title: How We Fill Our Waiting

series: Advent

themes: advent-expectation anxiety jesus-is-lord justice-and-righteousness second-coming

text:
**Scripture:** Jeremiah 33:14-16; Matthew 6:25-33; Hosea 12:6
**Series:** Advent

> Preached on the first Sunday of Advent (the Christian New Year, Hanging of the Greens), this sermon argues that day-to-day worry is bound up with our expectations—of teams, children, spouses, ourselves, and even Jesus. Using personal stories of the Astros' playoff elimination and the Longhorns' loss, the pastor observes that anxiety dissolves once expectation is gone, and is worst when there is nothing we can do. But Jesus' command in Matthew 6 not to worry is not life-coaching; it rests on the assumption that Jesus is Lord—the Word made flesh who came and will come again. Advent waiting is therefore not nervous waiting. Echoing Hosea, the answer is not merely 'don't worry' but to fill our waiting and our worried moments by holding fast to love and justice and returning to God.'

**Illustrations:** astros-playoff-relief, first-astros-game-sons, longhorns-washington-penix, jesus-not-life-coach

---

# December 1
## How We Fill Our Waiting
### Jeremiah 33:14-16
### Matthew 6:25-33

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”  - Jeremiah 33:14-16

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, 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, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. - Matthew 6:25-33

I’ve shared with you all before how I'm a big Astros fan. I grew up as an Astros fan. I've enjoyed our run of success over the last eight years. I do not think that they are cheaters. I can go into a deep discussion about that, but that is not really a pulpit conversation.

Regardless of the legality of their activities between 2017-2019, they went to seven straight conference championships. Which, if you don’t know baseball, is really hard to do. It is much rarer than even making the World Series. The only other team to do it was the Atlanta Braves of the 1990s, and I don’t think that that should count because there was a strike in ‘94 and the Astros were amazing that year and would have not let the Braves get to the conference championship, but again, that’s a separate conversation.

This year, they were going to continue that streak. It wasn’t the best team they have had, but we were excited. We took the boys, Dominic and Ephraim, to their very first Astros game ever, like a week before the end of the season. The Astros got 20 hits. It was an awesome experience. They loved it. We were rooting for them in the playoffs and then, they were just bad. They lost a game, and it was annoying and frustrating I was trying to be hopeful and root for them. They lost another and I was nervous. I was anxious. I didn't know what was going to happen next. Finally, when they were eliminated, surprisingly, I was relieved.

Sure, I wanted them to win, but I couldn't worry about them anymore, I couldn’t stress about it. The rest of the baseball playoffs were relaxing. The anticipation, the expectation was gone. Without any expectation, there can be no worry.

A similar thing happened last year during the college football playoffs to the Longhorns. I'm not trying to curse this. It's a completely different system this year, so it can't happen in the same way, but after the Longhorn's lost to Washington (or blew the game to Washington by deciding not to tackle Michael Penix. It was an interesting choice to not tackle the quarterback, but they did it and had to suffer the consequences). After their loss, in the championship game, I was relaxed. It was like, “oh, this is kind of fun. No skin in the game.”I had no expectations. It was peaceful.

I’m not saying every anxiety or every worry is connected to expectations. I don't want to be so generalizing. Many of us suffer from anxieties that are general. Many take medication and that's great. And I want to support it.

My point is that there is a connection between day to day worries and our expectations. Our expectations of ourselves, our children, the people in our lives, and an insecurity around if those expectations are going to be met.

If you're supporting a sports team and you expect them to win the title, there is a nervous energy until their season is over, but they'll either win or they won’t. Other expectations work in less decisive ways. With the people in our lives, we have long term and short term expectations. Expectations around our children, our friends, our family, ourselves, especially our spouses. As well, for those of you here or watching online, we all have expectations around Jesus.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It is the Christian New Year. We're starting a new season. We are hanging the greens today. We are decorating the church. We are preparing our church for the coming of Jesus and we are starting this season of preparing our hearts for the coming of Jesus. What do we expect of Jesus? What do we expect of ourselves? How can we have those expectations and not build up a counterweight of worry?

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has these words from Chapter 6 about worry that are pretty stark. He points out how worry doesn't help a situation, but I think we need to see Jesus's words not as simple life advice. Jesus is not an influencer. Jesus is not a life coach. Jesus is the word made flesh, incarnated at Christmas, baptized the Jordan River by John. Jesus who ministered, who raised the dead, who healed the sick, who made the blind see, who made the deaf hear and the leprous to return home, who forgave the sinner, who preached the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus is not a life coach. The Bible is not there to give us some helpful tips on success. Jesus calls us to turn our life around: Repent and believe in the gospel! Everywhere in the sermon of the Mount, there is an assumption of the presence of God in your life. Do not worry because Jesus is Lord. Worry hasn't added a minute to your life because Jesus is Lord. Blessed are the poor and spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven because Jesus is Lord.

You may have nervous energy about the Longhorns going through the playoffs or the Cowboys and what's gonna happen in their future, or other non-sport related nervous energies like your job, your kids, your future. As we enter this Season of Advent, may we prepare our hearts by cleaning out our nervous energy. Not because we're so good or so strong or have just amazing willpower, but out of faith that Jesus is Lord, that our expectations of ourselves, of our children, of our neighbors, do not have a final say over us. The God who created everything has come to us in Jesus Christ and will come again. Advent has two meanings. It is both waiting for the infant Jesus in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, as well as waiting for Jesus to come again and judge the quick and the dead as we say in the creed.

Waiting for Jesus is not a nervous waiting. As it says in the prophet Hosea, Return to the Lord, hold fast to love and justice. I'm at my most worried for the Astros when Longhorns when there's nothing I can do about it. I am not on the team It's not my team. I just support them. They're a bunch of millionaires. The college team. It's a bunch of people who are going to be millionaires.

In my own life, though, it is those moments when I don't know what to do that are the hardest that are the most filled with worry and anxiety. Hosea gives us something to do. Jesus gives us something to do. The point is not don't worry, but fill those moments of worry with nothing else, but like Hosea says, hold fast to love and justice. This is how we fill our waiting. This is how we fill or seeking. This is how we fill the God shaped hole in those moments in our heart. Hold fast to love and justice. Return to God. In this season of advent, may it be so.

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


site: sermons

title: Jesus Wept

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: After Pentecost

themes: comfort-in-grief death-and-resurrection lament remembering-the-dead grace communion-of-saints

text:
**Scripture:** John 11:32-44; Isaiah 25:6-9; Matthew 5:4
**Series:** After Pentecost

> An All Saints Day sermon on John 11 and Isaiah 25 arguing that Christians must refuse both the denial of death and the denial of grief, since both are forms of lying. Jesus himself wept over Lazarus even knowing he would rise, validating grief as a physical, faithful response rather than weakness. The church holds practices for honoring the dead that secular life lacks, and Jesus' beatitude 'happy are those who mourn' inverts expectations. Believers can grieve the departed while being comforted by their presence with God, remembering the saints who shaped them and being called to be saints to others.

**Illustrations:** australian-atheist-biologist-blog, funeral-industrial-complex, denver-casket-ministry, becker-denial-of-death, pray-preach-or-die, flannery-oconnor-dark-stories, and-can-it-be-hymn

---

# November 3
## Jesus Wept
### Isaiah 25:6-9
### John 11:32-44

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
     a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
     of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
     the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
     the covering that is spread over all nations;
     he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
      and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
     for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
     “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
     This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
     let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” -  Isaiah 25:6-9

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” - John 11:32-44

When I was in college, this website came out called Blogger. It let anybody sign up and be a blogger, which is a funny word that sounds a lot like the French word for a joke, une blague, but it was that this decentralization of writing.
Most of these blogs would have comment sections, and there would be a lot of like really intense conversations in these comment sections. I didn't always participate in them. And I was never a troll, honestly. But I remember this one moment in a blog by this biologist in Australia.
Which is itself an absurdity of the internet in the early 2000s: how did I get to the blog of a biologist in Australia?

He was a prominent atheist at the time on a lot of atheism message boards, and so I followed him on Google Reader, which was this wonderful service that collected and organized all your blog feeds. It was so wonderful that Google shuttered because they couldn’t make any money from it.

So I was reading this blog of this biologist in Australia and he was talking about a friend who had recently died. And I felt compelled to comment. My comment wasn't a criticism of his beliefs or any of that. It was more of an observation about what was lacking in atheism. In a purely secular worldview, nobody really knew what to do when someone died. They didn't have the habits. They didn't know who to call. They didn't know how to remember them. Now, I'm not saying the church has it all together, or Christians have it all together in this kind of capacity. There's still so much bureaucracy that goes on when you lose someone you love. And if you're the next of kin, if it's your spouse or your parent, there are so many death certificates you have to order.
This doesn’t even get to what kind of service to offer for them. And grief is not a purely religious phenomenon. Everyone grieves.
There's also the funeral industrial complex that goes on today, like five companies own 95% of all funeral homes in the United States. It's cheaper to get a cremation than to rent a casket, even for a viewing in most places. And very few people are as vulnerable as the recently bereaved and they can be taken advantage of.
When I lived in Denver, one of the ministries they had there before I got there was that they built wood caskets for people and gave them away. And I just loved that. I was sad that that ministry had stopped by the time I had arrived. I like offering dignity for people in that kind of space, giving them options that the last time they see their loved one is not decided by money or a transaction.

And we're still in this kind of material level in talking about grief. It is on this level that the church has habits that matter: who to call, what to say, how to organize a reception for someone we know, to come to the memorial, to come to the funeral.
A funeral is always a waste of time in a material sense. It is never productive. You usually have to take time off of work in order to go to a funeral. You don't go to the funeral to be productive: it doesn’t fix your grief. Grief isn’t like a broken down car or a bacterial infection that will be fixed or healed based on certain actions. Nobody goes to a funeral to be productive, we go because our relationships in this world matter more than our productivity,

## All Saints Day
Today is all saints day, a day when we remember those in our congregation who have passed to life eternal this past year. Where we are not afraid to remember. We don't hide.
A few years ago, the writer Ernest Becker, wrote this book called The Denial of Death about the ways people in the contemporary world follow through with that deny death. And I think it's only gotten more so in the last 30 years. The ways that people deny death, ignore it, move past it.

I think it is really important as Christians that we don't deny death. Jesus talks about death a lot.
Those who wish to save their life will lose it. Those who lose their life, for my sake will find it.
Those who die for me will find it.
I had a teacher once who would say that a, a Christian preacher should always be ready to pray, preach or die.
There's a starkness to that, which I appreciate because it points to this question: where does my faith lie?
## Lazarus
And this is the question we find in John 11 when Jesus goes to Mary and Martha's house and hears word that their brother Lazarus has died and they're grieving. They're at a loss.

Jesus is grieving, too. Jesus is at a loss. The connection with his friend has been severed by death. Even though he may know the end of the story. He knows that Lazarus is going to wake up and rise again. He knows that Lazarus will be back. Jesus still grieves.

This is so important because there are many Christian traditions which may not have the denial of death, but they have a denial of grief. As if grief itself is a weakness. As if grief itself points to a lack of faith.
Grief is a physical response. Grief is not an intellectual response to the loss of a loved one. It is the physical reality that we are no longer whole. And depending on your connection to the person who is gone, it affects you physically in deeper ways. We may fully believe that they are present with Jesus and still miss them. And that's okay because Jesus wept.
Jesus didn't laugh at Mary and Martha because of their grief. Jesus wept.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. There is not a denial here. There is an inversion of expectations, as with many parts of the Sermon on the Mount. Grief is something that Jesus equates with blessedness. In Greek, it is even starker. The word, is Makarias, which means happy more than blessed. Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Jesus points to a tension in the sermon on the mount between our life to come with God, and our current life amidst the brokenness of the world. This is the same tension pointed out by Jesus in John 11 when he goes to visit Mary and Martha and weeps over the death of his friend.

To be a Christian is not be forced to feel happy or sad. To be a Christian is not to be forced to feel anything. We have the freedom to be joyful and the freedom to mourn. We have the freedom to weep as God weeps and to sing for joy as the angels sing. We have the freedom not to lie.

The denial of death and the denial of grief both come down to lying. They both lie. They both lie and they push people to lie about where they are and, honestly, who they are.

God gives us the grace to stare death in the face and be unafraid. Now we may not always feel that boldness, but that freedom is there.

## Flannery O’Connor
I’ve always loved the novels and stories of Flannery O’Connor. I think the heart of good news is found in her story, , A Good Man is Hard to Find,  about a serial killer and a family just trying to go on a road trip. Her stories can get dark. They are often referred to as Southern Gothic.

O’Connor was a faithful Catholic all her life. In one of her letters, someone asks her how she can write such dark stories being a Christian. Her answer was basically that it was because she was a christian that she could look at those dark places without fear.

Jesus wept over Lazarus. Then he said, Lazarus, Come Out!

We can weep this day over those whom we have lost. We can also be comforted by their presence with God and our future together.

Isaiah 25, our first reading of the day, is one of my favorite descriptions of the new creation. It is a feast. It is a party that doesn’t get old. It is life together.

On All Saints Day, we remember that our life together here includes the lives of those who have gone before us. They are still with us and we celebrate with them.

Our Choir sang earlier from my favorite hymn. it voices the utter astonishment of grace, that God would save even me.

>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?

I could go on and on about the power of these words, but they matter especially this day. If you have come to faith, another person was a part of that journey. Many of the people that have showed us faith have passed before us. They witnessed to God’s mercy and love and Christ’s amazing love that forgives even me, even you.

I want us to remember those saints today, as well. They may not be members of this church, but God used them to shape our lives, and thus shape this church.

What Amazing love that died for us. What amazing love that brought such people into our lives.

And then the last step is just important. Not only do we have saints in our lives, we are called to be saints in the lives of others. We are called to share and show and give and offer and love and serve in such a way that folks are blessed by Jesus Christ. You aren’t alone in this. The Holy Spirit is with you. What amazing love that can make you holy. No matter what you think may except you from God’s grace, God has seen it and still loves you.

Thanks be to God!

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: Laborers in the Vineyard: Grace, Community, and Mortality

themes: grace-not-merit labor-and-beloved-community mortality-and-death hope-not-optimism the-cross magnificat-reversal

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 20:1-16; 1 Corinthians 15:55; Romans 8:38-39

> Preached the Sunday before Lent on the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). Opening with a Big Bend story of giving an Alaskan fisherman a ride and her plan for wilderness counseling, the sermon argues that shared hard labor builds trust and community. The parable only 'makes sense' through grace, not finite wages: workers are drawn together for a purpose beyond pay, into a beloved community. A second reading, via Bach's cantata on the hymn 'Wer weiss wie nahe mir mein Ende,' treats the parable as an allegory of human life and confronts mortality. Drawing on Terry Eagleton, the sermon contrasts shallow optimism with Christian hope rooted in the risen Christ and his blood, hope that can stare death down ('O death, where is thy sting?').

**Illustrations:** big-bend-alaska-fisherman, construction-mission-trip-dads, bach-cantata-wer-weiss, eagleton-optimism-vs-hope

---

# February 4, 2024

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’ - Matthew 20:1-16

Right after Christmas, my family went out to Big Bend. We were camping by the river. We took the back roads to camp by the river. I’ve been to Big Bend maybe 20 times in my life. Almost every single time we go to the Chisos Mountains, the central part of the park. This area is gorgeous, I love it.
This mountain range in the middle of a desert where there's maple trees and springs and these special Sierra Del Carmen deer

Since we hadn't spent much time by the river, that was the main focus of this trip. And so we went down and camped by the river. It's pretty, pretty low flowing in Big Bend and it was very cold, but it was beautiful. It was fun. We went to the hot springs by the river.
The next day, we drove deep into the park and got to camp right next to the bend in the river, the bend in the Rio Grande, where it changes from going southeast to then start going northeast. We were able to camp right there. Mexico was a hundred feet away. The boys swam and kayaked in the river.
On our way back of there was a bicycle in the road, a woman on the bicycle. We pulled over to let her pass. Instead of passing, though, she waved me down and actually asked “Hey, can I have a ride?”

We looked at each other and said, “Sure, hop on in.” We had the space. And so we put her bike in the back and took her on the dirt road about 10 miles east towards the main road where her car was. She didn't want go all the way.
While chatting, while visiting, and trying to be cordial, and we discovered that she's from Alaska and is a fisherman. We even talked about the terminology. One of us asked, “why don't you call yourself a fisher woman?” She said that it's just easier as a fisherman. The industry is almost 90% men, but there's another few women who own their boats. And said that they were all fine with the term and that they could handle themselves out in the water.
Even more interesting, she then went on to say that she has a master's degree in counseling, and her goal is to set up a wilderness counseling service of like working on a boat.
Because doing something hard together is a way to open up. People who are often emotionally shut off, who won't say three words to you at a party, will tell you their life story if you're putting on a roof together or climbing a mountain together. I haven't really worked on boats, but I assume it's the kind of same thing. When you're doing something difficult with another person, you can see a lot of their character. You can build trust very quickly. It doesn't take long to see whether or not someone is a hard worker or worthy of respect. It doesn't take long to see if someone will do what they say they're going to do. If you meet someone you don’t know out and about or at a friend's house or at a Super Bowl party, it's hard to judge what kind of person they are, or how much time you should put in to get to know them. If you meet someone on a therapist couch, it may be hard to open up.

When she mentioned this idea, it made me think about these moments in my life where I was on construction mission trips and where these rough dads who were most often very introverted, very focused on the work at hand, moving roofing tiles around, would open up and share about their life and share not just like the good things, not just their lessons about how to be a man, but their failures, their mistakes, their fears.

Jesus tells the parable of the laborers in the vineyard near the end of his ministry, we're getting closer to Jerusalem.
There are workers who are hired to do a job. They're told that they will be given a wage. A little later, more workers are hired. a little later, more workers are hired. A little later, more workers are hired. Near the end of the day, another set of workers are hired.
Then, the manager gives out the wages. The last are given a denari, the second to last, a denarii. All the way down. The first ones, the ones who've been there all day, the ones who put in a 12 hour shift, are given the denarii. And it does not seem fair.
According to the laws of this world, it's basically wage theft. In a world where workers paid by the hour, one puts in a 12 hour shift, one puts in a one hour shift. They're given the same wage. It seems like it's a really cheap master trying to keep all the profits for himself. Don’t put yourself in the position of the manager, but the worker.

If the goal is just the wage, it doesn't make sense. If the wage is something finite, it doesn't make sense. Instead, if the goal is seen as the community gathered together both now and eternally, there's a different sort of logic going on. If the goal is a wage that is infinite, that cannot be contained, there's a lot more going on.
When the workers came to the vineyard, they weren't silent robots in the field. They were building up something because they were doing something together.
Now, just the fact that hard work builds up community isn't a justification for exploitative practices. I mean, we shouldn't exploit people in any sense of the word. People deserve to live with dignity. If we're holding on to these finite ideas, the whole parable doesn't really make sense. And it's important for us to realize it doesn't make sense. In the same way, it doesn't make sense to love your enemies. It doesn't make sense, apart from grace, to love your enemies. It doesn't make sense, apart from grace, to work in the field for 12 hours and only get one denari. It only makes sense because of grace. It only makes sense because of who Jesus is, because of who this master is.
And we are drawn together for a purpose beyond the wage. As laborers in the field, some have been there for a while, and some have just showed up, but we all serve our master in heaven and we are all better for having each other. And some of us open up because of it. We can share our hopes and fears, our weaknesses and frailties, because we have been called to a beloved community that lifts each other up, whether we have been here thirty years or three weeks.

There is another meaning to this parable, which is often lost today. It has to do with the inevitability of death for us all. It is another topic that is hard to speak of. What is our comfort with mortality?

The lutheran hymn, wer weiß wie nahe mir mein ende, which means “Who knows how close my end is to me!” was written by a German countess in the late 17th century. Even fifty years after the ravages of the 30 years war,  Europe was still recovering and death was present and visible for the rich and poor alike.

The words are stark and do not sound like any modern praise song.

>Who knows how close my end is to me!
There goes the side, here comes death.
Oh, how fast and agile
can come my death!
My God, I pray through the blood of Christ,
just do it well with my end!

The piece the choir sang was written by Johan Sebastian Bach for this Sunday in his Cantata cycle. He connected the last verse of the hymn with the passage from Matthew about the workers. It is a common reading of this parable to be an allegory of the human life. Some find Jesus early in life, some late in life, but we all receive the amazing treasure of his love (no matter how long we have worked) because it is freely given and not earned.

The verse Bach set is as follows:

>I live meanwhile in thee contented
and die, all troubles laid aside;
sufficient is what my God gives me,
of this I am in faith convinced,
Through thy dear grace and Christ’s own blood,
mak'st thou mine own life's finish good.

Lent begins in less than two weeks. We will have an Ash Wednesday service at noon and 7 and we will have the chance to hear these stark words: remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

The world often tells us to be optimistic. Jesus doesn’t give us optimism. Jesus gives us hope.

As Terry Eagleton writes,
>“Since the truth is often enough unpleasant, it must be trumped by the unflinching will. It is a vein of optimism not easy to distinguish from mental illness. Cheerfulness of this kind is a form of psychological disavowal. For all its square-jawed vigor, it is really a moral evasion. It is the enemy of hope, which is necessary precisely because one is able to confess how grave a situation is”
>
Hope lets us look at mortality it tragedy with clear eyes because hope does not rest in ourselves or our circumstances but in our risen savior.

It is a hope that can handle the truth. A hope deeper than passing fancies. A hope which rests, as the hymn author repeats over and over, a hope which rests on the blood of Jesus Christ and can withstand the reality of our mortality. The reality that whether we joined the labor early or late, the gift of life is offered to us.

May you find comfort in Christ’s promise. And if you do not feel that comfort, seek Christ’s peace. You are loved. You are forgiven. You are offered life here and now. You are offered life eternal, abundant so that our mortality need not be anything to cause fear.

The point of life is not to avoid death. We don’t need to avoid death as some people avoid talking about their emotions. In Christ, we are offered life that can stare death in the face and say, O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life beyond death. Thank you for the peace that passes understanding. Help us to live as those who are prepared to die. And when our days here are accomplished, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying, our life may be in you, and that nothing in life or in death will be able to separate us from your great love, In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Last Place

themes: servanthood magnificat-reversal jealousy transformed-desire identity-in-christ humility christus-victor

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-18; Philippians 4:8; Mark 12:41-44
**Series:** After Pentecost

> Preaching on Mark 9:30-37 and James 3:13-18, Wilson confronts Jesus' jarring command that whoever wants to be first must be last. Using baseball, his own BJJ competition win, and workplace promotions, he shows our deep desire to dominate and be validated by worldly success. Servanthood is not domination by other means; Jesus challenges the very desire for competition and offers a transformation of desire by the Holy Spirit. Drawing on Augustine, the cross, James, Philippians 4:8, and the widow's mite, he distinguishes domination from excellence: you can't win at mercy, prayer, or service, but you can excel at them. Since believers are already loved and already victorious in Christ, the only worthy competition is against one's old self, and we lift up our neighbors rather than minimize them.

**Illustrations:** astros-game-with-ephraim, world-series-2019-loss, chess-queen-sacrifice, promotion-to-sally, bjj-competition-win, augustine-cross-yoke, good-friday-scoreboard, widows-mite, marathon-community, kids-wrist-lock-confidence

---

# September 22
## Last Place
## James 3:13-18
## Mark 9:30-37

Who is wise and knowledgeable among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant and lie about the truth. This is not wisdom that comes down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.- James 3:13-18

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” - Mark 9:30-37

My family went to the Astros game last night in Houston. It was Ephraim’s first baseball game and he loved it. The Astros won 10-4. They had 20 hits and three homeruns. There was popcorn and soda and soft pretzels and Orbit the Astros mascot running around. It was a blast. A game is a blast and winning is a blast. Not winning is not as fun. I am glad his first experience of a game was a win, it was very different from my own. Growing up an Astros fan, I grew up with a team that lost a lot. Losing is not fun. The last time I had been to an Astros game was in 2019 in Game 7 of the World Series. They were winning in the Fifth inning and it felt great. And then Juan Soto kept hitting and the Astros were losing and it felt not great. And they lost. And losing wasn’t fun.

There's only one winner at the end of the year. Even if you get to game seven of the world series,  if you're not the winner, it can be really disappointing; we want them to win. We want to succeed.

A lot of us, when we're doing things in life, we want to win. We're not aiming to be last place. Whether in business or family or other activities. We want to succeed. We want our friends and family to succeed.

Jesus' words are hard here. Whoever wants to be first, must be last. These words are hard and they can be taken in a few different ways. There's a way that you could think about them where losing is a long term strategy to win, like sacrificing your queen in chess. You could think, “Okay, Jesus, now I know in order to win to be a winner, I gotta show I don't wanna be a winner, and then now I'll be a winner.”
That's missing the point that Jesus is trying to make. Servanthood is not another form of domination. What Jesus is doing here is to challenge the very desire to dominate another person. Jesus is challenging the very desire for competition. And when we take it at face value, it is quite jarring.
Competition can give a lot of value and purpose in this world. Competition is a goal that people strive for. Maybe not athletically, but in the workplace, you want to get the job, you want to get the promotion. Most professions are pretty zero sum. If you get the job, that means someone else doesn't.
People don't often willingly think, “oh no, give the promotion to Sally, she deserves it more than me. When the promotion comes, you take it. You help your family or provide for your future. It is an untestable way that the world works.

I've mentioned before how I practice Brazilian jiujitsu with my family. We all do it. We've all competed a few times. BJJ competitions are strange affairs. All of them have kids sections, which is a lot like any other kid event. And then grown ups do it. Crowds are cheering, sweat is dripping. And then it is your time. You have to make weight and go to the bullpen, or the waiting area. Butterflies in your bellow. And when you're doing it, it is hard to observe the absurdity of two 40-year-old men to walk out in pajamas basically, and try and choke each other.
It's an intense and surreal experience. I was thankfully successful in the only time I competed. I had one match. It started off very intensely. This guy's coming at me. The human body has a lot of chemical responses when someone is attacking you. My heart beat shot up. Sweat was pouring from my skin.
After a minute, I was able to calm down and go through my plan. I had a plan. I was gonna pull guard, which means I was going to sit down and pull my opponent into me.

I was going to reverse the position so that I would be on top, which I successfully did. I was then in the mount position which is dominant no matter that martial art. Then I isolated an arm. I moved his elbow over his head and then did what's called an arm triangle or a kata gatame in Japanese. And then he tapped and I won. I won the competition. I got first place and it felt good. It felt really good. It was validating to be a winner.

And then Jesus goes and ruins it by saying, whoever wants to be first, should be last,

I think Jesus is directly challenging this desire to be validated by worldly success. That feeling of vindication is directly contrary to what Jesus is talking about in Mark 9. And we have to be all humble and admit that even if we don't do anything competitively, that desire is present. In athletics is just right there in front of us, but it's there everywhere. It is there with our heart, our house, and our lawn. It's there. When our family is together, that desire is always present because the problem is not athletics.
The problem is not jobs. The problem is not schools. It is this question of what is the source of our identity and purpose and meaning. And here Jesus challenges a common conception of ourself and self-worth in a way that is jarring at first, but is ultimately liberating.
The wisdom of the world is that the strong will survive winners would be a winner. This is not the wisdom of Jesus.

As Augustine says, “Jesus has subjected all the powers to himself, he was made kings pass under the yoke, not with a proud army but with the absurdity of the cross, not by hacking away with steel but by hanging on a tree, suffering in body, acting in spirit.”[^1]

According to the world, Jesus was a loser. He died. His followers were killed. He didn’t overthrow Rome. The wisdom of the world is that the strong will survive and Jesus did not. He died. So what are we left with?

The truth is that his death was not the end of the story. The scoreboard at the end of Good Friday had Rome 1 - Jesus 0, but that score did not hold out. In losing, in dying, Jesus received the sin of the world. The hatred. The pride. The anger. All of it. He carried it. All of it. And he killed its power on his body. In rising again, he revealed the truth of the universe that God is love and death has been defeated, victory has been won not be domination, but mercy and self-sacrifice.

James is here helpful for us here. James gives us another example. Whoever is wise and knowledgeable among you. Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness, born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish and ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant and lie about the truth. This is not wisdom from above.
What Jesus seeks is a transformation of our desire.
Now, to be a follower of Jesus, to be a Christian, to be a student of Jesus, to be a disciple, is to desire differently. And it's not about our willpower to just change and suddenly no longer like the things we used to like. But it is about an acceptance of the Holy Spirit's transformation in our life and the building up of habits infused with grace, habits of mercy, habits of service, habits of prayer.
You can't win at mercy. You can't win at service. You can't win at prayer.
Wisdom from above is first, pure then peaceable. Gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits without any trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Again, Jesus is offering us a life of integrity where our value and purpose is not found in the results of the competition.
You are already loved. You already have attained the prize. So now how should we live?

 There is a distinction to be found between excellence and domination. Striving for excellence in what we do is a very Christian notion. We can look to Philippians of four eight.,

>whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

You can't be dominant in mercy, but you can be excellent in mercy. You can't be dominant in prayer, but you can be excellent in prayer. You can excel at it.

You are already loved. So live a life of excellence based on the love God has for you and that can take place whatever results you get.
Let us think about Jesus' observation of the gift of the widow's mite compared with the Pharisees who are loudly proclaiming all the money they give. The widow gave two pennies, but it was more because it was all she had. She wasn't competing against the Pharisees.

Giving, as well, can be turned into this competition. Churches are pretty bad about this and have been bad in the past. Giving is a virtue, like prayer, like mercy, a virtue without competition. We give out of response to God's prior gift, to venerate and honor God not to compete. We seek to look at our own life and what can we do? How can we exceed in our yesterday.

If there is a competition in this world that Jesus honors, I think it is between ourself and ourself. It is between the new person and the old person.
It is between the you of today, the you of yesterday and the you of tomorrow.
Do you have the same desires today as you did yesterday? Then pray God wash you free? Do you wish to excel more tomorrow than you do today? Then honor God with your time by doing those things.

When it ultimately comes down to it, our competitive activities are not wicked or evil: it is about where our hearts lie. I've often found running to be one of the most poignant prayer times in my life. I had surgery right when I went to ministry and I couldn't run for almost two years, and it was really, really hard spiritually to not have that time with God. I did two marathons as a runner, as a younger man. I wasn't trying to win.
But what I noticed about the marathon is the astonishing community that erupts around it. I was doing a hard thing with 30,000 other people and their presence made it less of a challenge. And that's really like the beauty and the gift of athletics and a lot of human activity. It is an opportunity for community or in Paul's words, koinoneia, fellowship, and coming together, us sharing with each other.

That's ultimately why my family has kept going to Jiujitsu; it is because of the source of community that we're not trying to win world championships. It's good to be able to protect ourselves. It's good that my kids have confidence. They know that no bully is going to be able to terrorize them physically because they can just wrist lock him. And if you don’t know what a wrist lock is, you can ask Dominic and he'll show you. It's not pleasant. That confidence is great. Some of you participate athletics, still, and it is a great that source of community, but what Jesus is calling out is our hearts: where our hearts lie. When Jesus says, the last shall be first, he is not offering a technique of domination by other means. He is giving us an opportunity to let go of worldly glory, to let go of the old person and embrace the new where we are already victorious in Christ.
You are already victorious in Christ, so live into that victory. Take a new step this day in Christ.
Your victory does not minimize your neighbor. In fact, you are all victorious together, and unless we lift up our neighbors, we lose sight of Christ's offering to us. So let us receive Christ's life and victory from the cross and lift up the people around us in order to honor God's gift. Let's lift them up with service. Let's lift them up with prayer. Let's lift them up with our gifts. Let's lift them up with thanksgiving and worship together,

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

[^1]: Sermon 51.2.


title: Let's Talk About the Devil

themes: spiritual-warfare problem-of-evil evil-as-corruption-of-good anti-dualism christus-victor service-and-mission freedom-in-christ

scripture: Mark 1:21-28; 1 Corinthians 13:12

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 1:21-28; 1 Corinthians 13:12

> Preached on Mission Sunday from Mark 1:21-28, this sermon tackles the unfashionable topic of the devil and unclean spirits. After three careful prefaces—rejecting dualism (the devil is not God's equal), affirming that evil does not exist in itself but is a corruption or absence of the good, and admitting Scripture gives no systematic metaphysics of evil—the preacher insists the unclean spirits are real, destructive, and to be prayed against, not explained away as myth. Drawing on William Temple and Milton's Paradise Lost, he argues self-empowerment ('better to reign in hell than serve in heaven') leads to self-destruction, while the cross and resurrection have evacuated the devil's power. The freedom Christ gives is freedom for service and mission, which is itself the most powerful cure for the devil's temptations because it draws us beyond narcissism into the needs of neighbor and creation.

**Illustrations:** early-methodist-boldness, superhero-supervillain, darkness-absence-of-light, ordination-interview-evil, william-temple-original-sin, milton-paradise-lost

---

# January 28

”They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.“
Mark 1:21-28 NRSV

I would like to talk about the devil. Many of you haven't heard those words often in Methodist churches. Many Methodists like to be moderates in our teachings. Not too little, not too much. Just right. This is not how the early Methodists. The early Methodists bucked the system. They let people who hadn’t been to college preach. John Wesley ordained women to preach. It was nearly a meritocracy. Credentials didn’t matter. They preached the scriptures plain. When you preach the scriptures plain, you can’t avoid unclean spirits.
There are, for sure, a lot of ways to talk about the devil. Part of the challenge, at least for me, and why I don't bring it up all the time, is that we need to make sure we're talking about the same thing. There's a temptation to talk about the devil as this kind of equivalent power to God. This is a dualist heresy: that there's good and evil in this world. That these twin powers are battling each other and we don't know who is going to win.
That's one of the temptations in this discourse. It is like a how you can’t have a superhero without a supervillain. Narratively, we like conflicts of commiserate power and this narrative trick ends up making the devil far more powerful than he really is.

Another temptation is to make evil into something that exists in itself. This is a little more philosophical, but I think it's really important for us to take a moment to jump into the philosophical pit.
From the early church on it was declared as doctrine that evil did not exist. Stay with me for a moment. This goes back to the doctrine of creation because if evil existed in itself, it would have been to be created by God, and God is good. Therefore, God did not create evil. It’s an answer that may sound good in Ivory Towers, but how does it connect to the real world?

Well, there's evil in this world. We see this. The early church acknowledged it. They saw a lot of evils, but the understanding was never that evil existed in itself, but that evil is a corruption of the good. An absence of the good. Just like darkness is not something that exists. There are no darkness particles floating out in space. Darkness is simply an absence of light. Evil and wickedness are corruptions of the good, distortions of the good. They don't exist in themselves. God did not create them.

When I was going through my ordination interviews, this was the one point where I was pressed on in the interview chamber, surrounded by 15 other pastors. I was very confused because I was trying to like cite Genesis and cite Saint Augustine and Wesley and the preacher who was questioning me was pretty angry that day. I think he might have had some other things going on in his life. His point was that it felt to him pastorally insufficient to say that evil was not a thing when someone was suffering a tragedy.
On first glance, that may feel right, but it is pastorally wrong to think that evil is a thing. Because then we turn God into this creator of evil. To make evil something apart from what is been corrupted is to make God an agent of evil and that is not the God I worship or the God the Bible describes.

With those two caveats, I think there's a third that needs to be brought up, which is that there's not this clear, scriptural understanding of what it means to be a devil. In our passage for today, Mark writes: Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. What does that mean? Are there clean spirits, as well? Where did it come from?

Jesus talks about Satan. Jesus talks about the devil and wicked spirits of this world. Jesus' sermons are given in an ad hoc way. They're not systematic arguments articulating the metaphysics of the cosmos. Jesus doesn’t answer every question that is begged by his teaching and remarks. How we understand the evil one should not be an issue of certainty because we have no space to be certain about the evil one. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, we look through a glass darkly.

Okay, all my prefaces stopped. Let's talk about the devil. Let's talk about Unclean spirits.  The devil is the prince of this world, the ruler of this world. Over the last 300 years since the Enlightenment, some Christians have lowered their emphasis on the devil because it seems a little too supernatural. It's not empirical in the ways they would like it to be. It's not empirical to talk about the devil in those ways.
They try to take devil language and make it seem like misunderstandings or like mythic language, outdated language, misunderstandings. But to take the Bible seriously, we have to deal with this, that there are powers in this world beyond our control that we do not see, powers that wish for our ill.
And honestly, I think that's enough. When we start building up a structure more than that, we get into dangerous territory, the dangerous territory of dualism, of seeing in the devil an equivalent power to God, which the devil does not possess.

So let us stay there on this plane. There is a devil. There are evil spirits There is an accuser. What that looks like, I don't know beyond what Jesus says, and I don't think investigating it is super helpful beyond what Jesus says. Jesus answers the questions we need to understand, but I don't think we should take the words of Mark here as a metaphor. These unclean spirits are unclean spirits that need to be cast out, they are destructive, they are destructive to the souls of the people in which they are a part, and they need to be cast out. We see here that the unclean spirits are not atheists, right? The unclean spirits know who Jesus is. They know who God is. They listen to him. They respond to him. They're silenced by him. They're cast out by him.

I don't think I'd ever be confident in diagnosing an unclean spirit, but I would be confident in praying against one. And ultimately, I think that's what Jesus is calling us to do, to pray against the wicked powers of this world that corrupt our hearts and corrupt the hearts of those around us. Corrupt the will so that people desire what is destructive for them, corrupt the mind so that people rationalize actions of destruction, corrupt the body so that people are weakened.

William Temple once said that Original sin is the only empirical Christian doctrine. We see evidence of it. There is evidence of the brokenness of the world and that good intentions cannot solve it.

John Milton’s, great poem. Paradise Lost is much more famous as a title than it is ever actually been read. The language is incredibly complex. I think it's lovely and beautiful, but I've grown to appreciate it.

Paradise Lost is filled with this irony that Milton writes Lucifer as the main character. Some people have read Lucifer as this epic hero that we should all emulate. Lucifer is offering intellectual freedom for you to do what you want and to live how you want.
“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” As Milton famously wrote out of the devil’s mouth. What Milton though is doing with the character of Lucifer is showing the inadequacy of self-empowerment next to the grace of God and how we can follow our own will to the point of destroying ourselves and everything we want and love. We are ultimately the ones who plant the seeds of our own destruction.

Milton’s famous line again cuts to the chase. “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” If you agree with this, Jesus has nothing for you. You have become your own god. When you realize it is better to serve in heaven than reign in hell, the doors of grace are opened. The brokenness of this world no longer defines us. We are no longer trapped by our desires.

In a world where the devil is made to be a hero, we need grace to see that that is false, that that is an unclean spirit towards destruction, and ultimately the devil has no power next to the grace of God. The power of wickedness has been evacuated because of the power of the cross.

We see this especially in the crucifixion, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the powers of the prince of this world have been shattered and gone. We have been freed. For what?

Mission Sunday is not the most obvious opportunity to talk about the devil. Usually, churches that serve and churches that talk about the devil are few and far between. What I think we need to hold onto is that by admitting the brokenness of this world and the powers that lead towards destruction the response of the freedom that Christ gives us must be to work towards healing that destruction, we can never be satisfied with where we are in a world on fire. We shouldn’t extend ourselves to the point of desperation, but we must move beyond complacency. We have been given power through Christ, who saves us power to cheer at the devil, to not be afraid of his ways. Power to love our enemies, our neighbors, whoever is in need. Power to love God’s creation, and the animals and pets that we so often find friendship with service, and mission is not simply away to feel good about ourselves, service, and mission is the most powerful cure for the Temptations of the devil. When we serve, we cannot be left with our own narcissism. When we serve, we see beyond ourselves. When we are the hands and feet of Jesus Christ God moves with us in the power beyond our control and understanding my brothers and sisters, your loved your forgiven, you were given power, use it it don’t hide it under a basket. Don’t be afraid of what will happen have faith God is with you as you serve your neighbor boldly.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the power that you have given us through Jesus Christ. Help us not to squander it but receive your freedom to serve wherever we are. In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit.


title: Lifted Up: Reading the Bible as Jesus Reads It

series: Lent

themes: scripture-interpretation bronze-serpent-typology the-cross new-birth spiritual-discipline

text:
**Scripture:** John 3:14-21; John 3:1-13; Numbers 21:4-9
**Series:** Lent

> Preaching John 3:14-21 in Lent, the sermon insists John 3:16 must be read in its context rather than as a stand-alone slogan. Using the Nicodemus dialogue, it distinguishes taking the Bible literally (to the letter, as Nicodemus does) from taking it seriously and transformatively, sketching the medieval fourfold method and Luther to argue we should read Scripture as Jesus reads it. Jesus' own figurative use of the Numbers 21 bronze serpent becomes the key: humanity is poisoned by sin and healed only by looking up to the Son lifted on the cross. God's love is shown in sacrificing not the enemy serpent but his only Son, a sacrifice that is cruel only if Jesus is not truly God. The call is to point to the crucified one in humility, not to use Scripture to justify ourselves, and to be amazed by God's love this Lent.

**Illustrations:** john-316-football-signs, chapter-verse-origins, niebuhr-god-without-wrath, medieval-fourfold-reading, nicodemus-literalism, moses-bronze-serpent

---

# March 10, 2024
## John 3:14-21

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” - John 3:14-21

John the Apostle did not write down verse numbers whenever he wrote the gospel According to John. He did not say “verse one. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. Verse two, verse three, verse four”, et cetera. He also did not write chapters.
The chapters in the Bible came later. They resulted from monks trying to split up the Bible into sections that could be read in one sitting. It was a way to organize praying through all the scriptures. Verses came later still. They were put together in ways upon which scripture could be commented and annotated. The verses that we have come from the lines that people would make comments upon. When we come across the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. This sentence was not written to stand alone. It was not written to be put on signs waved in end zones or to be put under eye makeup by football players. It was not written to be a summary of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was written for here, in this moment, and the context matters.
Chapter two of the gospel of John covers the wedding at Cana. And then, as I preached on last week, it shows Jesus going to the temple and overturning the tables.
That sets something up what happens next. The beginning of the third chapter of the gospel of John tells the story of Nicodemus, and this is important context for what takes place.

Jesus is still in Jerusalem and Nicodemus comes by night to ask him a question; to talk to him. Nicodemus was impressed by Jesus, son of Joseph. He wanted to learn from this wise man.

”Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.“
John 3:1-13 NRSV

I want to take this moment just to differentiate two terms: taking the Bible literally and taking the Bible seriously.

There is a lot of cultural signification in how people talk about the Bible as the word of God. H. Richard Niebhuhr once said that modern Christians are looking for a A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross. For some, any challenge to the word “literal” opens up the floodgates of this mushy and powerless god. History shows us a different option. Taking the Bible literally and taking the Bible seriously both see the Bible as true and Jesus as true.

Taking the Bible literally means taking it to the letter, it's what Nicodemus is doing here. He is taking the words of Jesus to the letter and to their plain meaning. The language around the literal meaning came from the medieval world. The ancient church would never talk about the literal meaning on its own.
In the Middle Ages, there were four ways to read the Bible: literally, allegorically, morally, and eschatologically. They would first ask : what do the letters say? And then : what is the allegory going on? What is the metaphor going on? And then: what is the moral rule being offered? And then: how does it deal with ultimate things, with the end times with anything like that?
So this was the main method of reading scripture up until Martin Luther and the reformation. Martin Luther tried to take away these other methods beyond the literal, but he still used them all the time. He used allegorical interpretation all the time. He used moral interpretation all the time. He just didn't like how rigid some of the medieval commentators were in this capacity. And so that's the moment when people started talking about taking the Bible literally.
Literal again means the letter, so it's talking about the letters of the Bible.
We need to let go of our preconceptions and let Jesus show us how to read the Bible.

In John 3, this is what Nicodemus is doing. Jesus corrects him and says, no, you must be born of fire and the spirit. What Jesus is telling Nicodemus to do is to take the word of God seriously, transformatively, to take it for what it is and what it does, and what it does is bring life. It's not a tool to win arguments or to control populations. It's a gift offered and shared.
It is after this encounter with Nicodemus that we get our passage for today and an example of the God’s love and scriptural interpretation.

Jesus mentions how Moses lifted up the serpent.
This alludes to the book of numbers chapter 21, when there is a plague of serpents going around the Israelite camp and many are getting bitten and die.
And God tells Moses to make a serpent out of bronze and to lift it up. And whenever anyone was bit by a serpent and then looked upon the bronze serpent, they were healed again.
Jesus is using figurative interpretations of scripture. He isn’t saying that the son of man will be dipped in bronze. The son of man will be lifted up.

If we believe Jesus is the Son of God, we should read the Bible has he reads it. That should be the guiding light. Jesus shows us the way. In John 3:14, Jesus gives us a figurative way of understanding this passage. The serpents represent something and the bronze snake represents something.
this is how Jesus connects the words to Nicodemus, “You must be born again” with the famous John 3:16. It's not out of the blue. You must be born again. As well, there is destruction going on in the world. My people are dying. They're being poisoned. They're being poisoned by sin. It is when I am lifted up that they will be saved.
One thing about Numbers 21 is unclear. Did Moses make a sculpture of a serpent? Or did Moses take a serpent and dip it and molten bronze killing it? But in so doing, saving the people. Was it a sacrifice offered in this way?
Whatever the case, what matters is that we have been poisoned. We have been bitten by the serpent of sin, and we must be healed or else we shall be destroyed, rotted away from the inside.
This is where we get the famous line. God looks out on the world in need and wants to do something. For God so loved the world that he gave his only
Begotten son, the son that came from him, so that the ones believing in him shall not perish but have everlasting Life.
John 3:17 is just as beautiful. I don't know why they cut it short. Indeed, God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
We have been bit by snakes and need healing, and all we are asked to do is look up to see the Son of God offered for us. That looking up, that looking to Jesus is not a work of will or strength. It only takes place because God is already with us. The God who created everything saw us in our weakness, saw us in our sickness, and sent out the love between the Father and the Son, which is the Holy Spirit, to be with us, to begin transforming our heart so that we can look and see the son lifted up. so that we can start emptying ourselves of all but love.

John 3:16 is about looking to the cross of Christ as the healing source of the destruction in our hearts; looking up to where Jesus has offered himself for us.
You are loved so much that God did not lift up a serpent, but his son. God did not make a sacrifice of Satan, his enemy. God made a sacrifice of his child.
The sacrifice is only cruel if he is not God. It is cruel and twisted if Jesus was just a man, just a teacher, just a priest, just a prophet. If Jesus was just a man, that Niebuhrian “Christ without a crown” makes sense. The world of practical atheism seeks that god which makes us feel better but asks nothing of us. That god who leaves us to self-destruction.
And it is by faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, opening our eyes that we see Jesus Christ as the Christ, the anointed son of God, the one who, when he is lifted up, heals our sins, heals our division, brings on a new kingdom.

Let us point to the one lifted up. Let us not use the Bible to point to ourselves or our desires or the way we think the world should be or the way we think others should change their ways. Let us point to the crucified one. Let us share this truth, not with hubris, but with humility and amazement. Let us be amazed at what God has done
For God loved the world. How do we know that God loves the world? This is how we know that God loved the world. He sent his son, not just any son, the only son, the single son, the image of the Father. He sent the image of the Father, the logos of God, through whom all of creation came to be. So that all who believe in Him, all who have faith in him, as well, all who have his faith, all who have the faith of him, all who he believes in, shall not perish, shall not be destroyed, shall not continue in the poisonous ways of this world, but have everlasting life. Have life without end. Have life without asterisk. This is offered for you.
In the season of lent,  Be amazed by this. Take a step of faith by this. Do something radical by this.
Let us pray,

Heavenly Father, who through your Son reconcile the world to yourself, help us to see your Son lifted up. Lift us up so that we see as Jesus sees, we read as Jesus reads, and we love as Jesus loves. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Like a Child

series: Unpreached Sermons

themes: childlike-faith kingdom-of-god welcoming-children humility wonder courage passing-faith-to-next-generation

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 10:13-16; Job 1:1; Job 2:1-10
**Series:** Unpreached Sermons

> An unfinished sermon (the manuscript breaks off at the third virtue) on Mark 10:13-16, with Job 1:1; 2:1-10 as the paired lectionary reading. Drawing on the historical observation that ancient cultures had no concept of childhood and saw children as immature, non-responsible, and low-status, the sermon reads Jesus's two commands: do not bar children from his presence, and receive the kingdom of God as a little child. It affirms that Covenant already welcomes children, then presses the harder claim that our whole bearing toward God should be childlike. It names three childlike virtues to appropriate -- courage (David and Goliath), humility (Joseph in slavery), and wonder -- though the text ends just as the wonder section begins.

**Illustrations:** childhood-modern-concept, children-barred-restaurants-bars, rabbi-seated-teaching, legal-system-children-responsibility, david-and-goliath, joseph-sold-into-slavery

---

# Oct 6
## Like a child
### Job 1:1; 2:1-10
### Mark 10:13-16
There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and the accuser also came among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord said to the accuser, “Where have you come from?” The accuser answered the Lord, “From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it.” The Lord said to the accuser, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.” Then the accuser answered the Lord, “Skin for skin! All that the man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” The Lord said to the accuser, “Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.”
So the accuser went out from the presence of the Lord and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself and sat among the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

- Job 1:1; 2:1-10

“People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.”
Mark 10:13-16 NRSV
https://bible.com/bible/2016/mrk.10.13-16.NRSV

Childhood is a fairly modern concept. For much of human history, there was little thought put into a stage of life called childhood In ancient Rome.
And ancient Israel, there wasn't a conception of childhood. Child was not an adult, they were not mature. That is how it was seen In Greek, the word per child doesn't have a gender. That's why sometimes it's translated as it.
Jesus makes some radical notions here. Children are not mature, children are not responsible. This is definitional in this, you know, our, our legal system is based around this, that the children to a certain age are not responsible for their actions. It would be unjust to hold them to the same level of account.
Children don't bear financial liability and Jesus said for those little children to come to him.
And a part of the reason the disciples wanted to keep the children away is not just because they're being sticks in the mud and don't want wild children. This kind of how it's often portrayed. Now, Jesus is a teacher and so to sit the feet of Jesus is to be taught. This is a very, the, the teaching position for second Temple Jews like the Rabbi sat and then everybody sat around.
It wasn't a lecture type system.
Jesus makes two major claims here. One is let the children come to me. And the second is whoever does not receive the kingdom of God, like a little child, will never enter it.
So we have two commands of sort from Jesus. Don't bar the entry of children into your space. The reason why people bar the entry of children is because children are unpredictable, unruly.
There are many restaurants where children are not allowed. There are many bars where children are not allowed, in fact, a bar where a child is not allowed.
But this is a notion that I think many, many of us feel. This is not a particular challenge. I'm sure there's times when you want to have a grownup conversation, but it, I don't think this is a notion that's challenging us at Covenant. Covenant is welcoming. Is welcoming to children. We are excited to have children here, no matter how quiet or loud they are. So yay.
But Jesus isn't finished. And this is where I think we need to be pushed.
Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.
That's the crux. It's not just about what we do for the kids. It's our bearing towards God should be childlike.
Now, children don't receive a lot of space throughout the Bible. There are a few exceptions of course, but it's just not a major aspect of scripture. A lot of the stories in the Bible are stories you wouldn't wanna share with children.
But part of it, I think, is for us to understand what are the childlike qualities which Jesus is lifting up for us to appropriate so that we can be like a child. I'm gonna lift up three. Humility, wonder and courage.
The courage we will go backwards. The courage of the child, the courage of the one who does not know better. I think the best example of this is, is David and Goliath. The people around him thought he was crazy because he wasn't afraid of Goliath, but David believed what he said, that God would be with him.
These other soldiers of the Israeli empire did not. They thought that notion about God being with him was to make him feel good. Instead, his faith defeated giant.
And then the next virtue would be
Humility. We see this in the story of Joseph, who even though his brothers sell him into slavery, holds faith, there's an easy situation where a rich kid is hold into slavery and complains about everything so much that he is just like sent up river. But that's not what Joseph did. He survived and he thrived in a matter of the situation.
The third virtue is wonder.


title: Magnify

themes: magnificat-reversal theotokos incarnation answering-gods-call

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 1:46-55; Micah 5:2-5; Luke 1:28-38; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Genesis 18:1-15
**Series:** Advent

> An Advent sermon on the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) paired with Micah 5:2-5. Wilson opens by clarifying Catholic Marian doctrines (Annunciation, Assumption, Immaculate Conception) and argues Protestants, by minimizing Mary, lose a powerful biblical witness and risk docetism. He situates the young, lowly Mary against Old Testament prefigurations (Hannah, Sarah/Elizabeth) and the muted Zechariah, highlighting that Mary alone says yes to God. The Magnificat is read not as meek but as revolutionary—God casting down the powerful, lifting the lowly, and redistributing to the hungry. Drawing on Bede, Anselm, and Ambrose, the sermon ends by calling every Christian to be a Theotokos-like Christ-bearer who magnifies the Lord.

**Illustrations:** marian-doctrines-clarified, hannah-prefigures-mary, sarah-elizabeth-too-old-mary-too-young, priests-like-roughnecks, zechariah-fails-mary-passes, eulogos-word-origin, magnificat-as-revolution, docetism-minimizing-mary, anselm-mary-mother-of-recreation

---

# December 22
## Magnify
### Micah 5:2-5
### Luke 1:46-55
But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
    who are one of the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
    from ancient days.
Therefore he shall give them up until the time
    when she who is in labor has brought forth;
then the rest of his kindred shall return
    to the people of Israel.
And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great
    to the ends of the earth,
and he shall be the one of peace.
    If the Assyrians come into our land
    and tread upon our soil,
we will raise against them seven shepherds
    and eight rulers. - Micah 5:2-5

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name;
indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
    and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” - Luke 1:46-55

The biggest difference between Catholics and Protestants has to do with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Catholics talk about Mary all the time. Mary is a central figure spoken of daily in prayers. She is given major feast days, holy days of obligation, like the feast of the immaculate conception earlier this month. There's the feast of the assumption of Mary, as well, earlier in the year.

Now, for those of you who didn’t grow up Catholic I want to clarify what the immaculate conception, the annunciation of Mary, and the assumption of Mary. There are major misunderstandings around this.
First, the Annunciation of Mary is when Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit and this is announced to Mary. The Holy Spirit is not the Father of Jesus in a genetic way. The annunciation celebrates the  miracle of Christ being formed within the body of Mary.
Then there's the assumption of Mary, which is the Catholic doctrine that Mary's body did not decay, but was assumed into heaven. I think this one’s a stretch.
And then, finally, the immaculate conception of Mary, which was that Mary was born without original sin so that she could be the vessel within whom Emmanuel, God with us, could enter the world. The immaculate conception is the immaculate conception of Mary, not Jesus.

All of this Mary talk is a hangup for a lot of Protestants in conversations with Catholics. There are also all the pictures of Mary. All the prayers to Mary. A question of the biblical evidence for all these doctrines.
What is lost for Protestants in this confusion of Mary is a great biblical figure and witness of God's love and power, as well as evidence of who we should be as Christians.
### Young Mary
Mary was young. The Hebrew word used in Isaiah means young woman. It's translated in Greek as Parthenos, which is a term of describing the Parthenon in Athens, a temple where virgins are dedicated, people who are consecrated for religious tasks apart from marriage.
The Greek word has these pagan connotations, but the Hebrew and Aramaic doesn’t. Nevertheless, we know that she's young. Maybe 12, maybe 13. We know, at least, she's not 25. She's a teenager. And she is betrothed to be married. Well, Joseph is seeking marriage with her. They didn’t have a registry or a set of engagement photos. Long engagements weren’t a thing in the ancient world. We also know about her cousin, Elizabeth, who's older. Mary, the life of Mary is prefigured earlier in the Bible in the life of Hannah. In the Book of Samuel, Hannah, is married, but cannot bear a child. She prays to God and says that if he gives her a child, she will offer him in ministry to God.
The miracle happens and Samuel is offered to God. Hannah then sings a great song to God with a similar power to Mary’s song here in Luke 1:

 Elizabeth, her cousin is prefigured in Sarah from the Book of Genesis. We have a symmetry with both Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth is too old to bear a child. Mary is too young. Elizabeth is too old. Two forms of barrenness that are overcome by God.

Elizabeth and her husband don't live in Nazareth of the north. They probably lived near Jerusalem. Her husband, Zechariah, is a priest of the order of Levites, Priests in the period of second temple Judaism.

Priests functioned a little like roughnecks: they would be two weeks on, two weeks off. They did this because their job was really, really bloody and hard. He was slaughtering animals and serving as a link between God and the chosen people.

## Angelic Visit
An Angel comes to Zechariah but Zechariah doesn’t understand and he is struck mute. Still, the promise comes true. God graces a child to Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Soon after, Gabriel comes to the young woman, Mary, but there is a reason the angel came to Zechariah first. We see how a holy man handles being sent a vision of God. Zechariah doesn't pass the test. He is struck mute. Zechariah has spent a long life dedicated to God and he can’t handle it. How will Mary respond?

The angel comes to Mary, a young woman, 12 to 15. The plan is to marry Joseph. To be a good wife to Joseph and a good mother to the children they have together. To raise them in faith. That is the expectation her family has of her. That is probably the expectation Mary has of herself. That is not the expectation God has of her. The angel

>“…came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

Mary was confused. It is alright to be confused by God’s call. Mary didn’t say yes immediately and the angel didn’t give up because of her confusion.

>The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.”
Luke 1:28-38 NRSV

Mary passes the test. She says yes to God. She does what Zechariah couldn’t do. She does what no one else could do. Mary says yes to God, and then she praises God with this amazing song.

## Magnificat
The first word of it in Latin is Magnificat.

My soul magnifies the whole. Just holding on to that one phrase. My soul, my psyche, my purpose, my person is to magnify, to glorify Lord.

My spirit rejoices in God my savior. My soul is magnifying the Lord, the spirit, the movement, the activity of my life is rejoicing in the God who saves me, the God who rescues me. For God has looked favorably even on the low state of his servants.

She is not the mother of many. She is not the wife of a wealthy person. Mary's got nothing going for her. She knows that, and she sees that. God knows that too. And yet God looks on her favorably.

In the song, she moves beyond that moment to all moments, to generations. Generations will call me. Blessed. The word she uses is eulogos, or well said. It is the root of Eulogy.

Generations will look on her for this amazing blessing she has received. For the mighty one, the strong one has done great things for her.
The great thing is Jesus. Jesus comes into the world through her. The Eastern church calls Mary theotokos, the God bearer. Her body bears God into the world. It's a big concept. The whole thing, this incarnation thing, this Christmas thing.

Protestants, in our ways of minimizing the importance of Mary, fall into this temptation of the heresy of docetism. Docetists over-spiritualize the life of Jesus so that he is not really human.
When we don't make Mary human. When we make her a statue, an image, we don't make Jesus human. Mary is only brought up in nativity scenes and at Christmas and in meekness. Although Mary never calls herself meek, she calls herself lowly. She doesn't call herself meek.
She's portrayed as meek and quiet, beautiful and passive. But this version of Mary is not what Scripture says here.

Mary is one of the least meek figures in the Bible. She sings, “He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
    and lifted up the lowly;

What happens when the powerful are taken from their thrones? What happens when kings are no longer kings? It's a revolution. The Magnificat is talking about the revolutionary nature of God, God's sovereignty over the kings, not just knocking them down.
She sings about how God is looking out the for rest of humanity, and in this Mary is working from politics to political economy. She is moving from talking about governing styles to how resources are distributed. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

This does not refer to the physical descendants of Abraham, but to his spiritual children.[^1]

The mercy of God has come. Mary sees this. Mary knows this.
Assured this, her life cannot be the same. Motherhood changes everyone. Mary is changed by Jesus. Her life could not be the same.

To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.
God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed.[^2]

Mary also shows us what it means to carry Jesus in the world, and that is what every Christian is called to do. We don’t

Let Mary’s soul be in each of you to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let her spirit be in each to rejoice in the Lord. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we all bring forth Christ in faith.[^3]

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

[^1]: The Venerable Bede
[^2]: St. Anselm
[^3]: Ambrose