title: Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom's Paschal Homily)

themes: resurrection harrowing-of-hell victory-over-death grace-not-merit

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 24:1-12; Isaiah 14:9; 1 Corinthians 15:55; 1 Corinthians 15:20
**Series:** Easter

> An Easter sunrise liturgy built around the Gospel of the empty tomb (Luke 24:1-12) and the ancient Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom. The proclamation invites all laborers, early and late, to share equally in the joy of the risen Lord, then celebrates Christ's harrowing of hell: by enduring death he destroys it, empties the tomb, and becomes the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Framed by Wesley's hymn 'Christ the Lord Is Risen Today' and the threefold Easter acclamation.

**Illustrations:** chrysostom-paschal-homily, laborers-of-the-hours, hell-swallows-christ, isaiah-hell-troubled

---

# Easter Sunrise Service
## Full Service
## Crysostom Sermon

Grace and peace to you from Jesus Christ our Lord.
My brothers and sisters in Christ:
On this most holy morning
	in which Jesus Christ passed over from death to life,
We gather as the Church to watch and pray.
This is the Passover of Christ,
	in which we share in Christ’s victory over death.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!
	All:  The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Alleluia!  Christ is risen!
	All:  The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
	All:  The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Let us Pray
God of life, Through Jesus Christ, You have bestowed upon the world the light of life. Sanctify this new fire, and grant that our hearts and minds may also be kindled with holy desire to shine forth with the brightness of Christ’s rising, that we may attain to the feast of the everlasting light; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

HYMN		Christ the Lord is Risen Today verses 1-3

1 Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

2 Love's redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia!
Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia!

3 Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where's thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!

GOSPEL					 Luke 24:1-12

Very early in the morning on the first day of the week, the women went to the tomb, bringing the fragrant spices they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. They didn’t know what to make of this. Suddenly, two men were standing beside them in gleaming bright clothing. The women were frightened and bowed their faces toward the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn’t here, but has been raised. Remember what he told you while he was still in Galilee, that the Human One must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words. When they returned from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. Their words struck the apostles as nonsense, and they didn’t believe the women. But Peter ran to the tomb. When he bent over to look inside, he saw only the linen cloth. Then he returned home, wondering what had happened.

EASTER PROCLAMATION

Are there any who are devout lovers of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!

Are there any who are grateful servants? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting? Let them now receive their wages!

If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward; If any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast! And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss. And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let him not hesitate; but let him come too. And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay. For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that toiled from the first.

To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows. He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor. The deed He honors and the intention He commends. Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together! Sober and slothful, celebrate the day! You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith. Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it. He destroyed Hell when He descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he said, “You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below." Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.

Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

TIME OF REFLECTION

HYMN verses 4-6

4 Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

5 Hail the Lord of earth and heaven, Alleluia!
Praise to thee by both be given, Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now, Alleluia!
Hail the Resurrection, thou, Alleluia!

6 King of glory, soul of bliss, Alleluia!
Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, thy power to prove, Alleluia!
Thus to sing, and thus to love, Alleluia!

SENDING

We are sent forth in the power of Christ’s resurrection. Alleluia!
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.  Amen.


site: sermons

title: Election, Not Selection

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: Easter

themes: election grace-not-merit us-vs-them evangelism wesleyan-anti-calvinism covenant-with-abraham

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 18:1-15; Matthew 9:35-38
**Series:** Easter

> Preached in Ordinary Time on Genesis 18:1-15 and Matthew 9:35-38, this sermon dismantles the 'good guy / bad guy' lens we bring to Scripture, arguing it smuggles in works-righteousness. Using the difference between election (God's gracious choice for a purpose) and selection (exclusive, attribute-based choosing, illustrated by picking peaches and partners), it shows that grace goes to the undeserving, as with barren Sarah's laughter and the birth of Isaac. It rejects Calvinist selective predestination in the Wesleyan vein and reframes evangelism as compassion ('suffering with') rather than recruitment, calling laborers into Jesus' plentiful harvest. The children's message extends the shepherd theme: we are not dismissed but sent to be shepherds to the aimless.

**Illustrations:** ephraim-good-guy-bad-guy, survivor-reality-tv-rooting, selecting-a-peach, choosing-a-partner, political-election-yard-signs, sheep-without-a-shepherd

---

# June 14, 2026
## Ordinary Time
## Genesis 18:1-15

“The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My Lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree while they ate. They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I be fruitful?” The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “Yes, you did laugh.””
Genesis 18:1-15

“Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.””
Matthew 9:35-38

When Ephraim was younger, if we were ever watching a movie or a show, or even reading a book, one of his first questions would be, "Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy?" It was always, "Who's the good guy?"

Sometimes we'd say, we need to wait and see because we dont know yet. Or, it is complicated: it's a good guy who's actually a bad guy, or a bad guy who's actually a good guy. Someone who looks like a good guy but is really a bad guy. Or someone who looks like a bad guy but is really a good guy.

All of these typologies, putting people into buckets — these are helpful frameworks for children to understand stories, but also for grown-ups. We like to know who we're rooting for.

TV shows set this up. Reality TV was basically designed on this: give the audience someone to root for and someone to despise. Because if the audience doesn't have any rooting interest, they aren't gonna come back to see what happens. It's this black-and-white view of conflict. Every season of Survivor begins with an exposition where the producers tell you exactly who to root for.

I think this is really important, because it shades how we read the Bible as Christians. So often we read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, by asking who the good guys are and who the bad guys are — when those aren't categories God uses, or categories found in Scripture itself.

Take the story of Abraham and Sarah and the birth of Isaac. It takes place in Genesis 18, this period after Abraham has had a child with Hagar.

What that story often does is give sympathy — especially today — to Hagar and Ishmael. Which is good and
generous. Those poor people, kicked to the curb by Sarah. But Sarah and Abraham are both complex figures who don't fit neatly into "good guy, bad guy."

See, the problem with the good-guy, bad-guy narrative structure is that it sneaks in works-righteousness. We think God should bless the people who deserve it, when in reality, the narrative of all of biblical history, all of Christian history, is that grace goes to the undeserved. Or else it wouldn't be grace.

The story of Abraham and Sarah and the birth of Isaac — and that joy — emerges from its undeservedness. Sarah was barren all her life, into her old age. Into her 70s. It was impossible. God gave her a child but also the strength to have a child. And she just laughed — and laughed. She was hardly able to have a child. She didn't deserve it — but children aren't about deserving.

This gets to something I've been thinking about a lot theologically recently: the difference between election and selection.

Now, election, for most of us, is a very secular category. It's the signs you put in your lawn. It's the arguments you have with your cousins on Facebook. But it's a much older theological term than a political one. Political elections are fairly recent in the history of the world — that is, for most of us, unless you were of the senatorial class or the upper class. Theologically, election has been part of Christian theology for hundreds and hundreds of years, as well as Jewish thought.

Election means a decision, a choice for a purpose. You elect someone for something. You select someone because of something. We can see the difference between election and selection in many stories throughout Scripture, throughout the Old Testament and the New: God doesn't look at the attributes of people. Take the story of David and his brothers. God doesn't look to see who's going to be the most qualified or the most handsome to be king — he looks at the heart. God looks at the heart. Earlier, with Jacob and Esau, there's a sense that Esau probably deserved the birthright, deserved these other things — but God does not look at the attributes. And that's not a way to get around selection, anyway. What God sees is beyond us. That's where grace comes in.

See, the thing about selection is that it's always exclusive. If you select one thing, you're not selecting the other. You are selecting it for this reason.

Think about selecting peaches. You pick up one. You feel it. A little mushy. You put it back. You pick up another one. A little too hard. Unripened. You put it back. Finally, you find the perfect peach. Just a little give but no bruising. You smell the stem and it smells like a peach. You have selected a peach in part by distinguishing and separating it from the other less optimal peaches.

Or in another more personal example, think of choosing a partner, the attributes you find attractive, the personality, etc.. Part of selecting a partner is deselecting others. It is a zero sum situation.

What is important in all of this is that God does not base God's love on anything we bring to the table. God doesn’t select some and damn others. That is, God doesn’t choose people for this reason or for that reason.

This was the calvinist ideology John Wesley and the early Methodists argued against again and again. It denies grace by assuming a God who is either arbitrary or wickedly selective. A God who judges us by our attributes, our works, a God who doesn’t judge as the God in the Bible judges.

This is part of seeing past the good-guys-and-bad-guys thing. It's not that there isn't wickedness in this world — but that the people in this world aren't divided between the good and the bad. People aren’t divided between the deserving and the undeserving. And this goes for people we know and people we don't know. Jesus never says, "Go feed the deserving poor and ignore the undeserving poor." Jesus never says, "Forgive the deserving person, and ignore the undeserving ones," We keep sneaking this works righteousness in, over and over again, in our practical theology. Jesus never says, "Now when you sin, make sure you say you're sorry like you mean it." That would be a qualifier. And there aren't a lot of qualifiers that Jesus throws around. Jesus doesn’t say, “Follow me unless you don’t feel like it.” He doesn’t say, “if someone strikes you, turn the other cheek, unless they are mean, then sock ‘em with a left cross.”

So much of it comes down to how we see ourselves. Do we include ourselves in the in-group or the out-group? Whatever the case, Jesus didn’t separate like this. When Jesus went out to the villages, he had compassion on all of them, on sight.

This is the heart of evangelism: this compassion. Not pity. Not good guys and bad guys. Not bringing people onto our team. Not recruitment, not sales. But compassion — suffering with, feeling with. God offers us life when we don't deserve it. God offers us a future when we don't deserve it. We're not selected by God based on our CV, based on how we look in the mirror. We're all sinners in need of grace.

Jesus says the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. The harvest is plentiful because there are many who need mercy and grace, love and transformation in this world. Many of them need their walls of pride torn down. And the laborers are few — because to labor with Jesus is to have compassion with Jesus. To see as God sees. To have our hearts break as God's heart breaks.

As we continue in this Ordinary Time, may we not seek to separate ourselves from others, may we not seek to be the good guys or the bad guys — may we humbly receive grace when we don't deserve it, because we only ever receive grace when we don't deserve it. May we respond joyfully, like Sarah, to the great gift offered to us. And may we graciously receive the encouragement of Jesus to go forth and offer God's grace to others, out of compassion — to see the grace given to us as something worth sharing, a light we should not hide.

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

### Children’s message

What does a cow say?

What does a duck say?

What does a sheep say?

The Bible talks about sheep a lot. Sheep were really important. But a sheep without a sheepard is lost. Sheep were trained to live with humans a long time ago so they don’t know how to live alone. they can’t protect themselves. They are aimless

One day, Jesus saw a group of people who were hurting and he said they were like sheep without a shepherd, so Jesus wanted to send people out to help them.

We try to follow that every week at Covenant. I want you to pay attention the very end of the service today. I always say, you don’t leave church, you are sent. One way you are sent is to be shepherds to lost sheep. To help people who are aimless. That includes you kids. You can help others who aimless or hurt or lost by having compassion. On the playground. When you go back to school, you can look to other people with compassion.

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: Get Ready for Something Big

themes: ascension already-and-not-yet christus-victor eternal-life works-of-love second-coming doers-not-hearers

text:
**Scripture:** Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11; James 5:7-8; 1 Peter 4:7; Hebrews 10:37; Philippians 4:5; Ecclesiastes 1:2; 1 Corinthians 13:12
**Series:** Easter

> An Ascension Sunday sermon framing the entire Christian life as a 'coda' or aftermath lived between the already and the not-yet. Using the NBA playoffs and Tolkien's Scouring of the Shire, Wilson argues that worldly victories fade because their thrill lives only in anticipation — but the church's anticipation of Christ's return never goes stale because the victory is already won and the not-yet has already begun. Drawing on John 17, eternal life is defined not as clouds and harps but as knowing God; with Augustine, believers participate in heaven now through faith, hope, and love. The closing call is to concrete works of love — prayer, service, worship, fellowship, invitation — not to earn salvation but to see God more clearly while awaiting the something big still to come.

**Illustrations:** nba-playoffs-anticipation, spurs-wemby-championship, tolkien-scouring-of-shire, sequel-replays-last-scene, honeymoon-and-diapers, layoffs-divorce-diagnosis

---

# May 17, 2026
## Get Ready for Something Big
## Ascension Sunday
## Acts 1:6-14	John 17:1-11

#### Acts 1:6-14

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.
They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away.
When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.
All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

#### John 17:1-11

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,
since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.
And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.
So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;
for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.
I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

# Sermon Transcription — The Aftermath

We are in the middle of the NBA playoffs. Some of you may follow the league. Others, not so much. My kids have gotten really into basketball this year, and so we watch a lot of basketball. It’s really lovely. Some games are on a little too late for my comfort, but it works out for us to have this activity that we are all interested in.

I think that the playoffs in any sport are exciting because of the contingency of what could happen. We don’t know exactly what is going to happen. We know who the favorites are, but not what is going to happen.

Ironically, as you get closer to the end, as you get closer to the finals, the excitement isn’t really there anymore. When you have a team that you support in a championship game — in the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Finals — it’s very stressful. At least for me. It’s not this peaceful, joyful, ebullient feeling. And then when it’s over, it’s over. When the Astros won the World Series, I was excited for like two days. When they lost the World Series, I was pretty sad for like four days. Either way, I moved on with my life.

What comes after? Often the excitement is based around anticipation, but when you accomplish your goal or you fail to accomplish your goal, there’s not much anticipation left. You can look to the next year and the next season, but it doesn’t have the same feeling.

This is why it’s hard to have a good ending to a movie or a novel. So many endings are so unsatisfying. One of my favorite books growing up was J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and the series ends not with the destruction of the Ring of Power at Mount Doom but like two hundred pages later, in the aftermath, in the Shire — the Scouring of the Shire. It’s a section of the book that wasn’t adapted into the movie because it doesn’t fit the cinematic energy.

Tolkien wrote his fantasy in light of his experiences in World War I and the horrors of trench warfare. The ending of the books are in large part about the consequences of even righteous action. The destruction of evil in Middle-earth doesn’t lead to everyone being happy in total harmony. There are still consequences that can’t be tied up in a neat bow.

----

When we look at John chapter 17 and the Book of Acts, we have to realize that basically all of the Christian faith is lived as a coda to the life of Jesus Christ. We are in the aftermath of that ending — of his death and resurrection — and there’s anticipation for the future. Something big is going to happen. But how should we understand and see that?

Acts chapter one takes place right after the events of the four Gospels. The writer of the Gospel of Luke is thought to be the same writer as the Book of Acts, and there’s a continuation here, but it’s not a direct sequel. It’s one of those movie things where they replay the last scene at the beginning. The Gospel of Luke ends with Jesus ascending. The Book of Acts begins with Jesus ascending, then we have what happens next.

And the friends closest to Jesus — his students, whom we call disciples — went back to Jerusalem and prayed. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the other women were there, back in Jerusalem. They were trying to take care of the after, but they didn’t know what to do. Something big was going to happen, but they didn’t know what it was.

The New Testament is filled with this expectation of the imminent return of Jesus. He is coming soon.

James writes Be patient… because the Lord’s coming is near.[^1]

Peter writes “The end of all things is near.”[^2]

Hebrews 10:37 — “For in just a very little while, ‘He who is coming will come and will not delay.’”

Philippians 4:5 — “The Lord is near.”

This doesn’t even get to the book of Revelation. Folks who knew Jesus thought that he was coming back soon, so they acted in the manner as if that was true. This language fills the New Testament so much so that there is a certain group of Christians who believe in the literal meaning of the New Testament so much that they think in Jesus actually did return in 70 AD but then he left again.

The Ascension of Jesus marks the beginning of the age in which we currently live, between the already, and they not yet. We live in a world transformed by the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We also live in a world still filled with the brokenness of sin and destruction, crying out for redemption. These two realities seem contradictory. If God was all powerful, why is there suffering in this world? If Jesus came to save our sins, why are people still sinning?

### back to the nba
I wants to go back to the NBA playoffs for a minute or two. Let’s say the Spurs pull it out and Wemby wins his first championship. I will be thrilled. A lot of people I know will be excited. There will be a parade in San Antonio. We’ll probably get a hat and then it will fade, like everything else. As the book of Ecclesiastes begins with, vanity of vanity says the preacher; vanity of vanities, all his vanity, and the chasing after wind.

It’s all ultimately unsatisfying, these things of the world. If you win the lottery tomorrow, if you got that big promotion, if the company work for public in the IPO quintupled your wealth, if your child got into the school of their dreams, whatever marker we give to ourselves in our world is ultimately not enough. Frodo and Sam destroyed the ring of power at the summit of Mountain Doom and it didn’t leave warm bubbly feelings for the rest of their life.

As those of you have been married, remember, every honeymoon does not last forever. For every child that is born, eventually they’ll start eating solid foods, and that smell in their diaper is gonna change.

These are the good things in life, but the obverse is also so true and is much more encouraging. When your job is downsized and it feels like nothing Good is going to happen, it is not the end of the world. When you’re girlfriend breaks up with you or your spouse files for divorce out of the blue or you realize that you have been an abusive relationship for a long time in need a fresh start it is not the end of the world. When you or someone you love gets diagnosed with a disease or get sick, it is not the end of the world for them or for you. That anticipation and excitement for the big thing to come is the life of faith we are offered in this life now is that anticipation continually for what is to come through Jesus Christ not that we are going to win the NBA championship or have a life free from harm, but that the glory of of God will be revealed in all the Earth and the all will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

Our faith is that the God who created everything who revealed himself fully in the life at the resurrection of Jesus Christ has not left us alone in this period between the already and the not yet.

In John 17, Jesus, defines eternal life. “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Eternal life is not clouds and harps and wings, but knowing God. We still look through a glass darkly, as Paul says in first Corinthians 15, but we are still able to discern God through Grace. And the power of that Grace is that the not yet we are anticipating, the big thing that is coming has already begun.

As St. Augustine wrote,

>Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him? While in heaven he is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.

We can be a part of it in the most surprising of ways: by closing our eyes and lifting our minds to the Lord in prayer. By taking time in a week to serve our neighbor even when we don’t need to. By worshiping God and singing, hymns and songs of praise, even if they aren’t our favorite tune. By meeting together and sharing together, and Christian conversation, even with people who aren’t our best friends. By inviting others to worship or a small groups or to lunch and being open about what we believe our ultimate destiny is before us, but it is not closed off to us.

These are the works of love or actions of love. They are not ways to earn salvation but what we can concretely do to see God more clearly. We are saved by faith but we are not left alone to try and reinvent the wheel.

You are so loved by God that God has called you to be a part of the kingdom building here and now. The victory has already been won, but that celebration is not going stale or growing old instead, it gets more exciting and deeper every year every month every week every day.

In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[^1]: James 5:7-8
[^2]: 1 Peter 4:7


title: Give Me Water

series: Lent

themes: living-water spiritual-hunger generosity samaritan-woman-at-the-well temptation serving-the-least wilderness-provision

text:
**Scripture:** Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42; Matthew 10:42
**Series:** Lent

> A 3rd-Sunday-in-Lent sermon pairing the water from the rock at Meribah/Massah (Exodus 17) with Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (John 4). The same staff that split the Red Sea splits the rock, signifying God's power to give water for body and soul. Jesus asks to be served before he gives, modeling the more radical act of receiving from a socially impure stranger. We all carry thirst triggers in our souls and long for living (spiritual) water; the entryway to receiving it is giving water to the thirsty and outcast. Lenten call: discern your thirst, and start by satisfying the needs of Jesus and the thirsty before your own, offering a cup of cold water (Matthew 10), for it is in giving that we receive the living water.

**Illustrations:** appalachian-trail-water-hiking, dead-moose-by-spring, indoor-plumbing-appreciation, red-sea-in-movies, men-forget-to-drink-water, augustine-gift-of-god

---

# March 8, 2026
## 3rd Sunday in Lent
## Exodus 17:1-7	John 4:5-42
### Give Me Water

#### Exodus 17:1-7

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.
The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”
But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”
So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.
I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.
He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

#### John 4:5-42

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?
Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

After college, I went hiking for a few months. I took a bus north to Maine and started walking south. Most of the hiking I had done before then was in Texas, where there’s not much water. You never expect water on a trail in Texas, and any water you do find should be regarded with a high degree of suspicion.

On the East Coast, up in the Appalachians, there are water sources all over — lots of springs, mountain springs. I was getting used to a new reality. I came from a situation of extreme suspicion around water to one of just appreciation for its abundance. When I hiked, I didn’t have to carry a lot of water with me because I knew I could fill up soon. I also stopped filtering it pretty quickly, both because I gained a lot of knowledge about good and bad water sources and for the sake of expediency — those two things combined.

Of course, there was always a small chance that the water sources I found would have parasites or Giardia or bacteria. But instead of taking a maximal risk view, I tried to just minimize my risk by applying a few criteria. Before I would drink the water, the first question was: Does the water come directly out of the earth? Do I see where it emerges from the mountain? Usually these were piped springs — water would trickle through rock, with a source inside the rock that came out through a pipe and dripped or flowed down. That was step one.

Step two was: Do I see what is above the water source, and is there any active animal activity? That is, is this water source near the summit of whatever place I’m on, so that I know what’s above it and what might drip down into it?

And this leads into a third criterion: Do I see any heavy animal activity around the source? One time, when I was in Maine, I decided to pass on a water source because there was a dead moose next to it. That’s a pretty clear violation of my criteria.

If those three criteria were met, I would just fill up my water and move on. If I was thirsty and needed water and there wasn’t a mountain spring nearby, I would filter the water — unless there were animal signs. If there were animal signs, I was not going to filter my water; I would boil it.

My hiking experience — that consistency of staying outside, day after day — also helped me appreciate indoor plumbing in a whole new way. Not just for gray water uses, but for the fresh water uses of simply turning a faucet and drinking water. How beautiful that is.

After their time as slaves in Egypt, when the Hebrew people came out and crossed the Red Sea, they had a hard time finding water. They were going through a wilderness area — a lot of people, thousands of people who needed to drink water. That’s thousands upon thousands of gallons of water they needed every day to survive in the desert. An incredible logistical challenge.

In Exodus 17, we see a glimpse of this challenge: the waters of Meribah and Massah, the rock that was split open to let water come out. It’s interesting that this story isn’t as famous in church circles as the Red Sea — that evocative, powerful image made famous in movies like The Ten Commandments or The Prince of Egypt.

But this is intentional. The same staff used to split the Red Sea is used to split the rock and bring forth water. The same staff that is used to separate water is used to bring water out.

The staff of Moses signifies the power of God — the power of God to separate the waters, to split the rock and let the waters come out. The power of God to give us water for our body. The power of God to give us water for our soul.

Jesus is traveling through Samaria, a set of regions under Roman occupation. The Samaritans are relatives of the Jews, cousins of the Jews, but those who live far from Jerusalem — and so they practice their faith not at the temple but on the mountaintops. They still follow, in their mind, the words of Moses, of Abraham, of Jacob, but in a different way.

For Jews, Samaritans were dirty. They were impure because they did not follow the ritual purifications at the temple. Ironic now, after the destruction of the Second Temple, that all Jews function like Samaritans because they don’t go to the temple for the sacrifice. So that criticism doesn’t work anymore. But in Jesus’s day it did, and there was a fine distinction. Jesus could be rendered ritually unclean by making contact with a Samaritan — a woman, not his wife, who is also not a Jew.

Now, this passage goes on for a while, as most of the Gospel of John does. John doesn’t have short moments in the ministry of Jesus. If it’s worth telling, it’s worth telling at length in the Gospel of John. So we just cut down to this first portion of John chapter four.

This woman is shocked that Jesus asked her for a drink of water. It’s interesting — this is another moment when, instead of serving, Jesus asks to be served. Like with the baptism, with John the Baptist: Jesus comes and asks to be served at the well.

And in that, it is a much more radical act. Because it’s one thing to do something for another person — to do something for a stranger and just think, “You know what, I did that. I’m a doer. I’m a giver.” It’s quite the opposite to receive from someone. To receive from a stranger. To receive from someone who is socially impure, who is socially tainted, who could tarnish your reputation.

Sometimes God calls us to give. Sometimes God calls us to receive.

But then we quickly get into this distinction Jesus makes between the water of the well and the living water, which he is able to give. In Greek, “living water” could also be translated as “water that is alive.” And I think there are some biologists who could talk about all the living organisms within water that is alive — but this is not what Jesus is talking about. The life present in his water is a spiritual life. And we should think “spirit” here in contrast to material, physical life. This is the life that Jesus offers, if we ask it from him.

This is what we are thirsty for.

Now, there are a lot of people who aren’t thirsty for water that often. I think there’s a generation of folk older than me — especially males — who find it difficult to remember to drink water. The thirst triggers in their body don’t go off.

But what Jesus is pointing out here is that we have thirst triggers in our soul. And that thirst is not divided between the pure and the impure, between the just and the unjust, between the righteous and the unrighteous. We all long for living water that satisfies, that purifies, that justifies, that makes us straight — that makes us right.

The people of Israel were wandering in the desert. They were thirsty, and God opened the rock and gave them something to drink. They knew they were thirsty. The woman at the well didn’t quite know she was thirsty until she spoke to Jesus. And the throughway to get to the living water is to serve physical water to Jesus.

How interesting is that? This act of service, of mission, of giving drink to the thirsty — this is our entryway into receiving the living water of Jesus Christ. If we’re not willing to give water to the thirsty, if we’re not willing to receive water from the socially outcast, we’re not ready to receive the living water from Jesus.

Now, what does this water look like? What does it taste like? We don’t see what the water looks like physically, because it’s not physical water. But we see what happens from it. We see the reaction to it. We see what it does to us. The living water changes us.

As St Augustine says,

>He asks for a drink, and he promises a drink. He is in need, as one hoping to receive, yet he is rich, as one about to satisfy the thirst of others. He says: If you knew the gift of God. The gift of God is the Holy Spirit. But he is still using veiled language as he speaks to the woman and gradually enters into her heart.

God moves gradually in our lives and sometimes God moves rapidly. We know when we’ve been given living water. Let us follow up that knowledge with action. We are thirsty, Lord. We are thirsty what quenches our thirst. And it doesn’t end with us. We will never be satisfied if we don’t respond.

The woman at the well kept missing the point. She wanted to to receive but she wasn’t ready to give.

In this season of Lent, as we go through the wilderness on the journey towards Holy Week, may we work to discern what we are thirsty for. And may we start not with satisfying our own needs, but satisfying the needs of Jesus, of the thirsty, the hungry, the tired, the lost.

May we look around us to see who is thirsty and offer a cup of cold water, as Jesus commends in Matthew 10 when he says, “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”

For it is in giving that we are able to receive the living water, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.


title: Go From Your Country

themes: cost-of-discipleship new-birth scripture-interpretation holy-communion abrahamic-call

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 12:1-4; John 3:1-17; John 3:16; Romans 13
**Series:** Lent

> Preached on the 2nd Sunday in Lent, this sermon pairs Abraham's call to leave Ur with Nicodemus's nighttime visit to Jesus to argue that faith means leaving comfort for the uncomfortable. Wilson critiques selective biblical literalism, contrasting eisegesis (reading our biases in for confirmation) with exegesis (letting God's word change us), invoking Barth's 'strange new world of the Bible.' He extends the call into communion as an unsettling, serious encounter with the body and blood of Christ, urging the congregation to go from their country to meet Jesus in the Bible, at the table, and in neighbor and enemy.

**Illustrations:** baseball-spring-training-optimism, dodgers-probably-win-again, medieval-fourfold-sense, luther-cuts-to-literal, mustard-seed-faith-has-no-mass, barth-strange-new-world, nicodemus-hats-cannibals-at-communion, hobby-lobby-kitchen-sign, luther-swaddling-clothes

---

# March 1, 2026
## 2nd Sunday in Lent
## Genesis 12:1-4	John 3:1-17
### Go From Your Country

#### Genesis 12:1-4

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

#### John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.
He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.
What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”
Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.
If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Opening day of baseball is starting at the end of the month. It is always a time of optimism, I hope, for baseball fans. Every team is tied zero and zero. Most seasons there’s a feeling anybody could win — though the reality is the Dodgers will probably win again, and sometimes that happens.

The first mark of a new baseball season is when pitchers and catchers report for spring training. They get a little extra work in. Usually, you can tell how well your season is going by the time when you first look up when pitchers and catchers are going to report for next year. That is when you get to the point that you realize your team is going nowhere. But next year could be our year — everyone is able to think that.

My friends, it is the second Sunday in Lent. Is this going to be your year?

## Nicodemus and the Messiah

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He was waiting for the Messiah for a long time. The Pharisees were a group of very religious lay people in Israel. They were not priests or Levites. They were people who took their faith very seriously. For a lot of them, Nicodemus included, that meant expecting and waiting on the anointed one of God — the Messiah.

If you grew up in the church, you might conflate the terms “Messiah” and “Son of God,” but it’s an important distinction. In the Hebrew scriptures, there’s nothing inherently divine about the messianic texts. The Messiah is a person anointed by God, but not God. A scriptural innovation that Christians make is claiming that Jesus is both the Messiah and the Son of God.

Nicodemus was waiting for the Messiah, and he noticed things about Jesus. He noticed the teachings of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus. He had been waiting for something new to take place, and so he left what was comfortable for him and went to see Jesus. He came by night, so others couldn’t see him. He left what was comfortable in order to see Jesus. And he paid attention to the words of Jesus. He listened to them. He listened to how strange they were.

## Taking the Bible Seriously

There’s been a lot of conflict within the church over the last hundred, two hundred years over biblical literalism. Different traditions talk about reading the Bible literally. That’s where it comes from — from the Latin littera, which means “the letter.” If you go back to the medieval church, they had a fourfold way of reading the Bible. The first was the literal way — that is, what do the letters say? What do they mean? The next was the allegorical — what is the symbol going on? What is the deeper meaning? The next was the tropological or moral — what is a moral teaching we can draw out of the scriptural text? And finally, the anagogical or eschatological — how does this point to the last things, or give us an understanding of our last things with God?

One of the things Luther did was kind of cut off the last three, so it was focused just on the literal: what are the words themselves saying? But he and others have to deal with the fact that Jesus uses figurative language a lot. The Bible is filled with figurative language.

So how do you take figurative language literally? “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed” — well, what size is faith? Is faith an object that has size or volume or takes up space? Is there a mass to faith? That’s taking it literally. But that’s not what people mean when they say to take the Bible literally. They don’t mean that. Obviously. But it’s these “obviously’s” that are built on ideologies, and that’s where the conflict comes in. It’s the assumptions that people make in their traditions that lead to conflict.

For most of Christian tradition, Christians have taken seriously — I use “seriously” more than “literally” — seriously, those texts which align with their ideology, and held lightly those that don’t. There are traditions that take deeply the language of the Bible around marriage but hold lightly language in the Bible around usury. They take seriously language of the Bible around authority, like in Romans 13, and hold lightly language in the Bible around being children of the kingdom of heaven, having no father or master.

## Born Again

All this gets us back to Nicodemus, who took the words of Jesus seriously. He was challenged when Jesus said, “You must be born again,” because birth was what happens at the beginning of your life. How can I be born again? Must I go back into my mother’s belly? He came from where he was comfortable into a new country, and he was challenged by it. But he was willing to listen and confront it, and in that he was transformed — and gave Jesus the opportunity to share the fullness of his good news in John 3:16.

Abraham went from his country, Ur of the Chaldees, to a new land on the word of God, by faith. He was willing to go from the comfortable to the uncomfortable out of obedience to the God of all creation.

This is what it means to take the Bible seriously. Karl Barth calls it “the strange new world of the Bible.” If you’re reading the Bible and it’s not very strange, I think you need to read it differently. If it’s not very new, you need to read it differently. If it doesn’t look like a completely different world, you need to read it differently.

There’s this distinction scholars make between eisegesis and exegesis. Eisegesis is reading into the text. It’s taking our assumptions and expectations and putting them there in the Bible to give ourselves confirmation about those assumptions and expectations. We read the Bible for the precise purpose of confirmation bias, so that we have a source to confirm how we wanted to live anyway. Exegesis is reading out of the Bible. It’s God speaking to us. And what that means is change. What that means for us is change.

Nicodemus left where he was comfortable and went to see Jesus. For us, this is what it means to read deeply, to spend time with scripture. It means leaving a place that is comfortable in order to meet and see Jesus.

## Coming to the Table

This is what it means to come to the table at communion. It means leaving someplace that’s comfortable to do something that is uncomfortable. Let’s put on our Nicodemus hats and come to the table.

Wait — you’re eating the body of Jesus? Are you cannibals? You’re drinking the blood of Jesus? Are you psychos? There’s a response, you know, that some Christians could say: “Oh, don’t take it so seriously. It’s just what we do.” When in fact the faithful response is to take it more seriously. Yes, we are eating the body of Jesus. Yes, we are drinking the blood of Jesus. Jesus is here. Our God, who created everything, is here. The one who sacrificed himself for us is here and gives himself to us.

We receive an amazing gift this day, one that is given freely, so we can receive it in a lot of different ways. We can receive lightly or seriously. We can come to the table solemnly, reflecting on the miracle of life given to us — that we are allowed to participate in the remaking of this world, that we are given a foretaste of the coming kingdom of heaven. It is something concrete that we can bite and chew and swallow.

And God gives us the freedom to just go through the motions. But why? Why waste this opportunity? The strange new world of the Lord’s table, offered for you. Coming to see Jesus, to touch Jesus, to taste Jesus.

## The Strange New World

This is what happens when we open our Bibles. It doesn’t always happen in the easiest of ways. There are a lot of verses of the Bible that you won’t find on a sign at Hobby Lobby to put in your kitchen. We have to wrestle with that. Be unsettled with that.

Martin Luther called the Bible the swaddling clothes in which we find the baby Jesus. The swaddling clothes were dirty. When a baby is born, it’s really messy. There’s lots of fluids and blood. But it holds Jesus.

In this season of Lent, may you be willing to go from your country to meet Jesus in a new way — in the Bible, at the table, in your neighbor, even in your enemy. God is here for you.

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


title: Good News: What Is Evangelism?

themes: evangelism the-gospel love-as-desire paul-at-the-areopagus holy-spirit-as-advocate freedom-in-christ

text:
**Scripture:** Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21; Matthew 7:24-27; Matthew 28:19; John 1:46
**Series:** Easter

> Preached on the 6th Sunday of Easter, this sermon redefines evangelism for a media-saturated age where 'good news' has been corrupted by an industry that always sells something. Drawing on Paul at the Areopagus (Acts 17), who affirms the pagans' instinct and offers a gateway rather than condemnation, and on Jesus in John 14, the pastor argues evangelism is a shift from reason to desire: love is what you want, and those who love Jesus keep his commandments. After tracing the loaded history of 'evangelical' and 'fundamentalist' (Scopes trial, Carl Henry, Billy Graham), he urges hearers neither to ambush strangers nor to avoid speaking of God, but simply to share the genuinely good thing that has happened in their own lives, freed from sin and no longer alone because the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate, walks with them. Evangelism is 'come and see' — pointing back to Jesus, who alone transforms and converts.

**Illustrations:** news-media-sells-something, rare-cancer-treatment-news, scopes-trial-inherit-the-wind, carl-henry-billy-graham-evangelical-term, coffee-shop-deathbed-question, house-on-rock-and-sand, freed-prisoner-shares-news, sharing-about-a-baby, come-and-see-john-1

---

# May 10, 2026
## What is Evangelism?
## 6th Sunday of Easter
## Acts 17:22-31	John 14:15-21

#### Acts 17:22-31

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.
For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

#### John 14:15-21

”If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.
This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

# Sermon Transcription — Good News: What Is Evangelism?

At the time of Jesus, there was no New York Times. There was no Fox News or Guardian or New Yorker or Time Magazine or MSNBC or CNN or Wall Street Journal or any of these. News as a noun — as we know it — didn’t exist. Sales and marketing wasn’t an industry.

There weren’t any marketing shops in the Roman Empire because there wasn’t a media to consume it. Letters and books and works were not mass-produced. They were targeted for specific audiences, so you couldn’t grow markets or market share in this kind of way.

When Paul was preaching in Athens at Mars Hill, the Areopagus, he wasn’t thinking about the camera angle or posterity. He was thinking about the people directly in front of him.

There are a lot of differences between our world and the world of two thousand years ago, but this is one that is often missed — that when we say “good news,” it sounds different today than it would have two thousand years ago. And I’m not talking about the English language versus Greek or Aramaic or Latin. The concepts themselves are different.

The challenge today is deception — a lack of trust about news. People profit from news, from new media, from old media. All of it is selling something. All of it is selling something. And sometimes it’s earnestly something you need. You have a rare form of cancer, a new treatment comes out, you hear news about it, and you’re able to join a study. That’s great. But this is not the majority of news of any kind. And I’m not talking about ideologies or parties or politics or any of that. Everyone who owns a media company wants to make money on the media company. Everyone who has an active following on social media wants to grow that following.

With all of that — what is evangelism?

----

Now, some of you have experienced more evangelical churches, the more charismatic traditions as well. Those aren’t identical, but often they overlap. Some of you have grown up Catholic or have been in mainline churches for all of your religious life.

“Evangelical” today is more of a political category than a religious one. The largest Lutheran denomination, the ELCA, is officially titled the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “Evangelical” was a phrase that Martin Luther would use, but I don’t think many of the cultural categorizers would refer to ELCA Lutherans as evangelical as a religious category.

The term came up especially in the 1950s, by people like Carl Henry, who started Christianity Today, as a way to differentiate from fundamentalists. “Fundamentalist” was a large category and a controversial one, especially in the twenties and thirties over the Scopes trial in Tennessee — when the former vice president and presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan came to Tennessee and prosecuted a case against a schoolteacher who was teaching evolution in schools. Clarence Darrow, the most famous lawyer at the time, came to defend him. The story drew national and international press, became a Pulitzer Prize–winning play and an amazing movie, Inherit the Wind.

The incident culturally placed, a lot of baggage around the term “fundamentalist.” And so after World War II, as Protestants were doing missionary work again, they leaned on this term “evangelical.” Carl Henry, Billy Graham, and others like them were at that point specifically focused on an apolitical Christianization of places around the world, especially war-torn places and across the United States as the GIs were coming home. And this language shifts and moves sociologically throughout the next seventy years.

So much so that whatever tradition you come out of, there’s probably some baggage in your life about the word “evangelism” — about what it means, what it could be, what it should mean, why it matters.

Literally, it means good news. Good message. The good message — the good message that he has risen, that Christ is risen indeed, that our life is different now because of resurrection. What seemed impossible before is possible now. Death has been defeated.

There are a lot of models for evangelism and what it can look like today. I remember growing up, being at a coffee shop, and somebody coming up to my table, interrupting me while I was reading, and asking me: if I died at that moment, where did I think I was going? This is one model of evangelism.

I think Jesus himself also offers us a different one — that our model of evangelism should come from him. Now, sometimes, especially for mainline churches, that can become a complete avoidance of actually talking about God and resurrection. And I think we should be careful of that temptation too — so concerned about making other people feel uncomfortable that we don’t actually speak and say what we believe.

Paul, in Acts 17, is in Athens, and he goes to one of the centers of public debate. He speaks up in the middle of the debate, and instead of saying to the pagans how wrong they are, he says that the resurrection of Christ is in some ways affirmed in the completion of what was already going on in pagan Athens. God is the source in whom we live and move and have our being. Paul makes this connection, offering a gateway.

And so often this is the limit of what people think of as evangelism, or apologetics. Apologetics — apologia, a Greek word for defense, making a defense of the faith. Apologetics is usually seen as arguing for Christian belief.

But what Jesus does in John 14 is make this amazing turn that I think should radicalize how we understand evangelism, how we understand our own faith and life and walk with Jesus, how we understand mercy and sacrifice and service. It is the shift from reason to desire. That’s what love is. Love is about desire. It is not simply what you think. It’s what do you want? What do you desire?

>“Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Those who love me — who are those who love him? In the same verse he says:

“They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”

In Matthew, we have the parable of the house on the sand and the house on the rock. The ones who hear the word of God and do them are like those who build their house upon the rock. The winds come and the waters rise and they are secure. But those who hear the word of God and don’t do it — it’s like those who build their house upon the sand. The winds come and the waters rise and they are swept away.

Jesus tells us to go forth and make disciples of all nations at the end of Matthew 28. But what I think is really important for us today — and to understand how important it is for your faith — is to think about what it means to share your faith. We are so focused, in church language, on the institutional identity of the church: “Oh, we need more people. We need more members. We need all these kinds of things.” But how grounding it is for your own faith to be willing to share it and explain it to others. To be unashamed of it. To not assume that people will think you’re crazy.

It is important for us. Multiple times throughout the New Testament, it is remarked that we should be able to give an account of our faith. And this also gets back to desire — having a faith worth giving an account of. Believing in God to the point that you want to share it. That God has something to offer the people in your lives. That God is not a sociological category. That you are not here this day just because of who your parents were or where you grew up, but that in your life, at one point, when the veil was thin, you encountered the divine.

You realized that you were not your mistakes. You are not your failures. You are not your sins. You are loved already, and you don’t have to desire paths of destruction. You don’t have to give in to the Joneses. You are free. You’re free to love and free to share. Your chains are gone. You can rise, go forth, and follow.

If you were locked away for a long time and you became free, you would share it. You would share that news.

People like to share when they have a baby. People like to share when their kids have a baby.

You are freed in Christ. Before you share, it’s good to reflect about what you believe — about who God is, about how Jesus saves, about how your life has changed and can continue to change.

If you would like to talk more about this and about your own faith, please come talk to me. Let us find a time to meet.

Most of all, don’t think of evangelism like a media organization, or like an influencer, or like a desire for conversions. It’s sharing something good that has happened in your life. And if it resonates with someone, fantastic. But it starts with you realizing that something good has happened in your life that’s worth sharing. The God who created everything did not see our broken world as something to ignore. He became human to be with us, to live with us, and ultimately to die for us.

But death was not the end. Death, in fact, was the enemy that was defeated when, three days later, he rose again. And then, still unfinished, he sent the Holy Spirit — the third person of the Trinity — to be with us, to be in us, to remind us that God is the source in whom we live and move and have our being, and to give us life so that we can share life in this world, so that we can offer love.

The Spirit of Truth came to be with us — the Advocate, the one walking with us — so that we are not alone. So let us not act as if we are alone. Let us not act as if we have saved ourselves.

We may not be on Mars Hill, on that debate stage, but let us be willing to start with the basics. At the beginning of the Gospel of John, when Jesus goes up to Philip and Andrew and Nathanael, he says to them simply: come and see. Jesus is the one who transforms hearts, not us. Jesus is the one who converts, not us. Jesus is the one who gives life.

May we be willing to point, in our lives, back to Jesus — to show the love that has already come down to us. That is what it means to follow the commandments: to reflect in our lives and in our desires our love for God and our love for our neighbor. And then God will also respond to that.

May we be free — not slaves to the brokenness of this world and the anxiety and the worries that however we speak outside of our comfort zone, we will fail — but trusting that God is there for us, and the Spirit of Truth has been offered so that we are no longer alone.

Thanks be to God.

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


title: If You Fall Down

themes: temptation idolatry fasting grace evil-as-corruption-of-good humility disordered-love

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 2:15-17; Matthew 4:1-11; 1 Corinthians 13:4; 2 Corinthians 6:14; Micah 6:8
**Series:** Lent

> First Sunday of Lent sermon pairing the Eden temptation with Jesus' wilderness temptation to argue that temptation is always personal: it takes something genuinely good (food, relationships, power, adoration, self-care, self-awareness) and distorts it. Such distortion is downstream from idolatry (Calvin's idol factory), and popular culture's fixation on only food and relationships blinds us to the many other ways we twist God's goodness. The point of temptation is not willpower but grace and humility when we fall, with fasting reframed as discipline over disordered desire and a stripping away of false necessities (Micah 6:8). Closes with the assurance that we already have what we need from God and should go forth offering mercy and grace.

**Illustrations:** seminary-food-book, unequally-yoked-church-camp, natural-gardener-tree, teacher-apricot, calvin-idol-factory, capybara-lenten-meat, catholic-fish-fry, sports-fall-down-cliche

---

# February 22, 2026
## First Sunday of Lent
## Genesis 2:15-17	Matthew 4:1-11
### If You Fall Down

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” - Genesis 2:15-17

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. - Matthew 4:1-11

Temptation is always tempting. It is a banal phrase that needs to be said. Temptation is always tempting.

Usually in our day, if there’s language about temptation in secular discourse — movies, TV shows, social media — it’s going to have to do with either food or relationships. These are the two great sins of popular morality, and I think it’s important to say that there is a secular moral discourse around food and around relationships. People have different schools of thought, but it’s there. Almost all language around food is filled with moralism: good food, bad food, good diet, bad diet. Should you take a GLP-1? Should you not? What are the distinctions? How much sugar? How much dessert? What is good?

When I was in seminary, I wrote a book on food in the Bible that I haven’t looked at in many years. I might take a gander at it again. The crux of it was that in scripture and the Christian tradition, the importance of food is about who you eat with, not what it does to you or for you.

Similarly, the Bible doesn’t have a lot of helpful language about relationships. For instance, most every verse read at a wedding doesn’t have to do with weddings. 1 Corinthians 13 epitomizes this. Love is patient. Love is kind, etc.Paul isn’t talking about marriage at all. He is more guarded words about marriage earlier in that letter. On the other hand, I don’t know if I’d call it helpful, but Christian culture has a lot of language about relationships. For instance, in my Paul class last week, we were reading from 2 Corinthians 6, and there’s this beautiful passage where Paul says, “Don’t be unequally yoked.” Someone in the class mentioned how at church camp, this verse of the Bible was saying that you shouldn’t date someone who’s not in your youth group — which is reading deeply into the passage. It turns on what we mean by “yoked,” but again, there are these glasses that look at Christian thought and scripture and say, “Gosh, it must be talking about dating or marriage.”

## Temptation Is Personal

As we move into the season of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday, and especially today, as we read these two temptation narratives — from Genesis 2 with Adam and Eve, and from the Gospels when the Spirit takes Jesus into the wilderness — temptation is always tempting, but your temptation is not mine, and mine is not yours.

The account of Genesis 2 is filled with metaphor and allegory. The fruit meant something. It was on a tree none of us have ever seen before. You can’t buy a knowledge of good and evil tree at the Natural Gardner. It meant something. I still believe there was a fruit. My teacher thought it was an apricot because she loved apricots. The heart of it is not the food but where the food is, hanging on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However we are to understand the deep meaning of the fruit, it wasn’t simply food. In Genesis 2, Adam and Eve both fail the temptation given to them.

Jesus isn’t tempted by food or relationships. His temptations come in a different manner. Jesus is tempted by power, by authority, by adoration. Every temptation takes something that is good and twists it. Eating is a good human activity. Relationships are good. Temptations are found in the distortions we make. For Jesus, power is good; adoration is good.

The tempter says, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

Jesus basically does this with the feeding of the five thousand. Feeding people who are hungry is good. Using the power of God to further your own power is not. With each temptation, there is a distortion.

But the distortions that the devil offers twist it and make something that has been created good into something that is destructive. It takes something that can build up and uses it as something to tear down.

## Temptation and Idolatry

If we understand temptations in this manner, they are always downstream from idolatry — that is, giving the praise due to God to something that is not God. John Calvin once said that the human heart is an idol factory. Not i-d-l-e, which is a factory that’s not currently working, but i-d-o-l — a factory for the making of idols. We make idols of everything. We can make an idol of everything.

This is the problem with the common cultural fixation on temptation as only going in two directions. We become blinded to the other temptations in our lives — which is another way to say we get blinded to the other ways that we distort God’s goodness in our life and in the world. We are blinded to the ways that we take something good and make it not good, or use it in a not-good way.

We take how we treat our neighbor and use it as a way to avoid loving our neighbor. We can take self-care — supporting ourselves, not exhausting ourselves to the point of desperation — and then distort it by turning that into an excuse not to care about the people around us. We can take “love your neighbor as yourself” and use that to say, “Well, I’ve got to love myself before I love my neighbor, so therefore I don’t have time to love my neighbor.” We can take “love your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength” and generalize the word love so much that it’s indistinguishable from what we would do if we didn’t even think God existed. Love becomes things we like as opposed what we see in the life of Jesus.

## Grace When We Fall

But what I want us to think about with temptations finally is not how to avoid them or how to willpower over them, but to acknowledge their existence in this broken world — and that we are going to be knocked down by the temptation to use something good and distort it. How we get back up again is grace. Being knocked down can teach us humility — the humility that we can’t save ourselves, and that our life as an island on our own is insufficient for the life that God created us to live.

The old sports cliché has this right: it’s not how you fall down, but how you get back up again that counts.

It’s easy to fixate on our failures and insufficiencies, on the ways that we’ve hurt the people in our lives or not done enough, or avoided, or hurt ourselves. This fixation is also a distortion and a temptation, because it takes something good — self-awareness — and turns it into something that is destructive, which gets us to fasting.

## Fasting and Desire

Like I said earlier, Jesus is tempted in specific ways. Jesus is tempted after fasting for forty days. For many of us, we may think that made Jesus weak — he must not have had a lot of energy. Instead, the fasting helps Jesus to be strong. Fasting ultimately is not about food, but about desires, and about whether our desires are under our control or not.

Lent as a season is famous for its fasts. The Eastern Orthodox especially have a stringent fasting regimen that, by the end of Lent, gets down to even fasting from oils and salt as well as all meat. Catholics famously fast on Fridays from meat — but they don’t count fish as meat, and if you’re in Argentina, they don’t count capybaras as meat. I’m not criticizing; I just think it’s funny. That’s why there are a lot of fish fry fundraisers at Catholic churches in Lent.

Fasting works directly against the habits of our daily life. Whether food or chocolate or alcohol or social media, a fast never impacts who we think we are. It is always addressing how we actually live.

So often our habits of daily life are built upon what we think is necessary for us to do, and this is where temptation really hits home — by convincing us of all the things we think we need, which weighs down our daily life and adds guilt when it’s not fulfilled. Our lives become filled with necessity upon necessity upon necessity, when in reality, as children of God, our needs are very minimal.

As we have in Micah 6:8: “And what does the Lord require of you? What do you need to do? Love justice, seek mercy, and walk humbly with God.” There’s nothing about all our stuff. There’s nothing about our to-do list or a curated life’s There’s nothing about standard of living. That’s an expectation we add. The world adds it. There’s nothing about the size of our home, or even about — all these things we add, and we don’t need to.

## Reorienting Our Lives

In this Season of Lent, if you fall down, may you remember that God is with you. So often we fall down because we’re not even doing what we need to do to begin with. May we all use this season to reorient our lives. May we not be blinded by the world to think temptation only comes in two flavors, but realize that all our activities, all the things in our life can be distorted. The temptations of the devil can look a lot of different ways, but that doesn’t give them extra power — because just as we admit that we can be tempted in a lot of directions, we also admit that we don’t need to be. God offers us and gives us what we need.

You already have what you need. Receive the mercy of God and go forth and do likewise. Offer mercy. Offer kindness. Offer grace. Respond to the amazing gift of a life fulfilled.

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


title: In the Presence of God

themes: presence-of-god disability-theology outward-appearance-vs-heart image-of-god everyone-matters grace-not-merit lenten-seeking

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Samuel 16:1-13; John 9:1-41; Mark 9:43-47; Genesis 28:10-17; Exodus 3:1-6
**Series:** Lent

> A 4th-Sunday-in-Lent sermon pairing Samuel's anointing of David with the healing of the man born blind in John 9 to ask where we encounter the presence of God. Drawing on Amy Kenny's disability theology, the preacher argues God's light shines not where culture expects (potential, ability, outward appearance) but among those society dismisses; the able-bodied may face a greater spiritual challenge of self-deception. The call is to abandon the dehumanizing gaze, receive every neighbor as a gift made in God's image, and remember we were loved before we could do anything.

**Illustrations:** jacob-divine-encounters, moses-burning-bush, nfl-draft-scouts, amy-kenny-zach

---

# March 15, 2026
## 4th Sunday in Lent
## 1 Samuel 16:1-13	John 9:1-41
### In the Presence

#### 1 Samuel 16:1-13

The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.”
Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’
Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.”
Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?”
He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.”
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.”
Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.”
Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.”
Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.”
He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.”
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

#### John 9:1-25

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.
We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes,
saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”
Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.”
But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”
He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”
They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.
Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.
Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.”
Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided.
So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight
and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”
His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind;
but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.
Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.”
He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

# In the Presence of God

What does it mean to be in the presence of something beyond ourselves—when we are in awe, amazed at what is happening, and don’t quite have the words?

Both the Old and New Testaments are filled with moments such as these. In Genesis, we have the moment of Jacob’s ladder, when Jacob, the scheming second son of Isaac who deceives his father and brother, has this vision from heaven. He has another moment where he wrestles with the angel, where he knows he is in a divine presence. We have Moses and the burning bush, where the words of God tell Moses to take off his shoes, for he is standing on holy ground.

The presence of God is found in those moments beyond ourself, where our experience transcends us. It can be on a mountaintop or a quiet in a storm, in the touch of a child, or the comfort of a friend.

How do we deal with the presence of God? How do we remember the presence of God during those seasons when the light shines dimly in our lives, or when our loved ones no longer see the light?

In our reading from Samuel, the prophet is concerned about the direction of the country, and God tells him to go to a strange place in order to anoint the next king. Samuel, who has dedicated his life to God, who speaks with God, is still concerned and perplexed. He doesn’t know what is going to happen. And the presence of God is revealed in the most surprising of ways. The youngest son—the most insignificant one—is designated as the king, the anointed, the successor who will grow up to be handsome and strong, a great warrior, a poet. But he starts in the most surprising way, in a manner that can only point to God’s glory and the presence of God.

The point is not that God saw the potential of David. God chose David to reveal God’s power. There is a synergistic relationship going on. Samuel doesn’t go to Jesse’s house to try and pick a king based on their potential or who they will grow up to be. Sometimes we read the story and imagine a secular world where there is no supernatural power, no divinity, no spirit that interacts with the world. Instead, it’s kind of like the NFL draft, and we’ve got scouts coming in trying to predict how these boys are going to king in the future.

No—God is a part of the future of David and the transformation that will take place in David’s life. David was chosen to glorify God, to reveal God’s presence to Samuel and to the people.

When we turn to the Gospel of John, we have a feel-good story. John chapter nine is a feel-good story at first glance. But many of the ways in which it has been read have been deeply problematic and dehumanizing to people with disabilities.

Amy Kenny, in her book, My Body is not a Prayer Request, offers another interpretation.

At the beginning of John 9, when the disciples of Jesus are debating whether the man born blind is blind because of his sin or his parents’ sin. As Amy Kenny writes, “They are so caught up in prescribing the cause of his disability that we don’t even learn his name. Do they even know it, I wonder?” She names him Zechariah or Zach to humanize him.

This is how she characterizes Jesus’ response to the behavior of the other people towards Zach:

>Jesus is having none of it. Jesus inverts their idea of blindness by showing the disciples that disability becomes a place of encounter with the glory of God. Jesus interacts with Zach directly, talking not just about him, but to him and with him. According to Jesus, Zach’s blindness didn’t result from his or his parents’ sin, but instead his blindness displays God. What a powerful, subversive statement: disability helps reveal the Light of the World to people who think of themselves as holier than disabled people. Disability is no longer a symbol of sin but one of being open to revelation. Disability unveils God’s work to the community, if only people are willing to receive it.

What are our entry points into the presence of God? That’s what this passage is about. And the presence of God may be more difficult to reach as an able-bodied person.

You may think this reading is a stretch but it follows the original Greek more closely. I translate verse 3 in the following way: Jesus answered, ‘Neither this one sinned, nor his parents, but it was that the works of God should be displayed in him.’

Jesus doesn’t justify suffering. To read it this way is to equate a lack of sight with suffering. God is displayed in the lives of those dismissed by society.

Earlier in her book, Kenny writes about the moment Jesus tells people to cut off their arm if it sins. Here is the full passage.

>If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out” (Mark 9:43–47 ESV). We get it, Jesus. It’s better to be lame, blind, and crippled than go to hell. It feels a little extreme to perform voluntary amputations to avoid sin. We’d have a lot more folks with amputations in our midst if we took this literally. Yet Jesus still claims that disability becomes a way to encounter God or a preventative remedy for sin, suggesting that being nondisabled might enhance temptation.

This may be a radically different reading than you are used to. Our society constantly others and pities and dismisses those with bodies and minds which are non-standard. This dehumanizing gaze is not based in the Bible or a theological understanding of who God is or how God created us. If we believe everyone was made in the image of God, there is no deficiency to that image based on ability. We don’t earn it. It is gift.

And to be healed as the world sees it, is not to make life automatically better. In John 9, Zach’s life is not better once he sees. People question him continually. Most of the chapter is made up of people questioning him and suspicious of what happened. They don’t see the presence of God. They still see a deficit.

To be in the presence of God takes a journey. It takes a decision and a realization.

And there may be a greater spiritual challenge for the able-bodied than the disabled. Able-bodiedness can easily lead to a self-deception that denies our connection to God and to our community.

God’s light is not often found where our culture tells us it will be. The story of David illustrates this, as does the story of Zach in John. Jesus is the light of the world but that light shines where Jesus wills, not where we want to see it. The light of Christ comforts the forgotten of society. If we want to be in the presence of God, we need to be willing to leave what is comfortable to go where God already is.

In this season of Lent, may you take the opportunity to seek the presence of God in new ways. May you let go of the patterns of the dehumanizing gaze of a culture that judges people on assumptions of ability instead of receiving every neighbor as a gift from God. Our neighbors aren’t objects we use to navigate in this world. We aren’t objects in someone else’s life. You matter to God, and so does your neighbor. Whether the world thinks so or not, you matter to God. As we get closer to Holy Week and we reflect on Christ’s great sacrifice for us. May we remember that God didn’t choose us based on what we can do. We were loved before we could do anything.

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