title: The Crown of Salvation

themes: justification-by-faith pistis-christou the-cross empty-tomb grace-not-merit self-reliance-versus-trust

text:
**Scripture:** Galatians 2:15-20; Luke 24:1-9; Philippians 3:12-14

> Salvation is not a crown we earn by our own faith or effort but the gift of the faithfulness of Christ, who saves us through the cross and the empty tomb so we live as free, reconciled children of God.

**Illustrations:** sports-final-score, french-arbre-cross, rhyme-across-languages, influencer-supplement, child-tie-shoes-by-myself, pull-up-by-bootstraps, andrew-of-crete-cross, and-can-it-be-hymn

---

# October 12, 2025
## The Crown of Salvation
### Galatians 2:15-20
### Luke 24:1-9

 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:15-20

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. - Luke 24:1-9

![](attachments/Crown of Salvation.a18f3ef4b6a440028c5ed785ffa641bb.jpg)

There are many aspects of life where I don't like ambiguity. I want clarity. One of the things I appreciate about sports is the clarity at the end of the game There's a winner and a loser. Even if everybody can find an excuse about what should have happened on this call or that call, the record is set at the end of the game:  the winner and the loser can move on to the next event.

A lot of people expect clarity from the Bible in every line. One of the reasons for this is that translators, over the last century, have translated towards clarity. They paraphrase the Greek and Hebrew into English in order to make it sound good in English.

And yet, there are some problems here, because if you have ever studied another language, translation is always about a choice. There is no perfect translation or else there would be no need for a translation because it would be the same language. When translating, you have to choose between words.

For instance, in French, the word for tree is arbre, but it's not exactly the same word in English. In French, the second meaning of arbre is the cross on which Jesus died. In English, it is the fourth.

There are other aspects in translation concerning more poetic elements of a style. That is, different languages have different stylistic norms. Even just rhyming, tree rhymes with bee or see. Arbre rhymes with marbre, the French word for marble.

Another level of complexity concerns syntax, with Greek as a perfect example of this. In the Greek in which the New Testament was written, the word order of a sentence does not matter grammatically as it does in English. In Greek, we understand which part of speech each word represents through its prefix or suffix, but word order is only about emphasis. There are other languages, like German, where word order matters tremendously more than even in English.

You don't have to be an English major or study Greek to be a Christian, but you should understand that words matter in this life. One of the greatest tricks someone can do to deceive us is to transform choice into necessity. They didn’t choose to do this, they had no choice. When we take away choice, we take away agency and accountability. This works for everyday life. That is, we should always be wary when someone describes something as necessary. An influencer telling you “You need this supplement.” As well, when we read the Bible, whenever something sounds confusing or out of step, it is good to confer with another translation and not just assume the translator is smarter than you. Confer with a brother or sister in Christ.

So when we come to our first reading from Galatians, there are two words in Greek that are translated in radically different ways and matter tremendously for our faith. pistis christou. They are commonly translated as faith in Jesus Christ we are saved by faith in Christ. If you have been in the church before, you have probably heard this line. And yet, an equally valid reading grammatically is that “we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

The first translation makes us justified by something we do, we have faith in Jesus Christ. The second translation makes us justified by what Jesus has done, the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the one who justifies, who makes us righteous and holy. Jesus is the one who saves.

## Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on the stained class windows at Covenant with this window, The Crown of Salvation.

The question for us today really is: who wears the crown of salvation? Does Jesus give us a crown that we can wear because of our faith in Jesus? Or is Jesus the crown offering salvation for us? Is salvation something we earn? Or is salvation something done for us by Jesus?

Paul in his letter to the Romans is clear that we are saved by faith and not by works, and yet many traditions in the church, many readings of scripture turn faith into a work, an action that we do, and this can become slightly contradictory.

In the more common reading of Galatians 2, we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. Well, that kind of turns faith into a work because we're the ones who do it. Yet, if we were saved by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we are not the ones who do it; it is gift all the way down.

Now, many of us have a big bootstrap ideology going on where we want to take care of our own business. As our youngest child used to say, I do it by myself. He was learning how to tie his shoes and really wanted to finish it.

Sometimes we can drift into this sort of understanding of God. I do it by myself. Thanks, Jesus, but I’ve got this.

This is the definition of hubris. We don’t got this. We can’t got this. On our best days, we can’t save our selves. We can’t save our loved ones. We can’t make the world right. We need to be saved. We don’t need to wear a crown, but to worship the one who wears the crown through his actions on the cross.

An early church father, Andrew of Crete, described the centrality of the cross in this beautiful manner:

>Had there been no cross, Christ could not have been crucified. Had there been no cross, life itself could not have been nailed to the tree. And if life had not been nailed to it, there would be no streams of immortality pouring from Christ’s side, blood and water for the world’s cleansing. The legal bond of our sin would not be cancelled, we should not have attained our freedom, we should not have enjoyed the fruit of the tree of life and the gates of paradise would not stand open. Had there been no cross, death would not have been trodden underfoot, nor hell despoiled. -Andrew of Crete

Christ was faithful even to the point of death, death on a cross. This is how we are offered life today. Not because of what we have done. Not because of our bootstraps, but because Jesus did not shun us nor shun the cross.

Christ has won the victory, still we must run the race. As Paul says in Philippians 3

>“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:12-14 NRSV

Our clarity is in this heavenly call. Our clarity is in Christ’s victory.

It is worthwhile living a life in response to Christ’s great act, because to live otherwise is to live a life of lies. It is a lie to think we can save ourselves or save the world. Christ is the one who acted. Christ is the one who has offered himself for us.

We have heard the great Charles Wesley hymn, And Can it Be, two different ways this morning. It is my favorite hymn with a deep understanding of Christ’s action on the cross to save us.

>And can it be that I should gain
An int'rest in the Savior's blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me?

For me? Really? He did it for me? How amazing is that?

>’Tis mystery all! Th'Immortal dies!
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine!
'Tis mercy all! let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more.

Who can explain the strange design of God to give up his son, Jesus, for us? How deep are the depths of divine love?

>He left His Father's throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace;
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam's helpless race;
'Tis mercy all, immense and free;
For, O my God, it found out me.

> Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee.

Our spirits lie imprisoned when we give in to the lie of the world, that we must save ourselves through our jobs or our families or our politics or our retirements. The encounter with God that shakes us from that lie frees us, as if chains fall off. Then finally,

> No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th'eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

The crown is only offered through Christ and after being justified, after being clothed in divine righteousness.

This is the power of the empty tomb

>But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body.

They did not find it because he wasn’t there for us.

When you come into this holy place and see this window, may you remember that the tomb is empty. He is not there. The faithfulness of Christ has justified us and reconciled. So let us live as free and reconciled children of God, and not children of lies.

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


site: sermons

title: The Gift of Jesus

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

themes: communion-of-saints transformed-desire anxiety consumerism grace sermon-on-the-mount forgiveness

text:
**Scripture:** Hebrews 11:39-12:2; Luke 12:22-31; John 3:16; Romans 7:15-20; Matthew 5:1-7:29

> Jesus is a threefold gift—securing our future through the cross, freeing us from our past while making us part of the cloud of witnesses, and calling us in the present to a grace-enabled transformation of desire in which what we consume no longer defines who we are.

**Illustrations:** socks-vs-heirloom-gifts, covenant-resurrection-window, nicaea-hypostasis, lifetime-meal-count, ravens-and-lilies, friend-spend-time-with-god

---

# August 24, 2025
## The Gift of Jesus
## Hebrews 11:39-12:2	Luke 12:22-31

Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. - Hebrews 11:39-12:2

He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith! And do not keep seeking what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that seek all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. - Luke 12:22-31

Some gifts in life are quite simple. Socks, for instance. When we give our kids socks, there is no greater meaning than that they need socks. Other gifts, a grandfather’s watch or and a grandmother’s pearls, has a deeper meaning. It represents the past. It can be worn in the present. But it also represents the future and generations to come.

![](attachments/Resurrection.db6e872024644b259871c25a856f6f4b.jpg)
We are continuing our series on the stained glass windows at Covenant with the fourth window today, the gift of Jesus. There's a picture of the cross here. The window originally signifies and points to Christ's death as offering us life.
But I want to take this idea of the gift of Jesus and expand it into three that Jesus is a gift for us: for our future, for our past, and for a present.

Usually there is a premier importance given to the future, in scripture and in the Christian tradition. Our future with God is deeply important. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ opens up the presence of God for us eternally. We celebrate this at Easter. This is why we sang all the verses of Christ the Lord is risen today and He Lives because we should celebrate this reality more than just at Easter.

As John famously writes, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. “
The gift of Jesus is a future with God because of the cross. But as a friend of mine used to say, if we don't want to spend time with God now, why would we ever want to spend time with God in the future?

The great call of Jesus is not: do whatever you want now and then right before you die, confess, and then you get to live in paradise doing whatever you want.
Instead, it goes far, far deeper into the reality that our desires, what we want in this life, in our day-to-day existence, has been corrupted and needs to be redeemed. As Paul writes in Romans 7, we don’t want what we should want and we want the things we shouldn’t want. Our desires need to be renewed, changed, converted, transformed.

This is why, in order to understand the gift of our future with Christ, we need to think about the gift of our past with Christ. Our life before now, our life up to now. What we are given in Jesus is not determined by our past. What I mean by that is that our past does not define who we are.

Part of this is that we are not trapped by our circumstances. We are not trapped by our culture. There's freedom from our past, both the good and the bad. The bad we try to escape, but the good can also trap us. Fixating on the good of our past, whether in our life time or in the time of our ancestors, makes us defensive of our past so it can be hard to look at it honestly. We are shaped by where we come from. We are shaped by our histories, but we are not redeemed by our histories.

Our reading from Hebrews starts at the end of chapter 11, this great litany of the heroes of the Old Testament. It is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It begins with a definition of faith: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. What is faith? Hebrews defines it for us and gives us illustrations to help us understand. Faith is not culture. Faith is not what we have done or who are parents are. Faith is the assurance of what we hope for. More than that, the substance of what we hope for. The foundation. In Greek, ὑπόστασις. In the trinitarian debates at the council of Nicaea in 325, this is one of the key words. Three persons, one hypostasis.

 The figures in Hebrews 11, by faith, lead towards the coming of Jesus and the redemption of the world and they're given as a cloud of witnesses for us throughout our life and our story and the lives and stories of those who came before us. There was a cloud of witnesses offering Jesus to us throughout our life. This is another aspect of the gift of Jesus for our past. It is the gift of the people in our lives that showed us mercy, that showed us kindness, that showed us how to live, how to give, how to love, how to serve.

Take a moment and think about someone in your life who taught you or showed you what it means to serve others.

Now, I want us to think of a moment or someone in your life who taught what does it mean to show forgiveness or to forgive?

The gift of Jesus is found in mercy for the sins of the past. The gift of Jesus is found in the people who were there in our past who showed us the way of Jesus, who walked like Jesus, who offered mercy and grace and service, encouragement, who fought hypocrisy and revealed God's love, but this gets us to the gift of the present, which is articulated most clearly in the sermon on the mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke.

 To say that it's articulated clearly doesn't mean that it's easy to follow or implement in our lives. The teaching of Jesus can be challenging to follow. Sometimes we are tempted to name anything that's difficult to do as idealistic. This is not quite a proper use of the term. Ideals are not perfect ways to do things. Ideals are guiding ideas that shape how we see the world.

Something that is difficult to practice is impractical. These terms matter because it's easy to dismiss the idealistic. It's difficult to dismiss the impractical, because then we have to get to the point or root of why it isn't practical.

When we are faced by the impractical call of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and Plain, there is grace which God infuses in us to help us. For example, on our own, we can’t forgive our enemies. Only grace offers us that opportunity and freedom.

So we have grace in Jesus about our future with God, about our past, before and after knowing God, and we have grace in Jesus for our present. As we respond to all these graces in life, in the kingdom, we need to also remember that we are a part of the cloud of witnesses for others. The reality that we have been shaped by others puts upon us the charge that we are also here to shape others, to show our neighbors and children and friends and community, what it means to serve and give and love.

 The words of the sermon on the mount and sermon on the plain are known as impractical because it is designed for the kingdom of heaven. This is what the kingdom of heaven looks like. This is what our future with God looks like. It's a way of living into that kingdom as a part of this cloud of witnesses that Luke includes this passage about worry, about anxiety.

>Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.

Jesus tells us not to worry and then names three of the greatest worries any of us have, worries that all of us have. No matter what kind of life you have had up to this point, in some season you have had worries about life, about how long you’re going to live, about how you’re going to die, things of that nature. The same goes to worry about what we eat. One of the most consistent decisions any of us have to make in our life is what are we going to eat.

When you turn 40, you’ve lived around 14610 days, which means that when you turn 80, you’ve lived around 29,220 days. So, if you average three meals a day, a forty-year-old has eaten 43,830 meals, an 80-year-old 87,660 meals. That is a lot of decisions and a lot of interaction with food. Now you didn’t always get to pick what you ate, but that is a lot of decisions and exposure to food in a life. And we are not even talking about snacks, or diet culture, or the different ways we relate to food.

Finally, Jesus tells us not to worry about what are we going to wear. This is a different challenge for women than it is for men because of how society categorizes men and women, and thus shapes us to categorize ourselves. Nevertheless, culture shapes us but it does not define us.

One way to read this passage is to see it as idealistic, another way is to see it as impractical. It is impractical today to not worry about our life, to not worry about what you eat, to not worry about your clothing. There is so much anxiety in these three areas because there are so many ways to mess up. There are so many mistakes that we could make.

What if we're making a mistake with our life? What if we're making a mistake with our health? What if we don't eat the right thing things? What if we don't wear the right things? What if someone somewhere judges us in a way we don't like?

Jesus goes on

> For life is more than food and the body more than clothing.

Yes. Yes it is. I think all of us can agree that life is more than the food we eat. It's more than the clothes we wear. So why do we let these choices and patterns of life being dictated to us by the culture around us take up space in our brain.

Jesus calls us to consider the ravens. Jesus calls us to consider the lilies of the field. Jesus calls us to a life that's not designed around what we consume. A life where what we consume does not define who we are.

If we take all these gifts of Jesus seriously, this is a radical claim on each of our lives. God has a radical claim on each of our lives: what we consume does not define who we are. We are loved so much to be brought into the gates of heaven, not by what we have done, but because of who Jesus is. We have been loved so much that our past mistakes, our consumptions, our errors, do not define us and direct where our future lies. Neither does where we work, how big our retirement is, whether we're able to retire at all, none of this defines who we are.

Seek Christ's kingdom. Seek God's kingdom and what you need will be given, a transformation of desire. This is one of the most radical calls of scripture that is often dismissed because it doesn't fit into a neat category. We can't commodify it because what we consume, what we buy and sell is how we shape our identities today.

The gift of Jesus is that our future has already been secured, not through the labor of our hands or the labor of our ancestors, but through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have been called to be a part of this cloud of witnesses expressed in Hebrews 12.

So when you see this window, and you come in to this holy place, remember the gift of the future that the cross promises us, the gift of the past that our sins have been forgiven, but also the gift of the present that we have been called to be a part of this cloud of witnesses to live a Christ-like life here and now. It may be impractical, but it is not idealistic. It is possible thanks be to God. Thanks to the grace of God in this life and when we fall short again, God is there to seek us out to love us to forgive us to offer us a chance again and again.

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

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: The Gift of the Trinity

themes: trinity creation creatio-ex-nihilo kingdom-of-god god-is-love new-beginnings

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 1:1-5; Luke 13:18-21; Isaiah 58:10-11

> Creation from nothing reveals God as Trinity whose love not only made all things but continually sustains them and grows like a mustard seed in our lives, making each day a new beginning.

**Illustrations:** imagining-nothing-before-creation, hebrew-waters-above, bertrand-russell-atheist-refutation, aquinas-five-ways, hubble-lemaitre-expanding-universe, infinite-chocolate-fountain, ordinary-things-prove-a-source, divine-watchmaker, mustard-seed-parable, yeast-in-flour-parable

---

# August 31, 2025
## The Gift of the Trinity
## Genesis 1:1-5
## 	Luke 13:18-21

“if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”
Isaiah 58:10-11 ESV

 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Genesis 1:1-5

He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
And again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” - Luke 13:18-21

![](attachments/Trinity.a2fc55f3bcc645668ff8da310d795e56.jpg)

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.

### Series intro.
We are continuing our series on the Stained Glass Windows of Covenant. Today are theme is the Gift of the Trinity, but I want to take it in a different direction. Instead of talking about the Trinity as such, which I did back on Trinity Sunday, I want us to think about Creation.

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, at the sky and the earth below, 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 from a wealthy English family and friends with important people. He was also a strident atheist and frustrated by the 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. He said that 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 Hubble’s realization that if space is expanding, it can't have been 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 heavenly chocolate fountain. There's always more, you dip your strawberries and there's always more chocolate. So 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, 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, so 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.

Creation is not simply the past or history but life here and now. We see the Triune nature of God in this.

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.

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.

Friends. 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.

One way that we understand the kingdom of God is being able to notice the createdness of our world around us that started from nothing. Jesus tells this parable:

>He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.

The love of God expanded from something insignificant, a carpenter’s child in the Holy Land, into the redemption of the world.

In our own lives, the trinitarian love that created us always starts small in us. A spark. A glance. A mustard seed. And through the power of God can expand beyond our imagination of what is people. We don’t have to be the person we always thought we were, because God is triune. We don’t have to hide who we are, because God is triune. We can only see the power of the mustard seed after it has grown. Before, it is only by faith. Similar to mercy.

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.

When we step into this Holy Place, when we see the symbol for the triune nature of God, may we remember how all of this was created out of love. Let us give thanks.

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


title: The Harvest

themes: evangelism rejection prevenient-grace bearing-fruit sending-the-seventy guilt-and-shame gods-unconditional-love

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 10:1-11; 2 Kings 5:8-14

> Because God has already prepared the harvest through prevenient grace, Christians are freed to do the work of evangelism without fear, since rejection is ultimately borne by God and never separates us from God's love.

**Illustrations:** basketball-with-kids, astros-dodgers-blowout, 30-rock-jon-hamm-doctor, burgundy-harvest-laborers

---

# July 6, 2025
## The Harvest
### 2 Kings 5:8-14
### Luke 10:1-11

But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the skin disease! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. - 2 Kings 5:8-14

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ - Luke 10:1-11

I love playing basketball. I’ve never been particularly good, but it is a sport I enjoy. I love that I can just pick up a ball, shoot for five minutes, then put it down and do something else. I play with my kids, Dominic and Ephraim, as much as possible. Usually, we play Horse or Knockout or other games like that, where my height advantage wouldn’t be such an asset. Sometimes, though, we play one on one. And if my kids aren’t careful, BAM, a slap their shot away.

It feels pretty good, to be honest. Blocking a shot, even from a nine year old, feels good. However, getting blocked does not. Getting rejected does not.

Being rejected is not a fun thing, it is usually filled with private shame, but God has a lot to say about rejection. Today, I want to hone in on these three important points about rejection in the Bible.

1. We will be rejected in this life.
2. Rejection does not define us
3. We are never rejected by God.

 You can feel rejected by a prospective partner, rejected by a friend, rejected by school, rejected by work, rejected by neighbors, or even rejected by yourself. The feeling of rejection, though, is radically different from the reality of rejection.

We need to disentangle the feeling of rejection from being rejected. When you are directly rejected in basketball, there is a moment of shaking your head, thinking, gosh, that was lame, and then moving on. Last night, the Astros beat the dodgers 18-1, which was the worst loss in the history of dodgers stadium. Today, they play again. Their manager, Dave Roberts, said they are just flushing that one down the toilet.

The feeling of rejection, though, is never ending, it is mind numbing. Maybe some people never experience it. We all have different experiences of rejection.

There is this episode of the old show, 30 Rock, where Liz Lemon’s new neighbor is this incredibly handsome doctor played by Jon Hamm. And she is enraptured in him and amazed at her luck for finding a single, handsome, doctor in Manhattan. Over time, though, she discovers that he is horribly incompetent and rude and nobody ever corrected him because he is so handsome. He was never rejected in his life so he never realized what he was doing wrong and so could never fix any of his mistakes.

That is not a life worth living. We are shaped by the no’s in our life more than the yes’s. The point of life is not to avoid rejection but to remember that love that casts out fear.

As we think about the scripture for today, I want us to remember these three points.

1. We will be rejected in this life.
2. Rejection does not define us
3. We are never rejected by God.

The Gospel of Luke shows us a powerful moment in the center of the Gospel when Jesus sends 72 out to prepare the way. Often, we read these stories as if Jesus sends disciples out willy nilly, but there is something specific going on.

>After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

Jesus isn’t randomly going places. He is preparing the way. Like John the Baptist prepared the way for his own coming, Jesus is sending folks out to prepare the way for the Son of God.

Another way to talk about preparing the way is evangelism.

Evangelism can be an icky term for many people. It has been done poorly so often that it seems like it can’t be done.

There is shame, confusion, as well as process questions.

Evangelism is a word that means good news. The Good news is that you are loved so much by God that even though this world is broken, you are not. You are loved, and forgiven and offered purpose and endless grace to live a better life, to grow in love, to let go of all the things in your life that keep you from love, both now and for eternity.

But not just you. It would actually be really horrible news if God just loved those of us in this room and nobody else. That would not be a God worth worshipping. It is not just about us.

Getting back to Luke 10, Jesus is matter of fact in sending out the disciples. There is no hesitation. There is a harvest and it is full.

Harvest is different for different plants. A corn harvest and an apple harvest do not look similar. What is similar, though, is that by the time harvest has come around, the work of growing has already taken place. In Wesleyan language, we call this prevenient grace. God has already been with people before they were aware of God’s presence.

Some of you may have a lot more agricultural experience than me. My knowledge mostly comes in the most pretentious way possible: from the burgundy region of France, where the landowners hire traveling groups to pick the harvest. The ones who own land and raise the grapes don’t pick the grapes. They hire laborers to go through their ancient vines and bring forth the harvest before they turn it into 50$ bottles of wine.

Jesus sends folks out to be laborers in pairs, why? Why pairs?

There is a practical reason as well as a metaphorical one. The practical one is that two people are safer. The metaphorical one is that being with another person reminds you that it is not all about you anyway.

Jesus goes on and tells them:

Whoever rejects you, rejects me?

Whoa. That is a big statement that we need to wrap our heads around. When we are rejected doing the work of God, we are not really being rejected. God is being rejected. And do you know who handles rejection well? God.

But what Jesus offers here in Luke 10 is freedom from taking rejection about God personally. Just like the laborer can’t make the grapes grow, God never asks us to change anyone’s heart, simply to offer the grace that was given to us. And if the result is not what we hoped, we are not to look to ourselves but back to God. Still, it is one of those things that we cannot accept at face value. Even if we intellectually acknowledge that it is true, it feels like people are rejecting us.

So we must build up a habit of sharing good news. Of finding what we can share. If it is hard to think about who we could invite to church, who can you talk to about important things? Who are the people in your life that you can be real with. That is Good News. God is the God of truth so where truth is spoken, God is present. Taking the time to offer yourself to another in a way that you get nothing out of it.

We are going to take a few moments of guided reflection.

(1) who is someone in your life who could use grace

(2) why do you think that is?

(3) How can you share life with them in order to hear their stories and life

This is evangelism. This is the heart of evangelism. Does this seem like something to get rejected. Ask, listen, hear, share. Offer time and grace because that is what God offers to us. You may still be rejected, but again God carries that burden for us.

You are loved by the God who is love. This is not just for you alone, though. The harvest is plentiful. What Jesus means by that and what I mean by that is that there are a lot of hurting, tired, lonely, scared people outside these walls. I’m not talking about the lovely folks moving to the community looking for a Methodist Church, I am talking about neighbors and friends in need of the blood of Jesus Christ. In need of hope and purpose, grace and kindness.

The harvest is plentiful, but today, many people have been hurt by the church and cold-call inviting someone to worship may not be the best way to show them Jesus. It may first mean, inviting them to dinner. It may mean opening up before they do.

1. We will be rejected in this life.
2. Rejection does not define us
3. We are never rejected by God.

Especially in sharing God’s love through word and deed. You are loved. Don’t be afraid of rejection. You are loved. Offer that love.

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


title: The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil

series: Christmas Season

themes: problem-of-evil original-sin victory-over-death grace-not-merit resurrection-hope kenosis

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 2:13-23; Isaiah 63:7-9; Romans 3:10-12; Psalm 14:1-3; Philippians 2:5-8
**Series:** Christmas Season

> Because all humanity is bound under original sin, no one deserves death and no one stands outside the need for grace; the slaughter of the Holy Innocents is an unjustified consequence of the world's brokenness, yet those deaths are not lost to God, whose Easter hope—not optimism—promises to raise the dead and make all things new.

**Illustrations:** brothers-karamazov-ivan-alyosha, william-temple-original-sin-empirical, dresden-tokyo-firebombings, augustine-curvatus-curved-inward, passover-death-of-egyptian-firstborn, future-hitlers-thought-experiment, hart-doors-of-the-sea

---

# December 28, 2025
## Isaiah 63:7-9
## Matthew 2:13-23

I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord,
  the praiseworthy acts of the Lord,
because of all that the Lord has done for us
   and the great favor to the house of Israel
that he has shown them according to his mercy,
   according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
For he said, “Surely they are my people,
   children who will not act deceitfully,”
and he became their savior
    in all their distress.
It was no messenger or angel
    but his presence that saved them;
in his love and pity it was he who redeemed them;
   he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
- Isaiah 63:7-9

>Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
   wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
   she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.”
- Matthew 2:13-23

Since I was 21 years old, if anyone asked me what my favorite book was, my answer would be the same: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I've read it multiple times and discovered something unique in it each time. I think about it still today, and that is why it's my favorite. It stays with me.

One of the most poignant moments in the book is near the middle of the novel. The main character, Alexei, is talking to his older brother, Ivan. Alexei is a novice monk by trade. He is talking to his brother about faith. In this section of the novel, his brother, Ivan, tells Alexei why he doesn't believe in God.

Ivan talks about some of the practical matters for why he doesn't believe in God. It has to do with suffering, especially the suffering of innocent children. How could a good God allow innocent children to suffer. I can't believe in a god that lets that take place I can't call a god good.  that lets that take place. Later philosophers and theologians would call this problem of evil. Which is a very light way to talk about a heavy topic.

The problem is: how do we think about evil in this world? Can we think about evil in this world and still hold on to ideas about the divine?

Our reading for today is about what Catholics would call the holy innocents. When Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus fled Egypt, the children are killed throughout Israel. They didn't deserve to die.

This event is a recapitulation of what happened during the Exodus. As the Hebrew people fled slavery in Egypt, the spirit of God passed over the houses of the Hebrew people, but did not pass over the houses of the Egyptians. Their sons died, including Pharaoh's son. How is that worthwhile? How is that justified? Why would a good God allow that to take place?

For Jews and for Christians, the events of Passover are often taken at a distance, even though the stories are told and retold and retold. The innocent death of the children of Egypt is not the part in which people focus.

What the death of the Holy Innocents points out, though, is that we still have this lingering notion that some people deserve to die. When we imagine that children are innocent, we also claim that some people are not. Are there people who deserve to live? Are there are people who deserve to die?

It's one thing to kill 1000s of nameless babies. Its another thing if we thought, “oh, it's 1000s of future Hitlers.”

Does that make the event less horrendous?

This passage should jar us out of the complacency that anyone deserves death. But this is the state of the world. The way Christians understand this reality is through this doctrine called Original Sin. William Temple once said that Original Sin is the only empirical Christian doctrine. He said this in the midst of World War II, looking at the actions of the Nazis and the Japanese, but also at the British and Americans; the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, for example. Original sin is not a claim that each one of us constantly lies or sins in another way, but we are born dispositionally turned away from God. We are curvatos, curved inward, in language of Augustine. Grace through baptism and following the path of Jesus Christ straightens us out so that we can see the world as it is and see God.

Original Sin has gotten a bad rap over the years. But this bad rap has more to do with the word sin and how people understand the sin than with the doctrine itself. This is what Paul is getting to in Romans 3 when he quotes Psalm 14

>None is righteous, no, not one;
  no one understands;
  no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
   no one does good,
   not even one.”

That is original sin. No one is above the soul-distorting power of the brokenness of this world. It can seem harsh if our own self-understanding is that we are the good guys and gals. In that world, Original Sin is a major downer. I find a lot of hope here in that it helps us to understand that there's not a class of deserving people and undeserving people. Nor is there a class of people in need of grace and people not in need of grace. There is not a class of people who need redemption and people who don't need redemption.

It flattens all of humanity into people who need God to intervene on our behalf. There is no one outside of the need for God. There is no one outside the need for mercy. Original sin humbly reminds us of our need because the idol of self-sufficiency is toxic to our souls. The idea that history will save us is toxic. The mechanisms of this world will not lead us closer to God. We can’t save ourselves. And when we try, there are vast consequences.

The reading from today, the tragic loss of life as the holy family feels is one such consequence. Herod tries to clean the slate. Herod tries to maintain power and authority and people suffer. Lives are lost. Innocent lives are lost.

There deaths are not justified but they are not lost to God. God sees them and receives them. That is our hope at Christmas. The brokenness of the world spits out the young and the old. As Jesus says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. If we look for justice in this world, we will be disappointed. Our justice comes from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth. As Paul says in Philippians:
>Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

In the Brothers Karamazov, Alexei’s response to his brother Ivan is not another argument. Instead, he embraces his brother. The full response to the consequences of brokenness will not be fully realized until Christ is fully revealed to us. We can only believe this by faith.

>At such times that we strain to understand God’s presence among the tragedies of this world], to see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labor of vision that only a faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both a promise of the Kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty.
>Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is love], and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy. Such faith might never seem credible to someone like Ivan Karamazov, or still the disquiet of his conscience, or give him peace in place of rebellion, but neither is it a faith that his arguments can defeat: for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead. Now we are able to rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that . sits upon the throne will say, "Behold, I make all things new:'[^1]

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

[^1]: David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea, 103-104.


title: The Mercy of Fire

series: Advent 2025

themes: repentance purification holiness divine-mercy advent-expectation spiritual-formation sanctification

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 3:1-12; Romans 15:4-7; Malachi 3:2; Jeremiah 18:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:7
**Series:** Advent 2025

> God's refining fire of repentance, which strips, chisels, and remakes us into who we were created to be, is not destruction but divine mercy to be welcomed in the season of Advent.

**Illustrations:** michelangelo-marble-sculpture, tmnt-michelangelo, furniture-restoration-stripping, forest-fire-ecology, potter-and-clay

---

# December 7, 2025
## The Mercy of Fire
## The Second Sunday of Advent
## Romans 15:4-7  Matthew 3:1-12

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. - Romans 15:4-7

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’ ”
Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Matthew 3:1-12

When I was an undergrad at UT, one of my favorite courses was an art history course. It was a requirement for me as a Liberal Arts major. It could be any art class in the college. I was taking music lessons, but that didn't count. I’ve always had a fascination with history. If you've ever had a conversation with me or heard me preach, you've probably intuited that. And so I took this class on an art history and it was wonderful. I learned a lot.

It started with the early Renaissance. And so one of the figures we studied was Michelangelo. To many people my age, our first encounter with Michelangelo was as a turtle with nunchucks and an orange mask. I had heard of the Renaissance artist before taking a class in college, but I must confess that it was only during that class that my knowledge of Michelangelo the artist surpassed my knowledge of Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Michelangelo is famous for his paintings, for his frescoes like the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel, but especially for his sculpture. He spoke about sculpture in a unique way. Michelangelo said:

>The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

If that marble were alive, it could have been painful to chip and chip and chip until you got to the sculpture. And yet, even if it were, we would find something beautiful. Another way to think about a similar idea is with regards to restoring furniture.

To really properly restore an old desk, you need to take it apart if the joints are bad and reglue it. Then you need to strip it. Stripping wood sounds like a simple process. It is not like stripping a bed before you wash the sheets. Instead, you either paint on or sponge on Sodium Hydroxide or Methylene Chloride or another compound that sounds just as bad as those two. The toxic stripping solution melts through the old paint or stain. The solutions are so toxic that they are more difficult to come by today. Then you need to put mineral spirits or soap and water on the wood to make sure any residual from the stripper is gone and sanding won’t kill you (or harm you. This is one of the reasons why ventilation is so important for woodworking).

As we come back to the Gospel text for today, I want us to think about these two concepts: Michelangelo sculpting from the block of marble, but also, the carpenter restoring, refinishing the desk by taking it apart, stripping it, and putting it back together again. I want us to think about these two concepts as we think about the mercy of fire.

The Gospel reading comes from early in the gospel of Matthew. It describes the preaching of John the Baptist before Jesus is baptized. John preaches:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’ ”

Repentance is a radical process. Repentance consists of chipping away the superfluous parts of our life to reveal the core of who God created us to be. Repentance also means a stripping off of the habits of self-destruction that keep us from loving God and loving our neighbor.

Malachi describes the coming of Jesus as a refiner’s fire. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.

In one perspective, fire is destructive, in another it is constructive. A fear of fire can wreck ecologies. For many years, foresters prevented all fires from taking place; this led to overgrowth and unhealthy ecologies. When a big fire came, just brought loads of destruction over acres and acres and acres. But fire can also renew areas and bring about life.

We're in the Season of Advent. This time of preparation for the coming of Jesus. What if the ways I think we should understand the Christian life and the life that God is calling us to follow is consistently clarifying and purifying. God seek to purify us. This is what the call to holiness is.

Holiness means being set apart. God consistently calls us to be purified. God is consistently purifying us with a winnowing fire, and that means there's gonna be things in our life that need to be burned off, some things that need to be stripped. Sometimes they need to be taken apart and put back together again, and that can be uncomfortable and challenging. There are desires in our life that need to be stripped and taken apart because they're not for our good. They are destructive.

It's also the case that we are unfinished marble, and that our creator needs to chip a few more things off for us to be who we were created to be. There's a powerful image in the prophet Jeremiah, of the potter's house. Paul also uses metaphor for us as vessel’s of clay in 2 Corinthians.

When a potter is working, before they’ve blasted their creation in the kiln, sometimes they are turning the wheel and the clay is not working in the way that they expected it would. So the potter has to mash it all back down and start again. They have to redo it. It can be frustrating to do this if you are the potter. I imagine it is much more painful if you are the clay. Getting mashed back down in order to be rebuilt does not feel comfortable. It does not provide immediate gratification.

Being reformed and remade is not the same as vegging out on the couch. There are seasons of our life when we need to be reformed and remade and that is a mercy of God.

God offers us this opportunity to be reformed and remade, to be stripped and rebuilt. To be carved again and again, it is a mercy.

In this Season of Advent, let us hold onto this concept of mercy, of divine mercy for us. May you not take pride at who you used to be. May you not build up ideals and structures of who you used to be that need to be stripped or remade. May you hold close to God and let the chafe burn up. You don't need it. There are ideas of your own identity, that you don't need, ideas of my own identity that I don't need and can be burned up. We can let them go, and that is a mercy.

Out of mercy, God frees us from those commitments to destruction, destruction of our world, destruction of ourselves. Instead of staying away, and letting us reap the consequences of our self-destruction, God chose to send his son, Jesus Christ. To be born of a woman married, to be raised, offered life, given life. As we prepare for the coming of our Lord, may we willingly receive the mercy of fire.

What is something in your life that can be burned off so that you can more greatly welcome God. What do you need to be stripped of?

Or we could think about it in another direction. Maybe God has already stripped you. Maybe you have already gone through the season of getting mashed up, are you ready to be built up again?

May you let God burn what needs to be burned and mashed what needs to be mashed so that can walk in more freedom as you are sent from this place.

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


title: The Parables

themes: parables god-seeks-the-lost transformation divine-mercy

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 15:1-10; Isaiah 5:1-5

> Jesus tells parables not to transfer knowledge but to transform us, and Luke 15's lost sheep and lost coin reveal a God who relentlessly and inefficiently seeks the lost and says yes to every sinner.

**Illustrations:** aladdin-lamp, stained-glass-parables-window, banking-model-of-education, ai-bill-gates-ap-bio, riding-a-bike, inefficient-shepherd

---

# August 17, 2025
## The Parables
## Isaiah 5:1-5	Luke 15:1-10

I will sing for my beloved
    my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
    on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones
    and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it
    and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
    but it yielded rotten grapes.
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
    and people of Judah,
judge between me
    and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
    that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
    why did it yield rotten grapes?
And now I will tell you
    what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
    and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
    and it shall be trampled down.

- Isaiah 5:1-5

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
- Luke 15:1-10
![](attachments/Lamp.0046fe8c61164dff9116553630c94bec.jpg)
One of the movies I loved when I was a child was Disney's Aladdin.
I can show you the world
Shining, Shimmering, Splended.
Tell me princess now when did you last
Let your heart decide.

I loved the music and the style and the world it built. The idea of the genie and the lamp. Robin Williams as this genie and the journey the hero makes to the Cave of Wonders.
I don't know this for sure, but I feel like the stained glass artist who made our beautiful stained glass windows might have recently watched that movie when he designed this one for the Parables of Jesus.

See, there's no label on the window. You wouldn't know it's for the parables of Jesus unless I tell you. This window signifies the parables of Jesus. I haven’t been clear on this before, but this set of windows signifies the gifts of Jesus, this side signifies Our Committment. So we will go through the gifts of Jesus first before we get to the committments.

And one of the great gifts of Jesus is the parables. There are many times, though, when Parables do not feel like a gift. They can often feel like a test, though some of them are gimmes, like the image shown here.

The image is from one of the shortest parables, but it is a very vivid image.
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

It's the lamp. If you light a lamp, put it on a lamp stand. Don’t cover it with a bushel basket.

We're continuing our series on the stained glassed windows in Covenant. And today we're on window number three on the parables.
I think this is fitting for Backpack Blessing in a direct way. The parables are a method that Jesus uses to teach. The parables are about education. They really are, and they are about education not simply as knowledge transfer. This view of education is called the banking model. The banking model of education is that there is a set of facts or knowledge that schools have, teachers have, somebody has. And the point of school is, over the 12 or 13 years of your public education, to have enough  of the bank of knowledge deposited in your personal account so that when you exit school, when you graduate from high school, you have a large account of knowledge.

I mean, this knowledge transfer view of education is the easiest thing to cheat if it's just regurgitating what you've recently heard. This is what AI was literally built for.

When OpenAI first went to Microsoft looking for investments in 2018, Bill Gates was skeptical. He said that he would believe in the product and trust it if the AI could get a five on an AP bio examination, Microsoft would invest in this technology. Bill Gates was only a member of the board at this point, though an influential member. That version passed AP Bio with a 3 and OpenAI got Bill Gates’s vote.

The major AI platforms were designed to pass tests in order to show intelligence. They were designed to write essays for school in order to show intelligence. One of the trickiest aspects for Artificial Intelligence researchers was that they didn’t have a good definition of human intelligence to begin with, and so the best they could do was look at school tests and try to pass those. Thus, Large Language Model AI was created to be the greatest cheating tool known to humanity.

AI is not the end of education. In some ways, it will hopefully be the end of banking models of education. The best teachers we all had were not the ones that conveyed the most information. They impacted our lives.

Jesus doesn't believe in education as knowledge transfer. We should call the people who follow Jesus around the most students, not disciples. Disciple comes from the word for student in Latin. They're his students and they're following along and they call him Rabbi or teacher. He teaches them, but he doesn't teach them directly. The goal is not knowledge transfer, just like the goal of being a Christian is not to memorize the Bible.
Jesus seeks transformation. Jesus seeks changed lives.

And this is where the parables come in. The parables are a pedagogical technique for transformation, for us to reflect on the meaning, find the meaning, seek the meaning, have the meaning become part of us.

If Jesus spoke all with his messages directly, we would just, poof, put them in a knowledge transfer and they would fade away in our mind. They would fade away and we would think, okay, we understand, got it. And then move on with our life. Think about things that you have mastered in your life. Maybe riding a bike. How much do you think about riding a bike? Even if you haven’t done it in a few years, it still comes right back. Think about brushing your teeth or one of the basic aspects of your job. Sure, there may be ways to improve things, but you’ve got the basic concepts down so much that you don’t have to think about them. You understand.

For Jesus, understanding is not the point, conversion is the point. Transformation is the point.  New life is the point. Mercy is the point.
And the words of Jesus, the parables of Jesus work together with the Holy Spirit in our lives to move us towards transformation.

Jesus didn’t invent the parable, as we see in Isaiah 5.

Parables come in very different shapes. Luke chapter 15 has my three favorite parables. The Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Missing Coin and the Prodigal Son, all back to back, all bangers.

We can understand the power of the parables by a simple counterfactual of only saying the explanation at the end. Here is the end of the Lost Sheep Parable.

 there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance

What a great notion, Jesus. More joy in heaven sounds good. Sinners repenting sound good. Nothing memorable, though. If you are in the midst of a pit. If you have made a terrible mistake and hurt someone in your life and you feel like no one could ever forgive you, more joy in heaven won’t give you any comfort. You probably won’t even remember it.

>So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’

Okay, something different is going on here. Not only does Jesus welcome sinners, Jesus seeks sinners and celebrates them. The parable opens our eyes to a new way to see God and a new way to see ourselves. Jesus not only welcomes sinners, Jesus is incredibly inefficient in the process. Jesus isn’t trying to be efficient. Jesus isn’t trying to follow the way of the world. It would be an incredibly bad business practice to leave the 99 unguarded so that he can rescue one sheep.

You could imagine a situation where the thief uses the lost sheep as a distraction in order to get the 99, but Jesus isn’t concerned about that or about all the things that could go wrong. He is concerned about that sheep. So when you are trapped and stuck and lost, Jesus will not give up on you. Jesus will not see you as a distraction. Jesus will not see you as a tax write-off.

We can do the same for the parable of the lost coin.

 there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Nice sentiment. No staying power.

> Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’

Again, the parable holds power beyond the words themselves. The parable illustrates for us how far Jesus will go find us when we are lost.

No matter the teaching, no matter the parable, humans still have an amazing ability to keep our distance from God. We have an ability to rationalize away God’s love and mercy. We have a way to turn it into book knowledge and not transformation.

It is another way of being lost; being sure of ourselves. God does not forget us even then. Let yourself be found by God. Let yourself be loved. Let yourself be forgiven. You don’t need all the answers. You don’t need to pass a test. God has said Yes to you. Say yes to God. That is the point of transformation for Luke 15. At no point or distance will God give up on us. At no point or distance will God give up on you.

The kingdom of heaven is not like a test you have to pass. The kingdom of heaven cannot be purchased.

The kingdom of heaven is like a shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one.

>And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’

When you come into this holy place and see this window, don’t think about Aladdin, think about how God has said yes to you. You are loved and forgiven. You have a light, let it shine. When you’re lost, God will find you and bring you home.

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


title: The Portico of Solomon

series: Easter

themes: knowing-god faith-and-belief good-shepherd salvation-history assurance-of-salvation love-of-neighbor

text:
**Scripture:** John 10:22-30; Acts 9:36-43; John 9:25; 1 Kings 6; Exodus 26; 1 Maccabees 4; 2 Maccabees 1
**Series:** Easter

> The crowd at Solomon's Portico wanted to know whether Jesus was the Messiah without having to believe, but Christ the gate and shepherd offers life only through the act of faith, so we must keep seeking and loving rather than use questions to avoid belief.

**Illustrations:** pre-internet-world, 28k-modem-download, mainframes-switchboard, college-quad, house-closing, augustine-love-me, pascal-console-yourself

---

# May 11, 2025
## Mother’s Day
## The Portico of Solomon
### Acts 9:36-43
### John 10:22-30

Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them, and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile, he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.  - Acts 9:36-43

At that time the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, in regard to what he has given me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” - John 10:22-30

It is difficult to convey things of the past to people in the present. It is difficult to convey corded telephones to our kids. They don't get it. Or what the world was like before the Internet. You had a question about what other movies this actor was in, and then you just let it go away, because it was impossible to answer. We just got new internet at the house, I was trying to explain what a 28.8 modem was like and how long it took to download a 3mb song.

For me, it's like how it was difficult for the generation before me to convey what mainframe computers were or switchboard operators. It's challenging to describe it. It is difficult to describe what the Temple meant to the Jewish people two thousand years ago.

Jesus walked the earth during the time of the second Temple. The first Temple was built during the time of Solomon in 1 Kings 6. Solomon builds it, because God tells David that he can't. David is not going to be able to build the temple because of his great sin with Bathsheba.

Solomon builds the temple on the Temple Mount. It is partially on the location of Mount Moriah, where Abraham took Isaac to make a sacrifice.

At the time of its original construction, the temple is not the large location it will later be during the Second Temple period. It did not fill what is now the Temple Mount. It is the place to house the Ten Commandments, the tablets from Mount Sinai, to keep the holy of holies; to have a permanent tabernacle on earth. The tabernacle was the tent of worship the traveled with the Hebrew people throughout the wilderness.

We have a description of the tabernacle, the traveling tent of worship at the end of the Book of Exodus in Chapter 26. It starts with: “Make the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, with cherubim woven into them by a skilled worker.”

The point of the temple was to be a permanent tabernacle where Torah could be followed fully.

It was like this until generations later the exile to Assyria and the exile to Persia, when the Temple went into disrepair because no one could care for it. The temple was moderately rebuilt by Zerubbabel and then built and expanded by Herod Antipas, the first Herod. This is the Second Temple that Jesus knew and that was then destroyed by the romans during the Manassah uprising of 66 AD.

The temple was an important place, a holy place, a special place. But some people took it for granted that it would always be there. They spent time at the temple in the afternoons like college kids spend time on the quad or the south mall.

One of the best places to spend time was the Porch of Solomon. The Portico of Solomon or Solomon's Porch was on the east side of the Temple Mount.
It was basically a patio that would block the setting western sun with the main structure of the temple so the heat of the day would not invade it. This was a place where people gathered to pray and to discuss the faith.. This was a place where Jesus gathered his disciples and visited with folks when he came to Jerusalem.

Jesus is in Jerusalem for the festival of the dedication which we know today as Hanukkah, which means dedication in Hebrew.
After the occupation of Babylon, when the temple was rebuilt years later, Alexander the Great swept through and conquered the Holy Land. When he died as a young man, his great kingdom was split among his generals. The man who took over the Holy Land was named Antiochus.

And during the reign of Antiochus there was a rebellion led by Judas Maccabius. You can find accounts of these events in the apocryphal books of the Maccabees, found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles.

Now there are two great acts commemorated with the feast of the dedication. The first is the Cleansing out of the temple of Antiochus and his cronies. So they're no longer there and no longer. Getting the Temple ready for worship again. This is worthy of a feast day. From 1 Maccabees 4

>Then Judas detailed men to fight against those in the citadel until he had cleansed the sanctuary. 42 He chose blameless priests devoted to the law, 43 and they cleansed the sanctuary and removed the defiled stones to an unclean place.

The second act is found at the beginning of 2 Maccabees but refers to an earlier incident with Nehemiah about how oil from the original temple had been hidden by the priests and discovered when Nehemiah rebuilt it. The 8 days comes from a connection with the festival of booths or Sukkot, which lasts 8 days. 2 Maccabees 1 puts it this way.

>Since on the twenty-fifth day of Chislev we shall celebrate the purification of the temple, we thought it necessary to notify you, in order that you also may celebrate the festival of booths and the festival of the fire given when Nehemiah, who built the temple and the altar, offered sacrifices.

So Jesus is in Jerusalem to celebrate Hanukkah. It is not a high holy day. It is not one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar. It's kind of grown in importance, especially in the United States, because of its proximity with Christmas, so that Jews could have a comparable holiday to Christians. It doesn't have the importance of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, or Rosh Hashanah, the New year, or Passover, the holiest day.
But Jesus is a good Jew and he is there for the Feast of the Dedication. He is in the portico of Solomon. The Jews who are there ask him, can you just tell us, are you the Messiah? We've been waiting for a while and just want to know if it's you. Can we stop with the suspense?
And Jesus replies, I've already told you guys, But you don't believe. The works I do testify about me. They witness about me.

In John, chapter nine, Jesus heals the blind man. This man is confronted by others in town and asked if the man who healed him was a sinner. The healed man responses: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”[^1] The works testified to Jesus.

Earlier in chapter ten, Jesus calls himself the good shepherd who will lay down his life for his sheep. Here, Jesus says, my sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. The voice of Jesus is another work that testifies to who he is.
Jesus is walking in the portico of Solomon, and there are people there who just want to know. They want to know without having to believe. That's it. They want to know without having to believe. They want it to be finished.
It's like when you buy or sell a house, how you want to just get to the closing and move on with your life? They want to get to the closing: is he the Messiah? Is he not the Messiah? Can you just tell us and then we can adjust our expectations.

For us, we may not be walking in the portico of Solomon, but we are walking in a real concrete place like it: in our work, our homes, shopping and eating and all these things. We live in a concrete world.
And sometimes we, too, can get exasperated by the world and tell Jesus, can you just talk to us plainly? Are you the Messiah? I mean, I have been following you my whole life. I've been following you since my conversion. I just want to know.

To us today, Jesus has words. I have already told you, my works testify to who I am, and my sheep hear my voice.

Now, there's a way, especially with this language of sheep, that we can kind of fall into a exclusivist cul de sac. That is, thinking about what happens if we don't hear his voice. Does that mean we've failed and God doesn't love us?
Are we unlovable? A. Is there an in crowd and an out crowd?
But to understand the language of sheep, we have to go earlier in chapter 10.

Jesus not only says that he is the shepherd. Jesus says that he is the gate. We are sheep through him not despite him. We are included through him and by him.
As Augustine says, “God offers us a short route to the possession of himself. He cries out: Love me and you will have me for you would be unable to love me if you did not possess me already.”

Or as Pascal puts it, “console yourself: you would not seek me if you had not already found me.” God offers us life, but we can’t short circuit ourselves by skipping the act of faith.

God does not offer Godself as another object to be known and understood like other objects of the world. This is what the Jews of the portico are seeking. They are seeking a God of answers not a God of power. Honestly, they want to be done seeking. They are tired of it.

Many of us may think we are tired of seeking. We want to get to where we are going. But the reality is that our world is not where we are going. Our world is not finished. Our world is in need of redemption. It is broken in so many ways and God does not wish us to settle for it. God offers us a way to seek beyond the visible and the broken and to see the love of our creator for us in the redemption promised by Jesus Christ.

No one will snatch us away from God’s love. Nothing will separate us from the love of God. May we be consoled in this, but may we not stop seeking. May we not use questions to avoid believing and loving our neighbor. May we start today. May we not wait around to love our God. May we not wait around to love our neighbor. May we not wait around to love our family. May we not wait around to love ourself. May we let go of the guilt that keeps us from love. May we let go of the sin that blinds us from love. May we hear the words of the shepherd and receive the life that we are offered.

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

[^1]: John 9:25.