title: The Gate

themes: good-shepherd welcome-and-belonging citizens-of-heaven stewardship body-of-christ gatekeeper

text:
**Scripture:** John 10:1-10; Nehemiah 4:6-9; Nehemiah 4:15-20
**Series:** Easter

> Drawing on the personal story of his wife crossing a DO NOT CROSS line to retrieve their child's car seat in Geneva, Wilson preaches Jesus as both the gate and the gatekeeper of John 10. Through Jesus, believers are made citizens of heaven and brought home; the gate is not to keep people out but to protect the sheep from the thief (the devil). Pairing Nehemiah's wall-building amid threat ('Our God will fight for us'), he reframes Covenant's capital campaign: the church is not building a wall but a flexible future to be a gateway of Christ in North Austin, called to be the welcoming, serving Body of Christ rather than a social club.

**Illustrations:** geneva-car-seat-do-not-cross, coin-with-caesars-head, augustus-statues-idolatry, patton-fixed-fortifications, covenant-social-club

---

# April 26, 2026
## Nehemiah 4:6-9, 15-20	John 10:1-10
### The Gate

So we rebuilt the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.
But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and the gaps were beginning to be closed, they were very angry and all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. So we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.

When our enemies heard that their plot was known to us and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and body-armor, and the leaders posted themselves behind the whole house of Judah who were building the wall. The burden bearers carried their loads in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and with the other held a weapon. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. And I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, “The work is great and widely spread out, and we are separated far from one another on the wall. Rally to us wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet. Our God will fight for us.” - Nehemiah 4:6-9, 15-20

#### John 10:1-10

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.
The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

# Sermon

My sister used to live in Switzerland. We were able to visit her family when Dominic was 4 and Ephraim was 1. Because of his age, we had to bring a car seat for Ephraim.

It was a journey to get from Austin to Geneva, but once we arrived, we were so excited to reconnect that we at first didn’t notice the missing car seat. We looked at the expected place, but it was not there. It wasn’t at the baggage claim. It wasn’t in the specialty baggage claim for skis and golf clubs — still no car seat.

We kept moving forward and crossed a line that said DO NOT CROSS. But then we saw the car seat on the other side of the line, past a door that said as well, DO NOT ENTER. I couldn’t believe it! We were so close to finding what we were looking for, but this darn line got in the way. I couldn’t very well cross a line that said DO NOT CROSS, could I?

I couldn’t, but my wife, Alina, could. She didn’t hesitate to cross the line to help her child. She found a new gate where moments before it seemed like none could be found.

There are always gates in our lives — ways to transition between one area and another, one place and another, one period to another, even one identity to another.

Citizenship is an important concept in the Bible — civitas — but it’s a much older version than the one we understand today. The bureaucratic complexity of the modern nation-state has added a tremendous conceptual layer to the idea of citizenship. The Bible holds an understanding of citizenship with the question: who are your people?

We see this come up when Jesus is by the Sea of Galilee and someone asks him whether it’s okay to use coins with the head of Caesar to pay taxes. This is a theological discussion, because faces on currency are historically understood as idolatry — especially at that point, it was idolatry to have graven images of any kind, especially that kind. And the Romans used God-language around their emperors. The sculptures of Augustus were promulgated in large part to compare him to the sculptures of the pagan gods that were found all over the Roman Empire. Jesus’ response: give to Caesar what is Caesar’s; give to God what is God’s.

The Sermon on the Mount is also filled with the language of citizenship — with kingdom language, the language of nation. In the language of giving: do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. Do not give so as to be seen by others, but by your Father in heaven who sees in secret, so that your Father who sees in secret will reward you. That is where you’re from. That is your home.

But the radical thing of this passage from John is that Jesus is both the gate and the gatekeeper. Jesus is our way into the kingdom of heaven, but also the one who brings us there. Through Jesus we are made citizens of heaven and through Jesus we are brought home. Whether you hear his voice today or not, Jesus is calling you. Whether you heard it before but it seems so distant now, Jesus is calling you.

### Nehemiah
In our passage from Nehemiah, we have the people completing the wall, but also getting ready for an attack. A wall is a fixed fortification to protect something of importance from a military attack. If you build a wall and no one is there to man it, it is a useless device. As General Patton said, fixed fortifications are a monument to man’s stupidity. This was in the 1940s, after the advent of air power and accurate artillery. Before then, walls were seen as nearly impervious. The reason the Assyrians tore down the wall in Jerusalem was to make it easier to retake the city if it revolted against their rule.

But the key to the passage is the very last verse: “The work is great and widely spread out, and we are separated far from one another on the wall. Rally to us wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet. Our God will fight for us.”

Even if things look bleak, God is there with us because God has drawn us in through Jesus Christ. We are no longer distant from God. We are citizens. We have passed through the gate where before we thought it impossible. It is no longer us against the world.

### John
Jesus says, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

This seems exclusive at first, as if the focus is on an in group and an out group. The whole passage seems exclusive, but we have to think through what it means to be a sheep or a thief.

Jesus is talking about the devil. The thief is not the people who don’t listen to God but the devil who actively attacks God’s children. There are challenges today. There is brokenness. There is sin. There are structures that deplete and corrode the souls of people in this world. Jesus does not let those in. We are the sheep. Whether you hear his voice today or not, he is calling to let you in. The wall is not keep you out. The gate is not to keep you out but to protect you. You matter. You belong. Your future matters.

Christ welcomes us not to take away our challenges but to offer us life abundant, so that what seemed like a challenge before is no longer a grave threat. 1

We are not building a wall here at Covenant. We’re building a flexible future through this capital campaign in order to free us to better be a gateway of Jesus Christ in our community. The church is called the Body of Christ in Ephesians. If we are not the body of Christ — the body that welcomes, receives, forgives, expands, baptizes, mourns, consoles, heals — if we are not doing these things, we are not a church. Might as well change the sign. Just call it the Covenant Social Club. There are good things about social clubs, but that is not what we’re called to here.

God did not plant this church to be a social club, but to be a kingdom-building community in North Austin — for people to be his hands and feet in the world, and to welcome others in need of Christ, to serve our community, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, but also to welcome and to seek those in need of mercy and grace and life with Jesus, with the gatekeeper and the gate.

Our job as a church is always to point to God, to point to the Shepherd — to be so reflective of the Shepherd that it’s obvious. Our commitment as a church is to Jesus Christ. The things we do here, even this capital campaign, are merely a portion of that commitment to Jesus Christ.

Our God will fight for us, but we are not left helpless. We are called home by the shepherd and called to be part of the life of the shepherd in the world today. That is what it means to be the body of Christ. Doing the things of Christ. Caring for our community, for the stranger, for the child.

We are welcomed by Christ to welcome others, to seek others, to serve and comfort and teach and walk and remind the ones around us who can’t perceive the voice that Jesus is calling them, too.

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


site: sermons

title: The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: Easter

themes: joy christian-hope resonance-across-generations comfort-in-grief stewardship presence-of-god

text:
**Scripture:** Nehemiah 8:9-12; John 14:1-14
**Series:** Easter

> A Youth Sunday sermon on the 5th Sunday of Easter that frames hope for the future through Nehemiah's charge ('the joy of the LORD is your strength') and Jesus' promise of peace and a prepared place in John 14. Rather than preaching at length, the pastor turns the sermon over to the congregation's youth to answer questions they felt led to address, modeling that the way to meet anxiety about the future is to listen to, honor, and support the young people God has already called, celebrating God's ongoing work in the community (including the capital campaign).

**Illustrations:** youth-answer-questions, john-14-at-funerals

---

# May 3, 2026
## The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength
## Youth Sunday
## 5th Sunday of Easter
## Nehemiah 8:9-12
### 	John 14:1-14

#### Nehemiah 8:9-12

“And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, “Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved.” And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.”
Nehemiah 8:9-12 NRSVUE
https://bible.com/bible/3523/neh.8.9-12.NRSVUE

#### John 14:1-14

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.
And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.
Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

John 14 offers a vision of our future with God. It is a passage I often read at memorial services and funerals in order to offer hope and consolation.

Peace I give you. My peace I leave with you. I do not. leave it as the world does. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

When we think about the future, of our world today, there's a lot of causes of trouble, anxiety, and worry. If you're retired and the majority of your natural life is behind you, you may think about the type of world your children and your children's children stepping into.

If you are younger, you may think about what world you are stepping into: where are you going to fit in the future? How will you make a difference?

One of the most hopeful things I have found to do is to actually talk to young people. And so this morning, we're gonna do the sermon in a slightly different way, instead of me going on and on and on, I gave a set of questions to the youth, and those who are able to be here today are going to come and answer one of the questions they felt led about.

And I'll wrap it up it the end. Instead of waiting for something, realizing that there are people already here who have been called by God. God is on their hearts. Instead of telling them what they should think, and they should do, let us imagine and celebrate the future of God's presence in this community by listening. To the youth. by honoring them. It's celebrating what God has done. Through so many of you in this capital campaign, by offering us an opportunity to support them and help guide them into the future, that they feel that too.

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: The Lamb of God

series: Epiphany

themes: distraction-and-busyness scripture-interpretation call-to-discipleship lamb-of-god scripture-reading

text:
**Scripture:** John 1:35-42; Isaiah 49:1-2; Romans 7:15-19; Matthew 6:34; Exodus 12; Genesis 22; Isaiah 53
**Series:** Epiphany

> Preached in Epiphany on John 1:35-42 (with Isaiah 49:1-2), this sermon contrasts our culture of immediacy — short-form video, auto-fiction memoir, the craving for unmediated orders from God — with the Bible as a rich, layered medium through which God transforms us. When John points to Jesus as 'the Lamb of God,' Andrew grasps the loaded phrase (Passover lamb of Exodus 12, the ram of Genesis 22, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53), yet Jesus refuses to give an immediate answer, responding 'Come and see' and asking 'What are you looking for?' Pruitt urges the congregation to sit with that question, to resist hollow immediacy (Cheetos), and to be a 'Come and See' church marked by patient prayer, service, and Scripture reading — inviting them to read the Bible together on Wednesdays.

**Illustrations:** im-mediate-etymology, social-media-reels-tiktok, knausgard-my-struggle, gita-quran-clarity, military-commanding-officer-order, cheetos-hollow-snack

---

# January 18
## Isaiah 49:1-2	John 1:35-42
## The Lamb of God

>Listen to me, O coastlands;
    pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The Lord called me before I was born;
    while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
    in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
    in his quiver he hid me away.
Isaiah 49:1-2

>The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter). - John 1:35-42

We live in an immediate culture. We want things immediately. This word immediate is a funny one. We have the root word medium or media. Then there's a prefix there that we don't often think about.
Im-mediate. Im is a prefix like Un. Im-possible. Something that is not possible. Im-mediate.

Something that is not mediated.
There's no medium through which we are to see it and understand it.
Social media is ironically a great example of this.

TikTok, Facebook, Instagram reels, and YouTube skirts are immediately present and then they're gone. It is the instant, but there is not a medium to Interpret them. There is nothing to understand. You don't have to sit there and think about, now what is she thinking about as she's dancing to K-pop Demon Hunters in a Target?
No, there's no there there. There's no subtext present. It is immediate. You don't need to be trained at school to understand instantaneous videos. This is not a criticism of them, it is reality, and it is just an example.
Immediacy is all around us: in shows people watch, even in the books people read when they read.
Memoirs are now more popular than novels. Many novels are now memoirs in a newish genre called auto-fiction, which circles principally around this Norwegian writer, Karl Ove Knausgård, who writes about his life in a long series of books titled: My Struggle. There is no plot. There are very few characters. There's nothing to interpret, no structure because he has this idea that any structure is artificial. It is not filled with expositions on language and music and love like Proust. It is also written in the first person as if the author is talking to me directly.

The Bible is not immediate. The Bible itself is a medium through which we connect to God, but the Bible itself is not immediate. If you've ever picked up a Bible, it doesn't take long for even the most learned of scholars to ask themselves, what is going on here. There are, in fact, many other Holy Books and other religions that are far more clear. The Bhagavad Gita is very clear. The Quran is very clear and straightforward.

In the Bible, there are confusing parts that seem out of place. There are clear sections, and as I try to tell people: we should always, when we read the Bible read, when we're trying to understand confusing parts, we should read them through the clear parts, but that means that that reading through is a medium, it is a pattern, it is a habit with which we read; it is not immediately apparent.
Sometimes we just want immediacy from God. We want God to tell us what to do. That's immediate. An order is immediate.

If you're in the military and your commanding officer gives you an order: that is immediate, it is not for interpretation or nuance. It is clear.
Sometimes we want that of God, sometimes we want that of people in our life, but that is an even more artificial form of existence.

The challenge of someone telling me what they want is that they actually have to know what they want, and we are so often as humans opaque to ourselves and our true intentions and desires.

As Paul says in Romans 7, so often we do the things we don't want to do. We don't do the things we want to do. Our desire and action and intention clash. So if we don't really know what we want, how could we ever tell another person? And then if we're actually in a position of being transparent and honest, what if they don't like it? What if we're vulnerable and they reject us?

The Bible is not immediate. The Bible is a rich text. It is the word of God, the witness of Christ for us in two different testimonies. We have the former testimony, called the Old Testament, and the newer testimony, the New Testament. Each witnesses to  who Jesus is, who God is for us.
For centuries, people have read and discussed and commented upon the Scriptures. There is also commentary interior to the Bible: what goes on in the older Testament inform the newer Testament. There are layers to the stories that we can dig into and explore.

The Bible is not immediate. It is not a tool to control our lives or to control the lives of others. It is a gift with layer upon layer through which we are transformed by reading and studying. Through it, we grow closer to God. We grow fuller into love for our neighbors. This passage from the first chapter of John is a good example of this.

People are with John the Baptist and John sees Jesus passing by He points out and says: “there is the Lamb of God.”

Now, to someone who is not Jewish, that phrase, Lamb of God, means very little.
To a Jew, it's means an enormous amount. We look at Exodus 12 and the Passover lamb that is offered. We look at Genesis 22 and the sacrifice of Isaac and the Lamb that appeared. We look at Isaiah 53, the Song of the Suffering Servant, like a Lamb to the Slaughter, all of those moments are embedded in this phrase. This is why Andrew gets it. Andrew gets it and it changes his life. He is looking for an order. He's looking for something immediate. He's looking for the Lamb of God. He's been waiting around and he receives something different. Jesus says, come and see. It is mediated. Jesus doesn’t give him the answer. He says that there is still more to do. You have to come and see. You can't know it right then.
Gosh, Jesus, wouldn't it be great if you just told me what you want?

Come and see.

Jesus begins this conversation, though. Andrew starts following Jesus and Jesus says something about it. “What are you looking for?”

This is the deep question for all of us and Jesus asks us straight up.
What are you looking for?

The culture of immediacy today constantly confuses that question because it never gives us the time to think. What are you looking for in your life? What are looking for today? What are you looking for in a friend? What are you looking for?

Immediacy fills up our space so we don’t have to think about a question or a responsibility. It matches our shortened attention span. We never have to worry about what’s next because we are only looking at the now.

This is a cruel distortion of Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, “Do not worry about tomorrow because today has troubles of its own.”

Immediacy tells us: do not worry about tomorrow, do not even worry about today. The only responsibility is immediate enjoyment. But it is hollow. It is like eating Cheetohs. Sure, it tastes good, but it won’t fill you up, it will only make you sick and then be starving again in a few minutes.

What are you looking for?

This is a question for us today and the answer is not so obvious. Each of us, in each of our separate contexts, should ask ourselves that question as if we are being asked by Jesus. What are you looking for?

Andrew gives a great answer. He says to Jesus, “Where you are staying?” Only then does Jesus say, “Come and see.”

We only look for what we think is good. In a world of distortion and brokenness, we still look for what is good. We will someday see Jesus face to face. Our eternal future with a God is time of unmediated connection to our creator. But for our time now, the medium of the Bible and the Church, of prayer and service connect us to God.

We hope to be a church where people can say, “Come and See.” Where Christ is proclaimed and also served and glorified. Where the Scriptures are read and studied. Where people feel connected and safe.

In this Season of Epiphany, may God show us the patience to pray without concern for the immediate. To serve even when it isn’t fun. To read the Bible, even the confusing bits. I encourage you to read the whole thing. You can start today. You don’t have to finish on New Year’s Eve. You could keep going. If you want to join me on Wednesdays, that would be great. If you want to pick a book of the Bible to read together, we can email back and forth on it.

Whatever the case, may we be willing to deepen our understanding of who God us and not stay on the surface. May we take this journey together. May we seek where God is staying. May we go there together.

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


title: Three Whats?

themes: trinity creatio-ex-nihilo creation divine-providence new-beginnings

scripture: Genesis 1:1-5; Matthew 28:16-20

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 1:1-5; Matthew 28:16-20
**Series:** Easter

> A Trinity Sunday sermon pairing Genesis 1:1-5 with the Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20. Wilson begins with creation ex nihilo: out of nothing God brought all that exists. Using the Hebrew terms for upper waters and land, he frames creation as pure gift. He recounts how Bertrand Russell's 1927 dismissal of a cosmic beginning was overturned by Hubble's and Lemaitre's discovery of an expanding universe, leaving Aquinas's Prime Mover better off than Russell. Against the deist 'divine watchmaker,' he insists creation is God's continual sustaining of reality. He reads the Trinity into Genesis: the Father, the Son as Logos/word, and the Spirit (ruach) hovering over the deep as the love between Father and Son. The triune God sings life into existence not out of need but out of love, and that same Spirit flows over the congregation, making today a new beginning because God is present and making all things new.

**Illustrations:** hebrew-shamayim-eretz, russell-aquinas-big-bang, infinite-chocolate-fountain, divine-watchmaker, spirit-song-of-love

---

# May 31, 2026
## Trinity Sunday
## Genesis 1:1-5 Matthew 28:16-:20
### Three Whats?

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””
Matthew 28:16-20

In the Beginning, there was nothing. Like a total absence of anything. Nothing existed. Nothing was there. Think of a thing. Anything. A chair. A cat. A baby. And then it is not there. The not there part is what everything was. All was emptiness and void.

God, though, was not a part of this nothing. God is. God always was and was separate from the nothing. Out of the nothing, creation. Matter. Life. Existence. Planets. Stars. All the things that used to not be here but now are here.

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם
In the beginning, God created the waters above or heaven, and the land. In Hebrew, the word for heaven is literally waters above or upper waters. Mayim is waters, she-mayim waters above; upper waters. When you look out at an ocean and you look out at the sky over the ocean, they look very similar. It's easy to get a sense that these are similar concepts. And with the waters above, we have eretz, the land in Hebrew. It's not this concept of a globe as we understand it, but the land and the land that is gift. When we look at this, when we sing of all creation, we need to rest in this moment of pure gift. There was nothing, and then there was something.

In 1927, the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote a book that attempted to refute proofs of God's existence. Russell was very famous around the world in Philosophy and Math and Logic, he was also friends with important people and very respected. He was also a strident atheist and frustrated by continued belief in God. So Russell writes this book to refute proofs for God's existence, especially the proofs of Thomas Aquinas, which, if you grew up Catholic, you probably still remember them.

- The First Way: God, the Prime Mover
- The Second Way: God, the First Cause
- The Third Way: God, the Necessary Being
- The Fourth Way: God, the Absolute Being
- The Fifth Way: God, the Grand Designer

So Russell, starting with the first proof of the prime mover, said that obviously there was no need for a beginning to the universe, so this is just silly. His argument is longer than that but rests on this point that there is no need to assume the universe has a beginning. There is no evidence either way. Christians and other theists are flat wrong to emphasize this point. This was in 1927. In 1929, Edwin Hubble, who had already discovered galaxies beyond the Milky Way, was able to prove that the universe was expanding because galaxies were moving away from the earth in proportion to their distance. This replicated the work of the Belgian physicist and priest, Georges Lemaître. That is, the farther away, the faster they moved. He proved that space is expanding. It's growing. We can extrapolate from Edwin's, we'll call him Edwin. Edwin's realization is that if space is expanding, it can't be expanding infinitely. So there has to be a point when the expansion began.
So there's either a point where all existence began or, an infinite source, like a chocolate fountain, like a heavenly chocolate fountain. There's always more, you dip your strawberries and there's always more chocolate. That would be the other hypothesis, but that hypothesis was quickly squashed. Although an infinite chocolate fountain would be really great to have in the narthex, maybe if we can work on that, but instead, this leads to the scientific theory of the big bang.

With this evidence, Thomas Aquinas comes out better than Bertrand Russell.

What we come back to, though, is this moment, this event, when there was nothing.

And then there was.

We know there was something because we are here. You are here. I am here. There is life. There is a world. There are birds. There are air-conditioners. All of these things, chairs and children and skies and sparrows. We know there are things we know that there had to be a source of the things. For a long time, many Christians believed that God created everything and then kind of let creation be. This was a famous argument in the late 18th century called the divine watchmaker. That if you found a watch in a field, you would assume a watchmaker. When we see the complexity of nature, we assume a creator. But this argument is that God created everything and then let it be. This is not the Triune God we worship. For Christians, creation is not just this passive moment that happened long ago with little effect. Creation is God’s continual sustainment of all reality. In Genesis, with these first words, we have the reality of God and God's self as Father, Son, and Holy spirit.

We have, in the beginning, the Triune God. We have God, the Father, we have God, the logos, the word of God, the son. the word of God is what is spoken, what is expressed from God. What is thought from God. Logos in Greek encompasses word, reason, thought, logic, and more.
So God the Father is present. God the son is present. Then we have in verse two, the spirit of God, the breath of God floating over the deep, the ruach of God, what Christians call the Holy Spirit. The love between God the Father and God the Son. We have that here in this beginning, this source. A medieval mystic said that the Holy spirit is the song of love sung by the father to the son.

God as Trinity. We have the Father, Son and Holy spirit singing life into existence for the sake of it. Not out of need or necessity, not to win an argument just to allow it, to offer it.

All of that history comes to bear on our understanding today of the triune God's creative power in this moment and forever after. God is not just far away but with us, flowing over all things, sustaining all things. God is not a part of creation but the source in whom we live and move and have our being.

Throughout the story of creation, we receive affirmations from God that creation is good. And then at the end of the sixth day, after the creation of humanity, God said that it is very good.

Creation is not a distant thing, Trinity is not a distant thing. Genesis and creation aren’t just fun stories for kids or for confirmation or anything like that. Trinity isn’t just a concept for theologians or academics but who God is. Trinity points to the reality that God created us out of love and desires not only to save us but to be with us. Creation is not just an event long ago but the constant and persistent existence of all things due to God’s amazing mercy. It impacts us directly where we are in our every day life.

The love the Father has for the Son is the Spirit that flowed over creation and flows over us here today as we worship and pray, as we listen and forgive and sing. The Spirit that allows mercy and new life this day to be possible. Today can be a new beginning for you because God is here. You don’t have to leave this building as you walked in, because God is making all things new, including me, including you.

You are loved. Christ's forgiveness and mercy is found in the very act of creation.

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


title: Upside Down

themes: resurrection-changes-everything treasures-in-heaven anti-dualism the-poor-and-the-presence-of-christ truth-telling easter-works-of-love image-of-god

text:
**Scripture:** Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10; Acts 1:11; Luke 12:16-21
**Series:** Easter

> An Easter Sunday sermon titled 'Upside Down' preaching Colossians 3:1-4 alongside Matthew 28:1-10. The empty tomb flips the disciples' world, and Paul's call to 'set your minds on things above' is read against two false models: Model One (above=good/perfect, earthly=bad/material) and Model Two (Gnosticism, spiritual good vs material evil). The pastor rejects both, arguing 'things of the earth' really means prideful self-sufficiency that treats one's own desires as complete and instrumentalizes others (the rich fool's barns, the sin against the Holy Spirit). Model Three: because Jesus truly, bodily rose, 'above' means seeking Jesus concretely in neighbors made in God's image, not in the clouds (Acts 1:11). Truth-telling becomes a resurrection mindset and act of faith. The resurrection frees us from anxiety and self-reliance, lets others encounter Jesus in us, and affirms each hearer as beloved. He introduces an Easter Practices Generator (QR code) to live the full Easter season, closing with Buechner: the gospel is bad news before good news, but we are loved and bled for anyway.

**Illustrations:** world-turned-upside-down-bad-news, foods-restaurants-vacations-buckets, gnostic-gnosis-spelling, rich-fool-bigger-barns, acts-disciples-staring-sky, jesus-bffs-good-team, resurrected-jesus-stranger-neighbor, jesus-different-to-each-witness, get-out-of-jail-free-card, church-sense-vs-business-sense, easter-practices-generator-qr, buechner-bleeding-bled-for

---

# April 5, 2026
## Easter Sunday
## Colossians 3:1-4	Matthew 28:1-10
### Upside Down

#### Colossians 3:1-4

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,
for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

#### Matthew 28:1-10

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.
His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.
For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.
But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.”
So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.
Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

The tomb is empty. What they expected to see was not there. He was not there. The absence of the body of their Lord flipped their lives. Their world had been turned upside down. It seemed like bad news at first. If you told a friend, “my world turned upside down today,” they would most likely brace for bad news.

We like the world to stay how we expect it to be. We categorize our world based on how we expect it to be; we put things in buckets. We all have the foods that we like, the foods we don’t like. The restaurants we like to go to. The vacations we enjoy. The parts of our job that we find enjoyable, the parts of our job we could do without. We do it with the people in our lives — the people in our friends’ lives, in our families’ lives. Some of it intentionally, some of it unintentionally. We categorize. We do it to survive. We process the world around us in chunks. We set our mind to the things around us.

In the letter to the Colossians, Paul is committing the people of Colossae to think of what is above: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” And I want to hold on to this idea and this phrase on this Easter Sunday — the things that are above, the things that are on earth — because I think there’s a paradox going on here that we need to untangle in order to really get to the heart of Easter.

Now, a flat reading of this is what I am going to call Model One : there are things above — angels, clouds, saying all the right things, doing all the right things, doing what people expect of you. Then there are earthly things — dirt, disease, poverty, mistakes, the opposite of those above-coded things. This is one way to look at it. Things above: good. Things below: bad. Things above: doing everything perfectly. Things below: making mistakes. That’s Model One.

The next one, Model Two, is what has been called Gnosticism. It’s spelled in a funny way, with a G — G-N-O-S-T-I-C. Gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge, like agnostic — someone who doesn’t have knowledge of a situation, who is without knowledge. But a Gnostic, historically, was someone who claimed to have a special kind of knowledge. And what that ended up looking like was the belief that the material world was bad and wicked, but the spiritual world was good and kind. So everything that was physical and material was bad, and Jesus came to save us from that bad materiality and let us enter the spiritual world. This is Model Two.

I’m going to be transparent here: I think both of these options are very bad and wrong readings of Paul, as well as wrong understandings of Christianity. Now, if we proof-text this a little bit and just look at Colossians alone, there are some logical results we might get. But when we read it together with the Gospel — when we understand it together with the resurrection of Jesus Christ — “things above” and “things of earth” take on a radically different meaning, which gets us to Model Three.

What is being implied here by “things of the earth” is not normal things. It’s not earthly things that matter, material things. It’s not even mistakes or sins. Instead, we should understand by “the things of the earth” is the idea that we are everything we need. That my desires are all good and justifiable. That my actions are all good and justifiable. That the buckets and expectations in which we place the people in our lives and the things in our lives are satisfactory and complete. This supposedly natural way of living is precisely where our mind cannot be.

This gets to what is, in some of the Gospels, referred to as the sin against the Holy Spirit — a notion of a pride so strong that you are indifferent to the rest of the world except for your own benefit and what you see as your own benefit. These are earthly things.

This is the rich landowner who had so much wealth and so much from his harvest that he filled up his barns, and so he wanted to go tear down his barns and build bigger barns so he could be satisfied in himself. That’s the earthly mind that Paul is encouraging the people of Colossae to avoid. They have been raised with Christ, so they can seek the things that are above.

Now, the irony is that the things above may look like what Model One thinks are earthly things — and definitely what Model Two thinks are earthly things. Because to seek what is above is not just to go into your mind. It’s not just to escape your current reality. What is above is to seek Jesus. And Jesus is not to be found far away. Jesus isn’t found in the sky. Jesus never says, ‘Look for me in the clouds.’ In Acts 1:11, after Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples are mocked when they look to the sky after his ascension. They don’t wait and stare up. They go back to Jerusalem.

Jesus is found concretely in our neighbors around us. That is where Jesus is not only seated but living and active.

 Model Three can look like an exact inversion of the first two, based on what you do and how you act. You can go through Model One all your life and never give any regard to the people around you, whether they’re made in the image of God or not. You can do all the ‘right’ things and live the ‘right’ sort of life, a commendable life to most people that still ignores the people around you who could be Jesus in your midst.

You can go through Model Two all your life and never for a second think about it. You are taken care of. You are on the good team. You are going to heaven. You and Jesus are BFFs and you don’t even have to do anything different.

But in Model Three, we’re confronted by the existence of our neighbors. We are confronted by them because our goal is no longer to escape them or defeat them.

Now, we may try to define “neighbor” down so tiny that we don’t have to think about anyone — but then we’re coming back into Model One. And if that is the life you want to live, you can live that life. But that is not what is offered by faith. That’s not what is offered by God. That is not what the resurrection of Jesus Christ offers us. It’s not that minimal life of self-satisfaction that instrumentalizes everyone else. Instead, we can see our neighbor as made in the image of God and as a possible encounter with Jesus himself.

### Resurrection Encounters
The resurrection encounters with Jesus are confusing to the women and the people involved. Those people don’t really know what to make of it. People who have known Jesus and followed him are still confused and scared after the resurrection. After his new form — the resurrection body of Jesus looks different, so that the people around him don’t recognize him. Jesus doesn’t look like a zombie or a ghost. He looks like a stranger to them. He looks like a neighbor.

What is interesting to imagine is that he might have looked different to each of them. What if the resurrected Jesus looked different for the women than he did for Peter and John?

For each of us, we look at our neighbors in a different way. This is not categorizing into buckets — this is just the reality. We see Jesus in a different way. There’s not a hierarchy to this, but I think it’s important for us to clarify that we don’t all look in the same way. We don’t all encounter our neighbors in the same way. For those of us who are visually impaired, we don’t encounter our neighbors in the same way. And again, Jesus is present there.

Jesus rose from the dead. Not as a metaphor but a reality. The tomb was empty. Not in our hearts but in Jerusalem. The radical consequences of that amazing reality mean that we don’t only get a get-out-of-jail-free card for the afterlife, but that right now we see our world differently. We can see our world differently.

Whether you have been faithful all your life, or you are here on a lark, mercy is offered to you. Forgiveness is offered. You don’t have to live a life trapped by your desires and expectations. We don’t need to be shackled.

We don’t have to keep our thoughts on the earth. We don’t have to have our business sense and our church sense. We don’t have to think differently on Sunday than we do on Monday. Now, there may be consequences for that. There are going to be consequences in this world. There are going to be consequences for telling the truth.

### Telling the Truth
Telling the truth is a resurrection mindset. It is looking to things above and not below, because every time you tell the truth, it is an act of faith. And every time you lie, it is an act of the earth. It is an act of deception. It is an act of power — you are claiming power over another person. Telling the truth, even those inconvenient, difficult truths, the ones that don’t make you look good, is believing more in God than in yourself.

See, the true reality is that the resurrection transforms our lives a lot more than just spiritualizing it. And we have freedom in that. We have freedom to see the people around us as possible encounters with Jesus.

We have the freedom to not be anxious about the people around us or the situations in our life.

But more than that, we also have the freedom for people to encounter us as Jesus — that we are made in the image of God. That you are made in the image of God. You are beloved. You are beloved. You are not a mistake. You’re not an accident. You are worth it.

You can live differently today. The church has done a good job of focusing on Lenten fasts and practices, but we have let the Easter season get away from us. Easter lasts until the end of May at Pentecost.

### Easter Practices Generator
This year, I wanted to try something new: an Easter Practices Generator. If you go to this QR code, it will take you to a site that will generate a random Easter practice for you to try on. You are free to do it. Free to live in a different way that is not burdened by the expectations of this world which is collapsing. Free to live into the world Christ is building.

When the women went to the tomb, their world turned upside down. It seemed like bad news at first. The Gospel is always bad news before it is good news.[^1] The bad news is that you are a sinner. The bad news is that people are sinners in need of help, of saving. You can’t do it on your own, and to a world of self-reliance, that is humiliating and hard to bear. But it is also the news that you are loved anyway, despite being a sinner. Loved, “cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for.”

So on this Resurrection Sunday, may you take hold of your freedom in Christ — to set your mind on things above by living in this world fully, by not taking half measures, by not making excuses, by living fully, by letting go of that which keeps you from your neighbor, by letting go of that which keeps you from God. Truly, through Christ’s resurrection: freedom.

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

[^1]: Frederick Buchner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, 7.


title: Walking Along

themes: letting-go-of-control faith-over-fear following-jesus self-denial abrahamic-call discipleship us-vs-them

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 12:1-9; Matthew 9:9-13; Matthew 9:18-26; Luke 10:25-37; Jeremiah 29:4-7
**Series:** Easter

> Drawing on Abram's call to leave everything and Jesus' summons of Matthew the tax collector, Wilson preaches that Jesus walks through the world unafraid—seeing no one as a threat—because he clings to nothing but people and encounter. The call to follow is more radical than we admit: it asks us to lay down the 'pickles' we grip for comfort—possessions, identities, family loyalties, even fears that make us demonize others. Using Heat and the Tom Hanks pickle-jar sketch, he urges the congregation to discover what Jesus is asking them to release so that ordinary time can become the freest season of their lives, walking the road together into the love revealed in Christ's death and resurrection.

**Illustrations:** heat-walk-away, celebrity-jeopardy-pickle-jar, kids-school-rule, wilson-sports-loyalties, benedictines-vs-franciscans, good-samaritan-purity-threat, jeremiah-gardens-in-exile

---

# June 7, 2026
## Walking Along
## Genesis 12:1-9 Matthew 9:9-13;18-26

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. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

Genesis 12:1-9

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread through all of that district.
Matthew 9:9-13;18-26

When Jesus walks along, he does not see other people as threats. This is not because he has angels watching his back, or a black belt, or years of experience as a special operations officer. Jesus simply doesn’t see others as a threat as he walks along.

There were plenty of threats in the ancient world, and some were different from ours today. There was the threat to life and limb. There was the threat of robbery. And there was also the threat to purity. This is what’s so instructive for us about the parable of the Good Samaritan. The people walking by weren’t ignoring the man wounded on the side of the road because they didn’t have time for him or because they thought they were too good for him. They passed by because they were threatened by the possibility of losing their purity—of becoming ritually impure through contact with the blood of the man on the side of the road. This is why people call Jesus out when he eats with sinners. He’s not threatened by them.

But it’s important to point out part of the freedom Jesus has as he walks along: he has nothing that anyone could take from him. He’s not afraid that robbers will take all his money and goods, because he has no money and goods. This was a major point in the Middle Ages: huge arguments took place between Benedictines, who gathered lots of assets, and Franciscans, who took a vow of poverty. If we want to be like Jesus, we need to be like Jesus even materially—because there’s a freedom in faith, in being like Jesus, in not being dependent or fearful.

Whenever my kids want to take something to school, I always tell them: only take it if you wouldn’t mind it being lost or broken. If something matters tremendously to you, don’t take it. But the only things that mattered tremendously to Jesus were the people he encountered—the animals he encountered, the fish, the encounter itself. This is what a life of faith can look like. This is what being like Jesus can look like.

The call of Jesus is always more radical than we give it credit for. It’s always pushing us, no matter where we are in our life of faith. Reading the Gospels is provocative—it provokes us. We may consciously bracket off aspects of Jesus, but when we encounter him again and again, we’re confronted by questions about our own lives, our own loyalties, our own realities. This isn’t about reciting the creed, or where we believe we’ll go when we die—it’s about how we live day to day. Are we walking along under the weight of fear over what we might lose? Or are we walking along in full faith in the God who has given us everything?

Michael Mann’s movie Heat has this great back-and-forth between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro—two actors whose careers had been circling each other ever since they were both in Godfather Part II. Pacino plays a kind of alcoholic cop; De Niro plays a straight-laced bank robber. So much of the movie—the reason it’s called Heat—comes down to this: are you able to walk away, no matter what, if the heat is around the corner? What are you able to walk away from? Spoiler alert: at the end of the movie, De Niro is not able to walk away.

Really, this is what God tells Abram to do. Walk away from everything you’ve ever known. Go. It’s not an easy thing to do, to go, to leave. But the difficulty of the challenge depends on what we’re holding on to. What are we clinging to?

This is where the most radical call of the Gospel takes place. Jesus goes to the seashore and says, “Follow me. Lay down your nets and follow me.” Lay down the source of your income. Lay down the source of your identity. Lay down your family tradition. Follow me. In today’s world, we don’t often take up the professions of our parents. So what are the things you cling to? Sometimes we take on the sports teams of our family. What if Jesus came to me and said, “Follow me, Wilson. Lay down the Astros and the Longhorns, and I will teach you to be a fishers of men”? Anything but that! I don’t want to. I don’t want to do that.

Jesus had the freedom to walk along and call the disciples to a new life because he wasn’t clinging to anything in this world. Now, I don’t think Jesus is saying that we all need to be mendicants, itinerants with no home, moving from place to place. One of my favorite passages in the prophet Jeremiah has to do with building gardens in exile. It comes down to this: you can’t walk along if you’re clinging too tightly to your old self.

It’s like that Celebrity Jeopardy sketch where Tom Hanks is playing Tom Hanks, and he gets his hand stuck in a pickle jar. At first, Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek asks where the pickle jar even came from—I was confused by that part too. Then he says, “Just let go of the pickle.” And Tom Hanks says, “But I want a pickle.” His hand stays stuck in the jar because he refuses to let go of the pickle.

In all our lives, wherever we are on our journey with God, there are pickles we cling to that keep us stuck—because we just want a pickle. We think it’s fine. We just want a pickle, and we hold on to it. They’re sources of comfort. And sometimes those sources of comfort become ways of demonizing the people around us, seeing threats everywhere, so that we stay in the familiar. The point is not to live a reckless life, a foolhardy life. But neither should we cling so tightly to what we have and what we expect of ourselves that we end up trapped and stuck, denying the freedom God offers us.

When Jesus was walking along and came across you, what did he tell you to drop? What did he tell you to let go of? What is he telling you today to let go of, so that you can be free? This summer, this ordinary time—how can this be the freest moment of your life, in God’s love? How can you remember, more and more, that you are forgiven, that you are given life, that you are not your mistakes?

Take a step along the path of Jesus. Walk along. Free. And the great thing is, God doesn’t call us alone. God calls us together. We are together in this journey. We are together on this road. We each have our own pickles we’ve got to let go of. But the road gets us all back to where we need to go: into the heart of love, revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let us go. Let us rise. Let us answer the call.

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


title: Waters Above, Waters Below

themes: baptism-of-jesus servanthood creation church-membership you-are-worthy-already suffering-servant

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 3:13-17; Isaiah 42:1-4
**Series:** Epiphany

> An Epiphany sermon on the baptism of Jesus that plays on the Hebrew kinship of 'water' (mayim) and 'sky' (shamayim) to picture creation as waters above and below. Jesus, the servant-Messiah of Isaiah 42, travels to John at the unnavigable Jordan and submits to baptism, not to be made holy but to make the water holy. People made a deliberate detour to John (illustrated by the Michelin Guide's 'worth the trip' stars versus a convenient Silicon Valley stop), and the preacher calls hearers to a similar detour: baptism, church membership, and inviting others to the water of life.

**Illustrations:** outdoor-worship-rain-drought, hebrew-mayim-shamayim, silicon-valley-google-apple-visit, michelin-guide-stars, maximus-of-turin-baptism, early-christian-infinite-river, umc-membership-vows

---

# January 11
## Isaiah 42:1-4	Matthew 3:13-17
## Waters Above, Waters Below

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry out or lift up his voice
    or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
    until he has established justice in the earth,
    and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
- Isaiah 42:1-4

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
- Matthew 3:13-17

Whenever you are planning an outdoor event, the rain can be an incredible nuisance. We had a weekly outdoor worship service at my former church. This made me think about the weather a lot more than I had before. It seemed like there were some weeks when the only time it would rain was Sunday morning. I wasn’t thinking about the drought that Travis County had been experiencing at the time. I was thinking about how the rain impacted me. I was thinking about the waters coming down from above ruining my event.

In Hebrew, the word for heaven or sky is nearly identical to the word for the word for water. The word for water is mayim, the word for sky is shamayim. What that literally means is waters and waters above. When you look out at the ocean and you can you see the horizon, there are many days when the distinction between the sea and the sky is minimal. In Hebrew, we are all surrounded by water. Even in the desert, the water is around us. Especially in the desert, we think about the water.

When Jesus is going to get baptized, he has not been through a desert. The Jordan River runs through a verdant valley from the sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. There are many places that people claim as the location of the baptism of Jesus, but none are definitive. Whatever the case, the baptism took place at a wild spot, but not a desert spot.

The Jordan River is a lot like Texas rivers, in that it is not navigable most of the year. There are no historic sea battles on the Jordan River. It is not like the Mississippi or the Red River or the Nile or the Danube. The waters of the Jordan offer water to drink, to bathe, but not really transportation. This is why, historically, there aren’t any great and ancient cities on the Jordan. People have to travel to get to the Jordan. It is not a convenient location fr a revival. Jerusalem or Caesarea Philipi or even Capernaum would have been a better location for a revival. The Sea of Galilee can employ thousands of people around its banks. The Jordan cannot. You had to want to go there. You had to make a trip of it.

My family recently visited San Francisco and Silicon Valley. My mother has cousins in the city and Alina, my wife, has a cousin, Gabi, south of San Francisco in Sunnyvale. While we were staying in Sunnyvale, we visited the Google headquarters where Gabi works. Dom also wanted to go to the Apple headquarters so we did that, too. We didn’t fly across the country to go to Google and Apple. The spots were convenient and interesting so we checked them out.

Folks weren’t ‘checking out’ John the Baptist. They traveled to see him. They made a detour.

In 1889, Andre and Edouard Michelin founded a tyre company in Clermont-Ferrand, which was then a small village in France. It was moderately successful so that they could make a living, but there just weren’t enough drivers in France for them to sell a lot of tires. Thus, the brothers started sharing information about local communities to drivers informally so that they would go on more roadtrips. In 1920, they started selling the guide. But it was in 1926, when they began to award stars, that things really took off.

They went with the system of 1-3 stars. 1 Star being good cooking, 2 stars being excellent cooking, 3 stars being exceptional cooking, something worth a trip all on its own. Today, there are currently 18,801 restaurants that Michelin has reviewed, only 157 have received 3 stars. A 3 star restaurant is worth the trip on its own, like a the French Laundry in Napa Valley, or Alinea in Chicago, or Eleven Madison Park in New York. These are places worth the trip.

John the Baptist is offering something new on the banks of the Jordan River and people are coming to see him. He is preaching with strong language and people are receiving his words. He is offering a sign of a changed life in the waters of the river and people are taking him up on his offer.

John is a student of the scriptures. He sought to be faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And yet, he was surprised by Jesus. Not surprised by who Jesus was, but surprised by what Jesus asked for. John, no matter how holy he was, saw the water for what it could do for him. It was a source with which he could baptize sinners for repentance, and a source in which the Messiah could baptize him. John lived with an understandable hierarchy, and he put himself under Jesus. But Isaiah 42 reminds us that the coming of the Messiah is not the coming of a soldier, but a servant.

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry out or lift up his voice
    or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
    until he has established justice in the earth,
    and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
- Isaiah 42:1-4

Baptism is an act of submission. When folks came to John, they were submitting to him. When Jesus came to John, in an amazing twist, the Son of God submitted to a human born of flesh. Why? As an early church pastor said,

>Christ is baptized, not to be made holy by the water, but to make the water holy, and by his cleansing to purify the waters which he touched.

>At Christmas he was born a man; today he is reborn sacramentally. Then he was born from the Virgin; today he is born in mystery. When he was born a man, his mother Mary held him close to her heart; when he is born in mystery, God the Father embraces him with his voice when he says: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: listen to him. The mother caresses the tender baby on her lap; the Father serves his Son by his loving testimony. The mother holds the child for the Magi to adore; the Father reveals that his Son is to be worshiped by all the nations. - Maximus of Turin

People came to see John by the Jordan. Jesus came, too. It was the meeting of worlds. The Waters above spoke to the waters below so that no space would be empty of his presence. So that no one would be unseen by their Lord.

Another early Christian wrote about this.

>To think of the infinite river that gladdens the city of God being bathed in a poor little stream of the eternal, the unfathomable fountainhead that gives life to all men being immersed in the shallow waters of this transient world! He who fills all creation, leaving no place devoid of his presence, he who is incomprehensible to the angels and hidden from the sight of man, came to be baptized because it was his will.

Jesus came as a servant, to serve even John, showing us that serving and giving is sanctified. Baptism is always an act of submission. You can’t baptize yourself. If anyone could, it would be Jesus, but he didn’t make an exception of himself.

When waters come from above, the sky is dark. In the middle of the storm, it is hard to see, it is hard to move. Jesus offered New Wine with his life so that we could be transformed into New Wine for others. Baptism with Jesus is not simply the washing of the old, it is the putting on the new. That is why baptism is connected to joining the church. In Baptism, we receive a gift and commit to the responsibility of following Jesus.

The waters above opened up, not with a storm, but with a voice. “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”

In this season of epiphany, may we remember that in the midst of waters all around us, God came to light up the world.

Baptism has historically been the point of entry for the church. We baptize infants because baptism is a gift from God and in the early church they baptized whole families together. There is nothing we can do to earn baptism.

If you have not been baptized, please come and talk to me about the waters sanctified by Jesus.

Baptism also gives us structure for joining a specific church. When you join covenant, the words we say come from the same words for baptism.

>As members of Christ's universal Church, will you be loyal to Christ through The United Methodist Church, and do all in your power to strengthen its ministries?

I will.

And then

>As members of this congregation, will you faithfully participate in its ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness?

I will.

Joining a church is a detour. Life can go on without it. But it is a detour that you may discover was the path you were on all along. Recommitting to a church is similar. It is a detour. It is not the standard path. But you may discover it was the path God always had for you. There is friction in being a part of the body of Christ. It means commitments to others. It means commitments of time and money and attention, but this opportunity is given to us, and we are all more because of those who commit with us.

If you haven’t joined Covenant, please pray about it and talk to
Me about it. If you have been here a long time, invite someone to worship. Think of folks in your life in need of the water of life.

The waters above spoke out when Jesus came out of the waters below. All of creation sings his praise. Let us join their song. Let us offer our selves. Let us invite others.

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


title: Waving from the Sideline

series: Lent

themes: triumphal-entry passion-of-christ obeying-strange-instructions prevenient-grace call-to-discipleship readiness-watchfulness

text:
**Scripture:** Psalm 118:1-2; Psalm 118:19-29; Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 14:32-38
**Series:** Lent

> A Palm/Passion Sunday sermon that dwells on the irony of crowds who cheer 'Hosanna' and soon cry 'Crucify him.' Pruitt highlights Jesus' oddly specific instructions about the donkey and colt to argue that God often asks us to do strange things we cannot explain in the moment, with grace seen only in retrospect; the call is to 'come and see,' not 'wait and see.' Moving into the passion, he reads Mark 14's Gethsemane prayer ('not what I want but what you want') and notes Christ's most surprising words are the ones he never said (I quit, I'm going home). The service incorporates the Stations of the Cross (Westminster Cathedral design, with a QR-linked online version) and a reflective musical moment. The closing exhortation: like the disciples Christ asked only to stay awake, we are invited simply to be with him this Holy Week, as Christ desires to be with us.

**Illustrations:** irony-english-class, andrew-of-crete-homily, westminster-cathedral-stations, jerusalem-via-dolorosa-pilgrims, qr-code-stations-page, rich-young-man-sell-all

---

# March 29, 2026
## Palm Sunday
## Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29	Matthew 21:1-11
### Waving from the Sideline

#### Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”
Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

#### Matthew 21:1-11

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples,
saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.
If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.”
This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them;
they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.
A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?”
The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Palm Sunday has always been a day of great irony. Because of that, it has been a hard day for the church to really process theologically.
We lift up Hosannas and so often cheer with the crowds. “Yay Jesus. Save us, now. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Irony is one of those words that they talk about in high school and college English, that is difficult to define precisely.
So irony becomes this term for
English majors that people like will “well, actually” each other over and over again. Irony, at its core, is a disconnect between what we see and what is really there.

We see the crowd cheering and we know what is going to happen. It's not going to be cheerful. We see people laying blankets down and branches down as if the king is entering the town and we know what they're going to shout in a few days or a few weeks time. “Crucify him. Crucify him.” The church puts Palm Sunday the week before Easter, but Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was probably not just a week before Easter. It was probably a few weeks or a months before. During that time, Jesus did ministry in Jerusalem. Our proximity in celebrating Palm Sunday days before Good Friday accentuates this contrast.

There are many things we could talk about Palm Sunday, but I just think Jesus's requests are really weird. Like, they're very odd. I'm just gonna read this again slowly.

>“Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter it, you will find tied up there a colt that no one has ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘Its master needs it, and he will send it back right away.’”

Jesus has some painfully specific requests to make of the disciples before he enters Jerusalem. He's usually not that detail oriented. This is one of those things about the teachings of Jesus. There actually isn't a ton of detail to follow. When he is asked what the greatest commandment is, he focuses on two very general ones.
When the young man comes to Jesus and asks to follow him, Jesus tells him to sell every everything he has. It's not a very detailed kinda thing: sell it all. Not very detailed. It is not, sell your bad stuff or sell 10%. It's just, sell everything.

As we reflect on the palms, as we think about the irony of this day, about the people cheering, Hosanna, hosanna, and then the same people yelling, crucify him, I want to hold onto this one notion that maybe sometimes God is asking us to do things that in the moment seem really odd, that you cannot explain why you are here.

You cannot explain what has happened, but God is going to reveal it. We see grace of God retrospectively. We come back to it.

If we look in the moment, it is hard to see the movement of grace. And yet, when we look backwards, we see God's amazing movement in that time.
I want us to take a moment now to reflect on God's movement in our lives. On some of the strange things that have been asked of us, the strange circumstances we find ourselves. Maybe God has not spoken to us, but we find ourselves in circumstances we cannot explain.

We don't know how we got here. We don’t know what is going to happen next. There is a “wait and see” temptation to all of this. We don’t know what will happen so we better wait for more information. That may work in a lot of life, it doesn’t really work with God. Jesus never says wait and see. He does say, taste and see. He does say, come and see.

>“Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives. Today he returns from Bethany and proceeds of his own free will toward his holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation.”

Even when the instructions are strange, we must go to him. We must come and see, not wait and see.

>“Let us run to accompany him as he hastens toward his passion, and imitate those who met him then, not by covering his path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before him by being humble and by trying to live as he would wish. Then we shall be able to receive the Word at his coming, and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.”

Christ has strange instructions for his disciples. The strangest has nothing to do with donkeys or palms. The strangest is that he wants you. You are worthy. You are loved. You are forgiven. You can lay your life down as he goes by. You can stand up and follow him as he walks from dark Gethsemane towards his death.

### Passion Sunday
Today is not just Palm Sunday. It is Passion Sunday. It is the beginning of Holy Week and the passion of Christ. One way to understand the passion of Christ is the suffering of Christ: his great suffering for us. What God has done for us. We begin retelling this story today. We begin reliving this story today.
So often, Palm Sunday ends on a note of cheers with a gentle nod to the jeers.
Today, we're also going to do the passion part.  I'm gonna bring us to Mark 14 in the garden of Gethsemene. This reading takes place after the last supper, but before the arrest of Jesus.

“Jesus and his disciples came to a place called Gethsemane. Jesus said to them, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James, and John along with him. He began to feel despair and was anxious. He said to them, “I’m very sad. It’s as if I’m dying. Stay here and keep alert.” Then he went a short distance farther and fell to the ground. He prayed that, if possible, he might be spared the time of suffering. He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me. However—not what I want but what you want.” He came and found them sleeping. He said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Couldn’t you stay alert for one hour? Stay alert and pray so that you won’t give in to temptation. The spirit is eager, but the flesh is weak.””
Mark 14:32-38 CEB

Jesus was praying. Jesus felt alone. The weight of his actions, the weight of his life hung heavy on him: his experiences, nervousness, anxiety. He wishes the disciples to stay with him, but they fall asleep. Jesus knows what is going to happen to him. Just like we know, reading back, what is going to happen to him. In this way, we have the mind of Jesus. We can see as he sees and we can see the distance between his thoughts and those of his disciples. W can see how clueless they were to the realities that Jesus was facing. We have with this knowledge.
We read in this passage an amazing prayer of Jesus.
Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me. However—not what I want but what you want

Or in the older translations, not my will but your will. If you are in a place of pain and hurt, may you pray this prayer. If you are not in that place, this Holy Week, may you see that Jesus walked that road for you. May you give thanks to God.

Christ’s most surprising words are the ones he didn’t say. He didn’t say I quit. He didn’t say, they are not worth it. He didn’t say, I’m going home. His friends fell asleep. Another friend betrayed him, but Christ held close to father’s will, and so can we.

### Stations of the Cross
Around the sanctuary we have a display of the Stations of the Cross, as designed for the Westminster Cathedral, not the famous Abbey, but the Catholic Cathedral. This is an ancient practice of the church. In the Holy Land, there's almost always groups of pilgrims doing the stations in Jerusalem, reflecting on the last moments of Christ's life. If you are ever in Jerusalem and you see Roman numerals on the wall in the old city,

If you follow the QR code in the hand out, it will take you to our website and to a page that goes through the stations so that if you are mobility challenge, you'll still be able to pray and reflect on these moments in Christ's life.
The deeper we enter into Christ's passion this week, the greater we will experience the rising of Christ next week. May the experience of Christ’s passion help you reflect on your own life, what God is doing for you, and how you can respond.

### Reflextive Moment
Steve is going to play a little music in the background. You can start with the first station or really any spot around the sanctuary. These will be up all week

### Closing
I encourage you, my friends, to try to stay awake. Jesus is here for you. He didn’t stay in Bethany, He entered Jerusalem, knowing what that meant. He didn’t go to sleep on the mount of olives, but waited to be betrayed.

You don't have to move mountains. You don't have to be a superhero. All he asked at the end was for his friends to stay awake and be with him. In his last moments, Christ desired to be with his friends. Right now, Christ desires to be with you.

As we enter this Holy Week, when the dissonance between the world and the church is so stark, may we remember that Christ, the word through whom all things were made, desires to be with us. May we desire the same.

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


title: What's Next? (Builders and Names)

themes: ordinary-faithfulness names-known-by-god road-to-emmaus welcoming-the-stranger stewardship salvation congregational-future

text:
**Scripture:** Nehemiah 3:1-12; Luke 24:13-35; Galatians 3:28
**Series:** Easter

> Drawing on the roll call of wall-builders in Nehemiah 3 and the nameless disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, the sermon argues that God remembers both the famous and the ordinary, and that the Bible uniquely preserves ordinary names. Both texts depict 'building' — Nehemiah a wall, the Emmaus disciples the people of God by walking with Jesus. Believers are no longer strangers because they walk with the same risen Christ (Galatians 3:28); resurrection calls them to participate in the world's salvation and welcome others. This is tied directly to Covenant UMC's capital campaign: today's members, like Nehemiah, refuse to be trapped by past decisions and instead build for the future of the church.

**Illustrations:** hebrew-hapax-legomena, oxford-english-dictionary, tiktok-context-clues, name-repeating-trick-jack, covenant-capital-campaign-debt

---

# April 19, 2026
## Nehemiah 3:1-12	Luke 24:13-35
### What's Next?

Then the high priest Eliashib set to work with his fellow priests and rebuilt the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set up its doors; they consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred and as far as the Tower of Hananel. And the men of Jericho built next to him. And next to them Zaccur son of Imri built.

The sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate; they laid its beams and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars. Next to them Meremoth son of Uriah son of Hakkoz made repairs. Next to them Meshullam son of Berechiah son of Meshezabel made repairs. Next to them Zadok son of Baana made repairs. Next to them the Tekoites made repairs, but their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord.

Joiada son of Paseah and Meshullam son of Besodeiah repaired the Old Gate; they laid its beams and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars. Next to them repairs were made by Melatiah the Gibeonite and Jadon the Meronothite—the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah—who were under the jurisdiction of the governor of the province Beyond the River. Next to them Uzziel son of Harhaiah, one of the goldsmiths, made repairs. Next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, made repairs, and they restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall. Next to them Rephaiah son of Hur, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs. Next to them Jedaiah son of Harumaph made repairs opposite his house, and next to him Hattush son of Hashabneiah made repairs. Malchijah son of Harim and Hasshub son of Pahath-moab repaired another section and the Tower of the Ovens. Next to him Shallum son of Hallohesh, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs, he and his daughters.
Nehemiah 3:1-12

#### Luke 24:13-35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem,
and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.
While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,
but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.
Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”
He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,
and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.
But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.
Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning,
and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.
Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”
Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!
Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.
But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.
Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.
They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!”
Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

# Sermon Transcription — Builders and Names

The Bible is filled with a lot of ordinary names. Sure, there are kings and queens and prophets and emperors, but there are also a lot of shepherds, fishermen, and women who take care of the home. There are builders, not just leaders.

A lot of cultures erase these ordinary names from their history. The chronicles of history are the playgrounds of kings and future kings. The only people worth remembering are the ones you would put on a coin. The Bible is different. The great cloud of witnesses includes both the ordinary and the extraordinary.

In Nehemiah 3 — we are still building the wall, but we have a bunch of names, and these names matter. Their story matters. There’s little attestation to these names beyond this chapter. For some of these names, it might be the only place in history where the name is written down.

Because of the rarity of ancient Hebrew as a language, one of the curious things of studying Hebrew is that the Hebrew Bible is the only extant document of ancient Hebrew. Sometimes there’s a word that appears once in Nehemiah and doesn’t appear anywhere else in all of human history. Usually, if you’re reading a book today or an article or the subtitle of a TikTok, and you come across a word you don’t know, you can use context clues. You can look it up. In English, we have this great tradition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which tries to show the first time a word was ever used and the different ways it’s been used over the years. But in Hebrew, when a word is only used once, scholars kind of go with what the traditional meaning was that they were given as students. “Well, it’s translated in the Greek as this, and they knew more Hebrew than we do, so it’s probably close to this.” It works with the names as well.

----

Names are connected to experience and to memory. When I first got into ministry, people would tell me about how hard it is to remember people’s names, how they struggle with it. The names we remember are the ones that matter to us. They are the names that we think about. We don’t forget those names. We like to think of ourselves as people who are equally thoughtful to all the people in our lives, but that is not the case.

There are tricks you can do to remember names. One trick I think is very helpful is this: when you meet somebody, use their name a lot, really quickly. “Nice to meet you, Jack. It’s great to see you, Jack. What an interesting outfit you got there, Jack. So what do you do, Jack?” You just keep repeating it over and over again, and that tends to help. But again, for people I’m never going to see again, it’s not the most important thing in the world. It’s about what matters in my life.

The names written down in Nehemiah matter to God — the builders who built the wall.

### Emmaus Transition
In the New Testament, we have passages like the one today, the road to Emmaus, where we don’t have names for the disciples. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter to God, but there’s something else going on here.

We have a different kind of building going on in the Gospel of Luke. Instead of building a wall, they’re building a church. They’re building the people of God by walking with Jesus.

What does it take to build the people of God?

What we see here is that the nameless disciples were moved by the story of Jesus to the point that they were sharing it with the people around them — the people who had not heard, or who did not act as if they had heard. As I preached about at Easter, Jesus appeared here as a stranger. He might have appeared different for each of those nameless disciples who walked with him, who walked next to him, who didn’t recognize him because he was a stranger. And yet their eyes were opened — sharing food together, sharing fellowship together, sharing life together, sharing community together. Building something for tomorrow.

We were all strangers once to each other. Sometimes we feel like strangers to people on the other side of the room from us at church because it’s rare for anyone to sit in a different section than the one they first sat in when they came.

And yet, if you don’t know the name of the person sitting on the other side of the sanctuary from you or if this is your first time with us today, we are not strangers here because we all walk with the same person. We are known and understood and remembered by walking with Jesus Christ. Whether our faith has been something important to us for a long time or it is a new experience, we are no longer strangers because of who God is in Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in Galatians 3:

>There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

As we walk together, we build something greater than ourselves. As we walk together, sometimes we carry each other and sometimes we are carried. As we walk together sometimes we notice aspects of Jesus in each other and sometimes people move this aspects of Jesus in us. That is Grace. That is amazing grace. When God carried us so much up on Eagles wings that we no longer even look like the broken sad people we used to be.

Instead, when people look at us, they see our savior. That is the power of resurrection. It is not just that we are saved, but also that we are called to participate in the salvation of the world. To build up the kingdom of heaven. To welcome people to walk next to us on this journey. To invite people to walk next to us on this journey. We do this not because we are experts, but because Christ is risen.

The names in Nehemiah matter. The nameless Saints in Luke 24 matter. There are names that God knows of people yet to walk through these doors who are going to meet Jesus here and have their lives changed. We are building something beyond even now through God.

Now friends, in a little bit we’re going to hear from a few people about the capital campaign we’re running right now, to try and take down a good chunk of our debt. Part of that is going to be telling the story of why that debt exists to begin with. A lot of us who are here came to Covenant after all those decisions were made. Some of us were here through it all. It is all of our legacy here. There are names of those who built it, but there are also our names today — making a decision and a commitment to build for the future of this church and the future of the presence of God in our community. Not being limited by the decisions of yesterday.

Because sometimes this is a way to understand what was going on with Nehemiah. When Nehemiah was rebuilding the wall, when he was called by God to rebuild the wall, he was not being trapped by the decisions of the generations before him that led to exile and the destruction of that wall. He didn’t say, “Well, it’s not my problem.” He took on that responsibility and inspired others to do so — for a purpose.

When those disciples on the road to Emmaus saw the man on the road, they did not look at him and say, “Not my responsibility.” They welcomed him, shared stories with him, walked together with him — and then discovered it was Jesus, all along.

In this season of resurrection, Jesus will continue to come and show us who he is. Revive us, again and again. May we open ourselves up to him. May we open ourselves up to the movement of the Spirit. May we open ourselves up to be builders of today for the kingdom of God tomorrow.

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