title: Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together

themes: creatio-ex-nihilo trinity logos-christology light-and-darkness faith-and-science new-creation

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 1:1-5; John 1:1-5; Genesis 12; Psalm 90:4
**Series:** Creation

> Opening a multi-week series reading Genesis 1 and John 1 together, this sermon argues that creatio ex nihilo—God making everything from nothing—is central to Christian faith, distinct from mere creation-care. It traces the Trinity within the act of creation (the Father speaks, the Son is the spoken Word/logos, the Spirit/ruach is the breath that becomes reality), addresses the Hebrew nuance of bereshit and stylistic differences between Genesis 1 and 2, and reconciles the biblical account with science, noting the Big Bang reinforces rather than contradicts creation and that the 'days' need not be 24-hour periods. It closes on light as singular and grounded in Christ: all light exists through Jesus the Word, who did not abandon creation as a watchmaker but humbled himself to incarnation, cross, and resurrection, offering hearers a place in the new creation.

**Illustrations:** genesis-style-shakespeare-tiktok, mark-too-many-ands, hubble-lemaitre-expanding-universe, carlsbad-caverns-total-darkness, spotlight-on-stage, divine-watchmaker, church-in-the-50s

---

# September 10, 2023
## Genesis 1:1-5
## John 1:1-5

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. - Genesis 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. John 1:1-5

## Introduction

 Why is there something rather than nothing? What does it mean that God created everything from nothing?
In the Jewish faith, creation has an importance, but the more important section of Genesis is found in chapter 12, when Abraham is called to go from Ur of the Chaldees to the Holy Land and the people of God are established.
But for Christians, for 2000 years, the very beginning has been an essential aspect of the faith. Genesis 1-2 is the part of the bible with the most biblical commentaries. Creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing, is the central Christian understanding of creation. It points to the power of God to create as well as the power of God to save God’s creation.

Today, in a lot of churches, creation can be used to mean the lived environment. Creation-care is another way to talk about protecting the earth, but creation goes deeper than that.

How should we understand creation? How should we understand Jesus's part in creation? and how does it really affect our lives today? Over the next few weeks, I'm gonna be going slowly through the Genesis chapter one and the gospel of John chapter one together to look at the importance of creation for any theology or doctrine of God, any understanding of right and wrong, as well as any understanding of salvation and our future with God.
## Hebrew
Hebrew is a complicated language. I'm not very good at Hebrew. I’ve tried. It is not my strength. I'm much more comfortable in Greek. The language of Genesis !, though is simpler than a lot of the other sections of the Old Testament. I can tell the difference in style between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 because I can read Genesis 1 and I can't read Genesis 2. When we translate the uniqueness of language is often flattened out.
The best example of this is not found in Genesis but in the Gospel of Mark. A literal translation of Mark would have three times as many “ands” in it. Mark loves to say, and they did this, and they did this. and immediately they left and did this. English translators attempt to reduce redundancy, which takes away from the character of the text.

The same things are going on in Genesis 1 and 2

The stylistic differences between Genesis one and two are almost impossible to portray. It is as if Genesis 1 is written in the language of Shakespeare and Genesis 2 is a set of tik tok reels.

Genesis 1 begins with two words in Hebrew bə-rê-šîṯ ba-ra. What is unique about them in Hebrew is that there is not a definite article. It doesn't say in Hebrew, in the beginning, a more accurate direct transaction would be in a beginning. Early Jewish rabbis made a big deal about this and some postulated that it's a sign that there were multiple creations and that this was the creation that stuck. There's something beautiful and complex going on here, something old.
For much of Christian history, what was of central importance in the Genesis narrative was that God creating everything from nothing. There's emptiness and void.  That's all there is. There was an absence. There was no material reality. There was an absence of reality. God existed separate from this material reality. We believe that God is eternal but God is not material. God is not an object in the created universe like you or I or the Sun and the moon. Before creation, there was this absence of material reality.
And then God said, let there be light. And there was light. And then God said, this is important. It is also one of the reasons why we, we are reading Genesis 1 with John 1.
John 1 begins in poetic fashion. In the beginning was the word And the word was with God. And the word was God.

How did creation happen? How did the first act of creation take place? God spoke! The speech of God. The logos of God is the Son of God.
This is super deep. I want to just say it again. The way in which creation came into being was the speaking of God, the Father. That act of speaking was the medium of God, the Son. And what was spoken into material reality was the Spirit, the ruach of God and Hebrew, the breath of God.
We have the full Trinity here. God the Father speaks. God the Son is the medium and message of what is spoken. God the Holy Spirit is the voice which comes from the Father and the Son into the reality that now exists.

## Creation

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1 is a title as much as a declaration. The heavens aren't created in Genesis 1:1. It describes what is about to happen. Because then we're back to darkness. We're back to the void.
In the beginning, God created the heavens of the earth.
In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things came into being through him. And without him, not one thing came into being. This into-being-ness is a very Greek concept. You don't find it as much in Hebrew.
Later, Christians connected John's language of being with pagan philosophers like Plato and Socrates and Aristotle.
The focus here is not on the philosophy, but this binary transformation that takes place in creation.
There's nothing. And then there's something. How did we get something from nothing? The answer to that question is God. Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer to that question is God.
## Biblical Account of Creation
I believe it is important at this point to say a few words about the biblical account of creation versus secular scientific accounts of the universe and the cosmos.
For a long time, the presumed understanding of the universe was that it was a steady state. It had always been and it would always be. This goes back to the Greeks. For a long time, there was no way to disprove this. The universe was there. There was no reason to think it hadn't always been there. We could look at the time on earth and the timing of different things and the way matter decays, the way the energy is transferred.

Christians, for many centuries, were heavily influenced by Aristotle. This was true even into the last century. In the midst of that, in the 1930s, two different astronomers came to a realization about the universe. Edwin Hubble was an American working out of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, and Georges LeMaitre, was a Belgian priest and astronomer. Both came to a realization and found observational data to back up this realization that the universe was expanding.
For the universe to be expanding, there had to be a point from which it had expanded. Thus was born the theory of the Big Bang. The Big Bang is not a theory about creation, but about history, about the hard edge of history before which nothing can be observed. All observational data is limited by the Big Bang. Even the most secular of scientists would claim that speculation about what happened before the Big Bang is purely just speculation. The Big Bang does not contradict the Christian Bible. In fact, it in many ways reinforces a Christian understanding of creation. The parts of Genesis that people get hung up on the most have to do with the days of creation.
For a long time, the church was very focused on the timeframe of creation. There are a lot of reasons for this. Some had to do with different theologies of ages or epochs or dispensations under which we lived.
Now, a day is a single rotation of the Earth, right? We, we can be agreed with that. It's pretty universal around the world. How we measure the day is different, but that a day is one time around is not disputed. Whether or not you're measuring from sunset to sunset, sunrise to sunrise, midnight to midnight, it's still all the way around about 24 hours.
When we look at the Genesis account, you have the first day: there was light and there was dark, but there wasn't a planet rotating. Waters weren't separated from land: how can you measure a day without the sun?

On top of that, in the Book of Psalms, the psalmist says, a thousand years are like a day to God. A thousand years. Why not a million years? Why not a billion years?

All that to say that the biblical account we are reading in Genesis is not contradicted by scientific study. They are two methods of looking at same thing.

We'll talk about different aspects of creation over the next few weeks, from the creation of the sun and the moon to the animals, the fish, the birds, and people.
But we start with the out-of-nothingness. And ultimately what it matters to us today is how it shows us the power of God, the love of God, the unity of God and the purpose of God. The power of God in creating something from nothing. We see the love of God in that we see God creating something that is not God. God has no need for creation, yet decides to create it. This gift, this super abundant gift, is only made out of love.

We then get light, which will be one of the guiding principles throughout creation and all of existence. God speaks light into existence, but there is no sun at this time.

There are very few times in our lives when we are in total darkness. There's usually a little bit of light. The only time I can remember was in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, on a tour. The guides told us to prepare for a moment, and then they turned off all the lights in the cave. This was before cell phones, so nobody was cheating. There were no sources of light. It was dark. I could not see my hand in front of my face.
I think it's interesting how so often we translate dark for darkness. If something is dark, it's more about pigment. Darkness is the absence of light. The Bible isn’t interested in colors like white and black, but the presence of light and the absence of light.

Light plays an important part in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the gospel of John, we have, Jesus is the light of the world.
Now, there's a few ways to read this. One is that he's a light among other lights, but that's not what John is going for.
Light is singular. There's only one light. There's only one source of light.
All light exists because of Jesus. This is the radical Christian claim of creation. It's not that, you know, the world came about a long time ago, and there's a God who does some good things for us, does some bad things for us, here and there, but in that act of creating light, it was Jesus the Word, and in all subsequent light, it is Jesus.

As we participate in the light, we participate in Jesus. As we avoid the light, we avoid Jesus.

Light will stay central to how we understand creation. We all respond to the light differently. If you are up on stage somewhere, some of you love the spotlight, others are afraid of it.

God gives us the grace to be in the light because the source of all creation didn’t leave creation alone as a divine watchmaker. Our source saw the brokenness of the world, humbled himself to being born a baby. He grew up as one of us, teaching and healing and calling us to the kingdom of God. Then he continued to humble himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. And then three days later rise again, to defeat death and show us the first fruits of a new creation without death and darkness will look like.

God offers you a chance this day to be a part of this new creation. It doesn’t look like the old one. It doesn’t look like church in the 50s. It looks like a life boldly offered to others through grace. Not on our own strength, but because we let the strength of the God of all creation give us light.

Receive that light. Receive that boldness.
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, thank you for the amazing gift of creation which guides this day. Help us to receive your true light and may we shine your light in the darkness through our love. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


site: sermons

title: Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: covenant-umc

series: Creation

themes: creation idolatry baptism stewardship patience-as-faith holy-spirit

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 1:6-13; John 1:6-9; Exodus 32; Acts 8:9-24
**Series:** Creation

> Preaching from Genesis 1:6-13 and John 1:6-9, the sermon argues that creation proceeds by distinctions (light/dark, sky/sea, sea/land, living/non-living) and that the deepest distinction is between message and messenger: Jesus is the light and the message, while John the Baptist, the Bible, holy people, and the church are messengers who point to him. Confusing the two is idolatry, illustrated by the Golden Calf, Simon the magician, and Calvin's 'idol factory' heart; idolatry's great enemy is patience, a fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is fully God and present with us without being us (panentheism, not pantheism). The sermon turns to baptism's waters of creation and to stewardship, previewing Covenant UMC's stewardship campaign and a congregational conversation, and closes with a Dayenu meditation on God's overflowing generosity from creation through cross, resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit.

**Illustrations:** office-same-picture-meme, angels-on-a-pin, heartache-vs-heart-attack, maim-shmaim-word-play, vestige-footprints, golden-calf, calvin-idol-factory, simon-magus, umc-baptism-liturgy-chaos, passover-dayenu

---

# September 17, 2023
## Genesis 1:6-13
## John 1:6-9

“And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”
Genesis 1:6-13 NRSV

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”
John 1:6-9 NRSV

Office meme

Corporate needs you to tell the difference between these two pictures.

They’re the same picture.

Distinctions are really important in life.

Distinctions were really important at creation

There's light and there's darkness, and they are separated. There is sky and water, and they are separated. Creation takes place along these lines of distinction, distinguishing between two forms.
Creation does not take place with an idea of radical building, but the use of distinctions; there's a logic to what God is doing.
We go from the nothingness to light and darkness. What are the sources of light and darkness?
We know from John that it is Jesus. The word is the source of light. In these moments of creation, before the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky, the light which shown in the darkness was Jesus.
This is the same light that's shown in John the Baptist, when we read this passage from the gospel of John. He wasn't the light, but he came to testify to the light, a true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world.
The light which was there from the very beginning was coming in a different Way.
So in this, in this beginning, in this creation where Jesus is the source of light in the universe, first we have a distinction between the waters above and the waters below. The word for water in Hebrew is Maim, and the word for sky is sh’maim. That is sky, is the word got water with a prefix signifying up or above. The word for sky is waters above. When you stand on the beach and look out over a sea, that makes perfect sense.

And then we have a distinction on the third day between water and land. The third day also offers us the first forms of life: vegetation.

We have a lot of distinctions. The distinction between the sky and the sea. The distinction between the sea and the land. The distinction between animate and inanimate, that's what we have with the vegetation.
It's the first animate objects or it's the first living things, living and non-living. We have it all. We have a lot of distinctions that are made. And then we have in John this distinction between John the Baptist and Jesus, the word of God, which ultimately comes down to a distinction between message and messenger.
Jesus is the message. Jesus is the content of the good news. The gospel.
John is the messenger. He is not the word, he's not the light, but he shows others to the light. This can be confusing.

Philosophers and theologians talk about distinctions in exhausting ways that don’t seem to matter. A classic question of medieval philosophy was how many angels could dance on the head of a pin? It seems like the most useless questions imaginable, at a first glance. The issue, though, is not the amount, but whether angels are material or non-material beings. Can angels be present around us and not follow the laws of material reality, or are they just hidden and we will bump into them or do they even exist? All of these interesting thoughts come out of this seemingly absurd question about dancing angels.

Another philosophical distinction that seems empty at first is between pantheism and Panentheism. There is a one-syllable distinction that makes a big difference. There are other words like this: heartache and heart attack. You know, there's only a one syllable difference between heartache and heart attack. Yep. There is a major difference. There's a one syllable difference between pantheism and pantheism, but there's a major reality of difference. Pantheism is that God is everywhere. Trees=God, mice=God, birds=God pools, God, okay, this is pantheism.

Panentheism is about the presence of God. God is in the trees. God is in the birds. God is present but not equivalent to creation.
There's a distinction that matters. We don't worship creation. We worship the God who created everything. We see evidence in creation. Vestiges in creation. Vestige is this great Latin word that means footprints. You see footprints of God in creation, but God is not creation. With John the Baptist, we see vestiges of the Good News of Jesus Christ, but John the Baptist is not Jesus Christ. With holy people that we have known, we see evidence of Jesus, but they're not the same as Jesus. They aren't who we worship. They point, they testify to God and God is present with him.
In a similar way, the Bible is a messenger of Jesus, it is not Jesus. If we don’t have the messenger, we don’t have Jesus, but the messenger is not Jesus.

This is ultimately what happened with the Golden Calf during the Exodus from Egypt. Moses was on the mountaintop and the people wanted a god to worship. They wanted an object to look at it. They didn’t care what it was. They wanted to See the message, not just hear it. So Aaron made the calf. They were impatient, so they began to worship the messenger and not the message. This is what idolatry does. It takes something good, and then twists and distorts it. In the case of the golden calf, it was the desire of the people to follow God, which is good on its own. But they didn’t want to wait for Moses to come down the mountain, so they had Aaron form his own God.

John Calvin called the human heart an idol factory. Idolatry is not a question of worship but attention. Religious devotion is about our attention. What are we attending? Who are we attending? This attention can go in a million different directions and we can create idols like sacred cows. Our world today is not anymore idolatrous than previous generations, there is simply an easier way to find idols.

As long as there has been a Christian faith, there have been people who turn truth about God into idols. In the book of acts, Simon the magician saw the apostles healing and he wanted to learn their secrets so that he could exploit them and make a profit. Churches and businesses and politicians and rulers have exploited the church and the good of Jesus Christ for their own ends from the beginning. They have sold people idolatry and not truth. Good-hearted people have been deceived by charlatans again and again.

I say that to remind us that there is no space safe from the temptation to idolatry.

The great enemy of idolatry, however, is patience. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit for a reason. The Holy Spirit both gives us patience and encourages us to be patient by faith. We don’t need to rush to the next thing because we have been given faith.

The Holy Spirit is with us when we cannot see it because the Holy Spirit is not a created reality. The Holy Spirit is fully God and is fully present with us. This is the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is with us, but it isn't us. It is an important distinction to make.

In the baptism liturgy of the United Methodist Church, we look back to the waters of creation, the centrality of waters.
Eternal Father,
When nothing existed but chaos,
you swept across the dark waters
and brought forth light.

And when we read this passage from Genesis slowly, we see how out of waters everything  came, all existence is that all life came from the waters. There was water and sky and nothing else.
Baptism offers us a distinction, a distinction between outside the kingdom of heaven and inside the kingdom of heaven. Now, the love and power of God on someone's life is not dependent on baptism or on the church.
The church is a tool for God. Baptism is a tool, it is not the only way God acts. Baptism is a gift beyond anything else. It is a gift to offer the waters of life to a child, to a teen, to a grownup, to offer the waters of life, to claim the power of God, to claim the forgiveness of sins, to claim the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting through these waters.
Baptism is not an end, but a beginning, a beginning of new life in Christ. And that beginning can take place when you're one month old or 101 years old. We all have to begin again.
In Christ, there is a distinction to be made with this language of gift and this language of creation. There's another important word that comes in: the language of stewardship.
We're stewards of our gifts, caretakers of them. God calls us to be caretakers of what God has given us. Do not waste the gifts that God has given you.
This is true for all creation, for all the waters and vegetation and animals and people to be stewards. It's also true for our own lives, for our own resources to be stewards, caretakers of what God has given us and for our church, for Covenant to be a steward of what God has given us, to not be wasteful of the gifts, to look rightly and care for the gifts we have been given.
Sometimes that means investing in the gifts we have been given.
In a few weeks, we're gonna talk more directly about a stewardship campaign for Covenant United Methodist Church, ways of supporting the church for the next year. Ways of participating in the awesome generosity of God. Next week we're going to have a church conversation after this service to talk about where we are as a church, what has happened during this pastoral transition. What I've learned through the cottage meetings, about the opportunities we have and the challenges we have. Throughout, I want us to hold on to this grace God gives us in creation. This grace of stewardship, of care, care for what has been given that we see most clearly throughout creation, the care and love and generosity of God.

In the classic Passover Seder, there's a section called Dayenu, which in Hebrew, means it would've been enough. And it goes through the Exodus story part by part.

>If He had brought us out of Egypt, it would have been enough.
If He had executed justice upon the Egyptians, it would have been enough.
If He had split the sea for us, it would have been enough.
If He had fed us manna, it would have been enough.

If God had done such and such, it would have been enough. I think Dayenu also works for creation. And we'll continue this spirit of Dayenu throughout Genesis 1.

- If God had created, had separated the sky from the sea, it would've been enough.
- If God had separated the sea from the land, it would've been enough.
- If God had separated the living from the non-living, it would have been enough.
Yet God did more and more and more to the point of creating all of us. And yet, God did more beyond creation of seeing the brokenness and sending his son Jesus Christ. And God did more, by offering Jesus for us, for our life and our salvation. And God did more to the point of death on the cross. And God did more to the point of resurrection. And God did more to the point of sending the Holy Spirit to be with us, not to replace us, but to be with us. Not to be equivalent to us but to be present with us, fully. The God of all creation is not equal to creation but present in creation because God is three-in-one. The Trinity shows us how the Holy Spirit with us is fully God, not partially God, not a messenger of God, but all God. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, Thank you for your great gift of creation that offers us light and air and life itself. We thank you for not leaving us alone in our brokenness but sending Jesus, your son, to give us new life in your kingdom. Help us to receive your patience so we don’t fall into the temptation but boldly live a life of love.

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: Do Or Do Not

series: One offs

themes: parable-of-the-talents faith-over-fear character-of-god suffering-servant stewardship fear-of-the-lord harrowing-of-hell

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 25:14-30; Psalm 123:1-4; Job 38:4-5; 1 Peter 3:18-19
**Series:** One offs

> A sermon on the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) arguing it is not about investment strategy but about the character of God and whether we trust him. The faithful servants act out of freedom and abundance; the third buries his talent out of fear, viewing God as a petty tyrant rather than a friend. Distinguishing fear-as-respect (Proverbs, Job's whirlwind, respecting a mountain) from fear-as-insecurity, Pruitt identifies Jesus as the truly faithful servant who turns five talents into five more, yet who also took the place of the faithless servant cast into outer darkness. Via 1 Peter 3 and Holy Saturday's harrowing of hell, even our failure and fear are redeemed, so we are freed to use our talents unafraid. Title from Yoda: do or do not, there is no try.

**Illustrations:** hundred-thousand-windfall, talent-word-etymology, investment-banker-take-risk, respecting-the-mountain, jesus-worldly-failure-nazareth, yoda-do-or-do-not

---

# November 19
## Do Or Do Not

To you I lift up my eyes,
    O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants
    look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
    to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
    until he has mercy upon us.
Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
    for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Our soul has had more than its fill
    of the scorn of those who are at ease,
    of the contempt of the proud. - Psalm 123

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. At once the one who had received the five talents went off and traded with them and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Matthew 25:14-30

If tomorrow, your boss or your fund manager or somebody else gave you $100,000, no strings attached, what would you do with it? Once we get past the shock, I think we all might look at it in a different way. Some of us would use it to pay down our debt. Others might pay for a vacation. Others might put it into an investment. What would you do if outta the blue you just received this great gift?
I think there's two general directions you can go with it. One is the direction of freedom, I can do what I want. The other, the direction of insecurity: I hope I don't mess up what I do because it won't happen again.

This is basically what happens with the parable of the talents. A talent is a large amount of silver and is a significant amount of money, between 80 and 100 pounds of silver, or 6,000 denarii, and could be worth around $100,000 or more in today’s money. 1 denarii was the basic wage for a 6 hour work day for a laborer. Servants do not receive talents. It is not a method of payment for servants. It is more like the currency you use to purchase homes.

So we have this parable where three servants receive down payments for homes or even the full cash value of some homes. They don’t receive an equal amount. One receives 5 talents, another two, another one. Two of the servants, though, act out of freedom. The other acts out of insecurity, fear. Fear about the consequences of what would happen if they make a mistake.

They all three received a gift. For now, let us focus on the servant who turned five talents into five more and the one who came back with only the one talent that he was given, we'll come back to the middle one later. He is important, too.

The one who turned the one talent into five talents saw the gift as abundance. He traded with them and made five more. May be housing prices in the middle east were going up and he bought low and sold high. It doesn’t really matter. God isn’t interested in the methods of investments.
The one who turned the one talent into one talent, just buried it. He saw the gift in terms of scarcity and fear. He thought about the giver and assumed that there must be a catch, and he didn't wanna lose what he had. He ended up losing all that he had in the end. He was cast into the outer darkness, with the weeping and gnashing of teeth. He was so afraid of losing the talent that he ended up losing so much more.

The one who made five more talents trusted the giver and bore fruit abundantly.
I think it's fairly ironic, in the English language, how the word talent from this parable became the word talent we use today in common English. That is a very talented person or talented singer, or a talented football player.
It originally was a term for a significant amount of money, and over time became translated into a term for a physical or mental gift of an attribute. A talent is a gift you have been given. We think about it as a genetic gift, an attribute that you have that others may not have.
In the same level, how do you use your talents? How do you not bury them?
I think if you're an investment banker and a Christian, this is probably your favorite verse in the whole Bible. You gotta take risk. You gotta take risk, baby. The one who takes the risk, bears the fruit. The one who does not, who buries the risk ignores it, just buys a CD and moves on. They do not. However, when we read the parable in the context of the whole chapter and the whole gospel, something else emerges.

Matthew 25 is a unique series of parables. It covers a lot of human existence. Last week we had the parable of the 10 bridesmaids, the five who got oil and were ready, and the five who didn’t. Today, we have the parable and the talents. The wise servant used their talent, and the foolish servant ho didn’t.
Next week we have the parable of the goats and the sheep of the coming of the son of man. It's Christ the king Sunday next week.

Where is Christ in this parable? Last week, he was the bridegroom that the brides were waiting for. Christ is the son of man in the parable of the Goats and the sheep, the one who is coming? Where is Christ here? Is he the master? is he the servant?

What if this isn't a parable about investment strategies in the Roman governed Palestine? What if it is about Jesus? What if Jesus is the good and faithful servant? Jesus is the one who turns the five talents into five more.
In many ways, it's much more of a choice between the next two servants. We have the servant who turned two talents into two, or the servant who had one talent buried it and returned one talent. Margins are very small here.
Margins are very small. But I think we need to read this parable as we read the other parables in Matthew 25 as a call towards following Jesus. It isn't a call towards investment. It isn't a call towards acting just to act, spending just to spend, using our talent just to use our talent, but living as Jesus lives, we see the example. We see the five talent turned to five. We see the words, “well done, good and faithful servant”, and that we can be trusted by God and that we can trust God in how we live and how we act in response to God's promise and God's love. It is a question of faith.
How much faith do we put in God? Is God the giver of life of divine justice, or is God someone so scary that we need to hide our gifts because in case someone steals it, 'cause we know if someone steals it, then God will be mad at us. Is our God a tyrant or a friend? Is our God big and powerful and far away, constantly judging us, telling us if we're good enough, being really passive aggressive, or is our God nearer to us than our breath, meeting us where we are, and also telling us that we can do more.
What the Good News of Jesus Christ shows us is that God is the latter.God is not finished with us, but God is not distant from us. God is not distant from you. You are not alone.
Viewing God with fear can make us feel alone, as if we're isolated. And we should be clear that there are multiple types of fear. Proverbs says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. There is an important sense that fear is a term of respect. Wisdom is knowing the extent of God’s power. Wisdom is not found in an assumption that God will act unjustly towards me.

When I take my kids climbing in mountains, I drill into them the importance of respecting the mountain. FeaRing the mountain. Fearing what a mountain is capable of. Don’t get cocky with a mountain because the mountain is going to win.
In Job, God speaks from the whirlwind and says to Job, Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?” Job 38:4-5 ESV

The fear of the Lord here is respect.

This language of fear and respect is very different from a fear of snakes or spiders or burglars. This latter fear is more about self-protection against irrational agents. It is not about respect but insecurity.  The third servant did not fear God as a mountain or the whirlwind or the creator, but as a petty thief who would take back what had been given.

Ultimately, this parable of the talents is about how we see the character of God. Is God for us or against us? If God is for us, we should not fear in using our talents. If God is against us, we should be frightened. The logic continues, though. If we are afraid of using our talents, that means that somewhere inside we feel like God is not for us. God is not with us. God did not save us. God did not love us.

Here is the moment when this parable cuts right to our own heart. What are we willing to do with what God has given us?

Psalm 123 can help us. To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.

The third servant did not look to the heavens. The third servant did not look to the Lord. The third servant went away and hid. The first servant, Jesus, looked to heaven constantly. Jesus prayed without ceasing. Jesus showed us a life of prayer and sacrifice and mercy.

This is how we use our talents. This is how we invest them. Not by being cold and calculating or efficient with everything we have, but by aiming to be Christlike. We are not all given the same talents, but we are all given opportunities to love and serve, to seek and mend, to bring peace and hope in the lives of the people around us. It is not about trying but doing. As the wise Yoda said to Luke in the emperor strikes back: do or do not, there is no try. The third servant was trying. The second and first were doing.

Trying, though, is a rational decision according to the world. It is rational to save up your 120 pounds of silver. It is rational to not use your talent. If all there is is what is in front of our face or in our bank accounts or whatever material things are in this world, then, yes, be super frugal. When you use your talents, a 100% return on investment doesn’t always take place. Some times people take your talents and use them for their own benefit. Or, let’s continue to think about the life of Jesus. He failed according to the world. He had no retirement account. He was a bum. Never kept a steady job. Couldn’t stay in the same place. I mean, Mary and Joseph’s neighbor’s kids probably stayed and Nazareth while Mary and Joseph never really know where Jesus was. “So where is Jesus again?” the neighbor asks. Mary doesn’t know. She changes the subject.

And yet, Jesus turns the 5 talents into 5 more. The value in the parable, though, is not the worldly value but what matters to God. The talents are not silver or gold but the love of the Father for the Son through the Spirit which created all the silver, all the gold, all the life in all the universe.

And, ultimately, Jesus took the place of all three servants. He was there as the good servant, giving the best return on investment. He was there with moderate servant doing what needed to be done. He was there with the faithless servant, being cast into the outer darkness. He took our sin, our insufficiency: As Peter says,
”For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison.” On Holy Saturday, Jesus went even to those who had been cast off and brought them near. So even when we fail and fear, God will set us free. Therefore, let us not be afraid to use our talents, to use our lives, to give our lives.

May you see God’s mercy in what you can give as much as what you can receive. And may you be unafraid to give it.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, thank you for loving us, forgiving us, and offering us a way to show love through your Spirit. May we use the talent of love you give us. May we not bury it. May we realize it is more precious than silver, it is more costly than gold. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Fruitfulness

themes: bearing-fruit creation flourishing in-the-world-not-of-it transformed-desire grace new-creation

text:
**Scripture:** Genesis 1:14-23; John 1:10-14
**Series:** Creation

> Part of a Creation series reading Genesis 1 alongside John 1, this sermon meditates on the command 'be fruitful and multiply' given not only to humans but to the creatures of sea and air. Drawing on personal hikes where he ate wild raspberries and apples, Pruitt argues fruitfulness is really flourishing, which requires patient investment and the right conditions, just as trees need light, water, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Turning to John 1, he frames Christian fruitfulness as being 'in the world but not of it' (illustrated by sitting in the Aggie section at Kyle Field as a Longhorn fan): a matter of habituated desire, or holiness, rather than outward garb. Human flourishing comes not from a good job, spouse, retirement, or social-media validation, but from grace, the Holy Spirit, the body of Christ, and a life lived for others. Salvation is not a get-out-of-hell card but the gift to see as God sees and share in the in-breaking new creation, beginning today.

**Illustrations:** isle-royale-raspberries, virginia-apple-tree, supermarket-fruit-bags, fruit-tree-maturation, sun-moon-tides-cycles, nitrogen-phosphorus-flourishing, kyle-field-longhorn-fan, pharisee-widow-garb-desire, social-media-worth

---

# September 24, 2023
## Genesis 1:14-23
## John 1:10-14

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. - Genesis 1:14-23

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. - John 1:10-14

I did not grow up around many fruit trees. I grew up in College Station, Texas, a location not known for its orchards.
My siblings had a childhood in Oregon, and would talk about the berries, bushes that they had in their backyard and they could go and pick berries whenever they wanted them; and that was something I was never able to experience in College Station, Texas.
Two times in my life, while I hiking, i was able to experience the strangeness and power of a fruit-bearing tree in full fruit. One time was in Isle Royale in the middle of Lake Superior. It was soon after I had had an encounter with a moose. I noticed the moose (they are hard to miss) and thus decided to go a different direction. I thank you moose for not killing me. I then came upon a wild raspberry bush. I was by myself. They were all ripe and spectacular. I sat there for an hour eating raspberries off the bush.

A few years later, when I was hiking in Virginia, I came across a wild apple tree in the fall. The tree was full of ripe fruit. Similarly, I sat for an hour and ate fresh apples from the tree.
Some of you grew up on farms. You grew up with orange trees or apple trees or bushes and those kinds of things; it was a common way of life. For those of us who did not, fruit was a piecemeal sort of food at all. You go to the store and acquire a bag of grapes, a bag of oranges, all these kinds of things. These beautiful bags hide the hands that pick them, which is a sermon for another day. Today, the point I want us to hold on to is the limited quantity of fruit in a world distant from the trees and bushes themselves. Fruitfulness is a metaphor to me in a way it is not to the apple grower.

When we look at the first reading from Genesis one, we read the words: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

Genesis one was not written with the idea of a modern supermarket and agricultural system in mind. Instead, it was in a world of fruit trees and bushes and orchards and the fruitfulness coming from those. Growth of an enormous scale. You plant an apple seed and a few years later you have hundreds of apples.
The line, “be fruitful and multiply,” is famous in Genesis 1, but not here, not in this section. It's famous later in God's words to Adam and Eve. But it's the same command that God gives the creatures of the sea and the and birds of the air. "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
Be fruitful and multiply is not just something for humans. All living things are to be fruitful. How should we understand fruitfulness, and how does creation give us guidance in this,
## Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on Creation, looking at Genesis 1 and John 1 together to understand more Christ’s presence in Creation, God’s power in creation, and the importance of creation for us today.
Today, fruitfulness.

I want us to focus on fruitfulness apart from that common understanding concerning Adam and Eve, which gets to reproduction. We will cover that soon. But today, i want us to rest in this idea of fruitfulness by thinking of the fruit tree bearing fruit. One of those aspects of fruit bearing trees or fruit bearing bushes is that if you plant them, they're not gonna give you fruit that first season. They're not gonna give you fruit that second season.
An apple tree takes 7-10 to go from seed to fruit-bearing maturity. An orange could go even longer, even to 15 years. It is not quick. There is an investment needed of time, of water, of sunlight, of nutrients in order to bear fruit.
We wanna rush to fruit bearing. We want that profit coming fast, that multiplication coming fast. That's not what happens with fruit trees. When God created the life of the sea and the air, it wasn’t a rush job. And fruitfulness was asked of them.

Fruitfulness doesn’t happen on its own. In order to bear fruit, a tree needs certain things. It needs water and sunlight and nutrients. The cycle of water and light and motion was offered by God with the Sun and the Moon. We now have self-generating light in the universe. No longer is existence lit solely by the Son of God, the Word, but now there are heavenly objects to move and light the sky. A tree cannot bear fruit without light. The seasons of the earth change due to the level of light we receive over different parts of the year. There is no year without the sun. There is no month without the moon.

The waters of the earth shift because of the cycle of the moon. The tides give us so much of our pattern of existence, even for people far away from the coast. The tides influence ocean currents which change the weather around the world.

Fruitfulness for trees and birds and fish have to do with a lot of factors. A bird may be fruitful in one location and desolate in another. Fish can live well in one part of the world and flounder in another.

A term I like in this is flourishing. It is when a flower can broaden and expand to their fullest. It's flourishing
When God says to the birds of the air and the fish of the sea be fruitful and multiply. God is also saying, flourish. Flourish in creation.

When we look to the gospel of John and what's going on here in John 1: 10-14, we have an understanding and description of Jesus. He was in the world, but the world did not know him. He came to his own people, but they did not accept him. But to those who received him, he gave power to become children of God.
born of the will of God and not of flesh.
The word became flesh, but not with the will of flesh. We were made children of God, but not with the will of flesh, which means a different will, a different light to bear fruit.

Jesus is in the world, but he is not of the world.  This is often used in language about being a Christian. Christians are in the world, but not of the world. Be in the world, but not of the world. There are a lot of ways to be in a place.
I grew up in College Station, Texas, about a mile from Kyle Field. My grandfather and my father both had season tickets to the Aggies. They were good seats because they got them when the Aggies were very bad. And they were very bad for many of the years I lived there. They were good, as well, but mostly average. I would usually get to go to an early game during the season, games against Stephen F. Austin or Louisiana Tech.
When I went to ut (or as my grandfather said, t.u.) my family still had the season tickets, so I could go to the game as a pretty rabid Longhorn fan. I was in the old alumni section, but I was not of it. It wasn't because of what I was wearing. I didn't wear annoying Longhorn gear. I wasn’t a troll. I didn't wanna be rude or mean about it. I loved my grandfather. I wasn't going to try and hurt him or embarrass him. The reason why I was in the section, but not of the section is because I desired something completely different from what they desired. Everyone around me wanted the Aggies to win. I did not. I did not want them to win. I, in fact, wanted the opposite. I wanted them to lose.
There are layers to this. I could have been there and just worn the gear, but not really cared about the outcome. There is a temptation for Christians today to act in this manner. They put on the garb of Christianity, but desire the same things as the world desires. To Jesus, the garb is not as important as the desire. We see this over and over again in the Gospels. When the pharisee is condemned for praying on the street corner, or when the woman is praise for giving all she had, even if it was a microscopic part of what the rich man before her had, we see garb dismissed and the desire praised.

Jesus gives us the power to become children of God and desire something different than the world. And this tells us a lot about fruitfulness and what human fruitfulness really looks like.

A tree doesn't bear fruit because it wants it badly enough. There are a lot of other factors involved. Following Jesus is not just a momentary act of the will but habituated desire that has been practiced and expanded upon. Another word for this is holiness. Holiness doesn’t mean the person praying in the street corner or someone holier than thou, but someone who desires what God desires and not what the world desires.

When Jesus comes in the gospel of John and the author describes that he was in the world, but not of the world, he did not have the will of the flesh, but the will of heaven. What we see is how humans can flourish. Our fruitfulness is not based on the circumstances of the world and the desires of the world.
We are in fact delinked from it. Our circumstances impact us and affect us, but they don't have to feed us, and they don't have to determine who we are.
If a plant doesn't get enough nitrogen, it doesn't matter what you do, it's probably not going to bear fruit. Nitrogen helps grow stems and leaves that plants need. If a plant doesn't get enough phosphorus, it's not going to flower. It doesn't matter what you do with all the other factors. It may look pretty, but it is not going to bear fruit.
What it takes for you as a human to bear fruit is not a great job, a great spouse, a great retirement, kids who listen to you, long vacations, good hobbies.
It doesn't take owning a business that's better than your neighbors. It doesn't even take the Longhorns winning.
Human flourishing comes from somewhere else. In Jesus Christ, we see the limits of the flourishing of the world, and we see the possibilities of flourishing as children of God.
You are offered life. You are offered peace. You are offered heavenly nitrogen and phosphorus to flourish. This is found in the Holy Spirit, which is offered for you. This is found in the gathered body of Christ, set apart for you. This is found in a life lived for others.
And so my brothers and sisters receive the grace to have your desires change, the grace to be at Kyle Field, but not of Kyle Field or to be at Texas Memorial, but not of Texas Memorial. In your desires to desire different things.
This is what God wants of you and offers to you.

Salvation is not just to get you a get out of jail free card to avoid hell, but the gift to see God now. To see as God sees and to be a part of the in-breaking new creation. To desire something different than what the world tells you you need, and to realize that your value, your worth, your purpose is not based on the world. It is not based on instagram or facebook or your neighbors or your siblings. It's not based on winning. It is grace all the way down.

You are loved. You are free. you can flourish. And it can start today. The circumstances of your life may not change but your life can change by the power of God.

Let us pray,

Heavenly Father, your grace is sufficient to transform us wherever we are. Help us to receive your grace and affirm our Yes to you, since you have already said Yes to us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Please stand as you are able for our closing Song of Praise, Oh How I Need You.


title: God's Song of Love

themes: comfort-in-grief communion-of-saints holiness beatitudes resonance-across-generations discipleship

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 5:1-12; Psalm 34:1-5
**Series:** One offs

> An All Saints Day sermon using Bach's C-minor Fifth Cello Suite (performed live by a church member) as an extended metaphor: just as musical vibrations resonate in a hall after notes are played, the lives of the holy people who have gone before us still resonate with us. Anchored in the Beatitudes ('Blessed are those who mourn') and Psalm 34, it argues that grief is infinite because love gives away part of oneself, that grief is a sign of love rather than doubt, and that Christians live lightened-but-not-erased grief in hope of the final resolution when all the chords of history resolve into praise. It calls hearers to recognize they are being shaped by saints and are themselves shaping others as role models, and to live a life that resonates with God's song of love.

**Illustrations:** bach-in-cothen, fifth-cello-suite-c-minor, daniel-cello-ut, beethovens-fifth-symphony, eye-of-the-tiger-champions, triad-resonance-physics, kubler-ross-stages-of-grief, jesus-wept-lazarus

---

# November 6
## All Saints Day
## God’s Song of Love

I will bless the Lord at all times;
    his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
    let the humble hear and be glad.
O magnify the Lord with me,
    and let us exalt his name together.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me
    and delivered me from all my fears.
Look to him, and be radiant,
    so your faces shall never be ashamed.
	- Psalm 34:1-5

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” - Matthew 5:1-12

I am going to nerd out on some classical music, but it is going to make sense even if you hate classical music. Just give me a little patience.

In the 1720s, Johan Sebastian Bach lived in a city called Cöthen. It was a unique time in his professional life. For most of his career, Bach worked for Lutheran princes or cities. His music was liturgical. It was churchy, all of the cantatas, the passions, the mass in B Minor, they were all based around Advent and Christmas and Lent and Easter and all the holy days in between. Cöthen did not have a Lutheran ruler. They had a Calvinist one who did not follow the liturgical calendar, the churchy calendar of the year. And it was during this time in Cöthen that Bach completed some of his most famous instrumental works: Book 1 of the The Well-Tempered Clavier for the piano, the Brandenburg Concertos for orchestra, his violin sonatas and partitas, as well as his Cello Suites. These works did not match a liturgical season, but Bach was a faithful Christian and still signed his manuscripts, soli de Gloria, all to the glory of God or only to the glory of God.

Today we celebrate All Saints Day. The Methodist Church doesn’t have a canon of saints like the Catholic church. We don’t keep track and have a committee for it or a devotion to the saints. The word saint means holy and holy people have been a major concern for the Methodist movement since the very beginning. Today, we remember the Holy People in Our life. Some are members of this church. Most of the Holy People we remember this day are not a part of this church but were a part of our lives. They are unique and their stories matter to God and to us.

The classic scripture for All Saints Day is the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. The saints in our life, the holy people in our life show us how this monumental text is possible. John Wesley described the whole sermon in the following way:
>“And what is it which He is teaching The Son of God, who came from heaven, is here showing us the way to heaven; to the place which he hath prepared for us; the glory he had before the world began. He is teaching us the true way to life everlasting; the royal way which leads to the kingdom; and the only true way, -- for there is none besides; all other paths lead to destruction.”

I think we should understand the sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes in particular as this representative of the sermon of all, as both aspirational and possible. It is the life of fully following the words of Jesus and obeying Jesus. It is always aspirational, always just beyond our grasp, but also possible for something we can hope for. It is also something we can see more in others than in ourselves. Holiness is a quality you observe external to yourself. It is something we see at present but especially in the past. We can look to our past and remember people in our lives who exhibited Christ-like qualities. We must look for a harmony between the generations which have come before, ourselves, and the generations to come. Musically, a triad, a chord, which gets us back to Bach.

Whether you like classical music or not, I feel that we must use the gifts we have. And right now at our church, we have a gift of Daniel studying cello at UT and working on the Fifth Suite, and I'm gonna use the fifth suite as a jumping off point to understand the complexity of God's love for us through the saints of our lives.

So Daniel is going to play the first section of the prelude to the fifth cello suite.

Daniel plays]

The fifth cello suite is in the key of C minor. It is not a happy key. If you know nothing of classical music, you can understand the difference in mood between a major or a minor key.
Beethoven's fifth symphony is also in the key of C minor, bum bum bum buuuuumm.

The first movement is one of the most famous in history, but that piece ends in C major. We get to the resolution.
I know two pop songs that have the same trajectory as Beethoven’s fifth. Eye of the Tiger and We are the Champions.

The chord of C minor functions like all of Western music through the power of the triad, this miracle of physics where the vibrations at these specific frequencies resonate with each other. C vibrates at 261.63 Hz, E-flat at 311.13 Hz, and G at 392.00 Hz. When you play these together you get a C minor chord.

When you play or hear an instrument live, those vibrations resonate after the notes are played. One of the amazing principle virtues of live classical music is how the resonances of a piece stay in the hall, the sanctuary, the venue, and interact with what comes next.

The fourth Cello suite is in the key of E-flat major which has three flats like c-minor. So the notes are the same but the starting point is different. The fourth suite ends with a delightful Gigue, or jig, a dance that covers the length of the cello. When someone performs the works straight through, those vibrations are still present in the hall when you start the C minor fifth suite. And even in the specific movements within the piece. When you move from the prelude to the fugue, right after Daniel’s excerpt, to the German dance which is the next movement, the grief never disappears. It resonates still.

This is the moment we turn the corner back to All Saints day and the scripture for the day.
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Jesus does not dismiss mourning or ignore it.

Grief of the loss of loved ones does not disappear. We need to admit that. One of my problems with Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and the five stages of grief is that grief is infinite. Because when you love another person, their absence is always felt. When you love another person, you give them part of yourself. When you are loved by another, they give you part of themselves.
TheIr identity is wrapped up in you. So the absence is felt. It may not be felt in the same way as right after loss. Grief changes shape and form, but It is always felt.

As a Christian, grief is lightened by the promise of life with God. It is lightened, but it is not erased. Grief is not a lack of faith. Jesus wept for his friend Lazarus. Tears are not signs of doubt but signs of love.

The life of those whom we love, who are no longer with us, their lives are resonating right now. Those vibrations are in the room. The saints of our life, the holy people whom we have known, who are currently in eternal glory with God, their life is still resonating with us. Now, I like the language of saints, not in the sense of the Catholic church, of having this canon and this big dramatic process, but just in the simple meaning of holy, or someone set apart.
Saint means holy, A saint is a holy person. It is so important to remember the holy people who have come before us. It is so important to realize that we have been shaped by the holy people who have come before us. We have been shaped by the ones we like. We have been shaped by the ones we don't even know about.
And then this turns into another aspect and another awareness that we are shaping the people around us. We are living lives that others are looking at and seeing. You are a role model whether you like that or not.
And so let us live in such a way that resonates with the heavenly song of life. This is what Jesus calls us to when he says lay down your nets and follow me and I will make you fisher’s of men. This is what Jesus means when he says, Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. This is what Jesus means when he says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Live a life that resonates the heavenly song of life. Sometimes this song is in a minor key, so that doesn't make it less beautiful.

Our music has a history. Our lives have a history. God’s love has a history. God’s song of love has a history. It resonated before we were born and it will resonate after us. The song of our life may seem minor or major, it may feel augmented or diminished, but our faith is not in the present but in our future with God, when all the chords of all human history will resolve in that great song of praise we will sing with all the angels: a song like Psalm 34

I will bless the Lord at all times;
    his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
    let the humble hear and be glad.
O magnify the Lord with me,
    and let us exalt his name together.

Let us give thanks for the saints who have gone before us. Let us give thanks to their influence on us and the ways they showed us Jesus. May we resonate our life with Jesus. May we live out God’s song of life by being doers of God’s word.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the saints who have come before. Help us to remember what they have showed us of your kingdom and may we live it out. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Growth

series: Welcome

themes: parable-of-the-sower bearing-fruit evangelism faith-as-action grace-not-merit church-turned-outward

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 13:1-9; Matthew 13:18-23; Matthew 15:23-28; Matthew 25:31-40
**Series:** Welcome

> Preaching on the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13), Pruitt argues that not all growth is good—weeds are easy, low-effort growth, and churches and souls can produce green-looking but choking, deathward growth. He walks through the bad soils (weeds, rocky hill-country soil, trampled roads) as conditions of our hearts and our world, insisting that since Jesus is the one who sows, our task is tending the soil—both our own hearts and our neighbors'. True evangelism is soil-care, a continuous affair, not a single sermon or initiative. Good soil is found beyond ourselves in people most in need of God: faith in desperation (the Canaanite woman) and faith in action (the least of these in Matthew 25). Finally he turns to grace: no one can make themselves good soil; the tilling and seeking is only a response to the Holy Spirit's prior movement, and the hope is that soil—like the soul, the neighbor, and Covenant UMC—is never finished.

**Illustrations:** weeds-i-do-not-like, chemical-weed-killers, caro-hill-country-trap, wild-kratts-polly-paver, big-yellow-taxi-paved-paradise, roman-roads-efficiency, continuous-gardening, canaanite-woman-good-soil, least-of-these-faith-in-action

---

# July 16, 2023
## Growth
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I am not the world's biggest fan of weeds. I do not like weeds. I do not like them in my yard. I do not like them on a barge. I do not like them in gardens. I do not like them in sidewalks.
Weeds are very annoying and, unfortunately, they are the easiest thing to grow. If you don't do anything with your land, weeds are what you get. You get weeds, low effort, high return, weeds.
The existence of weeds are an important reminder to all of us that not all growth is good. Good growth is good. Bad growth is bad. We need some kind of qualifier for growth. We want to avoid that bad growth. We want to avoid those weeds.

In this passage from Matthew, Jesus offers a wonderful parable about growth.

We’ve got the weeds, the rocks, the road, and then good soil.
### Weeds
Let's start with the weeds and the thorns.
Weeds are easy to grow. They always show up.
The modern world’s solution to weeds is chemicals, lots and lots of chemicals. Unfortunately, those chemicals have other consequences. They do more than just kill the weeds.
Some of the seed fell with the brambles and the weeds and they were choked.
I think this part of the parable is one of the most accurate aspects of what it means to be a Christian today or even a person trying to do good in the world. The word of God is shared and it grows up amidst the weeds competing for the resources around it. There's only so much water, only so much sunshine, only so much phosphorous and nitrogen, to be extracted from the ground. To plant seeds in a yard full of weeds would not predict success. Why waste seeds on the weedy ground?

 We have these other examples.
### Rocky Soil
We have the dry, rocky soil where you cannot take up roots.

In the first volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, he writes: “The hill country was a trap bated with water.” The westernmost longitude of the US that receives 30 inches of rain a year is the 98th meridian which runs through Bee Cave, Texas. Caro notes how the hill country looks green but it doesn’t get enough water to farm and the grass is only there because it has always been there. It is not good soil.

Rocky soil can look good on the outside but it doesn’t have what is necessary to grow. There can be a lot of green, but when you look closer it is really just ash juniper and mesquite and the seeds you plant will not take root.

### The road
And the road where the birds peck at it. It makes me think of a children’s show on PBS called the Wild Kratts about these brothers who love to protect animals. They go against a cadre of villains, including Polly Paver, whose only desire is to pave all the world in asphalt. She is the person who cheers during the Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi, when we hear that paradise has been paved.

There wasn’t asphalt in the ancient world, but there were lots of roads. The reason the Roman empire lasted as long as it did was the ability to maintain roads between places. But to build a road meant to take away soil. Roads are necessary links between communities and people. If we don’t have roads, everything gets trampled. Roads are made for the sake of efficiency. The ground is trampled and hard in certain places for efficiency. But roads themselves are no longer sources of growth.

Then we have the good soil and the seed finds a home and grows spectacularly.

### Faith in general
Let's start thinking about this with the Christian faith in general. We want to have good soil for the word of God so that it can take root. As a world, we want to make sure that there's good soil, so that means taking care of the land where the seed is going to spread. Taking care of the people where these weeds are, where the people have been hardened so that their hearts are like roads, ready to be picked off, hardened by bad experiences, hardened by life. We also can read this passage for ourselves.

### Ourselves
I think all of us, at different times in our life, have felt like our hearts were full of brambles and weeds. There were so many things hungry for our interest that we couldn’t focus and our hearts went dry.

I think all of us, at different times in our life, have felt that our hearts were rocky like the hill country. We may look green or put together on the outside, but we are really not getting enough water or rest and the seeds can’t put down roots.

I think all of us, at different times in our life, have felt that our hearts were like roads. That is, we were so busy going from place to place that parts of us were trampled for the sake of efficiency and birds peck at the seeds that have been strewn about.

Hopefully we've had those moments when we felt the good soil, when the word of God has taken root in our hearts and grown in amazing ways. Those moments of good soil usually happen because we have been cared for. Someone has weeded us. Someone has given supplemental soil and compost that fills in the rocks.

### Evangelism
I think this parable gives us a great example of what we can actually do as Christians in this world, about what actual evangelism looks like.
You see, in the parable, Jesus is the one who spreads the seeds.
What we can do is take care of the soil. We have to start is by taking care of the soil in our own hearts. What kind of soil is your soul today? Is it rocky? Is it dry? Is it full of weeds? Is it trampled over?
The weeds grow for sure. They grow, but it's not what we want.
We don't just want to grow. We want good growth, healthy growth, growth that builds life, not growth that builds death. Growth that looks outward, not growth that looks inward. Growth that is with our neighbors, not growth that's against our neighbors and our own hearts.
There are many different competing weeds and it takes time for the soil to be cared for. As well, the soil needs to be refreshed. You can't just weed once and then never do it again. If a gardener thought that they could till the soil once, weed, put in some compost and fertilizer and then never have to do anything in the garden again, they would not grow a thing. Gardening is a continuous affair.
### Covenant UMC
We can take this parable to our church, to where we are, to our immediate surroundings. Some of the seed of Jesus Christ was spread where brambles and weeds were present and the good seed and the weeds grew up together and the weeds choked out the good seed. Some seed was sown on the rocky soil where roots could not be made and it washed away, some to the road where it was eaten up. Some to good soil.
Everything we do is not going to result in amazing fruit of the Spirit. Everything we do as a church or as individuals.
We should not assume that. We should not see that, but what we can strive for and hope for is in some straightforward way to keep on working the soil and have faith that God will be there.
A good tree does not bear bad fruit. Growth isn't the result of a single sermon or a pastor or an initiative or a funding source, and all growth is not good.
Some growth is just weeds. It may look green from afar, but when you get up close, it has choked out what is actually good.
There are churches throughout history that have sacrificed their faithfulness to Jesus in order to get immediate gains in the world. That is not good growth. That is not what anyone needs.
### Where the Good Soil Is
The good soil for the word of God is found in people who are most in need of God, who are desperate for hope, who are broken by this world. We read many examples in the gospels. Jesus is teaching and a Canaanite woman comes up to his disciples seeking help.

>“Send her away; she keeps shouting out after us.” Jesus replied, “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.” But she knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.” He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.” Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed.”
Matthew 15:23-28 CEB

She was good soil. Her genetics did not make her good soil. Her social status or blood did not make her good soil. Her desire for God did. Her need for God. Her willingness to step out in faith.

Examples of good soil are also found in Matthew 25.

>“Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began. I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’ “Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’”
Matthew 25:31-36, 40 CEB

They are good soil who put their faith into practice. We have these two forms of good soil: faith in desperation and faith in action. Believing something enough to step out of your comfort zone and seek Jesus. And believing something enough to step out of your comfort zone and love others for their own sake.

The good soil of personal faith is found beyond itself. The good soil of the church is found beyond itself. When we stay enclosed, the weeds grow, the soil dries up and the ground is trampled.

Growth is not the result of seeking growth but seeking Jesus Christ, whether as a Canaanite woman dismissed by society, or the people who do the humble work of God and serve Jesus without realizing it.

With all of that, these are not the only two options: a Canaanite or a saint.
### GRACE
No, in fact, on our own, all of us fall short. None of us can make good soil by ourselves because none of us can save ourselves. Though I said tilling the soil is one of the few things we can do, the work is not enough. The work doesn’t save us. The work, the seeking Jesus, the serving the least, can only be a response to the prior movement of God in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

The examples of the Bible show us ways of living faithfully and responding to the word of God.

The most hopeful thing about soil is that it is never finished. There is not an expiration date for the ground. There is not an expiration date for your soul. God is not finished with you and God is not finished with your neighbor. God is not finished with Covenant. Take heart in that.

Let us receive the grace to til the soil of our hearts. Let us receive the grace to see the brambles and thorns we grow and spread and to take them out. Let us remove the rocks we place in people’s way and the rocks we place in our own way. And let us seek Jesus together and serve him where we can.

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


title: New Year's Eve (Christ the King Sunday)

themes: serving-the-least works-of-mercy liturgical-calendar judgment antinomianism transformed-desire

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 25:31-46; Psalm 95:1-7; 1 John 3:9; Matthew 5:8; Matthew 16:23
**Series:** One offs

> Preached on Christ the King Sunday—framed as the Christian New Year's Eve before Advent—this sermon uses the arbitrariness of human calendars to ask who is Lord of our time. Working through the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46), the third in a series on Matthew 25, the pastor resists the temptation to stop at verse 40 and confronts the reality of judgment and stakes, warning against antinomian readings of grace. The division is not between good and bad people but between those who perform the works of mercy and those who do not. The core claim: the sheep seek Jesus where he is (among the hungry, poor, and naked) while the goats seek him where they want him (among the wealthy and comfortable). Conversion is a transformation of desire and direction, never merely a set of tasks, made possible only by grace—an invitation to a Christian New Year's resolution to seek Jesus where he truly is.

**Illustrations:** julian-gregorian-calendar, daylight-saving-fall-back, pecan-pie-oven-burn, marathon-resolution-one-mile, jubilee-forgiving-debts, peter-get-behind-me-satan

---

# November 26
## New Years Eve

“O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!” - Psalm 95:1-7

““When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”” - Matthew 25:31-46

### Intro
Julius Caesar declared a calendar for the Roman world that is still in effect even today. The reason Greek Orthodox of Russian orthodox churches celebrate a different Easter is because they follow the Julian calendar. In the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII adjusted that calendar to make it more in line with the solar year and that is calendar we have today with the days, the months, days of the months, as well as the leap year. Because of the anti-Catholic bias in England, that country kept the Julian calendar into the middle of John Wesley's life in the 17 hundreds. And that transition looked like a two week jump daylight savings time. One day, it was July 1. The next day, it was July 14.

Someone in their nineties, when the transition happened, they would not really be super invested in the new calendar. So a lot of letters and journals and, and histories carried both dates, the old calendar and the new calendar. I say all this because of how arbitrary it ultimately is. The markings of time and the year are so because of the judgment of people over the centuries, but there's nothing natural or empirical about our calendars. Each kind of timekeeping system has some advantages over others.

A few weeks ago, all of us slept through a moment in time where it was 2:00 AM and then it was 2:59 AM and then it was 2:00 AM Again, it didn't go to three because of the government in this country's inability to get rid of daylight savings time.
There is nothing permanent about the calendar that our country follows. There's nothing natural about it. It is a choice to follow that calendar over others, to be dependent on it over others. The Christian calendar is different than the Gregorian calendar. The Christian calendar starts next Sunday. The Christian calendar starts on the first Sunday in Advent, which means that today is New Year's Eve.
It is also known as Christ the King Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the old year. I went through those histories of time and calendars because it's really important for us to be aware of who is the Lord of our time.

How we tell our time, how we order our lives matters. We can order our lives in a way that fits perfectly in line with the standard calendar of the United States and all the secular holidays and calendars, but that is different than the liturgical calendar. The Christian calendar that follows a different pattern, a pattern based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes those calendars conflict.
This is similar to how sometimes our lives conflict with the lives of the world. There's tension there between what Jesus calls us to do, the grace that God gives us to live holy lives and the expectations and requirements of the world. We see that here in Matthew 25.

Over the last two weeks, we have looked at the first two parables of Matthew 25. The first is the parable of the ten brides, where five expect the coming of Jesus and five do not. The next is the parable of the talents, which isn’t about being good or bad, but about how we see God.
### The Sheep and the Goats
Today, we have the parable of the sheep and goats. Half of it sounds really great. It is famous. When you do so unto the least of these my brothers and sisters. You do unto me. The language of the world of mercy that John Wesley uses also comes from this passage. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the foreigner, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned.

I’m always tempted to just preach the first section of the passage. It can encourage us to serve all our neighbors because all of them could be Jesus. But what happens when we don’t? Sometimes I think we take many of the words of Jesus as extra credit. We can help others when it is convenient to us or it fits in our schedule or they look deserving, otherwise we should stick to what we know. The rest of Matthew 25 shows us that that is not the case.

If we do not serve Jesus by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, there will be consequences. There are stakes involved in this life. It can be uncomfortable to talk about stakes. Sometimes grace is presented in such a way that it doesn’t matter what we do since Jesus will forgive us anyway. In the ancient world, this was called antinomianism. There have been different people over the years who claimed that Grace gave us freedom to do whatever we wanted. Sin or not, it doesn’t matter since God will forgive you so just live your life.

In this view, there are no consequences for our actions or our lives. In this view, we stop reading Matthew 25 at verse 40.  In this view, the law protects us but does not bind us. We don’t need to feed anyone. We don’t need to welcome anyone. We don’t need to clothe anyone or do anything uncomfortable or change anything because they are already taken care of by grace. It is a common enough reading that ignores huge sections of the Bible.

Actions have consequences. If you grab a pecan pie out of a hot oven without a mitt you are going to get burned. Much of the world is filled with these action/reaction consequences.

Matthew 25 turns this around. We don’t see the consequences of our actions until much later. The sheep feed the hungry. We don’t know why they did it but they did it. Jesus doesn’t divide people between those who intend to do good and those who intend to do evil, but between those who perform the works of mercy and those who do not. The division is not between good people and bad people. Most of us think that we are good people. We may not be perfect, we may be selfish from time to time, or ignore our neighbors, or say something mean, but we think we are good people and we think that God knows this.

There may be some consolation in this way of thinking, but throughout the Bible we are confronted by the stark reality of judgment. Jesus doesn’t call his followers good. He doesn’t console them by saying they did enough. In one verse, Jesus praises Peter for calling him the Messiah. In the next verse, Jesus says to Peter, Get Behind Me Satan! Jesus looks into us and sees us not for who we think we are, but for who we are.

### Judgement
 If our souls were exposed before God, what would God see? Did we seek Jesus in the lost and the hungry and forgotten? Who, in fact, are we seeking?

Are we seeking immediate consequences or heavenly ones? And this isn’t about what our society calls Christian or not, but this stark confrontation with the actions of our lives.

I can’t judge you, your neighbor can’t judge you, but you can judge yourself. If the Son of Man came this day and split this room between sheep and the goats, would you be on the side of the sheep or the goats?

Grace doesn’t get us out of our obligation to love our neighbor. Grace saves us from damning ourselves. There is more to the Christian life than salvation or damnation. Grace doesn’t free us for a lifetime of selfishness. This is what John means in his first letter when he says everyone born of God does not sin. If we see grace as an excuse to not love our neighbor, we are spurning God’s grace. It is not even there.

But also, if we lived according to Matthew 25, we could face a lot of challenges in this world. As much as anything, the works of mercy are inconvenient. What is the limit of what God asks of us?

Faith is not a series of new tasks that we have. Faith is, instead, a different way of seeing our world, which includes our time. Grace doesn’t absolve us of some things but keep us in the same place. Grace transforms us to no longer desire what we used to desire. This gets us back to the Christian calendar and the Christian new year.

### Christian New Year
We often divide our time between what we need to do and everything else. Who judges what is necessary or not?

It comes down to you. Sure, there are external factors and motivators and constraints, but we ultimately are responsible for our time and our actions. Even those aspects of our life that seem so rock solid, like the calendar, was based on the choices of individuals in history, like Julius Caesar or Gregory VIII.

We mark our lives by the Gregorian calendar not because it is good or true, but because it is convenient. We have always done it. And everyone around us does it. Were we to revert our families to the Julian calendar, it might be a tricky thing. If we measured our lives fully by the Christian calendar, it might also be a tricky thing. The Bible speaks often of jubilee, of forgiving the debts anyone owes us every fifty years. Were we to practice jubilee, the American economy would fall apart.

To where is our time oriented? Is it towards our bosses, our retirements, our families, or our Lord. This is what Matthew 25 is about. To whom are we oriented? Whom are we seeking? Who do we desire?

The sheep seek Jesus where he is: among the hungry and poor and naked. The goats seek Jesus where they want him to be: among the wealthy and comfortable.  This is the heart of the passage and I want to repeat it. The sheep seek Jesus where he is: among the hungry and poor and naked. The goats seek Jesus where they want him to be: among the wealthy and comfortable.

Conversion is always a question of direction. Which way are you going? When you suffer an addiction, you’re going one way. When God heals you, you go another way.

Whatever has happened before in your life, this day you have a choice about which direction you want to go. The choice is not a discreet set of tasks. The choice is the answer to the question, who do you love? If you love Jesus, you will want to meet him where he is. It doesn’t matter if that is convenient to your life. As Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God Where will they see God? Matthew answers that question here. The pure in heart will see God in the hungry, the naked, the thirsty, the sick, and the imprisoned. How will they see God? Through their purified heart that has been converted to desire God. Christian conversion is about our desire. It a transformation of our will so that we seek, more and more, to do the works of mercy because we seek, more and more, to be with Jesus.

It is no longer an obligation but an opportunity. Conversion always takes a small step. Like a new year’s resolution to run a marathon begins by running a mile. None of it would be possible without grace. On our own, we are all goats. On our own, we seek the good whenever it is convenient. On our own, we seek God only when we want to. Yet by grace we can be emptied of selfishness and pride to seek Jesus where he is, in places the world doesn’t want us to go.

On this Christian new years, you have an opportunity for a new resolution: to seek Jesus where he is, not where you want him to be. As the Psalmist says, to sing a joyful song to the Lord with our whole life: with our time and our desire.

Jesus is here. Go to him. Go to him in the hungry. Go to him in the sick. Go to him in the stranger and the naked.

Our time is a construct. They just add an hour here, take an hour away there. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ is true and makes all things new. Our time is offered to us freely by God. We are offered grace by God. We are offered life by God. Let us seek God where God is to be found. Let us not justify our selfishness but grow in the grace offered to us this day. Let go of selfishness. Let go of pride. God is here for you. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, thank you for loving us so much that you are honest with us. Thank you for not hiding the consequences but giving us the grace to transform our lives so that we are able to love you and our neighbor fully. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.