title: Legion

themes: spiritual-warfare christus-victor scripture-interpretation temptation love-of-neighbor humility

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 8:26-39; 1 Kings 19:1-4

> Because Scripture deliberately leaves demons under-defined, Christians should neither dismiss nor inflate evil spirits into an equal cosmic combatant, but rest in the truth that Christ has already conquered them through humility and the cross, freeing us from self-absorbed fear to serve our neighbors.

**Illustrations:** church-lady-snl, paradise-lost, exorcist-horror-films, south-park-movie, greek-daemon-etymology, satan-accuser-etymology, hell-norse-vs-biblical, scylla-charybdis, aristotle-golden-mean, roman-legion-brigade, screwtape-letters, chrysostom-easter-sermon

---

# June 22, 2025
## Legion
### 1 Kings 19:1-4
### Luke 8:26-39

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” - 1 Kings 19:1-4

Then they arrived at the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on shore, a man from the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had not worn any clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me,” for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they became frightened. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then the whole throng of people of the surrounding region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone out begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. - Luke 8:26-39

What do we talk about when we talk about demons? Depending on your own personal background, you may have a different understanding of the term. And like a lot of powerful images within the Christian faith, Scripture unfortunately does not give direct clarity about demons: what they are, who they are, where they are. Because of this, the language of demons has become ripe for literary and cinematic creativity.

On the old SNL sketch, the Church Lady, Dana Carvey was able to poke fun at the hypocrisy of some public Christians, as well as punctuate any joke with the question, “Could it be Satan?”

Beyond sketch comedy, if there were clear language about demons, we wouldn't have Milton’s Paradise Lost, and English majors everywhere like me would mourn. We wouldn't have the Exorcist. We wouldn’t have the South Park movie. Demon possession horror movies continue to be made every year and folks who have nothing to do with Christianity are compelled to see them.

Humans have filled in the gaps of biblical revelation. Not that it is all true, but it is interesting and compelling. But the challenge is when we think about it on our own: do we believe in what has been filled in by humans, or do we believe what has been revealed in the Scriptures through grace, through the Holy Spirit.

It's important to remember that when we talk about these concepts that are filled with so much cultural meaning, that we talk about the source language of the Bible. The word Daemon in Greek does not correspond directly to the word demon in English. It means more generally a divine power or spirit. An inferior being but not a powerful one. There is no negative or wicked connatation to the term. Shatan in Hebrew, means the accuser. It could be negative. No one really likes to be accused of things. But it isn’t inherently wicked.

This happens with other words in the Bible. The New Testament never talks about hell. Instead, the Bible talks of Gehenna and Hades and Tartarus. Hell is a term that comes from later Norse mythology. But some translations of the Bible translate Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus, all as hell, which makes it seem like a much more structured system than it is.
Now, when I preach about hell or I talk about demons, I'm trying to complexify it, not dismiss it. Complexifying something is not about ignoring it or dismissing it, but acknowleding we can't take it for granted and the meaning is deeper than the surface. We can't take our understanding of demons for granted, because so much of our understanding of demons comes from movies and books and poems and art. It doesn't come from the Bible. And we have to realize that we all have blinders on.

Some of us come from traditions that talk about supernatural creatures all the time. For others, it's completely avoided and you may have never heard a sermon about demons. The thing is, when we read the gospels, there are spirits. There are evil spirits involved in the world. And how do we make sense of them? And we have these twin temptations in both directions. In the ancient world, they talk about the Scylla and Charybdis, like in the Odyssey. Scylla, who's the monster with the leg of wolves that eats sailors who go by and Charybdis, the big whirlpools that smash ships that go by. So we have to go right in the middle. The golden mean, as Aristotle would say.

The twin temptations for modern Christians are leaning too far into the importance of supernatural creatures and thus creating a Manicheanism, where good and evil are equal combatants versus leaning too far in the other direction, where there is no supernatural and all phenomomena can be explained through sufficient reason.

When we read the gospel for today, there are demons. Not just demons, a legion of them.  is a Roman military term for a unit of the Roman army. A legion was about 6,000 soldiers, which means the closest modern equivalency in the US. Army would be a brigade, which is about 5,200 soldiers. That's a lot. It's a lot of soldiers. It's a lot of evil spirits possessing one person. The spirit aspect is important because we can't even come close to talking about demons if we don't have some concept of immaterial reality, of a reality that doesn't have mass or volume.

That could be 6,000 in the same place or 10,000 or 10 million or 10 billion, the more immaterial creatures present do not displace the others. However many there were, it seems like a bad situation that Jesus is walking into in Gerosene, on the other side of the side of the Sea of Galilee. It is a bad situation.

And Jesus casts them out. The demons recognize Jesus. They acknowledge his power. They ask him not to send them into the abyss, another term of the afterlife unexplained and usually translated as hell. So Jesus sends them into a bunch of pigs that go down into the lake and die.

It is quite a strange situation that seems like it would be outrageous if it weren't true. Like, how would someone think of it? There's a legion of demons and Jesus has power over them, over even a legion of demons, over even the prince of demons. They cannot withstand him. And so we need not be afraid.

My favorite modern account of Demons comes from C.S. Lewis's novel, The Screwtape Letters, which is the series of letters from one demon to his younger nephew demon, giving advice on how to tempt people. In a way, it's a very funny book. and the demons come off as laughable. And I think that that's the best posture we can take. Scripture describes evil spirits. They exist in some capacity. There are spirits of an immaterial nature that are present in our world. Yes, they're trying to tempt us and others, offering challenges in this world, but our faith is not found in this climactic battle between good and evil. The battle is over. Even in the book of Revelation, the battle is an afterthought. God isn't preparing an army of angels and saints for armed combat with the evil one. The evil one was defeated, not by combat, but through death on a cross.

As the early church father, John Chrysostom said at his Easter sermon.
>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.

Humility defeated the demons. Sacrifice defeated the demons. I think if God thought it was important for us to have a well developed system of understanding demons and angels throughout the history of the world, then scripture would be more clear on the subject. But it's not.

Scripture is clear about what matters and what matters to save us. And that is the power of Jesus Christ over all creation and all spirits. The power of the God revealed as love over all spirits. The power of Christ’s mercy over our own sins. The power offered to us when we commit to Jesus and walk the path of holiness.

So let the demons come. Let the spirits come. Christ is Lord over all. Let us give ourselves to Christ. Let us give ourselves to our Savior. Let us give ourselves to someone beyond ourselves. And if we feel challenged or tempted, and this is my pastoral advice to anyone who feels tempted by a spirit or other things or possessed is like, do something for others. Get out of your head. The devil wants us stuck in our own head. This is what C.S. Lewis points out, people stuck in their head are the people most ripe for temptation, or people full of themselves, whether they're full of themselves in their faith, or full of themselves in other things. Serve your neighbors. Give in a concrete way, even if it wasn’t the plan. Because Christ has already won the victory. Christ cast out a legion, 6,000 demons possessing one person. Christ will cast out whatever spirit is going on in your life, in the life of the ones you love. It is not an equal battle. Jesus is Lord. Let us be at peace in that.

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


site: sermons

title: Maundy Thursday

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: Lent

themes: holy-communion foot-washing receiving-grace real-presence kenosis loving-enemies ongoing-conversion

text:
**Scripture:** John 13:1-17; John 12:1-8; Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24
**Series:** Lent

> Jesus' final command before his death is not a list of moral demands but a single mandate to receive his gift again and again, in communion and in foot washing, being cleansed and transformed by a self-giving love that excludes no one.

**Illustrations:** stranger-giving-orders, military-command-structure, bosses-giving-orders, colonel-receive-this-gift, mary-anointing-feet

---

# Maundy Thursday

We don't like being ordered around by just anyone. If a stranger comes up to you and tells you, do this, do that. I think most of us would be confused and probably, at least for me, instinctively desire to do the opposite of whatever they're telling me. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”

For those of you who served in the armed forces, the command structure helps you to understand the orders that you follow. That is, you follow your superior officer because you're all a part of the same mission. Many of you who have served have had superior officers who may not have given the best orders, but you did them because that was your job. All of us have had bosses who told us to do things that we would not have done at that particular time. Whether we did them or not, probably depended on our buy in to the mission of the job or our dependency on that job for our survival.

For all the ways that Christianity has changed the world and all the ways it's most often presented to the world, Jesus doesn't directly tell us to do very many things. There's not a lot of commands that he has. Jesus offers transformed life in a number of different ways, but he doesn't command very much until tonight: do this in remembrance of me. Do. Jesus commands his disciples is to celebrate the Lord's table together.

Communion is the most otherworldly of Christian practices. It is the claim that here at this table, Jesus, God become human, is present. There are a lot of ethical positions of the Christian faith that are wonderful, the communion table is one of those places where it is hardest to see the Christian faith from a secular point of view; something supernatural is going on here.

The amazing thing is that Jesus offers himself for us and commands us to receive him, again and again and again. This is the miracle. This is the command. Jesus doesn't say be a generally good person. Jesus says, “eat me. Consume me. Receive me so that you are transformed to be in the world like me and to be present in the life to come with me. do this in remembrance of me. Come to this table, this radical, supernatural table, where what seems to be there, where there is something deeper to the core of reality that the God who created everything is present here.”

Jesus commands us to receive a gift that changes our life. Maundy Thursday comes from a Latin term which means mandatum. It means command. This is the command: receive a gift that continually changes your life. Imagine that the only order your Colonel or Sargent gave you was: receive this gift.

That is what Jesus is telling us at the table. Receive a gift that continually changes your life. The Christian faith, though, is not about a single moment of conversion, but continually receiving the gift of life in Jesus Christ, again and again and again.

The other moment we commemorate on Maundy Thursday is the foot washing, when Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Again, Jesus tells them to do this. And that in washing the feet, they wash the whole body.

John 13 comes right after John 12, a passage that I preached about a few weeks ago, where Jesus visits Mary Martha and Lazarus, and Mary pours the fragrant oil over Jesus' feet, and Jesus gets in this big debate with Judas, that we don't need to rehash, but the important thing is that Jesus receives the blessing from Mary. Here, on Maundy Thursday, Jesus gives the blessing to his disciples. It is a humbling thing to have your feet washed, to receive that.

Our feet our dirty. We may not want people to touch them. We may be self-conscious. Jesus does not love us at our best but our dirtiest. As Adrienne von Speyr writes,

>He wants to receive directly whatever is worst in us, whatever humiliates him more. In this undressing, the whole realism of his action becomes clear. It is not only a sublime symbol. The disciples really have dirty feet — they had simply not noticed it. Every individual, when the Lord comes to him, thinks perhaps to himself: If I had known that the Lord was going to do that, I would have washed beforehand. But they did not know, nor did he announce it, for he wants to take on and bear their dirtiness.[^1]

Jesus doesn’t seek to avoid the sin of the world. Jesus doesn’t seek to dismiss it. “He looks it in the face without illusions.”[^2]

Jesus cleans us in whatever shape we are in. We don’t have to do anything to be loved by God. We don’t have to prepare. We don’t have to wash up. He washes us even when we are dirty and stinky. He willingly cleans our feet and our soul.

This is what Jesus tells his disciples: receive from me, receive from the Lord. Receive this gift; that's how foot washing and communion go together. They are both about receiving a gift. and this is the command. This is the mandate. Right before he dies, Jesus commands his disciples to receive gifts. Here, I am offering them to you. As I am about to offer my body for you, receive these gifts.

The Lord has given the perfect, shining example of love, which not only consists in the deed of love itself but has its roots in his love for the Father, and therefore points back to the Father's love. In the breadth of this prototype the Lord has included everyone: beloved John and official Peter, betraying Judas and the multitude of those who are strangers to him and have turned away from him.[^3]

Jesus doesn’t pick and choose. Jesus washes them all. Even when the Gospel writer seems to pick and choose, Jesus does not.

Today, two thousand years later, living our lives as a people of faith is to receive gifts and to offer the space of Jesus to wash the feet of our friends, to share in the table of communion together, to wash the feet of our enemies, to not let conflict divide us, to serve, to see Jesus in those whom we serve to those whom we give and care for, to see Jesus even in our enemies, and to be continually renewed by consuming the God who gave himself for us, who is present at this table, may we receive him this day.

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

[^1]: Adrienne von Speyr
[^2]: Adrienne von Speyr
[^3]: Adrienne von Speyr

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: Mercy Revealed

series: Advent 2025

themes: mercy forgiveness readiness-watchfulness incarnation love-of-neighbor discipleship

text:
**Scripture:** Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44
**Series:** Advent 2025

> The mercy of God revealed in Christ's coming is the great unexpected twist of the world's story, and Advent calls us to stay ready by not delaying the love and service we owe our neighbor.

**Illustrations:** mystery-stories-act-of-faith, murder-on-the-orient-express, doomsday-preppers, thief-in-the-night, worst-thing-youve-ever-done

---

# November 30, 2025
## Mercy Revealed
## The First Sunday of Advent
## Isaiah 2:1-5
## Matthew 24:36-44

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
In days to come
    the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
    and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
    Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations
    and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
    neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob,
    come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord! - Isaiah 2:1-5

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. - Matthew 24:36-44

I really like twists in stories. They keep my attention, especially when I'm caught off guard. I love reading mysteries. My mother and grandmother raised me on them.

Mystery stories are built on expectations, and the good ones flip those expectations.
Most people know the basic beats of what is going to happen in a story: the exposition, the crime, et cetera. And then it's the question lingering while you read: is the author going to be able to pull this off in a surprising way?

Realistically speaking, the payoff is usually not there, but that's okay. It's en- enjoyable to go through and, and figure it out.
There's this great British mystery writer, PD James, who wrote a small essay once about how, like, reading a mystery is an act of faith, both that the author is going to reveal the truth at the end, but also that there is a truth to be revealed. In the midst of the chaos of the modern world, there is a truth that can be discovered: someone did it. The story unveils who did it, how it took place, and offers justice.

There's a satisfaction in reaching justice in the story or the TV show or things like that. But for the justice to be effective, it needs to be revealed at some point. If the butler did it, and you thought at the very beginning, "Oh, the butler did it," it's not really an interesting or good story.

One of my favorites, classic mysteries, is the Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, which holds up this sense of justice throughout. And I must warn you, there gonna be spoilers here for a book published in 1934. So if you haven't read or seen one of the film adaptations, this would be the time to just go to the bathroom.

Okay. So, Hercule Poirot is on this train, the Orient Express, and it gets snowed in. The rest of the passengers on the car all seem so very different, radically different people. There's a murder that takes place, and none of them seem connected to the murderer at all.
It is very confusing, but eventually the truth is revealed that there was a famous kidnapping many years before, and everyone on the car was connected to that family. The person who was murdered on the train was the kidnapper of so many years ago. The big twist at the end that's revealed is that they all did it. They all stabbed him, and they don't know which one was the killing blow. It was a great twist that offered a sense of surprise and of justice.

I want us to think about that revelation and awareness of justice that takes place at the end of a good mystery. We need to connect that twist to mercy and forgiveness.

Anytime you've ever truly been forgiven, it has come as a shock, a surprise. When someone didn't need to do it. When you have wronged someone, hurt someone in your life and they forgave you, it is a twist just as bold as realizing that all the people on the train did it.

But we could go even deeper in this because mercy only makes sense if we go back to the beginning of the story. And the beginning of the story is not when you first met this person. It was at the advent of the coming of Jesus Christ when mercy was revealed to the world.

My friends, we are entering into the Season of Advent. We are hanging our greens. We are changing the decorations. We are telling this story of Christmas in the decorations we have placed around the sanctuary. What I want us to hold on to throughout this Season of Advent, the season of preparation for the coming of our Lord, is the amazing mercy of God in coming to us, that twist, that twist at the heart of this world; that all is not lost, that brokenness and injustice does not define us. Hope is found in the God who became flesh as a child.

The first Sunday of advent has a dramatic reading in the gospels. It has an apocalyptic reading that doesn't often fit with contemporary understandings of Advent.
It doesn't fit with the niceness of decorations, of presents and family and cocoa and fireplaces and stockings and all of that. The first Sunday of Advent is about the destruction of the world because, it's about something dramatic being revealed to us, something dramatic and deep that changes us to our core.
The mercy of God is that we are not forsaken, that you are not forsaken, that you are not lost, that your story is not hopeless. And this is as dramatic a twist as any mystery.

We have to be ready for the coming of the Son of Man. It is going to happen like a thief in the night. Advent is this season of staying ready, getting ready and staying ready. And what that means for Jesus is not that we all have to become preppers, saving 365 meals and 100 gallons of water and getting ready for when the lights go off and electricity fails across the world.

No. Being ready for the coming of Jesus is about not waiting around to love our neighbor. It's not waiting to serve our neighbor. It's not waiting to worship. It's not waiting to give. It's not saying, "I'll get around to it tomorrow." Mercy has come as this giant twist. When you thought you were guilty, when you thought you were lost, the twist is that you are forgiven. Think of the worst thing you've ever done, really, now.

God offers mercy for you. You are not the worst thing you ever done. You are not your mistakes. God offers mercy for you.

 In our reading from Isaiah, "Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of God that he may teach us his ways." It shall be established.

It is offered to us. We're offered mercy and offered a path to follow the ways of God. Mercy has been revealed as a twist. The twist is that you are not the bad guy, that I am not the bad guy, that you are not the villain of your story. Even if your life to this point has been filled with self-sabotage, you are not the villain of this story. You are forgiven. And not just that, not just offered mirth, mercy, offered a path, offered a path to follow in the way of the Lord.

My brothers and sisters, in this Season of Advent, may you follow the path of the way of the Lord. May you start today by loving your neighbor more, by praying more, by going to the Scriptures, by reading the Gospels more.
If you want know what to read or how to read or how to spend some more time with your Bible, talk to me about it. I'd love to have a conversation about things to study and look at. Praying more, giving more. Do not delay. We've already seen who wins. We already know the hero of the story who came for us as a child.
So let us prepare for his coming by not delaying the love he has given us; let us share it.

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


title: No Distinction

themes: temptation disordered-love kenosis power-in-weakness self-denial confession-of-sin

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 4:1-11; Romans 10:8-13
**Series:** Lent

> True temptation is always a conflict between rival goods, and Jesus' refusal of bread, worldly kingship, and miraculous spectacle reveals that he saves not as a secular king or magician but as the crucified Lord in whom there is no distinction, so that all who confess him are already loved and saved.

**Illustrations:** faulkner-heart-in-conflict, casablanca-rick-ilsa, galadriel-ring-of-power, chocolate-cake-lenten-fast, eddie-izzard-cake-or-death, superman-laser-toast

---

# March 9, 2025
## No Distinction
### Romans 10:8-13
### Luke 4:1-11

“But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.””
Romans 10:8-13 NRSV

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ” Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ” Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ””
Luke 4:1-11 NRSV

Any story with internal conflict is about temptation. Temptation is another name for internal conflict: the desire to do things the things that you know you shouldn't do. Temptation is always tempting. A temptation that is not tempting to you is not a temptation. This always needs to be said because sometimes, culturally, there are ideas of what a temptation is, but each of us individually have our own temptations.

What is also central in this and any talk of temptation is that in order for there to be a good that you seek, any good, there will be a rival good competing with it. This is what temptation looks like. True temptations are goods, they're just disordered in some way. They're not quite right. I'm going to talk about the temptations of Jesus, but again, temptation marks internal conflict, so temptations are found in most good stories and movies. William Faulkner even said that it is “the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

One way to think about temptations is to look at stories. The temptation is not always straightforward because a straightforward temptation is a bad story.

In Casablanca, the Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman movie filmed and set in World War II, both Rick and Ilsa are tempted. They have a history together. His love for Ilsa is good. It is not a bad thing. He's tempted to run away with her and ignore the world falling apart around him. Love is a good thing. Love is not a bad thing. The situation is that there's more important things going on than these two forme loved birds fleeing Casabanca. That's why it's compelling. It's these two rival goods.

In the first Lord of the Rings movie, the great elf, Galadriel, played by Cate Blanchet, is offered the ring of power and has this incredibly dramatic moment where she says

>I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired this. In place of a dark lord, you would have a queen. Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn!  Treacherous as the sea. Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!

She could have been really good done great things with that but what talking is pointing out with her is that it's the power will corrupt you even if you want to do good by it, it will be destructive.

Even when we get more salacious with more common understandings of temptation, love is good. God created it. God offered it to us. Because it is good, it can be disordered, it can be transformed into a destructive act. That doesn't mean love itself is not good. Love is not tainted by the fact that it can be abused. There is temptation because there are rival goods at work. Let’s get a little more concrete.

Maybe you're giving up chocolate for Lent. If the person next to you is eating a chocolate cake and you want to have a bite of it, you want the chocolate because it tastes good, right? And it's good for food to taste good. We want our food to taste good, to be desirable. It's not bad that it's good. It tempts us because we are trying to take part in a lenten fast, to show that our desire for things does not control us. That doesn't mean the desires for those things are bad. It is because they are good that it is a challenge.

It is easy to avoid bad stuff. This needs to be said. It is not tempting. The comedian Eddie Izzard, has a bit about how the Spanish Inquisition wouldn’t have worked with the Church of England. It would end up like, Cake or Death.

Someone is arrested by the inquisition: Cake or Death? Cake please. Right, here you go.

 I think we'd all choose cake. if you're choosing between, you know, ice cream Sunday and the bowl of rocks to eat, I think we're going to choose the ice cream Sunday. There's no conflict there. There's no temptation.

A temptation is between two goods. Things that are good but, for whatever reason, are destructive, these are not always easy to see at first, which gets us to Jesus in the desert.

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus goes into the wilderness, the desert after the baptism. He goes into the desert and is tempted. He's tempted by power. He’s tempted by authority. He’s tempted by praise. All three of these temptations point out how Jesus is not the God we expect him to be. Even today, the temptations narratives clarify who Jesus is for us and for the world and how Jesus saves. Here we see how Jesus was offered a way to save the world in this manner of worldly power and he said no.

Command the stone to become a loaf of bread. use your power to sustain yourself. Material power does not give us life. Jesus rejects alchemy. Jesus rejects turning one thing into another. Jesus rejects using his divine power for himself. That's the temptation. We need to think about it.

With Superman, imagine Superman using his laser vision to like heat up a piece of toast. Jesus wouldn't do that. He's not Superman, but still, Jesus doesn't use his authority as God for himself. He's already starving. He hasn't eaten for 40 days. A 40 day fast is going on and he passes on bread because he came not for himself, not even in the little things.

The next temptation is authority. Jesus is taken up to see all the kingdoms of the inhabited world. This gets to another temptation: wouldn’t it be great if Jesus were king of the world, but like actual king, so all the presidents and kings and rulers and sultans, they just explicitly follow Jesus. Don't you think the world would be a better place? Do you know who doesn't think that? Jesus. Jesus doesn't think that, because he could have done it, he could have been worldly king of the world then, and he didn't. It's tempting. It's tempting for us today. We look around the world and see all the brokenness in this world and think, “Gosh, Jesus, couldn't you just take over and fix it all and then we wouldn't be so broken?” This is why it is tempting. It would be good if all the pain was healed by divine fiat, but it would also be a different kind of God. It would not be the kind of god obedient to the point of death on the cross. He could not have been killed by Caesar if he had forced Caesar to obey him.

Finally, Jesus is taken to the top of the temple. The devil says,

>“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ””

The devil quotes two scriptures here. It is always good to remember that quoting the Bible doesn't make you a Christian; even the devil does it. But getting back to the temptation itself, Jesus has authority over the heavenly forces powers, but he does not use that power for himself. He's tempted to have this ostentatious miracle that could not be denied, but he withholds.

I want us to read the temptation narratives this day, not just thinking about the temptations that we face, which is important. It's important to admit that we face temptations and the temptations we actually face in our life are between good things, not between a good thing and a bad thing.

As well, I think we should read it as if we are tempted to see Jesus in these ways. We are tempted to see Jesus as a secular king. We are tempted to see Jesus as a magician. We are tempted to see Jesus as the general of the angels, but that is not who Jesus sees himself.

We need to see Jesus as he sees himself, and this is what we see in the gospels. The son of God obedient to the father even to the point of death, death on a cross, who reconciles all distinctions through his power.

If you confess, as Paul says, with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that got raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You will not be saved by king Jesus, who turns stones into bread. You will not be saved by king Jesus, who all the countries bow down to and give authority to. You will not be saved by King Jesus, whom the angels do his bidding everywhere.

No, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Will we seek something extra from God beyond what God offered to us? Already we are being tempted. We need to slow down in the Season of Lent.

As well, we need to remember that we are not alone. God has not left us alone in this. God has called us as a church, as a people. God has called you. You are loved now. You may be tempted to think that you're not, but you are. You're loved by God now. You may be tempted to think that you're not good enough. You look at the world and think about how you're not good enough, but you're wrong. You are loved now. You don't need to turn stones of bread. You don't need to command the authority of angels, and God doesn't either. God doesn’t need to listen to the devil in order to show you love. You are already loved. Receive it, and when you face temptation in this world, be able to admit it and be humble. Confess. God heals and God saves through confession. Confess to God, confess to your friends. let it go. You don't need to be controlled by your body, by your desires, by any of it. You are free. Jesus has shown us the way. Jesus has offered us the path.

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


title: Original Sin

series: The Way of Salvation

themes: original-sin prevenient-grace human-brokenness need-for-a-savior wesleyan-theology addiction-and-recovery self-knowledge

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 6:1-8; John 8:34-36; Romans 7:15; Psalm 145:13-14
**Series:** The Way of Salvation

> Original sin is the empirically observable reality of human brokenness and our inward-curved distance from God, which we cannot self-care or self-actualize away, so we must awaken to our need for a savior and the prevenient grace already at work in us.

**Illustrations:** william-temple-empirical-doctrine, apostles-creed-empirical-test, plug-ears-close-eyes, hero-of-your-own-movie, jonathan-edwards-awakening, wesley-moravians-seclusion, self-care-influencers, aa-twelve-steps-bill-wilson, big-boy-pants, not-a-superhero-messiah

---

# Feb 2
## Original Sin
### Genesis 6:1-8
### John 8:34-36

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. - Genesis 6:1-8

Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. - John 8:34-36

William Temple, the former Archbishop of Canterbury called Original Sin the only empirical Christian doctrine. I know, so funny. It is a joke designed for like five people, but it is hilarious. Trust me. This is a joke on a number of levels.

Empirical testing is following the scientific method: observation and objectivity and repetition. Something has to be observable and repeatable and understood by a neutral observer.

Concerning Christian doctrine, there's no way to empirically test the Trinity or the incarnation because it's a non-repeatable event. Concerning creation, there are ways of observing the debris of the Big Bang, but not the actual bang.
Similarly, there are ways of observing evidence of the birth of Jesus, evidence of the resurrection, but not the event itself. These are one off affairs.
If we go through the apostles creed and look at it empirically,

I believe in Jesus Christ, his Only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

We can't see any of that.

Born of the Virgin Mary,

I wasn't there. Empirically, this is unlikely, and unrepeatable. It hasn’t happened again.

Suffered under Pontius Pilate,

Only suffered once, so not a repeatable action. There were witnesses, but you can't test it.

A lot of Christian doctrine works like this. It is unobservable and unrepeatable, but sin, oh boy, sin. With sin, we’ve got a thing that's both observable and repeatable. Man. These humans, they keep on making mistakes. It doesn't slow down. We see them again and again but people keep making them and with the best of intentions they are still repeated.
As Paul says in Romans 7: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Romans 7:15 ESV

Or as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

Now, depending on what tradition you come from or your experience with Christian thought, the language of sin may leave a sour flavor in your mouth.

The language of sin within churches has often been used as a means of social control. People fixate on the actions of others, especially children and teens, so that they can conform to established expectations of social behavior. The weight of this has fallen especially on women.

For a long time, the church was focused on the fall, on the disobedience in the garden. Sometimes blaming Eve and blaming women and for being tempting.

This is an erroneous reading of scripture. Genesis 3, the fall narrative, is important, but I don't think we should fixate on it. I think fixating on it misses the observable reality of the brokenness of our world. This was William Temple’s point. We can look at the world and see that it is not as it should be.
Our world is not as it should be. There is injustice in this world. There is tragedy. There's trauma. There's hurt. There's pain. There's sickness. There's pride. There are families falling apart, children being harmed. There's a lot of bad stuff. What do we do about this? All this bad stuff.

Now, one of the most powerful human responses to the brokenness of the world is the plug your ears and close your eyes, La la. I don't hear anything. I don't see anything, la la. There are ways of doing that all day, every day. It's avoiding stuff that doesn't make you feel good because you just wanna feel good. And why not? This world is so hard, I just wanna feel good about myself, right? There's a lot of ways of doing this.

It's a classic move. It's been done for thousands of years. We are all tempted by this move. We are tempted to ignore bad things. To ignore bad news. To ignore the sins of others. To ignore our own sins.

Another classic move is to think that people who are suffering probably deserve it somehow. I don’t know how, but they probably deserve it.

Neither of those are Christian moves. They are both pretty antichrist moves. Really, really deeply antichrist moves, which I don't mind saying. Antichrist is not a proper noun.
Christ means anointed, the one anointed. Joshua the anointed would be an accurate translation of Jesus Christ. Anti means against. anointed against, that's what means, and that's what plugging your, closing your eyes to the pain of this world means. That's what us judging the suffering of others means: it is antichrist. It's anti-Christian.

Okay, so what else are we left to do?

What helps me understand this predicament that we are in is the doctrine called original sin. Those words are not found in the Bible, but the language is found throughout. We start with Genesis, and not in the Garden of Eden. I'm gonna start with Genesis 6 before the flood. That's the time when people are doing whatever they want. Desire becomes reality.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.

Sin continues throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Sin marks the distance between us and God. We see it through Genesis, through Exodus, through the wandering in the desert, through the early nation of Israel, the season of the judges. The people, again and again, are offered a path to follow God, and the people walk away from God, again and again and again. A good king rises up. And then his son is a bad king, and the people turn away from God and worship idols.
The prophets come. They give us some language about the sinfulness of the land. If you have your Bible, turn to the start of any prophet. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Amos, any of them. It doesn’t take long to reach the sinfulness.

Yet God is faithful throughout. As it says in Psalm 145:
The Lord is faithful in all his words
and loving in all his deeds.
The Lord supports all who fall
and raises all who are bowed down.

In Hebrew and in Greek, sin means missing the mark. Sin is not making a mistake. Sin is not wronging. Sin is when we do not live up to who God created us to be. So there could be passive sins and active sins.
I think the listing out and ranking of sin often makes us too anthropocentric, too focused on ourselves and our behavior.
Sin is about who God is and the goodness of God, and the distance between ourselves and the goodness of God.

Original sin is the human tendency towards this state, towards this distance. I think it is more helpful as an empirical doctrine than a genetic one. That is, focusing more on the fact that we observe it and experience it and not focusing on where it comes from.

It is the level of moral inertia that pulls us away from God and away from the people that we were created to be, so that, In the language of Augustine, we're curved inward. Our focus is on ourselves. And the good we do is accidental. Some people have a lot of accidents of good. That's okay, but it doesn't change its nature.

All of this is hard to look at. We want to see ourselves as good people from the start. We want to be the heroes of our own movie. But we are not in a movie. We eat and chew and spit and spill and trip and laugh and fall and cry. We have to go pee and we hurt in weird places. It can be a bit of a shock to realize you are not the hero in your movie and that our intentions and expectations do not make everything work out.

Now, some of you probably have heard about a preacher named Jonathan Edwards in colonial Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards was a young pastor in Massachusetts and there was an awakening, to use his language, going on in the community of Northampton, Massachusetts.
Now, when we hear the word awakening, we kind of think positive stuff, right? Nope, that's not what Jonathan Edwards meant. He meant an awakening to a person’s understanding of their own sin. That was the first step. A level of accountability with the actions we take in this world.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, read Jonathan Edwards' accounts soon after he had returned from to England, from visiting a group in Germany called the Moravians, who had showed him a way of life of following God intentionally and fully, but was still kind of secluded from society. And John, from his early days in Oxford, thought faithfulness did not need seclusion. God could transform us wherever we are. As well, sin would find us wherever we are. We all need grace. We need to be aware of our sin but also in a community where the good news of Jesus Christ is proclaimed and the sanctifying practices of the Holy Spirit are taught and offered.

Talk about original sin is not talk about being sad or making mistakes. It is about being explicit with the reality of the world and our own reality in the world. We can’t self-actualize away from sin. We can self-care away from sin. If we get up at the right time, and eat the right things, and exercise the right amount, if we do perfectly at work and care for our family perfectly, it won’t save them or ourselves. If we make all the little adjustments recommended by social media influencers, sin will still be there. And this drive promoted so much today, blinds us to dealing with the consequences of our actions and of sin in the world. It also blinds us to the people God has put in our lives to help us, not enable us.

Waking up to the reality of sin is about needing God. It is saying, I can’t save myself. Then it is about putting on our big boy, our big girl pants, and facing the consequences of our actions. Some of it is entirely our fault, some of it not. We still have to pick up the pieces.

There is a connection between this language of original sin and language of addiction. The connection is not hollow.

The first step of the twelve step program is to admit you are powerless over alcohol.  Powerlessness is not a mark of weakness but a step of transformation.

Bill Wilson, one of the founders of AA, was deeply influenced by the Oxford Groups which came out of the Keswick Convention, a holiness off-shoot of Methodism. Becoming holy, becoming sober, becoming clean, starts with an awakening and a community.

When we move back from addiction to our lives in this world, we need to understand the problem before we can seek the solution.

Over the next few weeks, we're gonna talk about salvation, about how God saves us, about how Jesus offered his life for us, how we are saved and made holy by God. You have to be saved from something. To save is a transitive verb. It needs an object. Saved is not a state someone can be in. You're saved from something. You're saved for something or to something.

Original sin helps us describe the nature of our world. It is a way to show the need for a savior, that we can't patch it up on our own.
And that even the good we do is often accidental and we follow it up by leaning on ourselves again and again and again and we, it all fall short.

Now, if you're counting on saving yourselves, I’m sorry to say, but you're not a superhero. Sorry, you're not the Messiah. This moment, though, is where the good news starts. After this awakening, this realization, we can recognize how God has been with us all along.

In the Wesleyan tradition, we preach and we teach that this awakening comes not from our own self and our amazing intellect, but from the grace God has already sent to us that has been with us from before we were aware of it. We use this funky work called prevenient Grace.

Admitting our mistakes is not a cause of sorrow, but a cause of joy. In the midst of these moments. In the midst of these mistakes, God is there for us. This is why Gabriel came to Mary and said, Hail, Mary, the Lord is with you.
It's why Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate. Why Jesus was crucified, died, and buried, and why he rose again.

We can't fix it on our own, but we need to admit that the problem is there. May God give us all the grace to clearly see our needs. May we forgive ourselves for failing to save ourselves. May we see the problem is deeper than us, but the solution is deeper also. Jesus doesn’t save us for us, but for each other, for the world.

In the name, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.


title: Praise

themes: praise worship-and-liturgy stewardship methodist-history light-of-christ chronos-and-kairos holy-communion

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 11:33-36; Psalm 150

> True praise is the whole-life response of thanksgiving to God's saving action, shaped by worship's liturgy and generosity, through which we reflect God's light back and are sent to shine brighter into the world.

**Illustrations:** praise-music-vs-hymns, praising-newborn-or-dog, rescued-from-drowning, candle-burns-down, christmas-candlelight-service, parable-of-the-talents, bristol-fields-st-pauls-evensong, wesley-1784-prayer-book, lay-led-circuit-preaching, william-seymour-conversion, passover-seder-four-questions, chronos-vs-kairos, sunday-eighth-day, duty-of-constant-communion, zero-sum-giving

---

# September 28, 2025
## Praise
## Psalm 150	Luke 11:33-36

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
    praise him in his mighty firmament!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
    praise him according to his surpassing greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
    praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
    praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with clanging cymbals;
    praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord! - Psalm 150

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel basket; rather, one puts it on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but if it is unhealthy, your body is full of darkness. Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. But if your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.” - Luke 11:33-36
![](attachments/Praise.201052c579dd41dd9322bb69b83d5d67.jpg)
In the last 30 years, praise has become a genre of music. Praise music.
Most of us have an understanding of what I mean when I say praise music. Usually, it will be songs written recently, led by guitar. Whereas hymns are songs mostly written in the past, led by organ or piano. Hymns are also written for congregational harmony whereas praise songs are not. Neither of these terms have really hard definitions.

But when we hear the language of Psalm 150,
>Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
    praise him in his mighty firmament!,

This psalm isn't talking about what we would call praise music today. Something else is going on biblically with this language of praise.

### Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on the stained glass windows at Covenant United Methodist Church. Our next window is praise. If you've ever been around a newborn, you've probably given them praise. Oh, you're such a good boy. Oh, you're such a good boy. Most of us with dogs give our dogs praise, even when they don't deserve it. Oh, look at you getting all so nice and muddy. You got so nice and muddy I'm cleaning out your paws.
This is praise. Encouragement is usually going to be what you give someone before they act. You're going to do a great job today, Wilson.
The praise we give after the fact. Great job today, Wilson.

So when we come back to the plain language of the Psalms, the Psalmist says

>praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with clanging cymbals;
    praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!

We move the from people to God. We praise God for what God has done for us; because of what God has done for us.

If you're drowning and someone saves you and resuscitates you, the thanks you're going to give that person are different than the thanks you would give someone who you just met on the street. There's a categorical difference going on. The praise we give God is like the praise we give the one who rescues us from drowning, but more so: It is deeper.
As well, part of us understand that we can never praise the person saving us enough for what they did. There is an asymmetry between God’s salvific action  in our lives and our response.

Which gets me to our gospel reading for today.

What is the light that Jesus is talking about? The light is God's presence in your life. There are many ways of covering that up. Yes, we've got the bushel basket. We also have forgetfulness.

One of the ways to put out a candle is to leave it burning all night long so that the wick goes down all the way to the base and eventually putters out.
At Christmas, when we have our candlelight service, you could hold that candle until it goes all the way out and then it's gone. Wax might drip on your fingers and burn a little. It might drip on the carpet and be annoying to remove (though not impossible). Whatever the case, doing nothing puts the light out as much as covering the light or blowing it out.

When we share good news of Jesus, we offer new life through Jesus, we offer resurrection. But we can just as easily cling to it as offer it. We may think that we cherish the light, but we do not. It is like the parable of the talents, where one servant turned his one talent into five. But the other servant is afraid of the Master, so he buried his talent. We can bury the light of Christ in our life.

This is what praise is meant to avoid. This is what praise is meant to dispel.
By praising God together, especially in worship, whether through hymns or praise songs or through the liturgy itself, we reflect back to God the light God has given us so that we can be sent into the world as light, shining brighter than we were before.

True praise comes after an encounter with God. It may be on a mountaintop. It may be on a retreat. It may be on a random Sunday morning. The encounter is that moment when you realize you are really forgiven for who you used to be and the mistakes you have made. That moment you realize that you are loved and that you can live for more than your own desire. This is the light of God. It is small before we are aware of it, but it is still there. Our encounter with God is the fuel that expands us, but each opportunity for praise is another chance to let the light grow in our life.

There is a structure to what we do here on Sunday morning in order to facilitate praise. Praise is not simply a form of music but offering our hearts to God in thanksgiving.

Praise is shaped differently in different traditions and cultures. We organize praise around what we call the liturgy, which means work of the people. Sometimes, I may talk about liturgical traditions. This doesn’t just refer to Catholic or mainline churches, but every worshipping congregation. Every church has a liturgy, whether they write it down or not. The spontaneous worship of some baptist or pentecostal churches follows a liturgical pattern.

Methodist worship began in the fields outside of Bristol, England, with a few basic hymns and a sermon, what we can call low church. It also began in the high church beauty of an Evensong Service at St. Paul’s in London. The tradition has space for the high church and the low church.

In 1784, when the Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in the newly formed United States of America, John Wesley sent over his own personal edit of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, to guide the movement suddenly disconnected from the Church of England through war. This wasn’t the only pattern, for the Methodist movement spread across the United State rapidly, becoming the largest denomination early in the 19th century thanks to its lay-centric ministries. That is, the preacher wasn’t the most important figure. Preacher’s led communion and organized communities, but they might have 60 churches under their supervision. When they served communion, the service would be highly structured. When the preacher wasn’t there, it was lay-led, focused on hymn-singing and bible reading.

19th century Methodism was a laboratory for liturgical experimentation. Most charismatic and Pentecostal traditions were heavily influenced by the Methodist Movement. It was at Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis in 1895 that William Seymour, the key figure of the Azusa Street Revival, gave his life to Jesus.

Methodist worship continued in a similar pattern until World War II, when the end of the war brought an expansion of ecumenical efforts among different denominations, as well as desires to pattern worship off of the early church. This led to changes in the liturgy which culminated in the 1989 UMC hymnal and the pattern of worship offered there.

It is on Page 2 of the hymnal if you want to pull it out.

There is an entrance; a manner of coming together and signifying that this time is different from other times. The candle is lit here. The light is shining.

In the Passover Seder, the youngest child who can speak asks the same question four times and receives four different answers. The question is: why is this night different from other nights?

We should ask that question of every moment of worship: why is this morning different from other mornings?

In Greek, there are two words for time. One is chronos, this is linear time. This is clock-time. The other word is kairos. Kairos marks what I call event time. It transcends simply linear time. Kairos marks those moments when you lose track of time. When you no longer think about how long you have to stay in a place before you can leave and go home. Worship doesn’t always succeed with this, but that is always the goal and the hope.

We worship on a Sunday morning because Jesus rose on a Sunday morning. This is intentional and important. Every Sunday is a little Easter in a Kairos sense. Every Sunday marks the 1st day of the week, but also the 8th day. It marks the start of the New Creation, the new kingdom inaugurated by Jesus.

This time is different from other times. It doesn’t just start. We enter in.

Next is the Proclamation and Response. This is the reading of Scripture and the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ, as well as our congregational response to this proclamation. Now, we respond with the Apostle’s Creed, the historic baptismal Creed of the early church

Next is thanksgiving or communion, which we don’t serve every week, but maybe we should. There is nothing against. John Wesley has a great sermon called the Duty of Constant Communion, where he talks about how we should go to communion as often as we can because Jesus tells us to (do this in remembrance of me, not do this once a month). and because we meet God there and we should try to meet God as often as we can.

Finally, there is a sending forth. As I like to say, you don’t leave Church, you are sent. The sending marks the end of this special time.

Now, there are two elements found throughout basic pattern: music and offering.

Like I said before, praise is not a genre of music, but a response we make to God for what God has done and what God will do, as well as who God is. Our time surrounds this action. Music is a way to connect with God and each other. There is no perfect worship music. We all bring our own histories with us here. Some folks like to only sing songs they already know. Others love up beat music. Others like to plumb the depths of spiritual experience. Others crave to go back to the mountaintop again and again. This goes for congregational song as well as for when our choir or bells present to us. They don’t perform, for no one can perform in worship. They present and witness of another sort. A musical witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ. Light offered.

The offering originally was the moment in the service when the elements for communion were brought forward. It was only later that it became a time to pass the plate. In Europe historically, giving to the church was like a tax and taken from your pay or paid from him, so there wasn’t a lot of plate giving. Plate giving was only for specific calls.

Giving now is one of the more participatory aspects of worship. Some traditions have a lot of standing and kneeling throughout the worship service. Some stand and dance and have call and response throughout the service. Giving is a way to participate.

You aren’t purchasing anything with your gift on Sunday morning. You don’t get extra points for heaven. It is a response to the action of God in your life and to the reality of the church in the world. It is a way to worship. It is a way to let your light shine.

Our light shines in our generosity when it is an act of faith and not duty. Duty is great. I love people who were raised by their parents to tithe and give. God bless them. For most of us, our gift to the church is a sacrifice. Anytime we change our giving level, we are choosing one less meal out during the week, or a few less days of vacation, or a little longer with the car we have.

Our gifts are zero-sum. It takes faith to give that extra step and to desire to support God’s presence more than our own comfort. Our gifts are zero-sum. God’s gifts are not. This is the act of faith. We believe more in God’s action in this world than in controlling every aspect of our life. We believe more in the mission of making disciples of all nations than in controlling every aspect of our life. This is how giving is worshipful. It honors God and is as much a step of faith as coming to the table for communion.

Next week, we are starting a stewardship campaign for the month of October. You will have a chance to pledge your support of the church

We praise God in song. We praise God in our presence. We praise God by receiving the Word of God. We praise God with our gifts. We praise God as we are sent. We are sent not to do the same thing we have always done. We are sent to reflect the light of God’s presence to others and shine brighter than we were before. This is why we praise. This is why we give thanks.

When you come into this sanctuary and see this window, may you remember the light of God in your life. May you praise God and give thanks for the Holy Spirit in this place.

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


title: Prayer

themes: prayer spiritual-discipline means-of-grace fasting

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 5:33-39; Psalm 20:1-2; Psalm 119:105; Luke 10:38-42; Luke 23:39-43; 1 Thessalonians 5:17

> Drawing an analogy that eating is to fasting as drinking is to praying, the sermon teaches that prayer is both petition (asking for what we truly want) and contemplation—a love-shaped, unproductive presence with God practiced through habits like lectio divina.

**Illustrations:** prayer-stained-glass-window, longhorns-game-prayer, lady-bird-lake-water, transitive-intransitive-verbs, idle-talk-weather, prayer-like-falling-in-love, thief-on-the-cross, mary-and-martha, birders-practice, von-balthasar-prayer-quote

---

# September 21, 2025
## Prayer
## Psalm 20:1-2	Luke 5:33-39

The Lord answer you in the day of trouble,
    The name of the God of Jacob protect you!
May he send you help from the sanctuary
   and give you support from Zion. - Psalm 20:1-2

Then they said to him, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding attendants fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise, not only will one tear the new garment, but the piece from the new will not match the old garment. Similarly, no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and will spill out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine but says, ‘The old is good.’ ” - Luke 5:33-39
![](attachments/Prayer.f8fdc4a00549485c91504451313421f8.jpg)
Luke 5 takes place early in the ministry of Jesus Christ. We're in this transitional period between John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, and the ministry of Jesus. Some people are challenged by the followers of Jesus. They come up to Jesus and say, John's disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.
Parallelism was very important to ancient Greek poetry and to Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry didn't have rhymes. Rhyming was not important. Parallelism was the central poetic device in Hebrew poetry, in the Proverbs, in the Song of Songs, in the Psalms.

Parallelism in poetry is the expression of one idea in two ways. Like in Psalm 119:

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (Psalms 119:105)

Lamp and light are paralleled. Feet and path are paralleled, and the point is emphasized.

We have a parallel clause here in our Gospel reading today. Your disciples eat and drink. Their disciples fast and pray. There is a simple connection to be made between eating and fasting. Eating is when we consume food, fasting is when we don't.
But what is the connection between drinking and praying?

## Series intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on the stained glass windows at Covenant United Methodist Church with this next window: prayer. Prayer is one of the responses we can make to God. Baptism is a one-time thing because God doesn’t make a mistake. Prayer is an all time thing because there's never a moment when we shouldn't be praying.

Paul in Thessalonians talks about praying without ceasing, endlessly praying.
Prayer though can be a hollow signifier, that is, it's a word that we fill it with meaning. And that meaning is based on our own experiences and ideas.

A few weeks ago, I talked about prayer and the language that Herbert McCabe gives us that we should pray for what we want. We've got to start there.
Don't pray for what you think you should want. Pray for what you actually want. If what you're thinking about all day is whether the Longhorns are going to win this weekend, pray for that. Don't pray for starving children in Africa unless that's what is on your heart. Pray what is on your heart. Pray for a new job. Pray for your kids to call more. Pray for an early freeze so that there won't be more mosquitoes. Pray for what you want so that God can shape your desires.

The drinking going on here was wine. Folks didn’t drink a lot of water because water was filled with pollutants. It would be like taking a sip from Lady Bird Lake. Folks knew you weren’t supposed to drink that water.
The disciples of Jesus were drinking, they were partying. They were eating and drinking. And it made some people confused. It might have been a fairly diluted wine, but wine nonetheless.

I want us to think about how the disciples are eating well and drinking wine well to the point that other people don't understand what is going on. They thought religious followers, students of religious teachers weren't supposed to be having so much fun. This is where Jesus starts to disabuse them of this notion of what is going on here.

All of this also gets us to why I want us to think about the connection between prayer and drinking alcohol. Eating is to fasting as drinking is to praying.
I mentioned how prayer is something you can do at any time. One of the few times you can't really pray is when you're drunk. Part of the necessity for prayer is being present with yourself and present with God. And when you are drunk, you are neither present with yourself nor present with God.

This also helps us to remember that prayer is not limited by what we call intercessory prayer. Prayer is not just praying for someone. To pray is a transitive verb. It is also an intransitive verb. And if you remember from English class, a transitive verb needs a direct object. An intransitive verb does not.
I walk. Walk is an intransitive verb. I don't need an object.
I open the jar. Open is a transitive verb. It needs an object. I open is an incomplete sentence.
Pray is not the only verb in English that is both transitive and intransitive. Play, only one letter difference, also functions in that. I play baseball is a coherent sentence. I play is a coherent sentence.

This matters because how we talk about God matters. The definition of idle talk is talk that doesn’t matter. Some weather we’ve got here? Them longhorns, I tell you what. This is talk to fill the time. It is precisely what we should not be doing with prayer.

 I pray for you is coherent. It makes sense. I pray also makes sense.

So, Herbert McCabe's advice on praying for what you want works for the transitive function of prayer, for praying for someone, for what we call intercessory prayer, praying for something as an intercessor. The intransitive form of praying doesn't start with what we want, because it's not about what we want. It starts with where we are.
This leads to the contemplative tradition of Prayer within Christianity. This tradition goes back centuries. It has especially high roots within Catholic monasticism. Monks and nuns throughout the world dedicating their life to prayer. But there's also portions of it in almost every Christian tradition.
For contemplative prayer, the object is God. When pray is used in an intransitive manner, the object is God. The real question is, how do we enter the space of prayer? Because that can be hard to do. How do we enter contemplation?

There are two historic methods. One is lectio divina taking a scriptural text and having that as a source. Another is starting with silence disciplining our mind around that. In this way, there is an understandable sense in a comparison between drinking and praying. Eating is to fasting as drinking is to praying. Prayer is about our relationship with who God is and entering deeper into that. Not for any material reason, not to get anything out of it.

Prayer is like falling in love. It's like walking on the beach with someone you just met who you may spend your life with. Time becomes irrelevant. There's nothing productive about prayer. You don't gain extra points on your heavenly resume and prayer and said prayer at its best is like lingering at the beach with someone you love longingly, spending time with them as if there's no one else in the world. Someone you can talk to for 20 minutes or six hours and you don't notice the difference.

We can pray before we know God. The thief on the cross prayed before he knew Jesus. He sought redemption from his moment of capital punishment. Prayer is an act of faith. To believe in someone beyond yourself. To believe in the God who created everything who became human in Jesus Christ to save you when you couldn’t save yourself. Who forgive your sins and wants to just spend time with you in prayer.

But when we get back to the biblical text for today, the gospel reading, it's not just about praying. We actually have this distinction that Jesus is talking about. He's challenged by someone that his disciples aren't fasting and praying and he mentions that while the bridegroom is there they will celebrate. But there will be time for fasting and praying in the future.

>Similarly, no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and will spill out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine but says, ‘The old is good.’ ”

No one puts new wine into old wine skins. What they are doing is different then what came before. It can't be seen in the same light. There's a time for contemplation. There is a time for celebration. There's a time for contemplation. There is a time for service.
There's a time for Mary and a time for Martha. Mary, at the feet of Jesus, is the figure of contemplation. She's entirely present with Jesus. Martha, in the kitchen, is a figure of service, but also of celebration, of getting ready to eat and to drink. And that is good and important. Jesus doesn’t dismiss Martha as so many readings have it. Jesus lifts up Mary as the better share, but the love of God is not zero-sum. For God to praise one person is not to condemn another. These activities are good for our own time.
Jesus has gone to the Father. We are seeking Him now. We seek Jesus through the means of grace, with worship and praise and fasting and service. We also seek Jesus through prayer. People aren’t born good at prayer, it is a habit we can practice. Contemplation is a habit that we can practice.

I am not a birder. I know a few birds, but most of the time, when I see a bird, if it doesn’t fall into one of four categories, I don’t know what it is. Birders have hours and years and decades of experience so that they can look at and see a bird and know what it is. They can hear a bird and know what it is. They can be still and wait for a bird to come.

As one of my teachers once said.
>…looking to God is contemplation. It is looking inward into the depths of the soul, and hence beyond the soul toward God. The more contemplation finds God, the more it forgets itself and yet discovers itself in him.[^1]

So how do we do this? Let's take the time to contemplate.

Let’s try some contemplative prayer, beginning with Lectio Divina. We'll start with this phrase from the Gospel Reading
New wine must be put into fresh wine skins.
New wine must be put into fresh wine skins.

 I want you to close your eyes, find a comfortable position, and under your breath repeat that line over and over again.
Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.
Take a moment to rest in the words of Jesus.
Let them guide you back to the Father.

New wine must be put into fresh wine skins.

When you come into this holy place and you see this window, may you seek out the time to contemplate God, to fall in love with God, to find space for God, not for any material reason, but out of love.

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

[^1]: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, 24.


title: Priest, Prophet, King

themes: identity-of-jesus christology mercy resurrection-appearances advent-expectation

text:
**Scripture:** Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43; 1 Corinthians 13:12; John 1:1; Revelation 1:17-18

> On Christ the King Sunday, the truest answer to 'who is Jesus?' is found not in historical reconstruction but in the cosmic, reconciling Christ of Colossians and the mercy he shows the thief on the cross — the priest, prophet, and king we are all called to encounter.

**Illustrations:** jesus-trick-or-treater, valla-donation-of-constantine, schweitzer-historical-jesus-mirror, lewis-liar-lunatic-lord, aristotle-four-causes-table, dark-room-eyes-adjusting, wesley-my-chains-fell-off

---

# November 23, 2025
## Priest, Prophet, King
## Colossians 1:11-20  Luke 23:33-43

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. - Colossians 1:15-20

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” - Luke 23:39-43

Our neighborhood gets a lot of trick-or-treaters at Halloween. We didn’t realize this when we moved there, but it has been a delightful surprise. Our kids went trick-or-treating with friends, so we got to stick around and hand out candy. There were a lot sport themed costumes for boys, a lot of k-pop demon hunter costumes for girls, as well as a number of inflatables. My favorite group that came by (that didn’t include my own children) had a ninja turtle, spider-man,

and Jesus Christ. There was a boy of about 6 who was dressed in a white robe with a red sash and he had used sharpie on his face to look like a beard. He was dressed as Jesus. Do you want some candy, Jesus? Is a sentence I never expected to utter.

It was rather strange. He was also not dressed as Jesus but as a popular image of Jesus.

Who was Jesus? For a long time, religious scholars were focused on this question: who was Jesus? The church throughout its history never really asked the question in this way. The question for the church was: who is Jesus? Jesus is alive and risen. Our faith is in a living God, not a dead one. Who is Jesus?

And yet, once modern historical scholarship was created in Germany in the early 19th century, the question, "Who was Jesus?" became of supreme importance.

Since the early Renaissance, scholars had shown ways in which the Christian tradition had distorted history in order to maintain power. This was not a new thing. One of the greatest Renaissance scholars, Lorenzo Valla, was able to show how this document, The Donation of Constantine, was a forgery and not from the pen of Constantine, thus calling into question some of the pope's power and authority.
This sort of criticism expanded in different areas until it came to the Gospels themselves. The scholar who synthesized all of these 19th century quests together was Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Laureate, but also first a scholar of the early church, as well as a musicologist who wrote one of the great biographies of Johann Sebastian Bach.

But Schweitzer has this line in The Quest for the Historical Jesus that talks about how the figure of Jesus in history is a mirror to our present. Progressives see a progressive Jesus, conservatives see a conservative Jesus, socialists see a socialist Jesus, capitalists see a capitalist Jesus. When we ask “who was Jesus Christ?” we are really asking: “who are we?”

Another way to phrase this question is to ask,

- where in the Gospels do we most clearly see who Jesus is?
- What is the clearest image of our savior?

I think that's an important thing for all of us to imagine. I even want us to take a few moments this morning to share with the people around you, what is a moment in the life of Jesus that you think most clearly encapsulates who he is? Not the best or most important, but clearest.

Pause for 30 seconds.

I don't think there's a wrong answer to this question, because this gets back to that same point that Albert Schweitzer was making: when we look at the historical Jesus, we see a reflective mirror of ourselves back.

But when we are trying to describe the clearest moment of Jesus, all of our own experiences with Jesus come forward there and are revealed there. For some of you, that moment might be Jesus preaching on the Sermon on the Mount. For others, it may be one of the miracles; the lepers, or the man blind from birth. For others, it may be in John when the crowd is about to stone the woman, and Jesus stops them. For others, it may be the Last Supper. For others, it may be the cross, the resurrection, the road to Emmaus.

There are so many opportunities to describe who Jesus is. We each bring our own history when we're coming to our Lord and Savior. How do we receive and see Jesus as he is?

One of the classic traditions of Protestant Christianity has been to see Jesus as a priest, prophet, and king. As the high priest described in the Book of Hebrews who made the ultimate sacrifice for us. Not the sacrifice of giving his life, but the sacrifice of the altar that makes the work of the altar no longer necessary.

The prophet who prophesied throughout his ministry, who speaks truth to power, as well as comfort to those who are hurting.

And the king, ultimate king of the world, who rules justly, who heals and casts out demons.

C.S. Lewis had another tripartite formula to describe Jesus. Lewis said Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. A liar because the things he said were not true, he's a liar.
A lunatic, because if the things he said are not true but he believes that they are true, then he is insane. Or if the things he
Said are true, Jesus is the Lord, the Word made flesh, God among us, Emmanuel.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It's the last Sunday of Ordinary Time. We're about to enter the Christian new year with the coming of the season of Advent. The text from today comes from Jesus on the cross.
Jesus hears a request from the thief on the cross, "Jesus remember me when you come into my kingdom," and Jesus says, "This day, you will see me in Paradise." The mercy of God in that moment is revealed fully. Jesus doesn’t have a lot of hoops that the thief must jump through. Jesus doesn’t go through an application process or even ask why he was being crucified to begin with. The thief desires God and God receives him. The thief doesn’t ask to be saved but to be remembered. He is not trying to save himself but connect with Jesus, and in that he is saved because of who Jesus is.

We see this at the beginning of Paul's letter to Colossae, which offers this beautiful theological elucidation of who Jesus is.

> He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

It is all beautifully there. Christ is the image of God. We see God in seeing Christ. Or as John puts it. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

The firstborn of all creation. Christ is prior to everything and holds all things together. Christ is the formal causality of existence.

Aristotle talked about four types of causality: material, formal, efficient, and final. When we think about a table, the material causality is the wood. The, the formal causality is the form of a table, the efficient causality is the carpenter who makes the table, and the final causality is when people eat on the table. We look at humanity in general, Christ is the formal cause of us all, the image, the possibility.

As Paul continues in Colossians, Christ is the head of the church, the reason for us gathering together. When we gather for reasons other than Christ, we cease to be the church. Christ is also the first born of the dead. The one who helped us sing oh deaf, where is the victory of death where they sting.

And Paul concludes in this lovely and evocative manner:

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Christ is the fullness of God. God works in other ways but the fullest expression of who God is found in the sacrifice of the son of God for us, reconciliation offered through the blood of the cross.

Or as John puts into the mouth of Jesus in the Book of Revelation:

There is nothing to fear. I am the First and the Last and the One who lives. Once I was dead but now I live—forever and ever. I hold the keys of hell and death

The ultimate answer to the question, who is Jesus, is beyond any of our capability. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, "We are looking through a glass darkly. We are looking through a mirror dimly, but soon we will see him face-to-face."

It takes a lot of time to see anything in a dark room. It takes time for your eyes to adjust. Sometimes, it takes crashing into walls. In lot of our days and a lot of our lives, we need to be honest with ourselves to admit that we dimly see Jesus. But there are moments when he shines brightly in our life.

And today I want us to hold onto that. If you have experienced the brightness of Christ's love for you, hold onto that moment. That encounter where you were forgiven and loved, where God was real, wholly real to you and offered for you. Where you were assured, like the thief on the cross, of your place with God in Paradise.

If you have not had that spiritual experience, your faith is no less authentic. You may have even experienced it and not had a name for it. A moment of peace beyond expression, belonging beyond understanding.

Regardless, we all should seek it. Seek that encounter with God. Let go of what is holding you back because ultimately, that's what happens when we meet Jesus. In the words of Charles Wesley, "My chains fell off." May all of us seek an encounter with Jesus this Advent season.

It could be on a mountaintop. It could be a still, small voice in the midst of a storm. God is there for you. Christ is there for you. Christ is a priest who sacrifices for you. Christ is a prophet who speaks truth to you. Christ is a king who rules over the powers of this world, who has control over the demons and the diseases, and is on the side of light, and offers abundant life for you, not just a continuation of life but life transformed.
Christ died not so we could have an average life or a mediocre life but abundant life. Let us not delay. Let us not delay. Christ is coming. Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel.

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