title: Reset Your House

themes: new-beginnings christ-at-center-of-home herod-as-rival-to-jesus scarcity-vs-abundance the-magi freedom-from-proving-yourself

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 2:1-12; Numbers 22; Matthew 6:21
**Series:** 2021

> Launching a 'Reset' series for 2021, the sermon uses the familiar fix of resetting a frozen computer to invite a fresh look at our lives. Reading the Magi's visit (Matthew 2:1-12), it contrasts Herod's insecure, appearance-driven palace with the humble Bethlehem stable where Christ is truly at the center. Herod, propped up by Rome and a scarcity mindset, hides his rotting heart behind gold and grand projects, while Mary and Joseph, having nothing to lose and nothing to prove, simply welcome Jesus and the Magi. Listeners are urged to identify the true center of their home, to prayerfully examine one room at a time whether its objects draw them toward or away from God, and to stop 'Heroding'—to let go of proving themselves and let the Christ child reset their home.

**Illustrations:** reset-the-computer, herod-warlord-temple, balaam-and-the-donkey, keeping-up-with-the-joneses, marie-kondo-sparking-joy, hobby-lobby-spending, pandemic-year-at-home

---

# January 3

## Reset Your House
Matthew 2:1-12

I was privileged to grow up with personal computers in the house. I remember an Apple IIe. I remember playing on it as a child, as well as an early Macintosh when it first came out a few years later. One of the things about computers, no matter how old or how new, is that they sometimes get stuck. They get stuck. They freeze, and you have to reset them. Oftentimes, it is important to do it even if you don’t know why. The second step on almost every solution page. That is, if you google what is going wrong with your computer, all the genius bar folks will ask you if you reset it.
Just reset it. Don’t ask why. Just reset it. Don’t have any ego about it. Don’t try and understand why. Just reset it. It is usually good, with computers and with routers, to preemptively reset it. Not to ask why, just to do it and everything will run much smoother. It is pretty easy to reset a computer or reset a phone, it is a lot harder to reset our lives. We can’t just close our eyes and then everything becomes different. We can’t just go back to factory settings for our house or our marriage or for the lives of our children. You can’t blink and then go back. There is no going back in time. The mistakes that we made in the past, we can’t go back to them. But a new year offers us a new opportunity to see and look at where we are. To find the opportunities that can be reset.

Reset is a word that has taken on a lot of meaning with technology but it is a simple English word. I set the table. Something happens. I reset the table. I set it again.
So for the next few weeks we are going to talk about reseting all aspects of our lives, from our bodies to our souls to our world. God offers us this opportunity because our lives are not set in stone. The past does not predict our future and the entrance of the Holy Spirit in our lives can do amazing things. And so today we are going to start by resetting our home. It may be strange to talk about resetting our home as we read this text about the wise men, the Magi, coming to find the baby Jesus. They visit two homes on their journey. The palace of Herod, King of Judea. And the Bethlehem stable, the way-station of Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus.

Most of us hope that our homes look more like a palace than a stable. No offense to Mary and Joseph, but that isn’t where they wanted to stay anyway. The problem with Herod is not that he lived in a palace (King Solomon lived in a palace and was honored by God). Herod thought himself as the King of the Jews but the Jews did not see him in that way. He was basically a warlord. His father had been an ally of Julius Caesar and Herod and his brother were named tetrarchs, which was a form of Roman government that allowed multiple people to hold the same authority. Eventually, Herod was able to consolidate power due to his good relationship with Marc Antony and then with Caesar Augustus. Herod’s family were converts to Judaism but Herod wanted to prove himself to the people by rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem and by building many other great projects across the land to, in today’s words, modernize the country. The problem with great projects, though, is that they cost money and money came from the people via taxes, and the people were none-to-pleased to pay high taxes for projects that they never even asked for. Even the rebuilding of the Temple was controversial with some saying only the Messiah can do that and Herod was obviously not the Messiah. (This controversy still exists today in the nation of Israel concerning the question of rebuilding the Temple.)

So Herod has this temple built on the backs of the people and Magi come from the East. Herod doesn’t ask them to come but they come to him because they had seen a star and they assume that they new king would be connected to the old king. This whole affair hearkens back to the Book of Numbers where Balak, king of the Moabites, is angry about the Hebrew people coming from Egypt to the Holy Land so he calls for a mage of the East to come and curse the Hebrew people. He sends for Balaam who comes. But God send’s an angel to Balaam so that he would instead bless the Hebrew people. At first, Balaam doesn’t see the angel but his donkey does. The wise man, Balaam, doesn’t see the messenger of God, but the donkey does. Fast forward to Herod’s time. The wise men now see the messenger of God (the star) but the king does not. The king imagines a rival who will take his throne. Herod has a scarcity mindset. And like most scarcity mindsets, he is overly concerned with appearances. Herod is deeply insecure about his authority because he knows that it is not his own: it all comes from Rome. With the snap of his fingers, Caesar could have Herod’s line extinguished. The Legions would move in and another puppet would sit on the throne.

The appearances, the fine purple cloth and gold and rooms and servants cover over an insecure heart. Perfumes and fine scents cover up the smell of rot.

The magi found no palace or gold or purple in Bethlehem. They found a man and a woman. They found a child. They found an unimportant place. They found unimportant people. They found a baby lying where animals feed. At the center of it all, though, they found a king.

And so we get to our own homes. Part of reseting our homes is clarifying for each of us what the center of our home is. What is the location of privilege in your home? I am not necessarily talking about redecorating, but it may be? What is the centerpiece of your home? Is it is a piece of furniture or art? Is the centerpiece your stability, your authority, your wisdom? Are you going to protect the center of your home like Herod? Are you going to defend it no matter the cost? How can we make God the center of our home? And how can we take the opportunity that 2021 affords us to reset our home so that the Christ child is at the center of who we are.

Our homes are not just the places or the things. Our home is not just our address or the capital assets of our address. Our home is who we are and what we do. Herod was afraid of losing everything. He built bigger and bigger afraid others would see his weakness. Mary and Joseph had nothing to lose. They knew that they were undeserving of God’s Grace, as well, that they did not have to prove anything. They welcomed Jesus. They welcomed the Magi. They received gifts. As well, when news of danger came, they responded and fled.

Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be. As well, there is the old American saying, your home is where your heart is. My friends, this past year, we have all spent way too much time at home. It has been a lot.

Your life does not have to revolve around who you were last year, or who you were when you moved. Your life does not need to revolve around everything you did before. You don't need to go through the motions just because they are there. You don't need to keep up with the Jones’s or the Herod’s or the Caesars

You are free to receive the gift of new life. You are free to change everything. What does that look like?

It starts with prayer. It starts with thinking through your home now, why it is how it is, and what are steps you can take. God doesn't want to overwhelm you but give you the grace to try something new. Start with a room.

Go home today. Or if you are watching us online, stay home. Pick a room in your house. Look at the objects there, the objects on the wall. The tables and chairs. Why is it there? Who is it for? Don’t start chucking things. Talk to your spouse or parents or roommates, but think about it. Pray about it. I am not talking about sparking joy like Marie Kondo. Does it draw you towards God or away from God?

What is important to remember is that I’m not just talking about crosses or other obviously religious objects. Herod probably had a lot of awesome Menoras in his palace because he was more concerned about what people thought about him than what God thought. Reseting your house is not about spending $300 bucks at Hobby Lobby. God doesn’t want you to paint over anything in order to hide it.

God loves you. There is not a mess in your life that God has not seen and still loved you. Herod tried to hide from himself. Mary did not. That is what it ultimately comes down to. You don’t have to hide from who you are as a child of God. Not at church. Not at work. Not at school. Not in your home. And anything in your life you may be ashamed of, God is here for you to reset it.

May you start afresh. May you see yourself afresh. Let go of proving yourself. Let go of Heroding and may this year bring you hope.

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


site: sermons

title: Reset Your Soul

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: bee-creek-umc

themes: spiritual-discipline means-of-grace doers-not-hearers holy-conferencing spiritual-formation prayer openness-to-change

text:
**Scripture:** James 1:22-25; Genesis 2:7; Acts 7:58-8:1
**Series:** 2021

> Part of the 'Reset' series, this sermon on James 1:22-25 calls hearers to become 'doers of the word.' Using nasal breathing as an extended metaphor for prayer (tied to God breathing nephesh/soul into humanity at Genesis 2:7), Wilson defines the soul as the aspects that make you you, warns against assuming people are fixed and unchangeable (Saul of Tarsus), and centers the Methodist question 'How is it with your soul?' He frames resetting the soul as practicing the Wesleyan means of grace—worship, scripture, prayer, fasting, Christian conferencing, and acts of mercy—not to earn salvation but to seek God and stay alive in Christ.

**Illustrations:** mouth-breathing-nasal-breathing, texas-cedar-allergies, zoom-interview-manners, covid-nasal-breathing-study, psychology-etymology, mirror-forgetting, saul-stephen-stoning, oxford-methodists-how-is-your-soul, daily-examen-evensong, augustine-restless-heart, start-small-fasting

---

# January 17

## Reset your soul

“You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.”
James 1:22-25 CEB

There is a specter haunting the world today, the specter of mouth-breathing. Yes, I said it. Mouth breathing. And of course, there are times when people need to pant, after you run up a hill, or after your dog runs away and you have to chase your dog (pant, pant). There are all sorts of ways of breathing, but there are some common manners advice which tells people, “Now don’t be a mouth-breather, especially at an interview., even a Zoom interview.”

Now, of course, we live in Texas, and cedar seems like a 12 month a year issue. So, yes, sometimes we are stuffed up and have to breathe through our mouth.

The issue is not that nobody should ever breathe with their mouth, but that the mouth should not be the primary mode of breathing, especially when someone is talking to you. When you are talking to someone up close and they are like, (pant, pant), “excuse me, what did you say?”

But nasal breathing has many medical benefits, as well. Breathing through your nose helps you to use your diaphragm muscle more, helps develop muscles around your nose, it also filters, humidifies, and warms air, and releases nitric oxide which allows the body to absorb more oxygen, sometimes almost 20% more oxygen, just by breathing through your nose. There was also a study in may showing that nasal breathing might help mitigate the viral load of COVID-19 and lower the chances of a related pneumonia.

But for Christians, breathing has a special place due to its connection with prayer. When we pray, we breathe with God and God breathes with us. Human life began with God breathing into us.

My friends, we are continuing our series called reset, about resetting our lives. A few weeks ago, I spoke about Resetting our Homes and how we can recenter our homes in light of Jesus’s birth. Last week, I spoke about resetting our body and I mentioned briefly how God created humans out of the dust and breathed life into them, and I want to start right there as we talk about Resetting our Soul. We are at Genesis 2:7. “the Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life.” Some translations have, God formed Adam, but Adam is not a proper name in the Bible until later. It is the word for human. Adama is the arable land or soil.

So God makes humans, Adam, and then breathes life into them through their nostrils and now he has a living soul. A nephesh, in Hebrew. It is translated into Greek as psyche, the root word of Psychology. Psychology literally means the study of souls. Now, soul is a loaded term in a lot of ways. Over the last few hundred years, the soul is often seen in contrast to the body. Sometimes referred to as Mind-Body dualism.

In the Bible, there is not this duality of body and soul. God creates humans, and breathes into them and in that breath we have soul, we have life-force. We have nephesh. You can’t take a soul away from a person and have them be a person. And for now, let us just think and define the soul as those aspects of you that make you you.

One of the tricky things is that a body is really easy to see. We see a body. We look in a mirror and see what we look like. We can look. We can see. We can feel. Our soul, though, is harder to grasp. It is tough enough for us to try and understand ourselves very well. It is almost impossible to understand another person’s soul. You cannot see another person’s soul. It is not observable, like you can observe a bird or a tree or another human.

Yet, as we grow older, we start to develop certain ideas about who we are, about what we like, we develop certain ideas about what we desire. But one of the great assumptions we can make about ourselves is that we are finished or fixed and that there is nothing that can change us. It is the same kind of assumption that we can make with other people in our life. We assume that they are fixed and will not change. It is a presumption, sometimes based on our experiences, but still a presumption. At the end of Acts 7, Saul of Tarsus approves of the stoning of Stephen. His life was laid out before him. His life could have been predictable, yet God intervened.

As well, each of us changes consistently in little ways as time passes and we respond to realities around us. The more closed off we are to change, the more closed off we are to God, because then we are closed off to the possibility that God is going to make a change in our heart and in our life.

To get back to the soul, it is hard to reset something that we don’t know where it is to begin with.

The early Methodist movement was a group of college kids at Oxford who wanted to take their faith seriously, so they asked one of the guys’ older brother, John, to come in and give them some guidance, and the guidance centered around this question: “How is it with your soul?”

So today, I want to ask all of you, both those present here and those with us online: how is it with your soul? We need to know where we are to know where we are going. So let’s take a moment to think about this question, how is it with your soul?
(60 seconds)

One of the tricky things is that sometimes we don’t have great language to talk about our soul, especially if we don’t do it often. One of the practices that we do at Evensong is based on the classical Christian prayer, the Daily Examen, which is designed to give people a chance to look at their day out of gratitude for what God has done. To build up a lexicon of gratefulness for God’s actions in their life. This is a great way to start. We begin by becoming aware of God’s presence. We then think back on our day with gratitude. We make sure to pay attention to our emotions. We lift up one moment of our day and then look forward to our future.

We have to start with where we are and the language that we have. No matter who you are or where you are, if you are watching this, you are seeking God in some kind of way. Resetting our soul is about resetting where we are standing on our walk towards God. All of our souls long to be with God, and as Augustine says, our hearts our restless until they rest in God.

So if we start with the question, How is it with your soul? we can begin to understand where we are. But this does not tell us where we are going. If we get back to those college kids in England asking each other, “How is it with your soul?” What they aimed for next is what we call today the means of grace. These are the things of God. We know where we are going when we are doing the things of God. And we are all doing one of them right now, we are worshipping God together.

The rest of the means of grace are as follows:
meditating and studying the scriptures, prayer, fasting, Christian conferencing (accountability to one another), and Bible study, visiting the sick, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry, and giving generously to the needs of others.

We do these things not to earn salvation but to see God and to seek God.

This also gets to what James is talking about.

“You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like.
James 1:22-24 CEB

This metaphor is so powerful. We forget who we are if we don't do the things of God. We forget that we are loved. We forget that we can love other people. To put our faith into practice is to reset our soul. And we have a chance to do that this year in a new way. One aspect of a church is being a school of discipleship where we learn and practice together what it means to be disciple of Jesus. We worship together. We study the Bible together. There are opportunities on Sunday mornings and Wednesday's to study the Bible with friends here. We serve together at Partners in Hope and Helping Hands and the Farmacy. We are also looking to start some new small groups that will be intentional gatherings to focus on what Wesley calls Christian conferencing and questions like “How is it with your soul?”

Visiting the sick is a means of grace and it is honestly easier than ever. If you can help with our hospital visitation ministry, you don't have to leave your home and can reach out to folks who are super lonely.

James is famous for saying that faith without works is dead. He does not mean it is useless but that it is not alive. To be a doer of the word is to be alive in Christ.

We all have to start where we are. Like with fasting, I would not recommend a 40 day fast if you have never tasted before. Maybe start with a meal. Start where you are with prayer, with study, with service, but realize that if you let God act in your soul, you will not be in the same place for long. Even in the little things you do every day like breathing (inhale, exhale), may you think of it in a new way. Let us reset our soul. Let us take a step of faith and do the things of 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: Reset Your World

themes: new-creation spiritual-formation being-on-gods-side ordinary-faithfulness christus-victor we-are-not-the-messiah faith-as-journey

text:
**Scripture:** Revelation 21:1-6; Romans 12:2; Romans 12:3
**Series:** 2021

> Concluding the 'Reset' series, this sermon calls the congregation to reset their world by reorienting their vision toward faithfulness right where they are rather than toward distant political power. Drawing on Revelation's promise of a new heavens and new earth, Lincoln's 'are we on God's side?', and Romans 12's call to be transformed by the renewing of the mind (and not to think too highly of oneself), it insists we are not the messiah and cannot save ourselves. Christ has already won the victory; unlike Henry V's band of brothers still facing battle, our task is to witness to the resurrection and to love the people right in front of us.

**Illustrations:** medieval-new-king-same-old-king, lincoln-second-inaugural, augustine-restless-until-rest-in-god, henry-v-st-crispins-day-band-of-brothers

---

# January 24, 2021

## Reset Your World

Revelation 21:1-6

The middle ages was an age of knights and kings and princesses and Queens, and most of our stories from the middle ages are about kings and princesses and knights. They were written by the educated who were almost all men and almost entirely connected to the court or the church. There are these chronicles of kings and of wars like the war of the roses between the Yorks and the Lancasters or the Anarchy, a less well known period after the death of Henry I’s only legitimate successor in 1135. The anarchy consisted of a battle between Henry’s chosen heir, Empress Matilda (who had been married to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, and Stephen of Blois, who was Henry’s nephew, whose wife was also named Matilda. This civil war lasted almost 20 years before a treaty let Stephen finish his reign while naming Empress Matilda’s son, Henry, the heir to the thrown. Simple stuff, right? Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine and they have Richard the Lion-heart and King John, and on and on. But for most folks during this period, new king, same as the old king. New king will probably increase taxes and may ask you to fight, but otherwise, who he was didn’t matter. On continental Europe, rulers changed more frequently and territories shifted a lot more. There were thousands of principalities and duchies that would change, and the people would think, new duke, same as the old duke: what does it have to do with me?

My friends, we are concluding our series called Reset, on resetting our lives. A few weeks ago we started with Resetting Your House in light of the birth of Jesus Christ and how we can reorient our lives and our houses towards Christ. Two weeks ago we talked about resetting our bodies. How we can see food and how we see our bodies in light of being created in the image of God. How we can cleanse our bodies and work towards that but it starts with resetting how we see ourselves. Last week, we talked about resetting our soul, and how when we do the things of God, we reset our soul, who we are, and how our church is a place to do those things. Today, we are talking about resetting our world. And my brothers and sisters, our world needs a reset right now. There is this nasty word, “politics” and a lot of personalities and emotions tied up in what has been happening in our country. There are a lot of assumptions about who is right and who is wrong, assumptions about who is on God’s side.

On March 4, 1865, 36 days before Robert E. Lee surrendered and 41 days before he was assassinated, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at his second inauguration as President. The campaign had been challenging. People were tired of war. His reelection had been in doubt for most of 1864, really until Sherman won the Battle of Atlanta. And even then, without a southern state voting, Lincoln only won 55% of the vote against the inept former General George McClellan, so not only is the future Reunited States divided, but the Union was divided about the course of action for the country.

So Lincoln spoke:

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained... Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other.

The question for Lincoln was not is God on our side, but are we on God’s side?

Resetting our world starts with this. Are we on God’s side? And I want us all to act like medieval peasants for a little bit, and not think of the King or President, not think of Washington or Austin, but think about right where we are.

In Latin, the word for the world is Saecula, root of our english word, Secular. Secular means worldly in English and often has a negative connotation to the church, but it is a descriptive term for the world. Not the globe or planet, the world that we inhabit.

Now, with the internet today, it is easy to focus so much on power and centers of power and transfers of power, but Jesus doesn’t have a lot to say about Caesar or even Herod. Jesus has a lot to say about how to live right where we are, starting with faithfulness right where we are and how we relate to the people around us. And I think that it is really important to not fall into the temptation of only imagining our world as the planet, or to imagine politics as elections and political parties, because we lose sight of what Jesus does and how he lives. Jesus doesn’t talk about Caesar very much, but he challenges Caesar. Jesus doesn’t talk about the next Sanhedran election, but the sanhedran don’t like him. They hear his words and rumors of his words and take him seriously, and they know that if his words are true, than the structures of society must change.

In what direction? That is the thing. It is easy to claim Jesus, The devil himself sees Jesus as Lord, it is hard to follow him.

Last week, when I was talking about resetting our soul, I mentioned this line from Augustine, that we are restless until we rest in God. Augustine does this as a prayer, it is at the very beginning of his confessions. We are restless until we rest in you, O Lord. Our goal is being with God. Our goal is not collecting power but to be with God, as well, the Bible shows us what is going to happen to this world. And that is where we get to our reading for today: a new heavens and a new earth.

And this new heavens and new earth does not mean that we should do whatever we want to the present earth or where we are. What it does do is guide us in how we live and love in our present. Resetting our world begins with realizing our world is the world we inhabit here and now, it is the places we go and the people we see. Resetting our world is resetting how we see our world. How do we see where we live? How do we see our neighbors? How do we see our family? How do we see our church and our surroundings? Resetting our world is about transforming our vision and transforming our minds.

As Paul says in Romans 12, “let us not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.” The word that was translated as “world” in Greek is aioni, the root of Aeon. Yes, world can be one translation, but “age” is more direct. Let us not be conformed to this age, to this time. Let us not be people of this time but people of God’s time.

This renewal of mind is how we reset our world in not only this age but this place. We renew our mind by renewing our vision. In light of what God has done. In light of what God will do for us all. Its so important, for Paul and for all  of the history of the church, to remember that faith and the life of faith is not something that is static. It is dynamic. It Ebbs and flows. Faith is a journey not a fixed point. Faith is a journey to God. It’s not about  saying “I believe in Jesus” and then you are finished. God is continually transforming you and we are continually deciding to follow Jesus. We need to be renewed in our mind and in how we see the world.
We need to remember what God has done. We need to reflect on what God has done. We need to pray about what God has done on the cross with Jesus. We need to pray for what God has done in Jesus through entering the world by forgiving us of our sins. But God is not finished. Through God’s mercy, we have been graced new life.
As well, thinking of this text from Revelation, we must remember our future with God: our new heavens and new earth. The point of Revelation is not the struggle but the end. God wins and every tear shall be wiped away from our eyes.
More than that, what Revelation points to is that we are not the saviors of the world. You are not the Messiah, my brothers and sisters. I am not the Messiah. I am not Jesus. I cannot save you.

In Romans 12:3, after calling us to renew our minds, Paul says, “Because of the grace that God gave me, I can say to each one of you: don’t think too highly of yourself. Instead, be reasonable.”

Be reasonable. Don’t think too highly of yourself or what you can do.
There is no human alive that can save you. I cannot save you, I cannot even save myself. We are deceived into thinking that we have what it takes, which is a pride and hubris that is hard to break.
As well, sometimes we can be deceived into focusing so much on the struggle that we forget what it is all for and where we are going, like Shakespeare's famous Saint Crispin's Day speech from Henry V, which goes back to the Middle Ages in the middle of the War of the Roses. Henry goes to fight the French and he is outnumbered and instead of cowering to the numerical superiority of the French, in Shakespeare's retelling, he gives the famous speech.

>
> We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Henry is concerned about his soldiers who don’t care. What are they going to do in battle? Many of the folks in the army are like, “new king same as the old king. Why should I die for him? Wouldn't it be better if I was back in England and I wasn't conscripted. Wouldn't that be great?”
I am always blown away by this speech. I think, Wow! We Band of Brothers. Yes, this is awesome. I get goosebumps. Yes, We are together. Yes, the Victory Is Ours! the honor is ours! Today, we are brothers and sisters. We are a band. The amazing difference, though, between Henry’s speech and our life of faith is that the battle has already been won. The battle has already been fought. Jesus is Victorious. Our place now is not to continue to fight for Jesus. Jesus has already won. Our job now is to witness to that victory. To point to that victory in the midst of the not-yet, in the midst of the Brokenness of this world that is still in front of us.
We reset our world when we claim in our lives the reality of the Resurrection. God has overthrown death and something new is possible. God wins! Let us reset our world by focusing right where we are. We don't need to fight for God. We need to love for God. We need to focus on the people in our lives, the people that we can love because God is with us. We are not alone. We don't need to live as if we were. We don't need to live as if we must save ourselves. You are free. You're free to reset your world, to renew your vision to remember that you are a child of God.

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


title: Restless with Foolishness

themes: the-cross wisdom-of-the-world restlessness spiritual-discipline love-of-neighbor the-gospel discipleship

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 1 Corinthians 15:32
**Series:** 2021

> Third sermon in the Lenten 'Restless' series, on being restless with foolishness, preached from 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. Paul's play on foolishness/wisdom according to the cross versus the world frames the message: the world's wisdom is endlessly restless, always chasing the next thing (Bitcoin, fashion, apps, fantasy football), and boredom is diagnosed as the ancient sin of acedia (citing Cassian and Aelred). The kerygma of the risen Christ offers God's abundant life freely, against the transactional logic of the world (no free lunch, Facebook users as product). The preacher calls the congregation to embrace the foolishness of the cross, which is concretely the foolishness of radical love of neighbor, and to break through the world's lies about worth and the next great thing, being willing to look foolish for God.

**Illustrations:** star-wars-fandom, obi-wan-more-foolish, han-shot-first, bitcoin-gamestop, fantasy-football, cassian-acedia, aelred-enlarge-horizon, facebook-product, no-free-lunch, no-bargain-with-god

---

# March 7
## Restless with Foolishness

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

A few weeks ago, pastor Matt asked me if I liked Star Wars, and I didn't know exactly how to respond. I didn't know how much he was ready for. There was a period of my life when I adored Star Wars and the Star Wars Universe. There was one moment in about 1999, when I had read every book in the Star Wars expanded universe all of them. I looked at the list on starwars.com to confirm. I think there were about 45 novels published at the time, as well as The Shadows of the Empire comic books, where a clone of the emperor comes back and Luke thinks that he's going to get close to the Emperor in order to betray him but then Luke actually ends up turning to the dark side and Leia, who is almost always super Force powerful in the stories, ends up saving him. The movie watched the most was of Return of the Jedi because we had a recorded copy of it from HBO from when my grandparents had got a subscription to HBO for six weeks and recorded all of the movies on VHS.
I remember having long debates on online message boards and icq in the 90s. For instance, a lot of arguments about the edits to the original Star Wars episode four a New Hope and whether Greedo or Han shot first. George Lucas went back and did some edits and used a little better technology before releasing a special edition, but he changed that interaction and made it so Greedo shot first. Nerds don't like change. I also had lots of debates about the prequels. I was excited about the prequels before they came out. I was interested in how much of the end of the Star Wars novelization from 1978 would be included in the movies.
All that is to say, I didn't know exactly how to answer pastor Matt’s question, but I do like Star Wars. My Star Wars fandom has mellowed a lot but over the years, that doesn't mean I have forgotten much. There's this one scene in the first Star Wars movie episode 4 where Obi-Wan Kenobi that I kept thinking about this week. Obi-Wan and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are together and Han says to Obi-Wan Kenobi, “Oh, you're just a foolish old man.” And Obi-Wan says, “Who's the more foolish the fool or the fool who follows him?” Foolishness is a funny word. It's always a contextual word. Who is the more foolish? Foolishness is always compared to someone or something. Who is the more foolish, the fool who thought Star Wars was a cool movie or the fool who spent hours and hours and days and days and days reading, arguing, digesting this made-up story for children. Who's the more foolish?

My brothers and sisters, We are continuing our series on restlessness. Two weeks ago, we talked about being restless with temptation. How temptation is always tempting and it leaves us restless, unless we rest in God. Last week, we talked about being restless with suffering. How suffering collapses our vision so that it's hard for us to see and think straight but our goal in life is not to avoid suffering but to stand with those who are hurting in this broken world and to point to the healing and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This week, our theme is being restless with foolishness. There's a deep ambiguity with this term. Foolish according to whom? In the scripture I just read from First Corinthians, Paul plays up this ambiguity. There's a foolishness according to the cross and a foolishness according to the world. There's a wisdom according to the cross and a wisdom according to the world. When we act as Christians and follow Jesus Christ, we can look foolish to the world. Later, in this letter, Paul points out that if there is no resurrection of the dead, we should just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. But if there is resurrection, t everything should change. And we must live our lives in the truth of this reality that the universe has been turned upside down by resurrection. Death no longer has power over us. And yet, it can still be difficult to parse out the difference between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the cross.
In some ways, Christians have made the cross quite worldly and palatable. The church tasted power and it liked the flavor. The church tasted influence and authority and it liked the flavor. The wisdom of the world is constantly seeking the next thing. What is the next thing? What is the next Bitcoin or Gamespot stock? What is the next thing? What is the next technology? What is the next app? What is the next fashion? What is the next hit streaming show? The world tells us we need to stay ahead of the curve. What is the next thing? What is the next device? It's going to be great. What is the next football star that we need to draft in our Fantasy League. What is the next thing? The wisdom of the world is easily bored. The wisdom of the world easily finds things old and empty.
Boredom itself points to a deep restlessness. Boredom is a form of restlessness. When we are bored, we are not in a comfortable place. We're not where we think we should be. We think about other things that we could be doing. We think of other people who could be entertaining us. “This party is boring. There's nobody to talk to. The sermon is boring. He just goes on and on. The song is a boring. I don't see the point. It's just the same thing over and over again.” In our house, we try to restrict the use of the word boring. It's like using another kind of swear word. It is not to be done. Boredom so often comes from our own lack of willingness to truly see what is around us as God’s beautiful and interesting creation and presence. Boredom in Latin is acedia, which John Cassian described in the following way to monks under his supervision :
He looks about anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him, and often goes in and out of his cell, and frequently gazes up at the sun, as if it was too slow in setting, and so a kind of unreasonable confusion of mind takes possession of him like some foul darkness

This acedia can strike us all, and if we wish to resist, something must change.

As an early Christian writer (St. Aelred) said, “If we wish to resist the promptings of our sinful nature, we must enlarge the whole horizon of our love to contemplate the loving gentleness of the humanity of the Lord.” We need to expand our horizon. We need to expand our vision. This world is interesting and fascinating wherever we are, but often, we get limited by what we think can hold our interest or we're so easily distracted by what is around us? We're distracted by the dopamine hits of movies or of social media and getting likes and shares. We're distracted by the dopamine of our team winning: our sports team winning our political team winning. We're distracted by outrage. Facebook is designed to have the most outrageous items shared as widely as possible because if you are outraged, your eyes are on Facebook and they make money. All of these point to what Paul calls the wisdom of the world. Paul also says that in God’s wisdom, God realized that the wisdom of the world could not lead us to God; Only the wisdom of the cross. God was pleased through the foolishness of the kerygma to save believers.
Kerygma is a Greek word. It kind of means what is preached about or what is taught in churches. The kerygma is the heart of the good news. Christ is risen! Christ resurrection is offered to us.
More than the miraculous, we are offered God’s abundant life freely. Economics has an old saying, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” The basic idea of which is that all of our actions have costs. Just because we don’t see them, does not mean that they are not there. For instance, Facebook and other social media is free because we are the product being sold.

As a theologian wrote,
  “Jesus teaches that our relationship with God should not be thought of as a transaction in which I give something to God—some slice of my time and attention, some thing that I give up as a sacrifice, some number of good deeds—in order to receive some benefit, whether this be a crude expectation of prosperity and material gain or, perhaps more likely,  the more sophisticated desire for peace of mind and spiritual consolation. This is the idea that I can give God  some determinate amount of my love, or at least of my obedience, in order to receive some specific reward. The entire life of Jesus is an assault on this idea. In embodying for us the God who is love, the God with whom we can strike no bargain but to whom we can give nothing less than everything, and from whom we can only receive with gratitude”

The foolishness of the cross, the foolishness of the kerygma by which we realize the truth of God can be a true foolishness. People can laugh at us. People can dismiss us. People can think we are suckers.
For us in the season of Lent, are we willing to look foolish in front of others in order to stay faithful to God? And really, the kind of foolishness I think Paul is pointing to, and the kind that Jesus over and over again points to, is the foolishness of radical love for neighbor. Are we willing to look foolish? Are we willing to look unreasonable in our love of our neighbors? Are we willing to be challenged for our love of our neighbors? Are we willing to push against what is expected of us for our love of our neighbors? Are we willing to prepare our children to love their neighbor? Do we believe so much in God's absolute love and perfection that we can share it with our friends even when it may make us look foolish? Are we willing to be mocked because of God's radical love for our neighbors? Because, what it comes down to is that the wisdom of the world leaves us restless. The wisdom of the world is always trying to find what's next. The wisdom of the world is always trying to compete with the people around us, always trying to be more clever, always trying to read more Star Wars books or watch more of the movies. The wisdom of the world tells us to moderate the kindness we show people. The wisdom of the world gives us rationalizations for why we shouldn't do too much. Ultimately, this wisdom only gets us to a restless place. We never arrive where we are seeking. There is no end to the next thing. There's always a next, next thing. In mathematical terms, it is always n+1. We don't get to our source by trying to follow the latest fashions. We don't get to our source by trying to stay ahead of the next big thing. We find rest and we find peace when we seek the Living God, who created everything. When we're willing to be foolish for the sake of the Cross. When we’re willing to be foolish for the sake of our neighbor. When we're willing to restructure our lives around offering ourselves to others. Love of neighbor is not a side gig. Loving our neighbor is not something we can just, you know, do in the marginal time once we've loved ourselves enough. God shows us what will happen if we marginalize love of neighbor and love of God, if we push that to the side, if we keep that as a tangent of our life instead of the center of our life. We are going to be restless. We are going to be unsatisfied or we are just going to lie to ourselves.
In the season of Lent, I encourage you to break through the lies that the world tells us about what our value is and what our worth is and how we must always be striving for the next great thing. Let us break through the lies that tell us that unless we can do everything we can do nothing. Let us break through the lies that tell us that if you're not contributing to society anymore, you're not worth anything. Let us be willing to be foolish for God. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.


title: Restless with Our Future

themes: already-and-not-yet restlessness eschatology transformed-desire spiritual-discipline gratitude-to-god passion-of-christ

text:
**Scripture:** John 12:20-26; Philippians 1:21-24
**Series:** 2021

> The fifth sermon in a Lenten 'Restless' series, preached amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Texas freeze, addressing our restlessness to fast-forward to a normal future. Using John 12:20-26, where seekers come to see Jesus and he declares 'my hour has come,' Pruitt distinguishes the already-and-not-yet tension of Christian faith, critiques the dispensationalist urge to predict the end (Joachim of Fiore through the Darbyites), and reframes apocalypse as unveiling rather than destruction. Drawing on Paul (Philippians 1) and Augustine, he argues holiness is not deferred propriety but transformed desire available now. He closes by teaching the Daily Examen as a practice for gratitude in the present: God's future is now because the God who is our future is with us now.

**Illustrations:** seinfeld-summer-of-george, teenager-college-question, fast-forward-through-life, calendar-change-markers, joachim-fiore-dispensationalism, augustine-chaste-but-not-yet, augustine-restless-heart

---

# March 21
## Restless with Our Future

 John 12:20-26

When will this all be normal? When can we just go back to life as we had it before? We know we have a future, when will that future arrive? I think most of us have been thinking about these kinds of questions for a while now, though with different levels of patience, Different reasons behind them, but we still would like some idea of what our future is going to be. The past 12 months have forced this. Usually, we're not in this position of having to decide what our future is going to be. Our future just happens. The next day arrives. And the next, and the next. And yet, there are moments when the future becomes more apparent. Moments of opportunity, of change and transition. New Year's Day is a good one. At the new year, you start writing a different number on your check or, if you fill out a form, there's a different number at the end of it. Change is right in front of you so there is an opportunity to change. What if this year is different? Summer is another opportunity, when the seasons change or the kids or grandkids get out of school. What if this summer is different?
When you meet someone who is in high school for the first time, a common question, I think for most people is: where do you want to go to college? What do you want to do with your life? It seems like an innocent enough question but it can be very anxiety enduring. But I remember when I was a teenager, I did not like the question until I realized, if I just had an answer, it would satisfy people. They weren't ready to go into all the metaphysical consequences of the choice of a career. They just wanted to be able to say, “Oh, so I saw The Pruitt’s youngest. he is good. He thinks he is going UT.” I realized, often, it was just a story to fill in another story. But for someone living that experience,  a future can be ominous. Going out on my own. There are things I'm excited about. there are things I don't know about. it is the same anticipation that happens after graduating college, getting a job, getting married, buying a house, having a kid, retirement, all these transitions that may make us think: is my future here?
The TV show Seinfeld had an episode where George Costanza, one of the characters who was always getting into trouble and not very talented, decided it was going to be the summer of George. Summer of George. He was really excited and energetic. And yet, over the episode, he is just hit by disappointment after disappointment. It is no longer the summer of George. He thought his time had come to shine and it was not to be.
Even if we are not all like George Costanza, for most people, there are some hiccups on the road to our time of ourfuture. It would be nice if we could just like get to the future, fast forward life a little bit. You know, have you ever been in those moments where you're like, I just want to fast forward through this and get to the end of it.” Like, I want to fast forward through this party I have to go to. I want to fast forward through this job interview, this lunch. I just want to be in the future now.
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on restlessness in this season of Lent. A few weeks ago, we started talking about being restless with temptation. How temptation is always tempting, but how we find our peace in God. Then we spoke about restlessness and suffering. How suffering can limit our experience and our vision, but we are freed by God's grace to not deny suffering or to avoid it, but to stand with those who are hurting by showing God's love. The next week, we spoke about being restless with foolishness, how the wisdom of the world thinks that sacrificial love is foolish and it is uncomfortable with it, but that we can hold on to the wisdom of the cross that offers life to us today. Last week, we talked about being Restless with our past. How we can hold up the Glory Days or the golden age and think life was better back then. How that think blinds us to what God is doing now.
This week, we’re talking about being restless with our future. Sometimes it may seem like the future is only exciting, only possibilities, but that's not how it is all the time. There are those times in life that we just want to get to what's next. We want to fast forward through this. Now, I think many of us are ready to fast forward to a time when nobody is getting sick from this. But that's not how creation works. That's not how time works. We can't fast forward our lives.
The people who had come to Jerusalem wanted to know about Jesus. They were ready. They came up to Philip, who came up to Andrew, and they were asking to see Jesus. They had heard about him. They'd heard about the Messiah coming, the anointed one of God. They were ready for that future to take place. And then Jesus says, “My hour has come.” This is it! This is the time! He goes on and says a number of things. Some of them are easy to take, some of them are hard to take. “Those who love their soul, those who love their life will destroy it. Those who hate it will have life eternal.” It's not even love or hate.  Jesus does not use verbs here. It is more like, “to the lovers of the Soul, It will be destroyed. To the haters of the soul (and I think it's really the best translation of this verse) all you soul haters out there will have life eternal. If you cling too much to this, You will lose it. That is what he's saying. This takes place in John 12 right after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11. John 12 is a transition from time with Lazarus until they get to Jerusalem.
Jesus’s hour is his passion, but after the resurrection, he says he will come again. Jesus says his hour will happen again.
Since the time of Jesus, Christians have been ready for the hour to come again. The Christian faith has this kind of tension between the already and the not yet. Between the promised future with God, life eternal, life everlasting, and the present reality of the Brokenness of this world: hurt and pain, sickness and disease. We're in this period, but we want to get to our future, we're ready to get to our future, but Jesus says you will not know the time or the hour and that it will happen like a thief in the night. So some Christians, for a thousand years, have thought, “maybe I can know, Jesus. Maybe I will know the time or the hour. Maybe if I read the Bible this way, turn it this way and I interpret this for that and that for this, then I will know the hour. And if I know the hour, I can plan on it, and that would be awesome.”
Since about the 14th century, there has been a group of Christians who've been really into planning the future. It started with this guy named Joaquim de Fiori. He began the practice of dividing the ages of history in a way that he could predict when the next stage could come. His work was influential in some of the undercurrents of the Reformation in the 16th century and then, in different ways, these forms of interpretation were taken up to the Darbyites of the Plymouth Brethren in England in the 18th and 19th century, who developed what became known as dispensationalism. This is the idea that history is a series of seven dispensations and we're almost there to the end, and we can predict when the end is going to take place. This gets us into different figures in the 20th century and 21st century who predict the end of the world. Now, it is important to remember that Apocalypse in the Bible is about being revealed. Apocalypto in Greek means to unveil something: the true reality of the universe is being unveiled. Apocalypse, Revelation, is not about the end of the world, but about the new creation, God's New Creation, being fully apparent before all.
Some people find solace in these predictions of when Christ will come again, of what specific time that is going to look like. But there is a misunderstanding of Jesus saying, “You will not know the time or the hour.” “But we want to know, Jesus. We want to know. It'd be a lot easier if we could just predict. Then, we could get ready for it. Or maybe we could fast forward now to our time with you. Wouldn't that be great?”
 Paul has the same sentiment in the letter to the Philippians:

“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”

God has a purpose here and now where you are. And that purpose is not to skip to the end of the movie. The reason why he says, “you will not know the time or the hour,” is so that we have a chance to be ready. Now, we don't have to skip to the end. We don't have to get through whatever we're going to get through. We don't have to sit on our hands while pandemics and viruses and freezes and all these things going on right now continue to go on. We can be ready. And in being ready, we can have a more fulfilled life.
And what does that mean to be ready?
This whole series is designed around this quote from St. Augustine early in the Confessions where he says, “oh Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” There's another quote, a little later in the Confessions, when he's young man, and he says, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet.” Augustine writes it in a tongue-in-cheek way but many Christians over the years have taken him literally without realizing it. Holiness is seen as being a stick in the mud no fun sour pus. What often takes place is a confusion between cultural propriety and holiness. Holiness is not about being better than others or proper but having a so heart full of love that anything that is destructive or hurtful is not desired. Being holy is not about saying no to what we want but transforming what we want so that we no longer desire what hurts us or others.

The thing about faith, the thing about holiness, is that we don't have to wait to graduate, we don't have to wait till our kids graduate, we don't have to wait until we totally pay off the mortgage. There's not a benchmark in the world that prepares us for seeking love.
If we are bargaining with God so we can avoid being holy, we miss the point.
We must let God transform our hearts to the point that holiness is what we desire so that we want to be chaste, we want to be selfless and thoughtful, we want to be generous and giving. Will we accept God's love fully today? Will we build habits that put it in to practice?
The way that we can avoid being restless with our future, the way we can avoid trying to fast forward to that summer of George, is to prayerfully see the ways that God is faithful to us now and that we can be faithful to God now. To be grateful for our present time. To be grateful for our present reality. A tool the church gives for this is the Daily Examen.
The daily examen is a historic Christian practice. If you have been to Evensong, this is the prayer we do at the end. We have placed a prayer card on your seats with the examen prayer, and if you are watching at home, there is a link on Facebook and the website and the church center app, so you can follow along. I want to go through the prayer this morning to practice together.

1. The first step is becoming aware of God’s presence.
2. The next step is to review the day with gratitude.
3. The next step is to pay attention to your emotions.
4. The next step is to choose one feature of the day and to pray from it.
5. The last step is to look toward tomorrow.

Our future is now because the God who is our future is with us now. As a holy man said, “If God is love, love should know no limit, for God cannot be confined. Any time is the right time for works of love, but these days of Lent provide a special encouragement.”

You are already forgiven, so you might as well forgive. You are already loved. So you might as well love. God’s future for you is now. God’s future for you is love.

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


title: Restless with Suffering

themes: suffering restlessness suffering-and-divine-solidarity take-up-your-cross theology-of-the-body self-denial

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 8:31-38
**Series:** 2021

> Second sermon in a Lenten 'Restless' series built on Augustine's 'our hearts are restless until they rest in you.' Drawing on Mark 8:31-38, the preacher uses his Appalachian Trail shoulder dislocation in the Mahoosuc Notch to illustrate how suffering makes us restless, fogs our vision, and links body and mind through trauma. Like Peter trying to keep Jesus 'dry' from the cross, we cannot avoid suffering; the gospel answer is not avoidance but taking up the cross, denying the self that clings to safety, and standing in solidarity with those who hurt as members of the body of Christ.

**Illustrations:** mahoosuc-notch-dislocated-shoulder, trail-lite-untrained-reduction, canadian-couple-stayed-and-cried, wilfred-owen-trench-poetry, pea-soup-fog-driving, peter-comforting-jesus-mary-margaret, staying-dry-in-the-rain, boil-water-notice-just-unjust

---

# February 28
## Restless with suffering

 Mark 8:31-38

After college, I took a bus from Austin to Maine and started walking south. I was not in great shape. I didn't work out much. I packed way too many things. And the first part of the Southbound Appalachian Trail is climbing the 5000 foot Mt. Katahdin, then the 100 mile wilderness. It was pretty swampy when I was there in July of 2004 and it was hard. I was going like seven miles a day. I had blisters the size of nickels but I just kept going. There wasn't a turnaround.  There was no exit ramp. I started that first day with one guy whose trail name was Trail Lite, who was hiking a yo-yo which means that he had gone from Georgia up to Virginia and then he had taken a bus North to Maine in order to come south and miss winter. So he had already been hiking for like two months and was in pretty good shape. I was not in good shape when I started but after that first hostel, I was able  to find a post office and I sent a ton of my stuff home: four books, extra clothes, a guitar. My mother also had a care package waiting for me. Mom’s, they’re great.
After a month, I had finally caught up to Trail Lite and I was feeling good and I got up early before him. I had started to average 20 mile days and i was so much stronger. Maine is some of the hardest hiking on the East Coast because most of the trails are old Native American Trails that go up creeks beds.  There are no switchbacks, so it just goes straight up a mountain.
Elevation gains are intense even if they are only 3000 to 5000 feet above sea level. But as I said, I was getting stronger and I had the hardest part of the trail behind me. It was going to be smoother sailings for me.
So I was going along and then I get to this stretch called the Mahoosuc Notch. Up in New England, they call canyons notches. it's the hardest stretch of the Appalachian Trail and it's a mile that takes about an hour and a half to do because the canyon is so steep. there are so many Boulders that there's snow in the canyon year round. Here is a picture. (picture)
I wasn't expecting to go through it fast. But I had to go through the Notch in order to make it to Georgia and I was not going to give up. After starting slow, I was making pretty good time, through it, too.
And again, there's snow on the ground in those valley places in the bottom under the shadows and spots that the Sun never reaches. I wasn’t used to snow then. I hadn’t lived in Colorado or Spicewood yet where snow is so common. My pack wasn’t as heavy as it had been, but it wasn’t light. It probably weighed 40 pounds with everything in it. And so about 2/3 of the way through the notch, I was supporting my arm with a Boulder and I slipped and pop! I dislocated my shoulder. I felt it immediately.
And then I rolled over and turtled for a little bit, which meant my back was on the ground and my feet were in the air. without a functioning shoulder, I could not do much. It hurt. It was, at that point, the worst pain I’d ever experienced. I had just been talking with a guy whose trail name was Flippy and so I called out, Hey, Flippy, I think I dislocated my shoulder. Can you come in come over and help?
And he came back and I had a phone for emergencies but there was no reception. So he took the phone and tried to go find help. A couple from Canada stopped by and stayed with me and there's an even longer story about the Journey of my phone from Maine to Canada to Houston and then back to me when I was in New York.

so I was stuck in this treacherous canyon. I couldn’t really move with a dislocated shoulder and it hurt and the only book I had, because I sent the others back, was All Quiet on the Western Front, which is about trench warfare. It's not really uplifting one. I had some poems I had written down by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

They didn’t help.
About an hour with my arm out of socket, Trail Lite shows up. The pain is only manageable if I don't move anything. if I try to move, if I breathe too hard, it's really really painful.
He comes over and tells me, “you know, I've never done this before. But my dad's a doctor and I read an article.”
Okay, so normally, when I seek medical assistance, I'm a little more discriminating. I would like to have a doctor or an EMT reduce a dislocated shoulder. Right after I got back on the trail a few days later, I ran into two ER docs who were on a day hike and asked about my sling. They started talking among themselves  about what they would have done, and they didn’t get to a straight answer. At least in 2004, standard practice was to just knock a person out if the joint didn't  slip in easily. There are a few different non-medicated techniques. Most of them with similar theories. All of them with lots of pain. I did not know any of this then. I was not discriminating in my medical care. I honestly did not care. Whatever happened, if it got better, if it got worse, it did not matter as long as it would be a different pain. The pain was so numbing. It was a constant buzz throughout my body.  I was so restless with the pain. I was restless with suffering.
My friends, we are continuing our series on restlessness in this season of Lent, following the words of Augustine our hearts are restless until they rest in you, o Lord. Last week, we talked about being restless with temptation. This week, we're talking about being restless with suffering. It is one of those aspects of suffering that's rarely discussed. That is, how it makes us restless. How it makes it hard to think straight or to be reasonable in those moments. Our minds are always racing elsewhere. This happens a lot with with trauma. Trauma is often thought to be solely connected to experiences and events like wrecks or deaths or war. However, trauma is not about an event but about our body's response to an event. and so something may happen to us that we think is fine and we move on but our bodies have not moved on.
As well, physical suffering and emotional suffering are incredibly linked. We can't separate the mind from the body in the ways that so much of medical science has tried to do over the last hundred years. When we suffer emotionally, it takes an incredible drain on our body and when we suffer physically, it takes an incredible drain on our emotions and on our mind and trauma happens in both directions.
Suffering also limits the scope of our vision. We can't see clearly in the midst of suffering. It fogs our vision. Suffering is like going through one of those pea-soup fogs or driving through it where you are going so slowly because you don't know what is right in front of you. You can barely recognize what is right in front of you.
In the scripture today, Jesus describes what is going to happen to him. He says he's going to suffer many things. πολλὰ παθεῖνAnd be rejected and be killed. Peter doesn't like to hear this. He doesn’t want it to happen and Peter tries to correct Jesus like you would correct a child who's had a bad day at school and say, “Just because Mary Margaret made fun of you does not mean you're ugly? You're beautiful, Jesus.” Peter thinks he's doing the good thing. He's trying to do the good thing. He doesn't want Jesus to feel bad.
Yet Jesus rebukes Peter, but then he speaks even more strongly and says Get Behind Me Satan.Peter again misses the point. Peter is like the person who’s all dressed up when a rain storm comes and he tries as hard as he can to stay dry. It’s muddy. It is dirty. Once you realize you are going to be wet, it will be fine. But if you think you can stay dry, you are going to do everything he can.
Peter thinks that he can keep dry from suffering. Peter thinks he can keep Jesus dry from suffering, but it is not going to happen. As Jesus says earlier, the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. The power goes off on the just as well as the unjust. The boil water notice is sent to the just as well as the unjust. We are not going to be able to avoid suffering in this life. The Brokenness of suffering is a reality of this world. Some people feel it in more acute ways. This is definitely true. That doesn't mean anyone is going to get away from suffering of some kind or another.
But restlessness in suffering often takes shape in this attempt to totally avoid it. Jesus doesn't like suffering. God doesn't like suffering. The whole reason of Jesus coming is to heal the Brokenness of this world, to wipe every tear from our eyes but the path by which that happens is the road to the cross.
The point of suffering is not to learn something from it. God doesn't impose suffering upon us. This is how the world is because we were created free, but what we are left with is this, how can we respond to suffering? How can we limit the suffering we cause to others? This is where Jesus is going, when he says:
Whoever loves their soul, whoever loves their life, will lose it. If you are so fixated on keeping yourself from any harm or any change, you will cease to have a life. All love involves change of some kind. if you love somebody and you were not changed by that love, then they are just an object to you.
Life happens. Pain happens. The choice for us as individuals, as a church, as a society, is not to try and avoid pain but to stand with those who suffer, to stand with those who hurt. And when we feel strong, may we not see that strength as our own, but as God's gift for us to use in order to lift up those around us. And when we are hurting and when we are in pain, when we are sitting in our own mahoosuc notches, that we may receive care and solidarity from others.

Peter wasn't ready for what was going to happen to Jesus. Often, when we come to Faith, we're not ready for what is going to happen next. Like last week, I spoke about how temptation happens after baptism. Temptation happens after Faith. Challenges happen after faith. Faith does not erase suffering, it transforms it because we no longer suffer alone when we are a part of the body of Christ. We stand together. And when one of us is hurting, we all hurt. And when one of us is joyful, we are all able to be joyful. This solidarity is God's solution to the suffering of this world, the suffering which separates people, which isolates people.
To get back to my hiking story, it worked. My shoulder went back into the socket. Trail Lite’s technique worked the second time, but it worked. The couple from Canada stayed with me the whole time and helped me walk out of that canyon. They cried with me because of the pain they saw on my face, and they helped me as much as the other hiker who reduced the dislocation. They stood with me. They reminded me that I was not alone.

Let us stand with each other in this season of Lent. Let us step out and care for others. Let us not forget the needs of our community and let us not forget our own needs. When we live and act and worship and pray with an eye towards the needs of our neighbor, God is glorified. When we tear down each other, we are tearing down God’s kingdoms brick by brick.
Let us instead stand on the side of God. Let us stand on the side of each other. Let us heal when we can heal. Let us stop and stay with others when they need us. Let us support acts of healing. Let us care, let us hope. Let us offer peace. Let us offer rest.
In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen and Amen.


title: Restless with the Past

themes: restlessness danger-of-nostalgia salvation-by-grace grace-not-merit antinomianism rest-in-christ

text:
**Scripture:** Ephesians 2:1-10; Luke 7:41-43; Matthew 7:3
**Series:** 2021

> Fourth in the Lenten 'Restless' series, this sermon addresses restlessness with the past. Using Ephesians 2:1-10, the preacher argues that two distortions—seeing the past as too sinful or as too golden ('glory days')—both deny that God is present now. Through the parable of the two debtors, Israel's longing for Egypt, and John Wesley's journey from moralism to his Aldersgate experience of grace, he urges hearers to look at their personal and national past with clear eyes, reject moralism and antinomianism, and rest in the God who is Alpha and Omega. Like Ilsa boarding the plane in Casablanca, we let the good past go because greater things are still to come if we respond to God's grace.

**Illustrations:** casablanca-past-vs-future, hastings-film-completist, parable-two-debtors, israel-wishing-for-egypt, wesley-aldersgate-heart-warmed, wesley-denies-sarah-communion, moravians-storm-faith

---

# March 14

 Ephesians 2:1-10

Growing up, not only did I like Star Wars. I liked old movies. I loved to watch movies. I loved thinking about films how they were made,  thinking about the history of them. When I was a kid, there was an American Film Institute list put out with the top 100 films of the 20th century and there was a section at the Hastings down the street that had those movies. And so, I systematically would walk to Hastings with any money I had saved in order to rent a movie. I watched all of them at some point. I have always been a completest of sorts. One of them was Casablanca from 1942. Now, Casablanca was one of the biggest movies of the 20th century. I don't know how many people of my generation or younger have seen it, but it's a story set and filmed in World War II staring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It's about this night club in Casablanca, Morocco, run by an American. At the time, the Vichy government was nominally in charge of the area. If we do our World War II refresher course, after the Nazis invaded France through Belgium, thus completely avoiding the Maginot line which had been built in order to protect against the Germans. Well, it didn’t work. Germany occupied Paris within 10 days but, at the time, France still had a far larger active army. A week later, Marshall Pétain signed the Second Armistice at Compiègne which disbanded the Third Republic and began the neutral Vichy Government of France, centered on the Southeast of the Country, which also oversaw the colonial territories. This included French Morocco. So Vichy is nominally in charge, but the Nazis are also there. The movie center’s on Bogart’s character, Rick, who used to be a rebel. He fought in Spain and ran guns in Ethiopia, and what happens after his former girlfriend, Ilsa, arrives in Casablanca, and we have this nice flashback of their time in Paris together. But Ilsa comes with her new fiancé, Victor Laszlo, who is an important leader in the resistance. Rick and Ilsa have this moment where they're struck by the song As Time Goes By, a song that takes them back to their relationship long ago.

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by

And basically the whole movie turns on this crux of a choice between the past and the future. Should Ilsa and Rick get back together for old times sake, or should Ilsa stay with Laszlo? Should we live in a past that was good and ignore the consequences of that or should we live towards a better future when we have the opportunity to make a better future?
My friends, we are continuing our series, in the season of Lent, on restlessness. On the first Sunday of Lent, we talked about being restless with temptation. How temptation is always tempting and how it leaves us restless unless we rest in God. The next week, we talked about being restless with suffering and how suffering blinds us from seeing who we are and whose we are. Last week, we talked about being restless with foolishness, and how following the wisdom of the world leaves us restless, but through the foolishness of the cross we have peace. Today, our theme is being restless with our past, with the glory days, with those things we used to be able to do.
Most of us have an idea of the Glory Days, whether or not it was high school or college or your 20s, maybe even younger. Maybe when we were small kids and we thought, “Life was fun and enjoyable then.” We think about the glory days of our country, the glory days of our city, our community.
In Ephesians 2, Paul doesn’t speak of the past as glory days. Paul speaks of our lives before we are aware of Jesus as our lives of sin. We need to see our past both as the mistakes we have made but also what we lift up as sources of inspiration. When we hold on too tightly to the past, we miss out on the present. Paul speaks of what can happen with lives of sin and with lives of addiction and pain and hurt and mistakes. There's a parable that Jesus gives, a quick one, when he's asked about forgiveness and he says there was a man who owed 50 denarii and a man who owed 500 denarii.
And the debt collector forgave both debts, who is the more grateful?
The one who owed 500, that's the point of the parable. when we see in our lives and in our past just how much Jesus has saved us from, we hold on closer to God's love. And this doesn't mean that if you don't have a great conversion story, you're less of a Christian. I think sometimes, for those who have grown up in the church, we may feel like we have never strayed very far and it may be more challenging to see the absolute depths that God has rescued us from but that doesn't mean it's not true.
So we have these two ways of seeing the past and they both distort our present: seeing the past as so bad because of who we used to be and seeing the past as so good that it makes the present a shadow of that past.
Both of these deny the present reality that God is in our lives today. This can also happen with mountaintop experiences and powerful conversion experiences. This can happen with youth camp. It can happen with Walks to Emmaus. Those experiences are so powerful and so moving and so meaningful that it can be such a letdown to think of where we are now compared to what we felt at that moment. What I want us to be aware of is that this is a form of restlessness, that our past can give us restlessness. When we don't fully address it or come to grips with it, it can take hold of us and take us away from the highest peace of God.
So, how do we do that? How do we come to grips with our past? A major part has to be with actually thinking about it and looking back with clear eyes and not with rose colored glasses. And this form of reflection is not just important for us as individuals. I think we should look with clear eyes at the history of our country, at the history of our state, the history of the church. Often, the past we hold up as golden or idyllic really had problems with it. I mean, thinking back to the good old days goes back to ancient Rome and ancient Greece and even goes back to the Hebrew people in the wilderness after God freed them from slavery when they cry to God, “I wish I were back in Egypt. At least there, we had full bellies.”
This fixation on the past keeps them from understanding and seeing what God has opened up for them. For God, you aren't who you are because of something you did in the past. Your past doesn’t make you good or make you who you are. When we seek validation by where we've been and who we were, we miss out on the true freedom God gives us. As Paul says here in Ephesians, “for we have been saved by grace through faith. It is not of our own doing.”
We're not saved because we grew up in the church.  We are not saved because we had a powerful conversion experience.
We're not saved because we had Glory Days. We're not saved because we had days of sin. You have not earned it. I have not earned it and we don't need to earn it. Being saved by grace doesn't mean we should go on sinning. Later, in a different letter, Paul is asked, “if I have been saved, should I just keep on sinning?” He says, “By no means.” This is called antinomianism. This is the belief that there is no natural law or way of life, but the way of life we are called to is a response to God’s grace and God’s love. Not a response to our past or our history, not a response to the glory days, not as a response to seeing an old girlfriend or an old boyfriend not as a response to getting antsy with a midlife crisis or quarter life crisis or a three quarter life crisis. It is grace all the way down.
John Wesley the founder of methodism had a very strict idea of faith and salvation early in his life. There was a Christian way and a heathen way and they were very different. He did some good in that time. He started the holy club with his brother and his brother's friends. They asked each other, “how is it with your soul?” They tried be holy and read books on holiness, but it wasn't enough. Wesley went to Georgia and tried to convert the Native Americans. It did not work. He tried to get married. It did not work. He was petty and vindictive in that, too. As he was trying to be holy, John Wesley's early life mimics a lot of the history of the church. There has been this restlessness with the past that often leads the church to practice the sin of moralism. What I mean by the sin of moralism is fixating so much on the actions and deeds of others that we ignore God's work in our life and in their life. Jesus speaks directly to the sin of moralism when he says, “don’t look for the speck in your neighbors eye until you address the log in your own eye.” John Wesley practiced the sin of moralism when he refused communion to his former fiancee Sarah Hopkey, who was tired of waiting for him and got engaged to another guy and John Wesley was upset with that and kind of passive-aggressively, he just denied her communion. He was living in the past and not willing to let Sarah live in her present.
On his journey to the Americas, Wesley had met some Moravians, these German pietists. He was very impressed by them. On that ship, there was a great storm and the ship bounced up and down. It was hard and Wesley was scared. The Moravians were not. They prayed together and sang together during the storm.
So when Wesley came back to England and came back to London, he started to go to meetings of the Moravians on top of his other duties. One night in London, he went to evening prayer at St. Paul's Cathedral, evensong, the Anglican Vespers service. And after that service, he went to a prayer meeting near Aldersgate Road in London. At the meeting, there was a reading from Martin Luther's preface to the letter to the Romans and something happened. Wesley writes about this in his journal and says: I felt my heart strangely warmed, that I, even I, was loved by God. That day, for Wesley, was a transformation of faith in him. A transformation that transitions him from faith as duty to faith as grace. From faith as who we are and what we've done to faith as who God is and what God has done for us.
The only antidote for being restless with our past is resting in the God who is our present and our future. The God who was with us in our past even when we weren’t aware. The God who is Alpha and Omega. It is for us to see rightly that God has been with us all along. That God is with us now and that our future does not lie in ourselves or our deeds or even our great retirements, but in the presence of the Living God. That is where peace is found.
And so, my brothers and sisters, I encourage you, in this season of Lent, to hold on to your past for as much as you see God in it. To hold on to your present, to hold on to your future as much as you see God in it. To see grace all the way down.
In Casablanca, Ilsa got on that plane. Rick didn't stop her. The past was good in itself. It did not need to be prolonged. There were greater things than the glory days. For us, in this church, there are greater things to come. For our city, for our nation, for our world, there are greater things to come. If we are willing to let God lead us and respond to God's grace. May we receive God's peace this day. In the name of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Restless

themes: temptation restlessness spiritual-discipline fasting baptism accountability

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 1:9-15; Luke 4:1-13; Matthew 4:1-11; Genesis 4:9
**Series:** 2021

> Opening a Lenten series on restlessness, the preacher uses Augustine's 'restless until we rest in you' and Mark 1:9-15 (with the Matthew/Luke temptation accounts) to argue that temptation follows baptism, requires faith, and is a restless longing for a false good in place of the true good. He insists temptation must genuinely be tempting and that Jesus' temptations were about power, not sex or food. The remedy is forming new Spirit-infused habits (prayer, generosity, service, accountability) at Bee Creek UMC, turning values into lived practice as a way to rest in God's peace during Lent.

**Illustrations:** barber-dentist-chair, texas-freeze-generator, augustine-restless-heart, backyard-barbecue-temptation, chocolate-cake-chips-salsa, road-bike-garage, bee-creek-mission-values, st-lukes-habits-not-values, methodist-class-meetings

---

# February 21
## Restless
Mark 1:9-15

When I was growing up, I did not like to get haircuts. It was never a plan of mine. It was never something that I thought was important or that I needed to do. I didn't like sitting in the chair. I wanted to move. it was hard for me to sit still. Barber’s just kept on telling me to sit still and I didn't want to sit still.
Barbers and dentists always tell you to sit still. I was like, “I don't want to sit still. I don't need this thing. I could be playing. I could be running. I could be jumping. I could be reading. I could be doing all sorts of things and not this thing that I don't even like. And I'm just going to have to get another one in a month. The dentist is just going to tell me that I have a cavity and they will want to drill it. I won't feel anything. It's just gonna hurt all around. I would rather be doing other things. I was Restless. I was busy. I needed to move around. Now, as the father of two young boys, I see the busyness of boys in a different way. I'm more appreciative of my own parents and their patience with me, but I can still relate to the restlessness.

As well, this past week, we have all been restless and frozen. Even if you had power and water the whole time, the effect of frozen people around you leads to restlessness. I may be tempted to self-doubt thinking, “Should have bought that generator.” I may be tempted to pride thinking, “Glad I bought the generator. “

My brothers and sisters, in this season of Lent, we are starting a new series on restlessness. Restlessness has a deep theological basis. St. Augustine prays to God, we are restless, Oh Lord, until we rest in you. Our goal in life is peace with God.

Our goal is to rest in the peace of God, that peace of what is good and true and beautiful. We believe that true peace has been revealed in the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that we are seeking God with our lives, but there is a lot of restlessness in this world. Today, we’re going to talk about being restless with temptation. Temptation is a tricky thing to preach about. One of the things we all know understand but don't really like to talk about. It’s not really a common Backyard Barbecue conversation starter. You know, “Hey Joe, how's it going? Yeah, I was tempted this week, let me tell you about it.” It's much too intimate a conversation. But there's a curious way that in American culture, especially, Temptation has maintained kind of a secular use, but it's only with regards to things like sexuality or food. Otherwise, there's not a lot of talk of Temptation.
But before I get to those fun topics, we need to speak about this restlessness itself and articulate precisely what is going on. The reason why I was restless in the barber's chair or dentist because I was thinking of other things I could do. My mind was in a place and I was like, “I could be there.” Frozen, we thought of thawed places. Or those temptations to pride or self-doubt. The temptation to think about what we deserve as opposed to the reality facing the hardest hit people in our community. It is thoughts of other places and possibilities that make us restless for where we are.
So let’s get back to temptation. You are never tempted unless you have faith. We need to understand this as a reality. There is no temptation apart from faith. There are people tempted outside of the church, but temptation has to do with believing in something that is true and good and then desiring to act beyond the good and true, seeking a false good or false truth. Temptation is a response to perceiving the actual good of love. So for instance, my temptation as a child. I was tempted at the dentist or the barber to lie and connive to get out of being there, to do whatever it took to not have to sit in that chair. The temptation of the freeze was to ignore my family or responsibility. It was to ignore my neighbor and say to Go, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” For Jesus, temptation comes after baptism. We see this in the passage from Mark. Temptation does not proceed baptism, it takes place after. We have to know the good in order to be tempted away from it.

But like I said earlier, society often only uses temptation around the language of sex or food. These are not the temptations that Jesus suffers. Mark doesn't go into it, but in both Matthew and Luke, we're given three great temptations.
One of them has to do with food. I mean Jesus has been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. He is quite hungry. He is quite parched. Some may think that 40 days of fasting would put Jesus in a position of weakness, but I think that's a very deficient idea of what fasting is. Fasting doesn't weaken us but strengthen us because we rely more on God.
I think that Jesus was at his spiritually strongest after forty days of fasting. And the temptations he is confronted with are not about sex but power.
In Luke, the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”
Temptation points directly to the Exodus and how God offered Manna in the wilderness to the Hebrew people. It points to God’s power but it is a distortion of that power. It is a false good trying to replace a good. The false good of fleeing the dental chair replacing the good of taking care of my teeth.
Next, The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

Finally, “And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’””

The Temptations of Jesus are not the same as our temptations. This is so important.Something that has helped me so much in pastoral Ministry is what seems like an obvious phrase, but it's so important to say: temptation must be tempting. If it's not tempting for you, it’s not a temptation.
We can illustrate this with food, though, again, we should remember that temptation is not limited to food. For some people, chocolate cake may be something that makes it hard to control your appetites around when you see it. That is not the case for me. It is more like chips and salsa is harder for me to control my appetites. So the question before anything else has to be this realization that once we receive the spirit of God and we receive baptism or conversion. Once we reclaim God's mercy, once we step forward to say “I am a child of God.”  And if that has happened to you, praise God! If that has not happened to you yet, I pray for you and offer you an opportunity that you can, this day, step forward as a child of God.

Once this connection with God has happened, temptation may come swiftly. For Jesus, after the baptism, the heavens are torn open and the spirit descends like a dove and a voice as hurt saying this is my child whom I'm well pleased. That same spirit pulls Jesus into the wilderness. It happens swiftly. We don't need to go to the wilderness, the modern world is tempting enough. I mean, my home turned into the wilderness last week. We built fires and used camp stoves. But no matter where you are, temptation is going to happen. There are going to be times when your heart is restless, when you know what you should do, when you know what is good, when you know where you should go, but see you may be like that kid in the dentist chair fidgeting and moving wanting to just run around for a minute, not thinking of the consequences.
Augustine says our hearts are restless unless they Rest In You, O Lord. We have to teach our souls and our bodies to rest in God in this world. It's not just going to happen. We need habits of Faith to enter into the Peace of Christ the passes all understanding.
About 20 years ago, There was a push for churches to have mission statements and Mission Vision and values statements. It was this kind of merging church structure and corporate governance practices.
We have a good mission statement at Bee Creek
Bee Creek UMC is a community of imperfect people who are transformed by God's perfect love and change the world together. We seek each week, to be our true selves and allow others to do the same. We long for God's love to transform and shape us. And, we give of our time and money to restore and bring hope in our community and around the world.

We have some great values.
We believe that children matter.
We believe that youth lead.
We believe in authentic worship.
We believe we all need good friends.
We believe we can change the world together.

I was on a conference call with some clergy few weeks ago with a pastor at St Luke’s in Houston. He was talking about how their Church doesn't have a values statements, they have habits. Habits are values put into action. And I want us as a church to develop our own explicit habits or own explicit values put into action. And I think it connects deeply with this text and with the season of Lent. What are the habits that we have as a church?
Habits are actions that are infused by the spirit. So it's not just about us being left to ourselves. Prayer is a habit you practice. You have to practice prayer. You can’t just put prayer away in your garage like that road bike you bought five years ago because you thought you would really get into road biking but you only took out twice. You have to grease those gears and get out on the road.
Generosity is a habit. It’s a practice. Generosity is not something you wake up one day and have. We practice and build up generosity as a response to God’s grace. Service is a habit. And on and on. We need new happens to replace old habits. I want this to be a long conversation at Bee Creek about what are habits together are going to be.

We're going to need new habits in this new world that is taking place around us. We need the best ways to fight temptation. Whatever temptations you are facing in your life, the best way to fight the restlessness of temptation is to form a new habit. If there is a place that you go that you feel tempted, try not to go there as often. You don’t have to walk by the chocolate cake store every day. You can change your pattern. Build a team of accountability. Part of the Class Meeting, the book study that Pastor Matt is about to lead, is that the early methodists practiced transformational small groups to help each other in faith.
What are your habits that you can adopt in this new season that bring you hope in God? What is a habit that you can step into? I want you to pray about it because it's going to be different for each of us. And if you would like to have a further conversation about this, I would love to have that conversation on the phone or zoom or on a walk. I'd love to go on a walk with you and talk about who you are who God has made you to be and what are some habits and responses that you could put into life and lent is a wonderful chance to do that to step forward in faith. Take a new step towards God. Let us commit to doing that together. Let us do that as a church. Let us do that as individuals in the name of the Father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.