title: Love Covers a Multitude of Sins

themes: sin-as-missing-the-mark love-covers-sin sanctification relationship-with-god easter-works-of-love grace-and-forgiveness holiness

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Peter 4:8; Luke 23:34; Luke 23:43; John 4:1-26; Matthew 9:9; Luke 19:1-10; Exodus 20:2; Revelation 21:1-4
**Series:** 2021

> Part of the Easter 'Works of Love' series, this sermon on 1 Peter 4:8 distinguishes love that genuinely covers and heals sin from merely hiding it (illustrated by the preacher's festering Appalachian Trail blisters). Using the Greek wordplay of calypto/apocalypse and hamartia as missing the mark, it reframes sin as straying from relationship with God rather than a moralistic rule-list, and points to Jesus covering sin in the lives of Barabbas, the woman at the well, Matthew, and Zacchaeus. It calls hearers to admit their need for grace, receive sanctifying love at the table, and grow in holiness as children of God.

**Illustrations:** appalachian-trail-blisters, calypto-apocalypse-wordplay, hamartia-archery, first-commandment-i-am-the-lord, supporting-actors-metaphor, car-loan-forgiveness, admired-person-holiness

---

# Love Covers a multitude of sins
## May 2

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

I've shared a little bit about how I enjoy hiking. I hiked a lot during my life, but especially after college, when I took a bus from Austin to Maine to walk south on the Appalachian Trail. I had a lot of gear that first few week. One piece of gear I had was a pair of really good, solid hiking boots. They were good boots. I had worn them in. They were solid.They were designed for heavy duty trekking, carrying a lot of stuff on your back in low-mileage journeys. Whereas thru-hiking on the Appalachian trail needs to be very light. You want to stay light to allow for high mileage days, but I didn’t understand that yet.
So I took my backpack full of gear and started hiking. In the first week, the trail goes through this area of Maine called the hundred mile wilderness. And it might as well have been called the hundred mile swamp. It was a swamp. I forded a few rivers and walked probably 20 miles on bog logs, which are logs on a bog: it's a bog log. They keep you from sinking into mud, but they are as slick as ice. And so I slipped a lot and my feet fell in the water a lot. And you know, waterproof boots are great, they keep the water outside your boot. But if water gets in, they keep the water inside your boot as well. So a series of blisters developed over that first week on my heels. They were not comfortable. When I first noticed them, I was 50 miles away from any place I could go. There was nothing I could do. I only had a little food and a limited amount of water. I was able to walk with pain, but I could still walk, so I kept going and the blisters got bigger. You know, when you have a blister that's bleeding or any kind of wound, there is an option to ignore it.
I mean, if I had a cut on my arm, I could, completely ignore it and move on. I could, I could cover it up and ignore it. I could bandage it and try not to think about it, but it's not going to get any better. What I ended up doing was switch to Chacos. I had some Chacos for camp shoes, which is also just like a really amateur mistake. Chacos are pretty heavy for sandals, but I started wearing Chacos, i was able to dry out the Chacos. They didn't irritate the blister and my body healed. With time and care, the blisters scabbed over and then went away.
So healing a bleeding, pussing, blister is one thing. How can we heal the sin in our life?
### Series Intro
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on the works of love. On looking at how we can respond to the miracle of Christ's resurrection in this season of Easter in practical ways. This week we're talking about how love covers a multitude of sins. Today’s passage comes from 1 Peter: For love covers a multitude of sin.
Some translations say love hides a multitude. The word in Greek is literally cover, calypto. There's a version of it that is very familiar to us: apocalypse Apocalypto.
Apocalypto means to uncover something. The apocalypse of John is the uncovering of Christ's true plan for all of creation. The apocalypse is not the four horsemen. It's what happens at the end of the book of revelation. And behold. I saw a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem descending, and there was no more weeping nor crying nor gnashing of teeth.
That's the apocalypse. That is what is uncovered. Here in 1 Peter 4, the word is to cover. As well, the word for multitude is also another word for crowd, like a crowd of people. It is not a fixed amount but a large number that increases or decreases over time.
Love covers a crowd of sin. How does that work?
### What is a sin?
We need to start with what a sin is. And this is something I know our confirmation crew has talked about. And it's one of those things that we need to clarify because sin is a word used in popular culture, but it's also one of those words that we use in English in very different ways from its use in Greek or in Hebrew. Sin is commonly thought of as just bad things faults or things you don't want to do or vices. The language of vice is very personal, it focuses on the things I do and the things I shouldn't do. It's all about me. A lot of societies are based around this. We have laws for individual behavior and action. The Ten commandments are often read in this fashion: do this, don't do that. You know, honor your mother and father don't bear false witness. Don't kill, don't steal. Don't covet, don't commit adultery. These kinds of things. But what that view of the commandments misses is what the first commandment is. The first commandment has nothing to do with me or you. God's first commandment to Moses and to the people from Mount Sinai was not about their moral behavior. It was: I am the Lord your God.
When we talk about sin, we need to start with who God is. Sin is not this list of legal parameters under which we can best live; it's about our relationship with God. Hamartia is the Greek word for sin. It is an archery term, a term used when you miss the target. And so if you're shooting an arrow and you don't hit the target, you commit Hamartia. Here, it refers to ways in which we stray from the path of God. But it can only make sense in the context of who God is. There's no such thing as a sin apart from relationship with God. In fact, one of the things Paul emphasizes is that we only know our sin because of our knowledge of God. After we become aware of God's presence and existence, then we become aware of the distance between ourselves and God.
And then we became aware that we cannot, on our own, bridge that gulf between ourselves and God. That's why we need grace. In the early church and throughout history, there's been different emphases on where grace impacts us. For instance, for many, what It means to say that I am saved, that you are saved, primarily has to do with what's called justification, this is what Christ does in the atonement and how the resurrection functions for us.
In the early part of the church, salvation had more to do with sanctification, which means being made holy, being made more Christ-like. Sanctification is about the transformation God continues to do in us. In this understanding, salvation is about this transformation of going from being a child of sin to a holy child of God. What it means to be a child of sin does not mean to be a person of debauchery or whatever cultural assumptions we may have. It's primarily about our relationship with God.
### Scripture
Now we get back to this issue for the scripture for today. Love covers a crowd of sins. Love covers it up. Unlike how I covered up my blister and tried to walk on it and forget about it, when love covers something up, instead of it continuing to fester, sin is healed. Love doesn’t just cover one sin at a time but a multitude, a crowd of sin. Sin and love do not mix. They are oil and water. If we are to understand that sin is straying from God, we should understand love as connecting with God; following God. Love is seeing as God sees. Having the eyes of God, the heart of God in our lives. To love someone truly is to see them as God sees them and loves them.
Not as this object to be used for us and for our advantage. The fact that we are made in the image of God means that we are not objects to God nor should other be objects to us. Other people whom we love are not just supporting actors in the movie of our life. They are individual agents with will and purpose.
### The Life of Jesus
And we see how love lives and what love does most purely when we look to the life of Jesus Christ. This is how love lives. The God who is love lives in this way. And we have many examples in the life of Jesus, of the love of Christ covering a multitude of sins. It's not just forgiving them, but covering them, overwhelming them. Christ doesn't just forgive sins like you forgive a car loan and move on with your life. Christ overwhelms sin. We see on the cross with Barrabas the thief. He asks Jesus to remember him and Jesus doesn’t just remember him, he says, today you shall be with me in paradise. To the people who crucify him, jesus says, father, forgive them for they don't know what they do. When Jesus comes to the adulterous woman at the well, he doesn't see her as an adulterous woman, but a woman at a well. His vision is not on her sin, but beyond sin. And in that Jesus covers sin. It happened when he is calling the disciples. He calls Matthew, the tax collector and covers his sin. It happens with Zacchaeus when he says , “today, I am going to your house.” That's the thing about Jesus and about love. Love doesn't just look past sin. Jesus literally loves the sin out of the people. We still need to understand sin, not in this moralistic way, but in the specific way of connection and relationship with God and the ways that people stray. And that sin is not just a thing that other people do, but it is the way that we turn and stretch from God. Sin is bad. Sin is not from God and it corrupts and wounds us. And if we refuse to admit it, if we refuse to admit those ways that we turn away from God, those ways that we miss the mark, we'll not be able to receive the overwhelming love of Jesus Christ that covers the crowd of our sins. If we fixate on salvation as purely this thing that happened when we said we were saved, we're going to miss out on the salvation that continues to be offered this day and each day to you and to me.
To cover the multitude of our sins does not to leave us in the same place, but brings us to our destination with God. If I get lost on a trail but refuse to admit I am lost, things are only going to get worse. If we deny our need, if we say, “no, I'm fine. I'm good. I got it. No worries. I got it covered.” If we refuse to receive the help of God's mercy, if we refuse to admit that we have missed the mark, we are the ones who suffer.
### Conclusion
In the season of Easter, if we are going to accept God's grace and God's love, we must admit that we need God's grace and God's love. And then we can receive the love that covers a multitude of sins. Then we can receive the love that covers and smothers sin, that heals us and brings us back from the ways that we have strayed from God, so that we can see rightly and see God's love rightly and see ourselves rightly as children of God, that we can be honest with ourselves, with others in humility and righteousness.
And that is possible for us. It is possible for you to become more holy. It is possible for me to become more holy. This is not just for other people. It's not just for people who were born holy. Think about someone in your life whom you admire and you respect, someone who's shown courage and thoughtfulness and care. That is holiness. Holiness is not about being prim and proper or being boring and dull, but showing life and sharing love. What good they have points to the God who is love and what good they have comes from the God who is love. And the good that came to them can come to you because it is from God.
Love covers a multitude of sins. Love surrounds you. Let us rejoice this day! Let us receive love at this table. You are not the worst things you have done. You are a child of God. You are loved. You have been made new.
In the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit. Amen.


site: sermons

title: Love Does Not Seek Its Own

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: bee-creek-umc

themes: self-giving-love christian-perfection sanctification fatherhood-of-god identity-in-christ new-birth radical-welcome

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Corinthians 13:4-5; Isaiah 66:13; Deuteronomy 32:11; Micah 6:8; 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Luke 15:3-7; John 3:1-8
**Series:** 2021

> An Easter-season sermon in the 'Works of Love' series on 1 Corinthians 13's 'love does not seek its own.' Using Anna Jarvis's founding of Mother's Day and a Seinfeld episode, Wilson argues that true love delights in the other's distinctiveness rather than seeking a mirror of oneself. Domineering and small-minded people seek themselves; loving people encourage others to become fully themselves. Drawing on God-as-mother imagery (Isaiah, Deuteronomy), the choosing of David, the lost sheep, and Nicodemus's new birth, he reframes salvation not as a momentary justification but as ongoing sanctification—what Wesley calls Christian perfection or completion. To be complete is to let go of all the unloving things and become a true self who can give love without limit, because God's love is without cap.

**Illustrations:** anna-jarvis-mothers-day, seinfeld-jerry-dates-himself, samuel-chooses-david, shepherd-leaves-ninety-nine, nicodemus-new-birth, mountaintop-forgiveness-not-finished

---

# Love Does Not Seek Its Own
## May 9

“Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it does not seek its own, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints,”
1 Corinthians 13:4-5 CEB

In 1905, Anna Jarvis’s mother died. And she was sad. She had seen a lot of mothers die, but more than that, Anna Jarvis had seen a lot of children die. She had seen a lot of mothers care for wounded children and go unnoticed by society and she wanted do something about it. In 1905, there was not a hallmark holiday card for mother's day.
There were no cards or chocolates or roses. There were no phone calls. Anna Jarvis, from Grafton West Virginia, was a member of St. Andrews Methodist Church, and she wanted to do something about it. She had organized mothers clubs after the civil war. So many boys had been lost in that war. She had helped mothers who were grieving their lost children or taking care of their wounds as their children slowly died, sons who were not able to have the lives that they had expected. Sons who couldn't take over the farm because they had lost a leg in the war. So Anna Jarvis started writing letters and petitioning. In 1908, Congress rejected a bill to make Mother’s Day a national holiday, but she continued. Anna then visited every state in the union and spoke about Mother’s Day until it was signed into a law four years later.
The point of the first mother’s days was not to divide women between mothers and those who are not mothers, or to separate mothers from those who can't have children or those who didn't, or to separate women from men, but to acknowledge that we all have mothers, whether they are with us still or not. If you are a mother, that is wonderful, but mother's day is not about mothers acknowledging themselves or feeling awesome. Anna Jarvis had lost her mom and that's what spurned her to start Mother's Day. It was not to honor herself as a mom, but to remember those other mothers that each of us have.
### Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on works of love, on responding to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the season of Easter with practical actions. We have been looking most often at 1 Corinthians 13, at different passages from that famous poem. Love is patient love is kind love, does not boast love does not seek its own. That is what we're looking at today. Over and over again in the Scriptures, God shows us love and examples of love. That when there is love in someone, they love another for their distinctiveness, not for their similarity.
You don't love someone because they are just like you. In the TV show. Seinfeld, at one point, a woman saves Jerry’s life and they have the same order for dinner (Cheerios, not much milk) same initials, and same sense of humor. He thinks he is in love because he finally found what he was looking for all those years: himself. They think it is wonderful at first. It goes through the show, but then the end of the day, they realize they can't date each other because it would be like dating themselves. And they don't really like themselves. But to love someone is not to make them just like yourself.
That's what the domineering person does, or the controlling person. They see others as objects to be changed because they don't seek the good of the other. They seek their own. Similar is the small-minded person. The small minded person does not love another out of their heart and does not seek the good of the other, but constantly finds ways that others have fallen short of their expectations. And so the small minded person again is just seeking themselves. Whereas the loving one encourages the other to be themselves, this points to what motherhood can be, not what it always is. Some people have hard experiences with their mothers and with their parents. The ideal is not the reality often, but it is a possibility formed in this intimate relationship between a mother and their child.

In the scriptures, especially in the old Testament, God is often described as a mother. in Isaiah 66:13: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; in Jerusalem you will be comforted.”
Also earlier in Deuteronomy 32:11, “Like an eagle protecting its nest, hovering over its young, God spread out his wings, took hold of Israel, carried him on his back.”

So the point here is not that we all need mothers to be safe. In fact, it points against the idea of salvation as this momentary thing that then we move on from. Last week, I spoke about a misunderstanding in the last few hundred years of salvation as simply justification, as just this momentary thing. As opposed to salvation as sanctification or transformation. Salvation as holiness. We can understand what that looks like more when we think about the relationship of a mother and a child, we think about what a mother wants for their child. What does a loving mother want from the child? They want them to be themselves.
What does God want from you? What does the Lord require of you from Micah 6:8: “to love justice, to seek mercy, to walk humbly with your God.” That is us being ourselves. That is you being yourself. God wants you to be the most you that you can be. God wants you to be the most you filled with love that you can be. Even when we don’t know who we are or we think we are someone we are not.
God doesn't want you to be someone other than yourself. Sometimes, though, we may not feel good enough. We may not feel that to be ourselves is good enough or worthwhile. We may think that our mistakes define us more than our virtues.
Think about God sending the prophet Samuel to the home of Jessie, looking for the next King of Israel. The older brother who is strong and handsome is a good warrior and could plow a field by himself. But that is not the one God chooses. And then Samuel looks at the other brother and the other. And those are not the ones God chooses. Instead, Samuel asks Jessie if there's another brother and Jessie calls the youngest brother, David, from the field. David is small but God does not look at the outside. God sees in the heart. Sometimes, though, we may not feel good or our heart is worthy We may feel that we have burned bridges with people and relationships and it is not worth it for even our mother’s to love us.
I think we should understand Jesus's parable of the 99 sheep in this way. If the shepherd was seeking its own good, it would've left that sheep to die.
But instead, he leaves the 99 to go find that one. The one who was caught in the brambles. When a sheep is caught in the brambles, it is because they did something wrong. That's the gist of it. It's not like, “Oh, I'm just stuck,” kind of thing. They were going too far. They were reaching too far. They went over the edge, but that wasn't the point. The shepherd didn't go and seek the sheep in order to reprimand them, but to bring them home. Love does not seek its own. To seek ones own is simply self-love, selfishness, self-seeking, or whatever other names the unloving disposition has. Love is a giving of oneself.

Love does not seek its own. We understand love, we know love by those experiences of being loved, but we most fully know love by the life of Jesus Christ. Who did not need to love us. Who did not have a genetic predisposition to love us. There was no evolutionary reason for Jesus to love us. To die for us.
We see how Jesus treats his disciples. When we see how Jesus treats strangers or the people who come to hear him speak, we see love lived out. The love that does not seek its own. As well, we need to understand this love, not as this momentary thing that is fleeting; but in a way, the love of God is a new birth..
Jesus speaks about this in the gospel of John. Nicodemus comes in the night to talk to him. And then Nicodemus asks, “does that mean I need you to go back inside my mother's belly?” Jesus says, “no, you must be born of water and the spirit.”
 The thing about childbirth, I don't know a ton of it. I've never given birth to a child, but it changes you. Giving birth changes. You know what else changes you: being born, being born changes you.
It is an event. It is an event, but when someone gives birth to a child or adopts a child, are they done being a mother? No
If God took you to the mountaintop and gave you this powerful experience,  that you felt your sins forgiven; you had new life in store for you. And then God just says, “okay, go along.” Are you finished? Are you complete? No, God wants to complete us like a mother wants their child to grow and to be themselves. Love does not seek its own. If love was just about notching wins on the belt: how many kids you can have, how many people you can save, and did not care what happened after the fact, it would not be love, but love does not seek its own.
So then for us this day, my brothers and sisters, for those of you who are mothers, for those who are not, what is there left for us?
We must remember that love does not seek its own, but the good of the other and the good of the other is for them to be fully themselves. For them to let go of all the not loved things in their life. This is what John Wesley calls Christian perfection. Another way to say it would be Christian completion: to be complete in God. Being complete as ourselves is to have all the not-love things, all the sins no longer here, because we don't need them. We don't need sin to be ourselves. We don't need sin to find our way in the world. We don't have to hurt others to be ourselves. We don't have to hurt ourselves to be ourselves. We don't have to have self despair or self-deprecation to be ourselves. We don't need to tear ourselves down to be ourselves. We don't need to tear others down to be ourselves. We don't need to compare ourselves to others unfavorably to be ourselves. We don't need to compare our children to others to be our selves. You are a child of God. You are forgiven. You are loved and you can love in a way that does not seek its own. You can love others. Not because they're fun or interesting, or because you're related to them. But because you want them to be themselves. You can give of yourselves to others. You can give of yourself, not in a limited capacity, but unlimited.
There is no cap on the love you can share in this world because there is no cap on the love that God has given you. You can never repay a mother’s love. You can never repay God's love for you. But what you can do is in turn love others. Not because they are awesome or they are great, not because you awesome or you are great, but because God loves you. Right now. In this place. And you can love in a way that builds up, that covers a multitude of sins. You can love in a way that believes all things and hopes all things and sees the other people in your life as children of God.

In the name of the father, the son, and the Holy spirit.
Amen.

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: Miriam, Miriam

themes: hidden-women-of-scripture danger-of-a-single-story ordinary-faithfulness god-uses-the-overlooked praise courage your-story-matters

text:
**Scripture:** Exodus 2:1-10; Exodus 1:8-22; Judges 4:1-16; Judges 5:3; 1 Samuel 2:1; Romans 16:1-7
**Series:** 2021

> Part of the 'Songs of the Bible' series, this sermon recovers overlooked women of Scripture as a corrective to the 'danger of a single story.' Opening with Adichie's TED talk, Pastor Wilson moves through a series of mini-portraits: Miriam, whose brave watch over the basket saved Moses and thus the people; Deborah, the judge whose song of praise predates David; Hannah, whose faithfulness and song foreshadow Mary's Magnificat; and the New Testament women in Paul's greetings, Phoebe the deacon and Junia the apostle, plus Lydia and Priscilla. The point: most of us are not Moses, Peter, or Paul, yet God calls each person to ordinary, brave faithfulness. Your story and your song matter, and the call is simply to respond to God rather than to win acclaim.

**Illustrations:** adichie-single-story-ted-talk, miriam-guarding-the-basket, balm-in-gilead-hymn, mother-teresa-do-it-anyway, junia-junius-mistranslation

---

# June 27
## Miriam, Miriam

Now a man from Levi’s household married a Levite woman. The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that the baby was healthy and beautiful, so she hid him for three months. When she couldn’t hide him any longer, she took a reed basket and sealed it up with black tar. She put the child in the basket and set the basket among the reeds at the riverbank. The baby’s older sister stood watch nearby to see what would happen to him. Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, while her women  servants walked along beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds, and she sent one of her servants to bring it to her. When she opened it, she saw the child. The boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him. She said, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then the baby’s sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Would you like me to go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter agreed, “Yes, do that.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I’ll pay you for your work.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. After the child had grown up, she brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I pulled him out of the water.” - Exodus 2:1-10

The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a Ted talk called the Danger of a single story. And it's really lovely. She talks about growing up in Nigeria and the stories she would absorb in her world, but also how powerful her experience was when she went to the United States for the first time. And she says that before she came to the U.S., she never identified herself as African. She knew herself as Nigerian. She was from this certain place. She had a middle class background. But how, in the US, whenever Africa came up in a conversation, everyone would look to her for the answer, even though she had no idea what was going on in Namibia.
As well, when she first started studying in the US, she says,
>  My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music,” and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals. . . .

There is a similar danger when we read stories in the Bible, when we tell these stories to our kids. There's a danger of a single story, of missing out on the complexity of what God is doing and how God conveys transformation in this world. There is a danger of making assumptions about what matters and what doesn’t, about who matters and who doesn’t. When we share a single story of the Bible, Miriam isn’t there, nor is Deborah, nor is Hannah or Junia. Even more so, no matter our gender, when we assume a single story, we often do not include ourselves. God uses other people. Who am I for God to use me?
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible, My friends, we're continuing the series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing.
Today, it's Miriam, Miriam.
We're going to start with the story of Miriam, Moses's sister, but we're not going to end there. Today's sermon is going to be more like a few mini sermons, looking at some hidden stories within the scriptures that highlight the power of God to use people for good. We start with Miriam, Moses's sister. We wouldn't have the story of Moses without Miriam. Her name doesn't come up often in songs to children. That's why I wanted to write a song about Miriam. And so we have the beginning of the story of Moses in the basket. We need to start with the end of Genesis, where Joseph brings all the people of Israel to Egypt because the land is better there.

Things change, though, at the beginning of Exodus, the second book of the Bible. It says.

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor... They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”

 And so we have this woman who gives birth to a child, Moses, and she wants him to live. She follows the command of Pharaoh and puts him in the river. So she puts him in a basket and it floats. Baskets don’t just float where you want them to go, though. When you put a boat in a body of water, it doesn’t care where you want it to go. Unless you have some propulsion. But his sister, Miriam, follows him. And we have this scene where the basket comes up into the space where Pharaoh’s daughter is bathing. The princess notices that he is a Hebrew baby, likely because he was circumcised. Then Miriam does an amazing thing. She does an incredibly brave thing. Miriam comes over and it goes up to Pharaoh's daughter. Miriam could be killed for this and her whole family could be killed for this, but she acts on faith.
Because of her brave action, not only is Moses raised by his actual mother, his birth mother, Moses is raised with his people. Moses was raised with a memory of his people. When he' older, he will go back to Pharaoh's court and events will happen that end with him killing an overseer who is hurting the Hebrew people. Moses flees. He goes to the desert. He gets married and becomes a shepherd. And then he comes to this mountain where there was a bush that is burning, but not consumed. And God speaks to Moses and says, “Take off your shoes. This is holy ground. I am the God of your forefathers. I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I want you to go back to Pharaoh to say, let my people go.” Were it not for Miriam, Moses could not have got to that holy moment where God sent him to free his people. As well, we can also understand that Moses survived in the river because of Miriam. I can see her standing out in front of him, throwing rocks at the crocodiles, walking off boats that would have smashed him to pieces. Because of the love of the sister, a brother is saved. Because of the love of the sister, the people are saved. The story matters. Miriam matters.
## Deborah
Moving later in the Old Testament to the book of Judges, we meet Deborah. Deborah was one of the first judges. After the time of Joshua, after the conquest of Canaan, after, you know, the people are freed and they spend 40 years in the wilderness and they take back the promised land. And then there was a time called the period of the judges when there were no king in Israel. The tribes ruled themselves independently, but there were certain judges who were lifted up by God to speak for God. Deborah is one of the first, At this time, there's a king in Canaan who is aimed at destroying the Hebrew people. He sees them as these upstarts who have come to this land. Deborah sends for Barak and tells him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, to take your army against the enemy. And Barak says, “if you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” Deborah went with him and the enemy was defeated. And then Deborah sings. Before David and Solomon, Deborah sings to the Lord a song of praise about the power of God.

Hear, kings!
    Listen, rulers!
I, to the Lord,
    I will sing.
I will make music to the Lord,
    Israel’s God.

God used Deborah to save the people: Barak could not do it alone.
## Hannah
We can next jump to Hannah in 1 Samuel, Hannah was married, but she was barren. And she knew that God had a purpose for her. She prayed for a child. She eventually came and offered to God this vow that if God blessed her with a child, she would give the child back to God to serve in the temple and God answered prayer gave her a son Samuel, and she remained faithful to God.
And when he was old enough, she brought him back to the temple to be a prophet. And then, she sang a song to the Lord. In the song of Hannah, we hear what will powerfully become apparent in the Magnificat of Mary, we hear of the power of God. She sings, “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God.”  Without Hannah and the faithfulness of Hannah, there would be no Samuel, there would be no king Saul, there would be no king David.
These figures in the old Testament are lifted up pretty dramatically, but in the New Testament, there are also a number of figures who are central to the birth of the church who have often been pushed aside in favor of a single story.
## New Testament
We find them and we meet them in the book of acts and at the end of Paul's letters. When you read the letters of Paul, Like Romans and 1 & 2 Corinthians, one surprising thing is how much like letters they are. Seems obvious, but they are not often read that way. Usually they are presented as law or philosophy or doctrine, treatises of technical language, but the central aspect of Paul's letters is that they are letters. Letters aren't just about instruction. They aren't just about explanation. Letters also greet people, and the letters of Paul have shout-outs all throughout them. For instance, here is Romans chapter 16:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.

Wait, who is Phoebe? She is a deacon? He goes on with the shoutouts.

3 Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, 4 and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5 Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked very hard among you. 7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

Paul calls Phoebe a deacon and he calls Junia an apostle. Over the years, there have been versions of the Bible that mistranslated Junia into Junius in order to maintain the presumption of a male only priesthood. But Junia in Greek is a female name.
Paul lifts up Lydia and Priscilla, as well. These stories point to what happens behind the scenes. What happens in the background, what is not on full presentation. These women were central to the spread of the Gospel, though they didn’t write the gospels and their names aren’t on our churches.

And I think it's so important to share with children the names of Miriam, the names of Deborah and Hannah, the names of, of Lydia and Junia and Priscilla.
Most of us are not going to be apostles like Paul or Peter. Most of us are not going to be Moses or Aaron. Most of us are not going to be Samson. And God doesn't ask us to be only those kinds of people. Instead, God calls and asks us to be faithful, like Miriam, to be brave in surprising ways. God calls us to be faithful, like Deborah, to accept God's wisdom and to use it. God calls us to be faithful, like Hannah, to seek out the Lord’s will. God calls us to be faithful, like Junia, to be an apostle for the Lord. Who's not trying to make a great name for herself, but just trying to be faithful, God calls us to be like Lydia and Priscilla, again, not to be on the front of the church guidebook, but to humbly build the church.

As the old hymn has it,

If you cannot preach like Peter,
if you cannot pray like Paul,
you can tell the love of Jesus,
who died to save us all.

You don't have to be a Peter or a Paul to be a Christian. You don't have to be James or John to be faithful. You don't have to be a Moses or a Joseph or an Abraham to follow God. We don't need to act a certain way. We don't need to be a certain way. God is offering to you a life of purpose, a life of love and transformation.
This day, your story matters. This day, your song matters. What are you going to sing about? We don't know if Deborah and Hannah had good voices. The point was not the quality of their tone, but their response to God. What are you going to sing about? Who are you going to sing about? Who are you going to share your song with? Is there someone in your life who needs to hear God’s song of love for them?

Are you going to sing about yourself? Are you going to sing about what's popular? Are you going to sing about what everybody else knows? Are you going to go with the tide of the culture? Are you going to sing a different song? Are you going to sing a bold song? Like Miriam. Are you going to step out and speak truth to the power of Pharaoh's daughter? Are you going to step out and speak truth to the power of the king of Canaan? Are you going to speak out? Are you going to live out a life of faithfulness like Priscilla and Junia. Are you going to be willing to be misunderstood in order to be faithful to God? As Mother Teresa said,

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

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


title: Palm Sunday: Practicing Living

themes: facing-fear communion-of-saints problem-of-evil discipleship presence-of-god

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 11:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30; John 13:36; John 16:7
**Series:** 2021

> A Palm Sunday sermon on Mark's account of Jesus entering Jerusalem. Beginning with his sons imitating each other, the preacher frames discipleship as 'practicing living.' He argues the crowd that sang Hosanna was right to do so even though they would later cry 'crucify,' because our actions are not invalidated by later failure; fear of failure is a greater sin than failure itself (cf. Peter's denial, the parable of the Talents). Drawing on Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, he shows that the answer to the problem of evil and to struggle is not perfect argument but embracing others and looking to the saints, who are 'visible gospels' that point to the God present in us. He calls hearers to imitate the saints in their lives and to sing Hosanna anyway, closing with Mother Teresa's 'Do It Anyway' poem.

**Illustrations:** ephraim-imitating-dominic, family-meal-falls-apart, theudas-roman-crackdown, brothers-karamazov-ivan-alexei, father-zosima-decay, francis-xavier-mission, mother-teresa-anyway-poem

---

# Palm Sunday 2021

Palm Sunday Practice

Ephraim and Dominic are at this wonderful age when they still love each other. It is amazing. It is amazing. Siblings who love each other. Ephraim loves his brother. He gets so excited to see his brother. If Alina or I go out with Dominic, he says ‘where Domi go’.

We tell Domi at the dinner table, “Domi, your brother is watching you. Show him how you can sit.” Then Dominic may or may sit, but if Dominic twirls his fork, Ephraim will immediately try to do what his brother did. It is amazing how long it takes to instill a good behavior and how swiftly Ephraim can pick up a bad behavior. Dominic may look outside, Ephraim gets up to look outside. Dominic starts babbling, Ephraim starts babbling.

The good and the bad.

Ephraim is trying out how to be a human, how to be a boy from his brother, from the closest person to him. He is practicing living. That is what growing up is, it is practicing living. And I think it doesn’t stop. We continue to try to practice to live.

We practice on our own and so often we fall short.

It is like when we have a really good meal as a family. Every sits and eats everything. It is amazing. And the next meal will be like the boys have never seen a fork or a table or food in their life and it will be like we haven’t taught them anything.

Ephraim is trying to be a big kid. Alina and I are trying to be parents, and sometimes it does not work out.

I think this sense of trying helps us understand what is going on in this passage for today from the gospel of Mark. We have one of the great holy days of the year. A day that has its own name: Palm Sunday. It is the day Jesus enters Jerusalem. It is one of the rare texts that is found in all four of the gospels.

Mark is really into Holy Week. He has Holy Week Down. You can tell in the hand out. See how each day in Holy Week has a reading. Everything has been a build up until this. And we see with the people crying Hosanna. We see this with the disciples going out to get the donkey. And it is weird, there is more detail in Mark about acquiring the Donkey than actually entering Jerusalem. So they do that. They acquire the donkey and the people sing Hosanna to the king.

These rallies in Jerusalem happened every once in a while. What is interesting about Palm Sunday is what doesn’t happen. When Theadeus led a large number of people from Jerusalem to the Jordan the Romans called him seditious and sent out a thousand troops to crush him and behead him. The entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem did not lead to a Roman intervention so it did not lead to a Roman panic. What happened to the people who cheered Hosanna?

That is the question for us today? What happened to those people? Where did they go?  Many of us know that we will see them again in a couple of days screaming, crucify him. What fickle people!

It is so tempting to disassociate ourselves from them. And yet, they still should have sung Hosanna. Our actions are not invalidated by the subsequent failure. We think too highly of ourselves when we cannot imagine life without perfect action.

This is the perfection of the world. The perfection of flawless ness. The perfection of the world. The perfection of a robot. Not the perfection of love. Not the perfection of the love shown by Jesus who forgives failures. We will see in a few days Peter deny Jesus three times. Is Peter forsaken for this? No. Peter is still lifted up as the greatest of the apostles. Failure does not get one kicked out of the kingdom of God. As we see in the parable of the Talents from Matthew 25. Usually fear of failure is a far greater sin than failure itself. The fear of failing God keeps us from loving. WHereas failure helps us to see where we are going wrong and to correct it.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s greatest novel is called the Brother’s Karamazov. In many ways, it is a novel about failure. It is about three brothers and their faither. And their father is killed. Their abusive and cruel father is killed and the oldest brother is accused of the murder, but it is so much more than that

The epigraph to the novel is one of my favorite quotes:

Man is a mystery. If you spend your entire life trying to figure him out, do not think that you have wasted your time. Because I occupy myself with this mystery. Because I want to be a man.

That is the question guiding the Brother’s Karamazov.

The center of the novel is the relationship between these brothers and one of the most poignant scenes takes place in the middle of the novel. It is a conversation between the middle brother, Ivan, and the younger brother Alexei. Alexei is a novice monk while Ivan is an intellectual atheist. In the conversation, Ivan goes into this masterful argument from the problem of evil: the best presentation imaginable for why the suffering of innocents shows that God doesn’t exist. Ivan talks about news stories of these children who are tortured and killed by their parents. The stories are true, from real newspapers.

Dostoevsky wrote to his editor that he wanted Ivan’s speech to be the best argument possible. He didn’t want Ivan to present a straw man that could easily be refuted.

So what is Alexei’s respond? First, he is flabbergasted, he doesn’t know what to do. But after a while, Alexei doesn’t go through a point by point refutation of Ivan. He comes forward and embraces his brother.

Alexei struggles, and so his first response is to embrace his brother, and then he leaves, and he goes to the person who respects most in his life, the saint in his life, Father Zosima. And it is through seeking out the pillars of his faith that he is able to come to grips with experiencing God anew in light of Ivan’s challenge.

We always start where we are with going through the motions. As Christians, we also start by looking at the saints in our life and in our history. Who are the people who showed you how to respond in hard times? Who are the people who showed you how to worship? How you should praise God? How you should pray? How you should receive communion?

As well, there are the saints in history. For me, one of the most powerful saints in history is Francis Xavier, who joining the society of Jesus when it was nothing and went to Goa, India. There he found out that Christians were already present in the Church of St Thomas, so he kept on going all the way to Japan. He read the Great Commission, and said yes to God.

The power of the saints is found in the fact that they are visible gospels. When Alexei’s faith is challenged, he goes to the saint in his life, the man who helps show him that God is real.

And the irony of the moment is that Father Zosima dies, and then his body decays like other bodies and Alexei is struck by how putrid he smells. He was challenged when he discovered that this man whom he admired and held up as holy would decay. In this challenge, Alexei finally comes to a moment of spiritual awakening.

The saints lead us on a journey, they don’t take the journey for us. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John, where I am going, you cannot follow, but I am sending the Holy Spirit to you.

The saints in our life cannot give us all the answers to the problem to the challenge of the problem of evil. What we see, though, with faith is a way of reframing those challenges, reframing our position in the world.

Who is a saint in your life that is showing you Jesus? How can you act like them? Who is someone you respect in the faith? What is something they do that you can imitate? How do we respond to challenge and struggle? We respond by acting in love as Alyosha did. We respond by looking to the saints in our life, as Alyosha did. We respond by listening to Jesus and doing the things he asks us before we understand them. As he asks the disciples to go into the village and find the colt, a request that seems absurd on the surface and only makes since because of who is doing the asking.

It may not seem like much just to imitate someone. It may not seem like much to give just a hug or a kiss but it is more than we imagine. Because in that action, when you embrace a friend  who is hurting, it is not just you, it is God with you. The answer doesn’t come from you. The solution doesn’t come from you. Resolution doesn’t come from you. but from the God who sends you.

And yes it feels like it is not enough, and that is where faith comes in. The faith that reminds us that on our own is never enough. Having all the right answers to Ivan would not resolve Ivan’s issues with God. Having all the right answers with a tragedy, with a diagnosis, with a job hunt, all the right answers does not resolve the human heart. And imitating the saints doesn’t, in itself, do that. But what it does do is point to the God who is present in us.

When we sing Hosanna, yes Good Friday is coming, yes Jesus is going to die, but there is still a blessing in naively singing Hosanna. And we should do it anyway.

I want to end today with a poem that Mother Teresa had on her wall in Calcutta.

     People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

            If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

            If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

           If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

            What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

            If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

            The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

         Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

         In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.


title: Palm Sunday

themes: doubt-and-faith almost-christian triumphal-entry messiah-anointed-one god-seeks-the-lost holy-week-discomfort

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 11:1-11; Luke 15:3-7; Luke 15:8-10; Luke 15:11-32
**Series:** 2021

> A Palm Sunday sermon on Mark 11:1-11 that uses the oddness of Jesus commanding the disciples to take a colt ('the Lord has need of it') to press the direct, individual question: what do you personally believe? Framed by the preacher's first date with his wife Alina, who won him over with direct questions, the sermon contrasts a demanding, world-altering faith with Moralistic Therapeutic Deism's distant, undemanding God. It shows the crowd's Hosanna turning to Crucify because Jesus was not the political Messiah they wanted but one who commanded concrete love of enemies. Drawing on the three Luke 15 parables (lost sheep, lost coin, prodigal son), it insists God seeks each person out, meets us where we are but will not leave us there, and has a purpose for us, sometimes as strange as fetching a colt. The Lord had need of that colt; the Lord has need of you. It closes refusing to rush to Easter, with Andrew of Crete's call to spread not olive branches but ourselves, clothed in Christ.

**Illustrations:** alina-first-date-direct-questions, moralistic-therapeutic-deism-study, hashem-adonai-ho-kurios, hosanna-to-crucify, lake-travis-drowning-rescue, godfather-michael-fredo, andrew-of-crete-quote

---

# Palm Sunday
Mark 11:1-11

I work really well with direct questions. It is something that has helped me in ministry. It is also something that helped me on my first date with Alina, my now wife. I had asked her to go grab a drink on a Friday. She was a teacher at Eastside Memorial High School in Austin at the time. I was not familiar with active teachers. I did not know that Friday is not really the best first-date day for a teacher after a long week. I was really nervous and excited and didn't know if she would even show up. I think I tried on a few different outfits. I only had like four shirts at the time, but I tried them all on. And then, she came in wearing sweats from soccer practice. She was coaching the soccer team. I had ordered her a drink but she never picked it up. Instead, right away she started asking questions. “Who are you? What do you care about? What matters to you? What do you believe in?” She asked me these deep direct questions. And it was honestly the best possible thing for me. She asked questions about life, the universe, and everything and I was able to answer them to the best of my abilities. I could answer them because I like direct questions. I became comfortable because I did not have to figure out what to talk about or what to do. Direct questions about ultimate things don’t happen often in life.

We don't often have moments to ask ourselves those direct questions. Why do you do the things you do? What do you really believe? Sometimes we may feel some judgment with the questions and be put off, but they matter. Why do you believe it? We can study reasons for belief. We can read stories of the beliefs of others, but faith must be something we each individually claim. It can’t be our parents’ faith. It can’t be our friends’, because faith makes us do strange things. If it does not, it may be more like what some call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This term comes from a study of teenagers in the early 2000s. A collation of the result of a study of 3000 found a consistent belief that There is a God but God is distant from our lives and we just need to be generally good and everything will turn out alright. This God would never ask anyone to do anything odd, really. This God would never ask anyone to steal a pony.

Jesus asks some strange things of his disciples but this is one of the strangest. We read about Jesus entering Jerusalem and sending the disciples to find a colt tied outside a doorway. This is odd. It was odd then and it is odd now. We shouldn't take it as normal. It is odd that two strangers would come and take an animal. Their response is important. Jesus coaches them on this response. He says to say that they are taking the colt because our Lord needs it.
Because our Lord needs it. In Hebrew, the name of God is never spoken. If you're talking among friends about God and you're a faithful Jew, you wouldn't say God. You’d say Hashem, the name. If you're reading and in a prayer service or at synagogue or the temple you would say, Adonai, the Hebrew word for Lord. So when Mark writes this down, ho kurios, which in Greek means the Lord, he refers both to Jesus, but also to the full Jewish understanding of who God is. The Lord has need of it. Not a random master. The Lord has need of it.
The people expected something to happen. They were waiting for something to happen. They shouted Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, but they weren't waiting for someone who looked like Jesus. They weren't waiting for someone who acted like Jesus. They expected a royal Caravan to bring them the anointed one of God. And yet they still shouted Hosanna. And these same people, in a few days time, will be shouting again. This time, “crucify him. Crucify him.”
Jesus was not the Messiah they were looking for. They had faith in the coming of the Messiah, but they did not know exactly how it was going to turn out.
And when it looked different than what they expected. When Jesus drove out money-changers instead of Romans, they turned on him. They wanted a religion that made them feel good but didn’t ask them to do anything. They wanted a new David who would not get into their business, whereas Jesus kept telling them to love people. And not a Hallmark card kind of anodyne love that doesn’t mean anything. The concrete love of forgiving people even when they don’t deserve it. Loving your enemies. Loving the Romans. Loving the Samaritans.
What do you believe? Not what do y'all believe as a group, what do you as an individual believe? The good news of Jesus Christ is good news for the world, but it's also good news precisely for you. It isn’t about other people. Right now, it is about you. Holy Week, this week, is a chance to ask ourselves these direct questions. What do you believe? Holy Week is a chance to put ourselves in a place that may be uncomfortable. How does it feel to be in the crowd, to wave the palms, knowing what is going to happen soon?
We can have faith and believe in what will happen next Sunday, what will happen at Easter with the empty tomb. Death will be defeated. But death is not erased by a snap of God's proverbial fingers. God could have taken away suffering like that, but it would have eliminated our human freedom. It would be gone. Instead, what God does through Jesus Christ is enter into our humanity, draw close to us so that we can draw close to God. But it still comes down to this direct question. Jesus tells the disciples to go this town over and grab this Colt. It is odd, but I think we can see in this question of Jesus a call to each of us.

My wife, Alina, on that first date, when she asked me all those questions, she did so because those answers matter. Who are you? What do you believe? What do you care about? For most people, we get to those answers tangentially over time. We slowly discover them over time or maybe in long night conversations in high school or college. But it was in that directness that the spark of our love was able to build. By asking those direct questions we discovered that we actually care a lot about similar things in this world. And through that similar care and belief, we were able to build a relationship and a family.
God cares about you. Yes, you individually. God cares about you and loves you. God wants to know what you think and what you believe. God meets us where we are, but God does not want to let us stay there.
If you are in the middle of Lake Travis, without a life jacket or a boat, and you are struggling to swim and someone comes out to meet you but leaves you there, what help are they? Even if we may feel like we are not struggling as much as others, we each have needs that are not fulfilled by our jobs or our families or our hobbies, yet many days we may feel like we are drowning.
## Three parables
God doesn't find us and leave us where we were. But like a Shepherd who has a hundred sheep and 99 are home, yet one is stuck in the brambles. God will leave the 99 to rescue that one. Or like a woman who has 10 coins, but one is missing. So she will sir. God will spend all night looking for that one and rejoicing when it is discovered. Or a father who has two sons. The younger says he would like his inheritance. He tells the father, basically, you are dead to me. The father, amazingly, obliges and offers the inheritance, but then the younger son goes off and squanders it and eventually realizes, while he is sleeping with pigs and stealing their food, that his own father's servants are fed better than he.
And so he comes home, broken, truly broken and humble and yet the father does not say I Told You So, like I would, nor does he say what Michael in Godfather Part 2 says to his brother Fredo: “You're nothing to me now, freddo, you’re not a brother, your not a friend? I don't want to know you or what you do. He runs out to embrace the son and brings him home and then the older brother who never left is, you know, upset about it. And the father says to the older son, “I will always have you, but this son of mine was dead and now is alive, he was lost and now is found.”
## Conclusion
Wherever you are in your life, whatever moment you find yourself in, whether you think about faith and life and death or you avoid it, if you feel like you lack a need for God, if you feel like you've moved beyond that need or if it's just not relevant to where you are, you are loved. You matter. You don't need to stay in the same place. God has a purpose for you. God is not just far away, indifferent to you. God seeks you out to show you that purpose. Sometimes that purpose may look like walking to a nearby village and taking a colt.
It may look strange. It may be confusing, but God has a purpose for you. The Lord had need of that colt. The Lord has need of you. May we all remember Christ's love this day. May we not rush too fast to Easter this day. ‘May we spread before his feet, not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but may we spread ourselves, clothed in his grace, or rather, clothed completely in him.’ (Andrew of Crete)
In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.


title: Reset Your Body

themes: theology-of-the-body image-of-god torah-and-law bodily-resurrection grace-not-merit

text:
**Scripture:** 2 Corinthians 7:1; Acts 10:9-16; 1 Corinthians 6:19
**Series:** 2021

> Second sermon in the 'Reset' series, on resetting the body. Tracing a biblical theology of the body from creation (humans made from dirt, then given breath), through the dietary laws of Torah, to Jesus fulfilling the law and rising bodily, Wilson argues that what we eat and how we regard our bodies matters to God. From 2 Corinthians 7:1 ('let us cleanse ourselves') and the body-as-temple, he names three wrong postures toward the body (pride, shame, indifference) and urges the congregation to begin instead from being beloved children made in God's image. Practically he draws on Wesley's health rules and Blue Zones research (more vegetables, less meat, exercise, fasting), insisting the reset comes through grace, not willpower.

**Illustrations:** french-stale-bread, paleo-crossfit-hipsters, maimonides-numbering-law, emmaus-breaking-bread, wesley-primitive-physick, albin-blue-zones, pizza-hut-kale, volunteering-sue

---

# January 10

## Reset Your Body

 2 Corinthians 7:1

The human diet has changed pretty dramatically over the last hundred years. If we go back further than that, it is almost unrecognizable. What the majority of humans ate was radically different from what anyone eats today. Unless you were the wealthiest of the wealthy, you ate what you had, mostly grains and root vegetables depending on where you lived in the world. Most humans subsisted and worked hard to subsist. I remember reading that even in France in the late 18th century, most people baked bread once a year for the whole year and folks would eat stale, rock hard bread all year long to stay alive. There would be lots of porridge, meat would be a festival kind of event for special occasion. The idea of a meat and potatoes kind of person, who many people are, is a very modern creation. Paleo diet is actually a super modern diet. You have to skip about 10,000 years of human development to go from hunter gatherers who ate meat and seeds, to cross-fit hipsters in the 2,000s who mostly eat meat.

Does God have anything to say about what we eat? or about how we see our bodies? My friends, we are continuing our series called Reset, on resetting our lives. Last week, we talked about resetting our homes and recentering our homes in light of the gift of Jesus Christ. Today, it is about resetting our body.

I will get to some practical stuff at the end, but first, I want to talk about what it means to be a people with a body. In order to get to what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians about cleansing our bodies, we need to start at the very beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created. God is the creator. Theologians talk about the creator/creature distinction. It seems small but it is super important. God is not a creature, or an object, God is the creator of all objects. God is not material in God’s self. God created all material reality.
Later, when God creates humans, they are first created out of the dirt and the dust and the mud as bodies. Adam in Hebrew comes from Adama, which means dirt. Their bodies are created and then God breathes life into them. And they are set in the garden of Eden to eat of any tree or bush in the garden. Adam and Eve are vegetarians. They don’t kill any living creature until later. It is in the covenant with Noah that humans are allowed to eat animals, but the blood still must be drained. And then that command is narrowed in Exodus when God gives Moses the Torah on Sinai; a lot of the practices in Torah have to do with how you eat. This is understood in modern day as Kosher practices. There are a few that are commonly known. Don’t cook a lamb in its mother’s milk. No shellfish, etc.. Now, there are a lot of ways to understand these commands. But it is important to realize that they weren’t seen as discreet and numbered rules until Moses Mamainides in the middle ages. Jesus never saw the Law of Moses as a set of different laws. As well, the modern way to divide the Torah between the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the dietary law is completely absent in the text. There is no difference between the prohibition of shellfish and adultery. These are on the same level.

The point, though, is that the law is about an overall life pointed and oriented towards God. In all that people did, from how you wake up, to how you pray, to how you eat, it can all be oriented towards God.

Now we have Jesus coming, and for Christians, Jesus grafts gentiles on to the covenant with Abraham. So we can find ourselves with God. But Jesus also says that not one iota will be taken away from the law. An iota is a Greek letter that is often very small and hard to see.

As well, Jesus says that it is not what goes into your body but what comes out of your body that defiles you. For Christians, Jesus fulfills the law and the covenant.

After the resurrection, Jesus eats fish. In this, he shows that the resurrection is bodily because spirits can’t eat.

And then we have this dramatic moment after the resurrection when Peter has this vision:
> Acts of the Apostles 10:9-16 CEB

Through all of this, what we eat matters. The fact that we are bodies matters to God. The fact that Jesus came in a bodily way matters. The fact that Jesus rose again in a bodily way matters to God. We see the bodily nature of the resurrection through Jesus eating food and breaking bread. In the story of Emmaeus, it is Jesus breaking bread that opens the eyes of the people to who he really is.

And so we get to this one verse in 2 Corinthians: “My dear friends, since we have these promises, let’s cleanse ourselves from anything that contaminates our body or spirit so that we make our holiness complete in the fear of God.”

Let us cleanse ourselves. Let us cleanse our bodies. Paul also describes our body as a temple for the Lord in 1 Corinthians, so we need to care for it. We need to care for our body.

The difficulty with talking about bodies is that we are each individuals with different histories and experiences of our bodies. There are three common positions people have about their body: too much pride, too much shame, or too much indifference. And all three of these are contrary to who God has created us to be. People with too much pride in their body spend a lot of time on their body and their image, on working out and eating right and they want to reap the benefits of their labor. People with too much shame are responding to tremendous cultural pressures and have probably tried all the things but they may feel like it never works. Finally, there are those who are indifferent to their bodies and they only eat what makes them feel good. So food as this pleasure vehicle as opposed to food as the bounty of God’s creation.

All three of these are wrong. Most of us find ourselves in one of these three camps (and I include myself in this). This year, we have a chance to reset how we see our body in light of Christ’s coming, in light of Christ revealing that we are beloved children of God, that you are a beloved child of God. And we don’t have to start from a stand point of deficiency.

We don’t start from the idea of a goal-weight or size or a celebrity ideal but from the fact that we are made in the image of God. What we put into our bodies and do with our bodies matters. If we are going to love our neighbors, we need to properly love ourselves. Our bodies are not machines, our minds are not ghosts, so we should not see our bodies as machines to be optimized or primed.

The most important thing is to take some time today or this week to reset how you see your own body. To let go of any loathing or pride and start afresh. To let it go. To take away any displeasure at looking at yourself in the mirror. To let it go. You don’t need to talk about God’s child like that. You are beautiful to God. Beauty is not a competition but a reality of the God who is love who gave up everything to die for you.

Practically, we should think about eating to live well. This was super important for John Wesley. He published a home health book with the idea that people are not going to be able to show the light of Jesus when they are not healthy. Most of it consists of advice for when people get sick, but in the beginning Wesley says, “For the sake of those who desire, through the blessing of God, to retain the health which they have recovered, I have added a few plain, easy rules.” The first rules have to do with air quality. Your breathing matters (which we will get to next week when we talk about the soul). Next, he talks about eating suitable food our our digestion, avoid heavy and salted foods, more vegetables than meat, and how water is the best drink.

A Physician at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Dr. Jacklyn Albin, recently wrote a super helpful article about the latest in dietary medicine from a Christian perspective. I will share it on the church facebook page. She goes into a number of aspects of food, but highlights research into Blue Zones over the last decade, which are regions of the world where a large percentage of folks live in a vibrant way into their 90s and past a hundred. A lot of this advice matches Wesley’s. Here are some of the results
- emphasis on a large intake of vegetables, including greens and sweet potatoes;
daily fruit intake;
daily legume intake, such as beans and lentils;
frequent use of herbs and spices, such as garlic, turmeric, rosemary, and mint;
most grains as whole grains, such as brown rice, oats, barley, and whole wheat;
minimal meat and poultry intake (typically, less than 5% of diet) with occasional fish;

This is not news to most of us, but most of us already like certain things and don’t like other things. And part of being an adult is being able to eat whatever you want, right? The issue is that this mindset ignores the words of Paul and the life of Jesus. Your body is a temple. Love it. Care for it. As well, you are not finished. God is not finished with you. Don't give up on yourself.

Eating is a habit and habits are developed. Kale used to not be easy to find or very popular. In the 90s, the largest purchaser of Kale in the United States was Pizza Hut in order to decorate their salad bars. Tastes change. Your taste can change. You have to want it and start, again, from the position that a reset is possible. From the time of Jesus, Christians have fasted, and part of the point of fasts for the church was to pray to God in a way that our body does not control us. That the desires of the body do not trump our will to love our neighbor and our Lord.

Wesley’s third section of advice was about eating light dinners 2-3 hours before sleeping and having a consistent time to rest. And then the fifth had to do with exercise. To take care of our bodies and cleanse ourselves as Paul commends, we must do things. Do something. To start, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Do something. Wesley said that walking was the best exercise for those who could bear it (he also advocated standing desks). Do something wherever you are. If time or other issues are present in your life, I am volunteering Sue to be a point of reference. She would love to have a phone call with you about ways of being physically healthy in this life and things you can do.

But all of these starts with how you see yourself. All of it starts with letting go of self-loathing or body-shame, letting go of pride or indifference and resetting. It does not happen through will power but through grace. You can reset your body this year. You can reset how you talk about your body and how you talk about other people's bodies.  You can see yourself as a child of God and see what you eat and how you act not us burdens but possibilities. You are beautiful. And you are beloved. And how you live matters. May you receive grace this day, to reset in light of Christ.

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


title: Reset Your Body

themes: theology-of-the-body torah-and-law bodily-resurrection fasting grace-not-merit

text:
**Scripture:** 2 Corinthians 7:1; Acts 10:9-16; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Genesis 1:1; Luke 24:30-31
**Series:** 2021

> Part of the 'Reset' series, this sermon argues that what we eat and how we regard our bodies matters to God. Pruitt traces the body through Scripture—creation from dust, the Edenic vegetarian diet, the Noahic and Torah dietary laws (understood as one undivided whole, not modern moral/ceremonial/dietary categories), Jesus fulfilling the law, Peter's vision in Acts 10, and the bodily resurrection shown by Jesus eating fish and breaking bread. Landing on 2 Corinthians 7:1 ('let us cleanse ourselves from anything that contaminates our body or spirit') and Paul's 'your body is a temple,' he names three wrong postures toward the body—pride, shame, and indifference—and calls hearers, as beloved children made in God's image, to reset. Practical counsel draws on Wesley's health rules and Blue Zones research (more vegetables, less meat, water, light dinners, exercise, fasting), but the reset comes through grace, not willpower.

**Illustrations:** 18th-century-french-bread, paleo-crossfit-hipsters, maimonides-numbering-the-law, wesley-home-health-book, albin-blue-zones, pizza-hut-kale, volunteering-sue

---

# January 10

## Reset Your Body

The human diet has changed pretty dramatically over the last hundred years. If we go back further than that, it is almost unrecognizable. What the majority of humans ate was radically different from what anyone eats today. Unless you were the wealthiest of the wealthy, you ate what you had, mostly grains and root vegetables depending on where you lived in the world. Most humans subsisted and worked hard to subsist. I remember reading that even in France in the late 18th century, most people baked bread once a year for the whole year and folks would eat stale, rock hard bread all year long to stay alive. There would be lots of porridge, meat would be a festival kind of event for special occassion. The idea of a meat and potatoes kind of person, who many people are, is a very modern creation. Paleo diet is actually a super modern diet. You have to skip about 10,000 years of human development to go from hunter gatherers who ate meat when they could and seeds, to cross-fit hipsters in the 2,000s who mostly eat meat.

Does God have anything to say about what we eat? or about how we see our bodies? My friends, we are continuing our series called Reset, on resetting our lives. Last week, we talked about resetting our homes and recentering our homes in light of the gift of Jesus Christ. Today, it is about resetting our body.

I will get to some practical stuff at the end, I think it is important, what we eat matters to God, and not as much in a “if you don’t eat this way, then you are going to burn in hell,” but the intentionality of it is deeply important.

But first, I want to talk about what it means to be a people with a body. In order to get to what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians about cleansing our bodies, we need to start at the very beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created. God is the creator. Theologians talk about the creator/creature distinction. It seems small but it is super important. God is not a creature, or an object, God is the creator of all objects. God is not material in God’s self. God created all material reality.
Later, when God creates humans, they are first created out of the dirt and the dust and the mud as bodies. Their bodies are created and then God breathes life into them. And they are set in the garden of Eden to eat of any tree or bush in the garden. Adam and Eve are vegetarians. They don’t kill any living creature until later. It is in the covenant with Noah that they are allowed to eat animals, but the blood still must be drained. And then that command is narrowed in Exodus when God gives Moses the Torah on Sinai, a lot of the practices in Torah have to do with how you eat. This is understood in modern day as Kosher practices. There are a few that are commonly known. Don’t cook a lamb in its mother’s milk. No shellfish, etc.. Now, there are a lot of ways to understand these commands. But it is important to realize that they weren’t seen as discreet and numbered commands until Moses Mamainides in the middle ages. Jesus never saw the Law of Moses as a set of different laws. As well, the modern way to divide the Torah between the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the dietary law is completely absent in the text. There is no difference between the prohibition of shelfish and adultary. These are seen as on the same level.

The point, though, is that the law is about an overall life pointed and oriented towards God. In all that people did, from how you wake up, to how you pray, to how you eat, it can all be oriented towards God.

Now we have Jesus coming, and for Christians, Jesus grafts gentiles on to the covenant with Abraham. So we can find ourselves with God. But Jesus also says that not one iota will be taken away from the law. An iota is a Greek letter that is often very small and hard to see.

As well, Jesus says that it is not what goes into your body but what comes out of your body that defiles you. For Christians, Jesus fulfills the law and the covenant.

After the resurrection, Jesus eats fish. In this, he shows that the resurrection is bodily because spirits can’t eat.

And then we have this dramatic moment after the resurrection when Peter has this vision: Acts 10:9-16

Through all of this, what we eat matters. The fact that we are bodies matters to God. The fact that Jesus came in a bodily way matters. The fact that Jesus rose again in a bodily way matters to God. Again, in that we see the bodily nature of the resurrection through Jesus eating food and breaking bread. In the story of Emmaus, it is Jesus breaking bread that opens the eyes of the people to who he really is.

And so we get to this one verse in 2 Corinthians: “My dear friends, since we have these promises, let’s cleanse ourselves from anything that contaminates our body or spirit so that we make our holiness complete in the fear of God.”

Let us cleanse ourselves. Let us cleanse our bodies. Paul also describes our body as a temple for the Lord in 1 Corinthians, so we need to care for it. We need to care for our body.

The difficulty with talking about bodies is that we are each individuals with different histories and experiences of our bodies. There are three common positions people have about their body: too much pride, too much shame, or too much indifference. And all three of these are contrary to who God has created us to be. People with too much pride in their body spend a lot of time on their body and their image, on working out and eating right and they want to reap the benefits of their labor. People with too much shame are responding to tremendous cultural pressures and have probably tried all the things but they may feel like it never works. Finally, there are those who are indifferent to their bodies and they only eat what makes them feel good. So food as this pleasure vehicle as opposed to food as the bounty of God’s creation.

All three of these are wrong. Most of us find ourselves in one of these three camps (and I include myself in this). This year, we have a chance to reset how we see our body in light of Christ’s coming, in light of Christ revealing that we are beloved children of God, that you are a beloved child of God. And we don’t have to start from a stand point of deficiency.

We don’t start from the idea of a goal-weight or size or a celebrity ideal but from the fact that we are made in the image of God. What we put into our bodies and do with our bodies matters. If we are going to love our neighbors, we need to properly love ourselves. Our bodies are not machines, our minds are not ghosts, so we should not see our bodies as machines.

The most important thing is to take some time today or this week to reset how you see your own body. To let go of any loathing or pride and start afresh. To let it go. To take away any displeasure at looking at yourself in the mirror. To let it go. You don’t need to talk about God’s child like that. You are beautiful to God. Beauty is not a competition but a reality of the God who is love who gave up everything to die for you.

Practically, we should think about eating to live well. This was super important for John Wesley. He published a home health book with the idea that people are not going to be able to show the light of Jesus when they are not healthy. Most of it consists of advice for when people get sick, but in the beginning Wesley says, “For the sake of those who desire, through the blessing of God, to retain the health which they have recovered, I have added a few plain, easy rules.” The first rules have to do with air quality. Your breathing matters (which we will get to next week when we talk about the soul). Next, he talks about eating suitable food to our digestion, avoid heavy and salted foods, more vegetables than meat, and how water is the best drink.

A Physician at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Dr. Jacklyn Albin, recently wrote a super helpful article about the latest in dietary medicine from a Christian perspective. I will share it on the church facebook page. She goes into a number of aspects of food, but highlights research into Blue Zones over the last decade, which are regions of the world where a large percentage of folks live in a vibrant way into their 90s and past a hundred. Here are some of the results
- emphasis on a large intake of vegetables, including greens and sweet potatoes;
daily fruit intake;
daily legume intake, such as beans and lentils;
frequent use of herbs and spices, such as garlic, turmeric, rosemary, and mint;
most grains as whole grains, such as brown rice, oats, barley, and whole wheat;
minimal meat and poultry intake (typically, less than 5% of diet) with occasional fish;

This is not news to most of us, but most of us already like certain things and don’t like other things. And part of being an adult is being able to eat whatever you want, right? The issue is that this mindset ignores the words of Paul and the life of Jesus. Your body is a temple. Love it. Care for it. As well, you are not finished. God is not finished with you. Don't give up on yourself.

Eating is a habit and habits are developed. Kale used to not be easy to find or very popular. In the 90s, the largest purchaser of Kale in the United States was Pizza Hut in order to decorate their salad bars. Tastes change. Your taste can change. You have to want it and start, again, from the position that a reset is possible. From the time of Jesus, Christians have fasted, and part of the point of fasts for the church was to pray to God in a way that our body does not control us. That the desires of the body do not trump our will to love our neighbor and our Lord.

Wesley’s third section of advice was about eating light dinners 2-3 hours before sleeping and having a consistent time to rest. And then the fifth had to do with exercise. To take care of our bodies and cleanse ourselves as Paul commends, we must do things. Do something. To start, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Do something. Wesley said that walking was the best exercise for those who could bear it (he also advocated standing desks). Do something wherever you are. If time or other issues are present in your life, I am volunteering Sue to be a point of reference. She would love to have a phone call with you about ways of being physically healthy in this life and things you can do.

But all of these starts with how you see yourself. All of it starts with letting go of self-loathing or body-shame, letting go of pride or indifference and resetting. It does not happen through will power but through grace. You can reset your body this year. You can reset how you talk about your body and how you talk about other people's bodies.  You can see yourself as a child of God and to see what you eat and how you act not us burdens but possibilities. You are beautiful. And you are beloved. And how you live matters. May you receive grace this day, to reset in light of Christ.

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


title: Reset Your House

themes: new-beginnings christ-at-center-of-home scarcity-vs-abundance herod-as-rival-to-jesus the-magi freedom-from-proving-yourself honesty-with-god

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 2:1-12; Numbers 22; Matthew 6:21
**Series:** 2021

> Opening a 'Reset' series for the new year, this Epiphany sermon on Matthew 2:1-12 contrasts the two homes the Magi encounter: Herod's palace and the Bethlehem stable. Herod, an insecure warlord with borrowed Roman authority and a scarcity mindset, hides a heart at war behind gold and perfume; Mary and Joseph, with nothing to prove and nothing to lose, simply welcome Jesus, the Magi, and even danger. Pruitt invites the congregation to reset their homes by clarifying what sits at the center, making Christ rather than self-stability the centerpiece, and to begin practically by prayerfully examining a single room. The call is to stop 'Heroding' (proving and hiding) and to live honestly as beloved children of God.

**Illustrations:** reset-frozen-computer, genius-bar-just-reset-it, resetting-the-table, herod-roman-warlord, balaam-and-the-donkey, perfume-over-rot, keeping-up-with-the-herods, hobby-lobby-menoras, pick-a-room-examine-objects

---

# January 3

## Reset Your House

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.” When King Herod heard this, he was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him. He gathered all the chief priests and the legal experts and asked them where the Christ was to be born. They said, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what the prophet wrote:

You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
       by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah,
            because from you will come one who governs,
           who will shepherd my people Israel.”
Then Herod secretly called for the magi and found out from them the time when the star had first appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you’ve found him, report to me so that I too may go and honor him.” When they heard the king, they went; and look, the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stood over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother. Falling to their knees, they honored him. Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.
Matthew 2:1-12

I was privileged to grow up with personal computers in the house. I remember an Apple IIe. I remember playing on it as a child, as well as an early Macintosh when it first came out a few years later. One of the things about computers, no matter how old or how new, is that they sometimes get stuck. They get stuck. They freeze, and you have to reset them. Oftentimes, it is important to do it even if you don’t know why. The second step on almost every solution page. That is, if you google what is going wrong with your computer, all the genius bar folks will ask you if you reset it.
Just reset it. Don’t ask why. Just reset it. Don’t have any ego about it. Don’t try and understand why. Just reset it. It is usually good, with computers and with routers, to preemptively reset it. Not to ask why, just to do it and everything will run much smoother. It is pretty easy to reset a computer or reset a phone, it is a lot harder to reset our lives. We can’t just close our eyes and then everything becomes different. We can’t just go back to factory settings for our house or our marriage or for the lives of our children. You can’t blink and then go back. There is no going back in time. The mistakes that we made in the past, we can’t go back to them. But a new year offers us a new opportunity to see and look at where we are. To find the opportunities that can be reset.

Reset is a word that has taken on a lot of meaning with technology but it is a simple English word. I set the table. Something happens. I reset the table. I set it again.
So for the next few weeks we are going to talk about reseting all aspects of our lives, from our bodies to our souls to our world. God offers us this opportunity because our lives are not set in stone. The past does not predict our future and the entrance of the Holy Spirit in our lives can do amazing things. And so today we are going to start by resetting our home. It may be strange to talk about resetting our home as we read this text about the wise men, the Magi, coming to find the baby Jesus. They visit two homes on their journey. The palace of Herod, King of Judea. And the Bethlehem stable, the way-station of Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus.

Most of us hope that our homes look more like a palace than a stable. No offense to Mary and Joseph, but that isn’t where they wanted to stay anyway. The problem with Herod is not that he lived in a palace (King Solomon lived in a palace and was honored by God). Herod thought himself as the King of the Jews but the Jews did not see him in that way. He was basically a warlord. His father had been an ally of Julius Caesar and Herod and his brother were named tetrarch, which was a form of Roman government that allowed multiple people to hold the same authority. Eventually, Herod was able to consolidate power due to his good relationship with Marc Antony and then with Caesar Augustus. Herod’s family were converts to Judaism but Herod wanted to prove himself to the people by rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem and by building many other great projects across the land to, in today’s words, modernize the country. The problem with great projects, though, is that they cost money and money came from the people via taxes, and the people were none-to-pleased to pay high taxes for projects that they never asked for. Even the rebuilding of the Temple was controversial with some saying only the Messiah can do that and Herod was obviously not the Messiah. (This controversy still exists today in the nation of Israel concerning the question of rebuilding the Temple.)

So Herod has this temple built on the backs of the people and Magi come from the East. Herod doesn’t call them but they come to him because they had seen a star and they assume that they new king would be connected to the old king. This whole affair hearkens back to the Book of Numbers where Balak, king of the Moabites, is angry about the Hebrew people coming from Egypt to the Holy Land so he calls for a magi of the East to come and curse the Hebrew people. He sends for Balaam who comes. But God send’s an angel to Balaam so that he would instead bless the Hebrew people. At first, Balaam doesn’t see the angel but his donkey does. The wise man, Balaam, doesn’t see the messenger of God, but the donkey does. Fast forward to Herod’s time. The wise men now see the messenger of God (the star) but the king does not. The king imagines a rival who will take his throne. Herod has a scarcity mindset. And like most scarcity mindsets, he is overly concerned with appearances. Herod is deeply insecure about his authority because he knows that it is not his own: it all comes from Rome. With the snap of his fingers, Caesar could have Herod’s line extinguished. The Legions would move in and another puppet would sit on the throne.

The appearances, the fine purple cloth and gold and rooms and servants covered over and heart at war with itself. Perfumes and fine scents covered up the smell of rot.

The magi found none of this in Bethlehem. They found a man and a woman. They found a child. They found an unimportant place. They found unimportant people. They found a baby lying where animals feed. They found a king.

And so we get to our own homes. Part of reseting our homes is clarifying for each of us what the center of our homes is. In the ancient world, it was the household gods which would be given the location of privilege. What is the location of privilege in your home? I am not necessarily talking about redecorating, but it may be? What is the centerpiece of your home? Is the centerpiece your stability, your authority, your wisdom? Are you going to protect the center of your home like Herod? Are you going to defend it no matter the cost? How can we make God the center of our home? And how can we take the opportunity that 2021 affords us to reset our home so that the Christ child is at the center of who we are.

Our homes are not just the places or the things. Our home is not just our address or the capital assets of our address. Our home is who we are and what we do. Herod was afraid of losing everything. Mary and Joseph had nothing to lose. They knew that they were undeserving of God’s Grace, as well, that they did not have to prove anything. They welcomed Jesus. They welcomed the Magi. The received gifts. As well, when news of danger came, they responded and fled.

Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be. As well, there is the old American saying, your home is where your heart is. My friends, this past year, we have all spent way too much time at home. It has been a lot.

Your life does not have to revolve around who you were last year, or who you were when you moved. Your life does not need to revolve around everything you did before. You don't need to go through the motions, just because they are there. You don't need to keep up with the Jones’s or the Herod’s.

You are free to receive the gift of new life. You are free to change everything. What does that look like?

It starts with prayer. It starts with thinking through your home now, why it is how it is, and what are steps you can do. God doesn't want to overwhelm you but give you the grace to try something new. Start with a room.

Go home today. Or if you are watching us online, pick a room in your house. Look at the objects there, the objects on the wall. The tables and chairs. Why is it there? Who is it for? Don’t start chucking things. Talk to your spouse or parents or roommates, but think about it. Pray about it. Does it draw you towards God or away from God?

What is important to remember is that I’m not just talking about crosses or other obviously religious objects. Herod probably had a lot of awesome Menoras in his palace because he was more concerned about what people thought about him than what God does. Reseting your house is not about spending $300 bucks at Hobby Lobby. God doesn’t want you to paint over anything in order to hide it.

God loves you. There is not a mess in your life that God has not seen and loved you. Herod tried to hide from himself. Mary did not. That is what it ultimately comes down to. You don’t have to hide from who you are as a child of God. Not at church. Not at work. Not at school. Not in your home. And anything in your life you may be ashamed of, God is here for you to reset it.

May you start afresh. May you see yourself afresh. Let go of proving yourself. Let go of Heroding and may this year bring you hope.

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