ago.

I tell that story because I think it helps us understand Mary’s response to Gabriel a little more deeply. We should come to this passage with an expectation of No, just as I did standing awkwardly under I-35. It wasn’t clear that Mary would say yes to God.

Today, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, we are going to talk about saying yes to God. Saying yes to God is not an obvious thing. Saying yes to God is not a simple thing. It is not a passive thing, because most of the time in most of our lives, we lean towards saying no.

Mary’s yes to God is not a quid pro quo. She is frightened. We might think about Mary with an understanding of the possibility that the angel Gabriel visited other people, not that that happened, but that the counterfactual is useful. Counterfactuals are alternative histories used to help us understand actual history. So we think of Gabriel visiting another woman and this other woman’s answer is no, or “get away,”or she tries to attack the angel, all of these are quite rational responses to an angel telling you that you are going bear the son of God. A rational response to the angel would be the same as the song from a few years ago: “my name is no, my sign is no, my number is no, you need to let it go.”

But Mary says yes.

Mary’s yes is not for herself but for us. Mary doesn’t purchase anything with her yes; she conforms her heart to God. Mary’s yes is the example for all of us. Mary says yes to God by faith. She does not know what is going to happen.

And this gets back to relationships and fears of rejection and the expectation of no. The yes’s we say in our life are actions of faith. The relationships we have with other people are steps of faith. One of my teacher’s used to say that you never marry the right person because you never know who they are going to be in 10 years or 50 years. Marriage itself is an act of faith, whether it is in the high steepled church or with the justice of the peace, it is an act of faith in another person.

Saying no to someone is a reasonable thing to do. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t need you. Why should I say yes?’

Mary isn’t arbitrary in her yes to God. Mary believes in what God will do based on what God has done in rescuing the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Mary says yes to God because she believes that God will continue to be faithful.

God’s love is not zero sum but our love is. To say yes to a relationship with someone means saying no to someone else. There is an either/or going on with us but not with God.

If God says yes to you, that does not mean God will say no to me. God’s yes is for all people.
When we flip it around again, a yes to God for us is zero sum. That is, when we say yes to God, we must say no to other things. A yes to God is a no to hatred. A yes to God is a no to pride and envy and all manner of sins. A yes to God is a no to living for yourself. And the amazing thing is, that in sending Gabriel to Mary, God is saying yes to the world.
We have the ultimate counterfactual about how God could have responded to sin with Noah and the Flood. We have a possible response to overwhelming sinfulness. That response is destruction. That is the response of no. In sending the angel to Mary. In Jesus Christ becoming incarnate in the womb of Mary, God is saying yes to us.

Mary’s yes does not take place in a vacuum. It is in a particular time in a particular part of the world to a particular person. None of which point to this yes.

And yet she says yes.

This evening is Christmas Eve. Tomorrow is Christmas Day. And pretty soon, it is the new year. In that new year, how can we say yes to God?

First, we must remember, that before everything, God has said yes to us. So anything we do is a response of the joy of God in our lives. You are loved. Whether or not another person says yes to you, God has said yes to you.

I finished seminary before Alina and I started seeing each other. Studying the Bible alone does not eliminate a fear of rejection. Studying the history of the church does not eliminate imposter syndrome and the idea that once people get to know me they are not going to like me. I can rationally see that God loves me without leaning on God in those moments of fear. I need to still practice the art of waiting and the biggest part of it is saying yes to God daily; Finding a way in your life to say yes to God. This is what John Wesley calls the means of grace. Saying yes to God by doing the things of God, by praying, by reading the Scriptures, by feeding the hungry, by clothing the naked. By not lying in a world full of lies and saying yes to God. By being truthful even when you know it will hurt you because you believe more in God than in the perceptions of the people around you.

We may seem overwhelmed by these ways, by how to respond to God. If we are not already praying and serving and feeding, then it can seem a mammoth undertaking. We may seem overwhelmed by how to say yes to God.

We may feel like those who come to the stable. Not the kings with their fancy gifts already prepared, but the shepherds, or the neighbors, or the drummer boy down the road. What do I give to the God who is love? How do I respond to love unmerited? I can’t do everything, where do I start?

We sang my favorite Christmas Carol earlier. In the bleak midwinter  was written by the English Poet, Christina Rossetti. During her lifetime, her brother Dante was a much more famous poet and artist than her. He was a part of the pre-Raphaelite movement that sought to reject the manneristic art of Raphael and Michelangelo and return to the 15th century art of brighter colors. The famous John Waterhouse painting of the Lady of Shallott is a prime example of this style.

Christina’s poetry had modest success during her lifetime, but it wasn’t until after her death, when Gustav Holst, the famous composer of the Planets, set her poem to music and offered the carol we have today.

Who is speaking in the carol? Whose voice sings? We are the ones who speak. We are the ones who sing. The questions in the last stanza are for all of us who hope to say yes to God.

>What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
What I can I give him, give him my heart.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, you offer us light in the midst of darkness. You offer us hope amid the chaos. Thank you for Mary’s yes. Help us to also say yes to you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

themes: advent-expectation second-coming readiness-watchfulness wonder

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 13:24-37
**Series:** Advent

> An Advent hanging-of-the-greens homily that uses the apparent mismatch between the stark Markan apocalypse (Mark 13:24-37) and festive Christmas decorating to recover the season's double meaning: the first coming of the Christ child and the second coming of Jesus in glory. Pruitt debunks the myth that the Christmas tree is a baptized pagan symbol, tracing it instead to Moravian and Pietist Protestants who lit fir trees to bring light into a dark season. The tree is not historically accurate to Bethlehem but is a true reflection of our lives mapped onto Advent, holding together birth and death, judgment and Mary's yes. He closes with T.S. Eliot's poem 'The Cultivation of Christmas Trees,' urging childlike wonder and a watchfulness rooted in love rather than fear.

**Illustrations:** christmas-tree-not-in-bethlehem, pagan-tree-myth-debunked, third-century-against-birthdays, moravian-pietist-first-tree, ts-eliot-cultivation-poem, fig-tree-lesson

---

# December 3
## The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

“But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
    and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

## Introduction
There were no Christmas trees that first Christmas morning in Bethlehem. There were no decorations. It is not historically accurate to put up a Christmas tree. Fir trees do not even grow in the Bethlehem region.
We have a Christmas tree here at Covenant. We are decorating it today. Many of you, most of you probably have a Christmas tree at home. Many of you, most of you probably grew up with one. And yet, if this tree is not historically accurate, why do we do with this?
What are we striving for in this Season of advent, in this new Christian year? But more importantly, what was God offering to us at Christmas? Why do we have to spend a few weeks getting ready?
The Gospel passage I read earlier from the Gospel of Mark is pretty stark with language of suffering and the darkening of the sun. It's very different language from what we went through during the hanging of the greens portion of our surface today. Not many nativity scenes include Markan language of the Sun and Moon being darkened and stars falling from the sky. And yet, historically, the first Sunday of advent has been about the double meaning of advent. There are two advents: the first the coming of the Christ child, and the second, the coming again of Jesus in glory.
That second coming is not as palatable. Well, of course, there are certain strains of Christianity that view the second coming as this great one-upmanship of their enemies. They see the Bible as this long list of codes that can be interpreted so that you and yours can be safe and those other fools will suffer. Yet I think the plain reading of the gospels is that we do not know the time or the hour. So we should not predict when Jesus is coming, but we should live every minute of our lives in anticipation of Christ.
Advent offers us a season of preparation and anticipation to look, to get ready for the first advent, as well as to look for the second. But where do the trees come from?

Some say that the Christmas tree is a pagan symbol that the Christians baptized. This sounds good for a freshman religious studies class, but it has no basis in history. The Christmas tree is not a Pagan celebration. It's just not the case. Christmas was a later holiday. It wasn't the earliest holiday. Births were not important in Judaism and were not important to the early Christians. There was a 3rd century Christian writer who said that it was contrary to the faith to celebrate a birthday because as Christians we should celebrate our baptism or martyrdom.

Concerning Christmas Trees, Europe had already long been Christianized by the time the first Christmas trees came about. The tradition started with Protestants from central and Eastern Europe, especially the Moravian and Pietist traditions that heavily influenced John Wesley. It was the Moravians who first took a fir tree, which is what Tanenbaum means in German, and put candles on it and decorated it. They did so in order to bring a little light into their home during a dark season. As much as anything, that's what a Christmas tree does. It is there to bring a light, to bring a reminder, to offer a memory,
Christmas trees are not reflections of first century Roman occupied Palestine. They are reflections of our existence as mapped on to Advent and Christmas.
And in this, they're worth remembering and celebrating because in that remembering, as we point to the first Christmas, we point to the second. As we prepare our homes for Christmas, we prepare our hearts. There is birth and death, seasons of spring and winter. There is Mark’s day of judgment as well as Mary’s yes to God. As we care for our homes, as we care for the people around us, let us remember the care we have received from our first Christmas until today. Let us be alert for Jesus not in fear, but in love. Let us long for Jesus.

To close this brief homily, I want to read a short poem by TS Elliot called the The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.

It was written in 1954 and is only 36 lines long, but it cuts to the heart of what I'm saying and why we even hang the greens today.

There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish – which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,

So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St.Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):

So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By “eightieth” meaning whichever is last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

Let us pray,

Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for this season and opportunity to celebrate the birth of your son, Jesus Christ. Help us to prepare our homes and our hearts for his coming by expanding the love in both. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: The Next Thirty Seconds

series: One offs

themes: readiness-watchfulness attentiveness-to-jesus judgment us-vs-them growth-in-holiness advent-expectation living-in-the-present

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 25:1-13; Psalm 78:1-4; Matthew 5:21-22; Matthew 19:16-22
**Series:** One offs

> A sermon on the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) preached as the first of Matthew 25's three 'parables of attention.' Wilson argues parables refuse our instinct to sort people into in-groups and out-groups; the question is not who is good or bad but who is attending to Jesus. Waiting for the bridegroom means giving God active attention, and that attentiveness is the shape of holiness and the substance of judgment. Drawing on a Rowan Williams interview (and John of the Cross), he frames judgment as being examined on love rather than rule-keeping, with the present moment as decisive: 'the next thirty seconds are decisive, and the thirty seconds after that.' The call is to attune to God's love now and keep awake.

**Illustrations:** rich-young-ruler, ut-austin-acceptance-in-group, boarding-the-plane, rowan-williams-thirty-seconds, john-of-the-cross-examined-on-love, devil-take-your-eye-off-the-present

---

# November 13
## The Next Thirty Seconds

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
    incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable;
    I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known,
    that our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their children;
    we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might
    and the wonders that he has done.
			Psalm 78:1-4

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten young women took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those young women got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut. Later the other young women came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. Matthew 25:1-13

Jesus can be very frustrating. He teaches in these parables, these stories with lessons. Lessons that are unique.
He also teaches directly. There's a tendency that when Jesus speaks in parables, we wish he was speaking directly. And when Jesus speaks directly, we wish he was speaking in parables. I'll give you an example of this.
When the rich young ruler comes up to Jesus and asks him, what must he do to inherit eternal life, Jesus says the commandments. And the rich young ruler says that he's been following them since he was a youth. Jesus then says, go sell everything you have and give it to the poor and come follow me, then will you be my disciple. And the rich young ruler walked away sad because he had many possessions.
This is a story of the gospels that has been turned into a parable. It is more palatable as a parable. It's more palatable as figurative language. It’s more palatable to think of Jesus talking only to this rich, young ruler and not to us.

In the opposite way, when Jesus speaks in parables, sometimes we wish he would just speak directly. Our reading for today is an example. We have the 10 virgins. Five are responsible, five are not. why virgins? Why 10?
 He explains the parable of the seed, but he doesn't explain this one. Five keep oil. Five do not. Five are patient; they wait patiently for the Lord. They wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. Five Do not. They go to sleep. Jesus gives a brief explanation about time, you’ll not know the time of the hour. So be prepared. Okay? I kind of get that, but how should we be prepared, Jesus? Just tell us.
Another time, when Jesus is direct that we may wish he were parabolic, is in the Sermon on the Mount
>You have heard it said to the ancients, You will not kill, whoever kills will be liable for judgment. I tell you anyone who is angry at their brother will be liable to be judged, and whoever speaks Raka to his brother is liable to the Sanhedrin. And whoever says, fool, is liable to the Gehenna of fire. Matthew 5:22-23

Oh Jesus, can’t you just tell us a parable about anger and how there's this complicated story of anger and you know, we shouldn't be angry, but if we are, it's okay. Then we can do what we wanna do. But not too much. Wouldn't that be easier?
Yes, it would be easier, but it wouldn't be God's word.
I think one of the powers of the parables is that they refuse to let us create in group in out-group. That's what we wanna do all the time. We humans, we love in-groups, we love out-groups.
When I was a senior in high school and I was accepted by the University of Texas at Austin, I was so relieved to be in an in-group. I was included. Once I made a decision, I didn’t have to worry about which college I was going to anymore. The same thing happened with seminary. The same thing happened with the ordination process. These are systems-based in-groups and out-groups, but we also do this socially and as a society. We have people we like and people we don’t. We have people we invite to our homes and people we don’t.

It is like getting on a plane. Once you board the plane, you are in. People who missed the flight are out of luck. Parables challenge these groupings because they are not about divisions of humans but the divisions of our heart.

Jesus inverts expectations in this parable of the 10 virgins. The five that wait for him do not assume they have already made it on the plane. The five that do not go to sleep because the bridegroom was delayed and they don’t think it will effect them. They think that they are already in the in-group, so they sleep.

The five who wait aren’t interested in being in the in-group or not, they are interested in the bridegroom. They care more about Jesus than their own status. It is not easy staying up. It is not easy waiting on the Lord. It takes making some sacrifices.
In telling this parable, Jesus provokes us towards godly sacrificial love. The virgins here sacrifice something by waiting for the Lord. Another word for waiting is attention. Giving the Lord attention.
Throughout Matthew 25, that's what is going on. We have these three powerful parables of attention. Next week is the parable of the talents, the week after that, the sheep and the goats. Each of these parables gives us a cascading understanding of what it means to give attention to God. In each of these parables, we are offered a choice between apathy and activity. Passive waiting and active waiting.
Ultimately, the parables are not offered to convince us of the truth of God's love. The parables don’t function as apologetic tools. If someone doubts that Jesus is Lord, reading this parable is not going to convince them. Conversion ultimately can only happen through grace. The parables, however, are offered to convict us towards active attention. This is what holiness is. Setting ourselves apart for God, not staying in the same place. Do not stay in the same place. Those are the virgins who don't get the oil. They wait for the bridegroom, but not that long. They're tired and they go to sleep. They expect God to do everything. They expect that they can just do what they want.

I want us to think about the brides who went to sleep, not as if they are lazy, but as if they are missing the point. Jesus isn’t giving us a simple “Don’t be lazy” speech.

The question is not about whether one group is good and the other bad. The question is about who knows Jesus. Who is seeking Jesus? Who is waiting for Jesus.
The parables are not about us and them. They're about us and God. The Parables are not offered to separate ourselves from each other. They are offered in order to provoke us into looking inward to see where our love lies. Does your love fall towards your neighbor? Does your love fall away from yourself and your own self-satisfaction? Are you gathering that oil? Are you giving attention to Jesus? Or are you just going to sleep?

We have judgment here. Jesus is judging the brides.

He says:
>The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut. Later the other young women came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Judgment is always uncomfortable. And, sure, maybe the 5 brides with oil should have shared it, but again, this is not about us and them, it is about us and God. Where does your heart lie?

This is conversion. It isn’t about which church you are a member of or what music you listen to or who you vote for, where does your heart lie? Are you attending to Jesus or not?

There will be judgment of a sort. The Bible says this again and again. Logic says this.

What is the shape of that judgment? That is the question. Is it based on rule-following? Is it based on a list of criteria? is it based on being a member of the in-group or the out-group? Or is it based on something else.

Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, gave an interview a few months ago and he said something profound about judgment that I want to quote at length.

>I think the notion that we are judged not on our keeping of the rules but on something else is one that is already there in the Gospels in a sense. And just as Jesus in the Gospels is not saying, “Ignore rules,” but, “understand that rules are about the kind of person you are becoming.” And I think, you know, that does run right through. It is St. John of the Cross in the 16th century who says, “In the evening of our life, it will be on love that we are examined.” So the conviction that there is beyond death, however we express that, that moment of confrontation with the truth, I think ought to make us, as I hinted, deeply conscious of the significance of every moment that passes. Because becoming more or less attuned to the truth is what happens moment by moment in every encounter. It is possible for me to get a little bit further towards, a little bit further away from that fundamental, all defining honesty. And it is only in that way that I become the person who finally sees God in the face. So I think a proper attitude to death and judgment is one that quite simply says, the next thirty seconds are decisive. And the thirty seconds after that. And the thirty seconds after that. Don’t take your eye off the ball. Look at what is in front of your eyes. That is where it starts.

>I’ve sometimes said that what’s going on in the temptation stories in the Gospels is, at least in part, the devil saying to Jesus, “Take your eye off the present for the sake of the future. Take your eye off the real world in favor of the imagined world where I can give you all you want.” And the refusal of temptation is the affirmation that it is here and now that the presence of God is encountered, that the will of God is discovered, and our own humanity is shaped. The next thirty seconds are decisive. And the thirty seconds after that. - Rowan Williams

Giving attention to Jesus is about how we live our lives now. It is about how we live the next thirty seconds. Attuning ourselves to the truth of God’s love for us. Attuning ourselves to the truth of God’s love for our neighbors. Attuning ourselves to the commandment to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Remembering that when we attune ourselves to God, we change. When we give Jesus attention, we change. If we are not changing and growing in holiness, we are not paying attention to God, and we are slowly being consumed by our own hardening hearts. You can go towards truth or away from it. You can go towards love or away from it. You can go towards Jesus or away from him.

Keep awake. You do not know the time or the hour. But be at peace, for your Lord is not a tyrant but a friend who is love. Don’t go to sleep on the Kingdom of Heaven. It is here. Start living it now. Change your life now. Give your life now.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, you give us life and opportunity now to receive your love and seek your love, not just in the future, but here and now. Help us to be so bold as to wait for you fully. In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: The Voice of Sabbath

series: Creation

themes: sabbath means-of-grace identity-in-christ john-the-baptist-as-forerunner stewardship growth-in-grace

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 1:29-2:4; John 1:19-28; 1 Corinthians 15:32; Matthew 25:40
**Series:** Creation

> Part of a Creation series pairing Genesis 1 and John 1, this sermon opens with the question of what makes us unique and argues that identity is shaped by distinctive practices, not just beliefs. Through Sabbath (which belongs to God and is not Sunday) and John the Baptist (the forerunner who refused to be put in a bucket), Wilson develops Wesley's means of grace - works of piety and mercy - as the faithful response to grace by which we grow into love. He lands on generosity, launching a stewardship pledge drive as an act of faith that, like Sabbath, makes no sense unless Christ rose, calling Covenant UMC to give to prepare the way of the Lord for generations to come.

**Illustrations:** buckets-categorizing, pastors-ordination-bucket, fridays-off-not-sabbath, jewish-sabbath-proximity-ghettos, thirty-years-war-religion-as-belief, marathon-training, drifting-wide-road, covenant-pledge-stewardship

---

# October 8
## Genesis 1:29-2:4
## John 1:19-28

### The Voice of Sabbath.

God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude. On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
- Genesis 1:29-2:3a

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
- John 1:19-28

What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique? These are two very different questions. I want us to think for a moment about them. When you're asked the question, what is something unique about you? What are the kinds of things you say?
What is something you do that is unique?  What are the kinds of things you say?
Humans love to categorize. We love to put objects, things, foods, ideas, people, into buckets, and once we have them in those buckets, we know what to do with them. When we have a new experience, once it is finished, we can put it into a bucket or create a new bucket of our life. In a lot of situations, we've put people into buckets. If someone is applying for a new job or you start a new job or class, you categorize the people around you, even if subconsciously.

When I was going through ordination in the United Methodist Church, I did not fit into an easy bucket. About 15 years ago, most people who were going through ordination were either currently in seminary or were straight up second career and had a job that could support a family and were seeking ministry. I did not fit in either of those.
So there wasn't an easy bucket to put me in. The system is designed for these two buckets, and if you don't fit in those two buckets, then it's a challenging road. Today, I want us to think about our uniquenesss, both how other people see us and how God sees us as unique, and it all starts with creation.

## Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on Creation, looking at Genesis 1 and John 1 together to understand more Christ’s presence in Creation, God’s power in creation, and the importance of creation for us today.
Today we're thinking about uniqueness and we start with Sabbath.

At the end of Genesis 1, God creates humanity in the image of God. When God is finished with creation, God says it is very good in Hebrew. Tov means good. Tov Tov means very good. It's a big deal.
And then got rests on the seventh day Sabbath. God rests in the glory of creation.
When God frees the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and they're in the wilderness and God gives them Torah to guide their way. One of the central aspects of Torah is to keep the Sabbath, to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
The Sabbath is the seventh day. The Sabbath is Saturday in English. Sometime over the last 200 years, many Christians have confused Sabbath and the Lord's day.
Sabbath is not Sunday. Sabbath is not a rest day. The bible is fairly clear on this. I take a day off from work on Fridays because work on Sundays, but Friday is not my Sabbath. I personally can’t have a Sabbath. The Sabbath is and always will be God’s. I could participate in the Sabbath, but I could never possess it. Sabbath is Saturday because it is given by God, it is not given by man.

I want us to remember those first questions I started with today: What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique?

A lot of modern understandings of religion came about in the 17th and 18th centuries with the end of the Thirty Years War and this attempt to prevent future wars that had religious bases.
So a lot of language of religion was formed out of basically a Lutheran and Protestant understanding of religion as a set of beliefs independent from the lived experiences of people or nations or what they actually do.

This is why a lot of European countries struggled with how to fit Jews into their systems. Jews did not define themselves by what they believed, but by what they did in response to the Torah of God. If you have a lot of interactions with practicing Jews, the question of what do you believe about God is in many ways secondary to the question of what are you doing in response?

Do you keep Sabbath?
Part of keeping Sabbath is not working on Saturday, which meant staying close enough to the synagogue so that if you walk to the synagogue on the Sabbath, you wouldn't work. Which led to Jews living next to each other, which led to European countries forming these ghettos and enclaves around which Jews had chosen, in many cases, to live next to each other. There is an enormous history of European Anti-Semitism that covers this history, but I want to point out how proximity of Jews was often due to the desire to keep sabbath as much as anything else.
It is a huge thing to keep Sabbath. It is an act of faith. It is an act of faith to believe that you're not gonna get behind if you don't keep up the grind on Saturday. It is an act of faith to use rest not as a convenience but a duty. It is an act of faith to not see rest as a way for further productivity, but to rest in God just because God is God.
The Lord's day is not the Christian Sabbath. It is a little Easter; a day to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A lot of Christians didn't wanna fall prey to work's righteousness, so they tried to get away from talking about distinctive practices like Sabbath keeping. And yet, there are a lot of distinctive practices to the Christian faith.
What is the thing you do that makes you unique and what bucket do you fit?
## John the Baptist
The Pharisees and other Jewish leaders didn't know what bucket to put John the Baptist in. Are you Elijah? Are you Moses now? What bucket can we put you? You don't seem to fit.
John says no to that. He says no to the desire to put him in a bucket. Jesus will also do this during Holy Week. When he has asked, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus' response is, you say that I am
Not quite avoiding the question, challenging the question. John the Baptist does this as well.
In the ancient church, John the Baptist was referred to as the forerunner. He is the bridge between the Old and New Testaments. He is the friend of
Christ. He is the baptizer.
For Jesus to be baptized, there needed to be a baptizer. You can't self baptize. I can't baptize myself. There must be community of some sort. John did not see himself fit to baptize Jesus, but Jesus did.
John also quotes the prophet Isaiah and the voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the, and in this way, I think John can and should be a model for what it means to be a Christian Today: We should make straight and prepare the way of the Lord.
What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique? If your friends are gonna put you in a bucket, is it gonna be based on a sports team you like? an activity you enjoy? Is it based on your faith?
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, often spoke about the means of grace. We believe that grace is present before we're aware of it. God is present in the midst of the sin and brokenness of this world. But once we encounter the risen Lord Jesus Christ, there's grace still offered for us: our journey is not over. There are things we should do as a response to that grace.
This is the centrally important word, a response to grace. How we respond are the means of grace. The church has historically understood these. There are works of mercy and works of piety. The works of piety are described in the Sermon on the Mount, prayer, fasting, studying the scriptures, worshiping together. The works of mercy are described in the book of Acts when the apostles set apart the deacons to care for the poor, the hungry and naked, the widows and orphans, to visit the imprisoned. They are also Matthew 25 in the Gospels when Jesus says when you do so unto one of the least of these, you do so unto me.
Jesus heals a child on the Sabbath in some Pharisees come to him and asked him why he's breaking Torah. Jesus says that I'm Lord of the Sabbath.
Sabbath Keeping is not centrally important to a Christian. But there are some practices that are. These are not practices that save us. But salvation is not the end of the story. Definitely not in the Bible.
As Paul says, We're saved by faith through grace, not by our own works, but solely thanks be to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. But we're not finished then. You are set apart for something greater. And that means responding to God in the Holy Spirit, growing in our capacity to love. As John Wesley preached, “all those who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the means God ordained.”
And that's what the works of mercy and the works of piety are about. They are exercises for us to grow in our capacities, to love, for us to grow into the people that God desires us to be, for us to be emptied of everything but love. To get all the not-love in our hearts out. But just like with long distance running, you don’t run a marathon on your first day training for a marathon.
You gotta walk before you can run. Don't skip ahead. You don't need to rush. You don't need to pretend like you're already finished and complete, but you should act as if God's grace is bigger than your sin. You start where you are and God meets you where you are, but God does not leave you there.
You can choose to stay there, but God does not want you to stay there because if you're not growing in grace, you're decreasing, you're drifting, you're stagnate, you're drifting back to the wide road and avoiding narrow one.

We are called together by Jesus Christ as a Church in order to desire the grace of God together and wait for God’s grace in the means God has ordained. We don’t gather to do whatever we wanted to do anyway. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If Christ did rise, then everything is different and we should live into the difference fully.

Today, I want to focus on one means of grace, which is generosity: giving to the work of God. We are starting a stewardship drive now. In this moment. We have pledge cards that you were given this morning. A pledge is an opportunity for discernment about your level of support for the community of which you are a part.

What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique? I want us to think about these questions not just for ourselves but for this church. What is something unique about Covenant UMC? What is something that Covenant does that is unique? There are a number of ways to answer this question. Each of you can answer this question differently. We give to support those unique ministries and missions. We give to support a church that is diverse racially, ethnically, culturally, politically, financially, and yet united where it counts, around the truth of God’s mercy and love for us in Jesus Christ.

A pledge is an act of faith. It is not an efficient thing. Like keeping the Sabbath, life might be easier if you didn’t pledge or didn’t give. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, it makes no sense to pledge. It makes no sense to give.

But if he did, if today truly is a little Easter, then we should respond and live into the world by doing the things of God. Giving out of faith in who God is and what God is doing. Giving out of a stewardship and care for what God has given us.

John the Baptist preached, make straight and prepare the way of the Lord. For us today, that is our call. To prepare the way of the Lord. Not only for today but for tomorrow. Not only for this generation but for the next and the next after that. Let us give not just to support what is going on now but what will take place in the future. Not just 2024, but 2054.

Let us desire the grace of God together. Let us practice the means God has given us. Let us serve our neighbor. Let us worship together. And let us give generously to prepare the way of the Lord for generations to come. May that be the bucket in which we are placed. May that be what we do that is unique.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your good love that sees beyond the surface to our hearts. May our hearts love what is good and pure and may we seek to serve you in all that we do. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Three Ways of Saying Thank You

themes: gratitude-to-god incarnation circumcision-of-jesus covenant-with-abraham works-of-mercy loving-enemies

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 2:22-40; Galatians 4:4-7; Genesis 12:1-3
**Series:** One offs

> Preached on the seventh day of Christmas, this sermon asks how we respond to the immeasurable gift of God becoming human. Opening with the homely practice of teaching children to say thank you, the pastor frames the incarnation—especially Jesus's circumcision, by which God enters fully into the covenant with Abraham and 'satisfies' it—as a gift we can never reciprocate. He offers three models of gratitude drawn from Luke 2 and Christian tradition: Simeon, who responds with the song (hymns of praise); Anna, the first evangelist, who shares the news (words of hope); and Catherine of Siena, who teaches that since we cannot repay God's love, we love our neighbors and enemies in God's place (actions of mercy). The call is to respond in all three ways, loving even the unlovable not by our own power but by grace we must ask for.

**Illustrations:** teaching-kids-thank-you, milton-circumcision-poem, chrysostom-christmas-sermon, simeon-song, anna-prophetess, catherine-siena-dialogue, riding-a-bicycle

---

# December 31

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir through God.
Galatians 4:4-7

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
   according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
    which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.”
And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.
Luke 2:22-40

It is important to teach our kids to say thank you. It is important for each of us to know how to say thank you. My kids are blessed each Christmas to have gifts from family members so they get to practice how to say thank you. We have tried to frame manners as the practice of thinking about other people. We practice saying thank you and sitting down at the table because we care about the people in our life. Manners are habits, like riding a bicycle. The point of teaching our kids to do them when they don’t want to is so that they will practice saying thank you to the point that it is second nature to them. Manners are not about controlling our kids but teaching them ways of showing love. One of those ways is saying thank you. Every gift they receive is not the most exciting and surprising thing in the world but it is helpful for them to act as if it were, so that we can learn to see the gift not as the object in front of us, but the act of giving itself.

Yet what do we do when the gift actually is amazing? How should we respond to the greatest of gifts?

The first folks who respond to Jesus, the shepherds, don’t really understand what is going on. They are like, “this is awesome, this is cool!” This is what happens right after Jesus is born, but then Mary and Joseph take the infant Jesus to be circumcised on the 8th day. This is the point where Jesus enters the covenant of Abraham. It is an important thing. An essential thing, because before the circumcision of Jesus, he was not a part of the covenant even though he was born of the people of the covenant, but it is at this moment that the God who became human in Jesus Christ enters the Covenant of Abraham fully.

John Milton, the English poet and author of Paradise Lost, wrote a short poem titled Upon the Circumcision of the Lord,  and I want to quote a few lines from it.

> For we by rightfull doom remediles
Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above
High thron'd in secret bliss, for us frail dust
Emptied his glory, ev'n to nakednes;
And that great Cov'nant which we still transgress
Intirely satisfi'd,

Now, this is an immense thing that has happened. One verse but an immense event. God has entered into the covenant with God. To rehash the story, God makes this promise to Abraham, this covenant:

Genesis 12:1-3
> “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, those who curse you I will curse; all the families of the earth will be blessed because of you.”

This covenant is continued with Moses and the giving of the Torah, the Law, the Way on Mount Sinai. The way that is offered for people of the covenant to live a faithful life.

And then, at this brief moment of the circumscicion, Jesus enters into that covenant. God become flesh enters into the covenant with God. So now God is in covenant with God. In the language of Milton, it entirely satisfies that covenant. And we will see on the cross the ultimate satisfaction, but that is for another day. It is the immensity of this gift that we must begin to comprehend today. The immensity of this gift on Christmas.

In the early Church, Christmas was not a big deal. By the early church, I mean the first six hundred years. Easter was seen as the holiest of days. Christmas was not lifted up, until a preacher named John Chrysostom in the 7th century, celebrated it with quite a sermon. Here is an example.

What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infants bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.

Okay, so what we have at Christmas is a gift we cannot possible recipricate. We cannot possibly say enough thank yous for it, and yet we try.

Today, we can look at three responses. Two from our text and another from the tradition. The first response is Simeon. He is a wise man. An elder, that many folks respected. He sees the child and responds with a song. This song has been song every night somewhere in the world since at least 516 AD and many nights before then. I wrote my own version recently

So we have this one example of Simeon who sings, who sings as a spontaneous response to realizing the gift that God has become human, taken on the covenant, taken on our sins, and is ready to live and satisfy the Torah fully so that we can enter into the bosom of Abraham, so that we can enter into the life of God.

Anna is the next one.  Anna was a prophetess who lived in the temple. She lived and prayed all day. She slept in the temple. She ate whatever was given to her. She prayed without ceasing. When Jesus goes to be presented at the temple, now she understands why she has been praying all of those years. Luke writes, “She approached at that very moment and began to praise God and to speak about Jesus to everyone who was looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.” Luke 2:38

Simeon sings praise to God. Simeon feels like he finally understands the point of his life. Anna shares anew the story of God and the redemption of God in the world found by the child Jesus. Both are attempts to say ‘Thank you’ to God. Neither of them fully reciprocates God’s gift. Yet all we can do is make these attempts. Both of these are good. One attempt to say thank you is that we worship. One attempt, one response to the amazing blessing of God in Jesus Christ, the amazing miracle of God taking on flesh at Christmas is to sing praise to God, to see ourselves and our lives fulfilled in Christ. Another is to share the good news as Anna did, the first evangelist. She is the first human to share about the redemption found in Jesus Christ.

And finally, we have, a few centuries later, a holy woman in Italy named Catherine, who writes about God becoming human. Catherine writes that we can never reciprocate Christ’s love for us. In a dialogue, she speaks to God, “I ask you to love me with the same love with which I love you. But for me you cannot do this, for I loved you without being loved.” And then God replies, “This is why I have put you among your neighbors: so you can do for them what you cannot do for me—that is, love them without any concern for thanks…and whatever you do for them I will consider done for me.”

 We are never deserving of God’s love, in the fullness of it. But what we can do, as a response to that love, is love those people in our lives that also do not deserve our love. What we can do is love our enemies. What we can do is love the people that we already don’t like. What we can do is love the people who annoy us and bother us and vote differently and act differently and look differently; the people we can’t stand. May we try to love our enemies, not because we are so awesome, but because God is so awesome. It is impossible on our own love our enemies. You cannot do it. I cannot do it. It is not a skill you can get. It can only occur in a life infused with grace, so today you have to ask for it, you have to ask for the spirit to come into your life to offer mercy in your life, because God has loved you undeservedly, you can go forth and love others.

So we have these three ways of saying thank you at the birth of Jesus: hymns of praise, like Simeon, words of hope, like Anna, and actions of mercy, like Catherine. My brothers and sisters, my hope for you in this Christmas season, and it will be Christmas until January 6. You know, the 12 days of Christmas start on December 25. The world likes to move away from Christmas as fast as possible, but we don’t have to.

And so on this seventh day of Christmas, let us try to respond in every way. Let us sing songs of praise, let us share words of hope with each other, let us seek to love people in our lives who are unlovable.

We cannot fully say thank you, what we can do is try. Let us take a step of faith this day to thank our Lord for his everlasting love.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the amazing witness of Simeon and Anna, who show us that something worth waiting for is worth waiting a lifetime for. Help us to remember the patience and to live out their love of you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Waiting

series: Welcome

themes: patience-as-faith judgment non-judgment contemplation-and-action attentiveness-to-jesus scarcity-vs-abundance

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 13:24-30; Matthew 13:36-43; Psalm 130:5-8; Luke 10:38-42
**Series:** Welcome

> Preaching on the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, Wilson reframes patience not as passive resignation but as an active act of faith. Just as the householder forbids his slaves from pulling the weeds lest they uproot the wheat, Christians are called to withhold judgment of who is weed and who is wheat, trusting that sorting belongs to God at the harvest. Patience is faith in a God of unfailing love (Psalm 130), justice, and abundance rather than the world's scarcity and comparison. Drawing on Mary and Martha, he holds together action and contemplation as both good, and locates true waiting in attending to Jesus through prayer, fasting, worship, communion, and Christian conversation. The world's judgments of inadequacy are the weeds sown by the evil one; the call is to be the wheat we were made to be and let God handle the rest.

**Illustrations:** marshmallow-test, be-patient-advice, impatient-babies, not-carrot-weeding, cyprus-oregano-weed, central-texas-nutgrass, waiting-for-friends, mary-and-martha, jesus-never-shames-peter, attendre-attention-etymology

---

# July 23, 2023
## Waiting

>He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen! - Matthew 13:24-30

“Just be patienti,” is easy advice to give. It is hard advice to take. When you have a friend who can’t find the right job. You can tell them to be patient. Or a friend who just got out of a relationship and can’t seem to find the right person. You can tell them to be patient. How well your advice is received depends on a lot of factors, but let’s switch it up a little bit.

What if you just lost a job and you are looking for a new one and it is difficult to find something comparable. Then someone tells you to be patient. Or you just received a diagnosis that calls for a specialist but you can’t get an appointment for four months and then someone tells you to be patient. It is a trickier bit of advice to receive than it is to give.

Babies are rarely born patient. They are hungry or tired or eating or sleeping or some combination of all of those. Babies rarely practice delayed gratification.

As kids grow older, some can grow patience, although a child’s patience is not necessarily a predictor of future success.

The famous Marshmallow test where kids were told to not eat a marshmallow for 15 minutes in order to get another one was recently disproven. A child’s self-control does not predict success.

Patience isn’t just an innate quality. It is a habit that has to be practiced and inculcated. Patience is very important to God in ways that get deep into the heart of faith.

One of the ways Jesus talks about patience is with weeds.

Yes, we have more weeds this week. We know Jesus understood agriculture because he talked a lot about weeds. And anybody who has ever gardened or farmed anything has had to deal with weeds.
### Scripture
The passage for today has a different twist than the parable of the sower we read last week. The sower planted seeds in different places. Today, the seeds are planted in one place. As well, the seed doesn’t land in the weeds. The weeds came later. The evil one comes to bring the weeds in the night.
Even with the presence of the evil one, this is a parable about judgment and patience.
You don't have to be a super experienced farmer to tell the difference between weeds and the plants that you have planted. It's evident.

I look to check: Is that a carrot? No, it is not a carrot.
I'm just going to pull the not-carrot out so that my carrots will get plenty of water and nutrients and grow nice and plump. This is the natural human reaction to seeing a weed.

In the parable, the people are told to go against their instincts and not weed. They are told to hold back judgment. “No, don't pull the weeds yet. This is not your job.”
In the parable, pulling the weeds is akin to judging the goodness or badness of those around you. Judging something as a weed is a contextual thing.
I remember watching this documentary that I think was set in Cyprus, and it was about a woman who was a cook. What struck me was not her food, but the fact that when she went in her backyard to pick up some oregano, it was growing in between the bricks in her driveway. The oregano was a weed. It wasn't a volunteer. It naturally grew in the countryside. It naturally sprung up all over the place, even where it wasn't planted. It was a weed. It was unintentional, and yet it was, it was oregano. It was delicious.
Now, central Texas doesn't have such tasty weeds. You can't take nut grass and, and sprinkle a little bit on your pasta and bring out the flavor.
But it's important to remember that that what at first may seem a weed, may not be a weed because we are the not the ones who plant. This is really important. I'm gonna say it again, that we are not the ones who plant the word of God. We are not the planters. You are not the planter. You do not set out the plot of God's word in this world.
We have been plopped down out into a world where there are seeds planted by others.
Our job is not to pick and choose the weeds from the wheat. No, we are given another task by God. If we pulled up the weeds, we would pull up the wheat, as well. So, instead, we're called to wait. So instead we're called to have patience.

Patience is a challenging virtue. Patience is an act of faith. Waiting is an act of faith.
If you are going to meet some friends out and they haven't arrived yet, you stay and wait for them only because you believe that they're coming. You trust them. If you don’t think that they will come, you just head home.

We see the trust of patience in Psalm 130.

>I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
 more than watchmen wait for the morning,
    more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
    for with the Lord is unfailing love
    and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
    from all their sins.

My whole being waits for the Lord for with the Lord is unfailing love and full redemption. We wait for a reason. We don’t wait arbitrarily. We wait for a reason because with God is unfailing love, so God is worth the wait. We wait for judgment because with God is unfailing love.

In the Parable of the Sower, which we spoke about last week, Jesus exhorts us to care for the soil of our souls and the soil around us. With this parable, we are exhorted to wait and be patient in what God is already doing.

We have action and contemplation. Both are necessary. There are season of our life when we need to act for God and for the faith. And there are seasons of our life when we need to wait patiently for God, when we need to attend to God.

We need to be comfortable asking ourselves that question: am I in a season of action or a season of contemplation? It isn’t a simple either/or but a question of emphasis.

Luke illustrates this very well with the story of Mary and Martha.

Jesus is visiting his friends Mary and Martha. Martha is busy preparing the house for the guests while Mary sits at the foot of Jesus. Martha is flumoxed by her sister’s behavior, yet Jesus backs Mary and says that she has the greater share.

Over the last hundred years, this passage has been read with Mary being good and Martha being bad. Don’t be a Martha, etc..

This is not how the church has historically read it. Instead, it is read in a way that both options are good. Martha offers the life of action and service. This is good and necessary. Jesus doesn’t rebuke Martha, he simply commends her sister.

In our society of scarcity, a lack of a complement is often taken as an insult. If we are all applying for the same job, only one of us can get it. If you get the job, I don’t. This is the scarcity of this world, but this is not the kingdom of heaven. If God blesses my neighbor, that does not mean I will be cursed. If God blesses my sister, that does not mean I am in the wrong. Martha is necessary and important, but Mary has the greater share.

The early church understood Mary as the act of contemplating Jesus. The act of praying to Jesus and waiting on Jesus. As much as anything, this is what is going on with this parable of the wheat and tares.

Don’t judge others as weeds or wheat. Wait on God. Be faithful to God. Be the wheat you were created to be and God will sort out the rest. Focus on God and not on the righteousness of others.

When we think about this parable as individuals, it is important to remember how easy it is to spend our energy comparing ourselves to others. Comparing their success, their failure, their anything.

As a church, it is so easy to compare ourselves to others. Their success. Their size. Their signs. Etc.. It is also easy to compare ourselves to our past. To think about the good old days or the golden days and to feel like we don’t currently add up.

Jesus never tells anyone to think about how awesome they used to be and then to feel bad about themselves. Jesus is never like, “Peter, have you gained a few inches around your waist?” Or “Peter, I wish you could be more like John.”

No. This is never how Jesus treats people. Even with Mary and Martha. He doesn’t says, “Martha, I wish you could be more like your sister.” There is no comparison to each other.

Instead, Jesus offers us a way of life that looks beyond idle comparisons that the scarcity of the world demand. Patience is an act of faith in a God of abundance.

Patience is an act of faith in a God of justice. We don’t need to take justice into our own hands by judging the weeds. That is God’s job.

Patience is an act of contemplation. It is not passive but actively attending to the feet of Jesus, to the words of Jesus. The French word for wait is attendre, the root of the English word attention. To give something attention is to wait for it. Holy patience is actively attending more closely to Jesus than to the ways of the world. Attending more closely to the words of Jesus than the desires of comparison and scarcity.

The ways of waiting at the foot of Jesus are prayer, fasting, worship, communion, Christian conversation. In these we are not passive but we remember who God is and who we are. We let go of the judgment the world compels us to have at all times. I am not good enough. I am not pretty enough or handsome enough. If only I were like this other person...
These world judgments are the weeds sown by the evil one.

Let us wait for the Lord, for with God is unfailing love. Let us wait together as a church. let us not put ourselves in the positions of judgment but seek God in prayer, in service, in sacrifice, in love.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, you give us the air we breathe and the water we drink. You give us the word of God and hope for the future. Help us to have patience in a world that demands action. Help us to have patience because we believe more in your judgment than in our own.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Welcome

themes: welcoming-the-stranger radical-welcome resurrection-changes-everything justice-and-righteousness identity-of-jesus

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 10:40-42; John 1:1-46
**Series:** Welcome

> A first-Sunday introductory sermon at Covenant UMC on Matthew 10:40-42. Jesus gives no good first impression yet offers life; he commands the hard work of welcoming others without conditions. Welcoming a prophet, a righteous (just) person, or a thirsty little one includes us in their reward. The whole ethic rests on the resurrection: because Christ is risen, we live expansive lives that go out to be welcomed and welcome the stranger as we would our own.

**Illustrations:** jesus-poor-first-impression, nathaniel-what-good-from-nazareth, college-station-longhorn, not-tempted-by-murder, come-well-bienvenue, no-solicitation-sign, exhausting-prophets, austin-summer-thirst

---

# July 2, 2023
## Welcome
"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."
Matthew 10:40-42

Jesus does not give a good first impression. We see this throughout the gospels. He is not someone who's wowing others with his charisma. I mean, he goes to Peter and Andrew by the seashore and says, “lay down your nets and follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” That's not a nice joke to break the ice. It's not an easy thing to follow up.
Jesus goes up to another person and tells them to completely change their life before they even know who he is. If someone came up to you while you're fishing, fishing on a lake, a lake you like to go to, if you like fishing or another activity you do outside, maybe you're at a ballgame or at a restaurant, this person walks up to you and says that you need to change everything about what you're doing and you need to listen to him and go wherever he goes, I don't think that's gonna be a good first impression.
Jesus also doesn't dress for success. He doesn't. You could say it's a different time and place. I think that that's a misunderstanding. I think people in the ancient world also had an understanding of the way that appearance marks a lot of our lived realities.
That's not how Jesus saw it.
And not only does Jesus look weird, he doesn't look the part. He's not from the right place.

In the beginning of the gospel of John, after the beautiful prologue with this poetry, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things came into being through him. Without him not one thing came into being. After this beautiful prologue, after we hear about John the Baptist, Jesus is walking and Philip says to Nathaniel that he should go and see this Jesus guy.
Nathaniel says, what good could ever come out of Nazareth?
Jesus is not from the right kind of place.
Like for me, I'm from College Station. I grew up in College Station. Many people say, what good has ever come out of College Station. As a Longhorn fan, and you should know, I went to the University of Texas. Hook ‘Em. Sometimes I still think today disparagingly about myself. What good ever comes from College Station?
It's not a good first impression.

Jesus doesn't give a first good first impression, and yet he offers life.

In the reading from Matthew today, Jesus exhorts us to welcome others, which is one of the harder commandments to follow. It really goes deep. I mean, I think for a lot of people ‘thou shall not kill’ is an easier commandment to follow.
Some people are really tempted by murder. I'm not. This is a confession. Covenant's new pastor, not tempted by murder.
And yet Jesus asks a lot of things of us and one of the harder ones is this commandment about welcoming because it gets real super fast. A lot of religious talk and Bible talk can stay in the realm of the impersonal, or it can stay in the a spiritual realm that's about me and Jesus, or about me and God. It avoids the messiness of others. Welcoming others does not.

To welcome another person is to enter into a new relationship with another person. Can we read this again?

>”Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."

So Jesus begins the passage by saying, whoever welcomes you, welcomes me. It begins by an action of how we go into the world and how we live in the world and how people receive us. He commends us to live lives where other people will welcome us.

To be welcomed, first of all, means you have to go somewhere. If you're still at your house, you're not going to be welcomed by anybody. The onus is on you to do something, to act. “Whoever welcomes me, welcomes you.” When you act for Jesus, you give another the amazing privilege of welcoming Jesus. So Jesus starts by pushing us away from a stagnant life into a dynamic life that is continually expanding to include more of Gods children. Jesus commends an expansive life.
Then Jesus switches it a little bit. “Whoever welcomes a prophet receives a prophets reward.”
We are not only to seek to be welcomed, we are to welcome prophets. Usually, prophets are not welcome to people’s homes because they're telling people what they're doing wrong. Prophets tell society what they're doing wrong.
Prophets are not fun house guests. And yet Jesus says, whoever welcomes a prophet receives a prophets reward. Whoever welcomes a righteous person receives the reward of the righteous. What attribute is more detrimental to your perception of a person than self-righteousness, right?
And of course, self-righteousness is different from righteousness. But if you think someone is better than you, not just that they think they are, but if they actually are, it's kind of hard to really welcome them.

The word for righteousness in the Bible is dikaisunai, it is the same word for Justice. Justice and righteousness are equivalent in scripture. So to welcome the just is to receive the reward of the just and that can be hard to do. It can be hard to welcome someone who is more just and lives a holier life.

You can perform for them, but it's hard to welcome them, to include them. Propriety only goes so far. You can be courteous and still closed off. You can be courteous and not welcoming.

You can be courteous and not let them come well, which is the roots of the word. French and Spanish and German all have the same roots, the same words for welcome: bienvenue, bienvenido, Willkommen.
This is a concept that crosses cultural barriers: come well. Come well. Come well prophets. Come well righteous.

and then we get down to the heart of the matter.
Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones and the name of a disciple, truly, I tell you, none of use will lose their award.
Jesus is meddling, as my parents would say. It's all in good fun to stay impersonal, but the words of Jesus get personal. And they get personal for a serious reason.
If the Christian faith is just about staying on the surface, if the Christian faith is just about continuing the status quo, or just feeling generally good about yourself. If the Christian faith is about, you know, offering a good impression to others, being well thought of, it's got nothing that can save you, nothing at all. There’s nothing true about it. We're at a loss and it's just as good a religion or philosophy or way of life as anything else.
However, if Jesus really is the son of God, if Jesus really died on the cross for our sins, to release us from sin, and then three days later rise again, then the world is different.

We should have lives that are welcoming to the prophets, to the righteous. We should welcome those who call us out, the prophets. And we should welcome those who live a life of Justice and can model Justice for us, the righteous. We should live lives that offer cold water to the little ones are thirsty. And my friends in Austin, in the summertime, our little ones are thirsty. They are thirsty for the water of life. They are thirsty for the literal water that is drying up from our lake. Even if they refuse to drink water, they are thirsty.
We should also  live a life where people welcome us. We should see that as a gift. By living a life of faith, we can bless others because when they welcome us, they welcome Jesus. Not because we're so good, but because God is good. Because Jesus is good. So, we should not withhold that blessing from others, and we should welcome others. We should welcome the righteous. We should welcome prophets, we should welcome little ones. The way you welcome your child or your friend home, should be the way you welcome the stranger.

We should not have conditions on it. That's where the meddling gets deep. We like to put conditions on people. We welcome. We also put signs up that says, no solicitation. It's a condition. I mean, it makes life easier, but it's a condition.
We could just as easily put a sign up that says, no prophesying. I mean, if you ever been around a prophet, they are exhausting. All of them seem like they were exhausting to hang out with. Reading Jeremiah or Isaiah, it must have been exhausting to be around them. It must have been exhausting to be around Elijah. There might have been signs in the ancient world, “no prophets welcome here.”
But what Jesus is pointing out here at Matthew 10 is that when we welcome another, we are included with them. When we welcome a prophet, we are included in the prophet's reward. When we welcome a righteous person, when we welcome a child, and when we are welcomed, they're included in us.
We welcome, not because someone gave us a good first impression, or we thought they'd be a fun hang at a game, but because Jesus Christ is risen. This one fact changes all of human existence. This one fact changes the world and if we think it is true, it changes how we treat other people. It changes how we welcome.

It is good to be here. It is good to be welcomed here, but I am here and you are here because Jesus Christ is risen and he has a purpose for us in this world, and we can offer ourselves in that.
When we see that Christ’s resurrection is true, we see that God is good, and that a life of love is opened up for us. This life of love is made full in the body of Christ, which is the church, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit in this world. This is who we can be together. This is what we can do together. We can welcome are neighbors. We can go out in the world to be welcomed by our neighbors. We don’t need to keep our walls tight because Christ is risen and the Spirit has come.

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