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My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (June 21, 2026) on Genesis 21:8-21.

For today’s sermon, I’d like to switch from focusing on the gospel according to Matthew and sit with Abraham and his family in the book of Genesis. When it comes to Abraham, we tend to focus on how God called him to leave what is modern day Iraq and move to Israel and Palestine; the promise God made that his descendants would outnumber the stars and how all families, through his, would be blessed; we remember how weird this promise seemed since Abraham and Sarah struggled to conceive, and when the promise of an heir was fulfilled, Abraham tried to sacrifice that child on a mountaintop. There are ways we can celebrate Abraham as a parental ancestor for our faith while also recognizing how a mug saying “World’s Greatest Dad” might not be a good gift for him on Father’s Day. His family’s story, though, is much bigger than what we typically hear in worship and he isn’t always the hero we always assume he is. Holding the good bits of his story next to the parts that are hard does more than reveal how human Abraham was. It also, I think, shows who our God chooses to be too. 

Way back in chapter 11 is when we’re first told Sarah and Abraham are struggling having children. The reasons why aren’t explicitly shared but we can safely assume it impacted their life together. Back then, as well as today, women were often unjustly blamed for reproductive struggles and this shame projected by the wider community was internalized by those who were struggling. Abraham and Sarah had, together, formed a large and wealthy nomadic community that even nearby kings felt the need to negotiate with. They were a force to be reckoned with and yet what might come next was always on their mind. Abraham prepared for the future by naming one of his slaves his legal heir. And while this created a way to have descendants that would follow, they wondered if there might be another way to create their future. So in chapter 16, Sarah told Abraham to sleep with Hagar who was one of Sarah’s slaves. God’s promise to Abraham did not fully identify who the mother of his child might be and so the cultural practice of letting a child’s parentage be transferred to whoever owned the mother was something they chose to embrace. This wasn’t, however, something they had to do. Sarah didn’t have to act as if our ways are also God’s way nor did Abraham have to simply do whatSarah said. Both of them had the capacity and power to say “no” while Hagar, who was enslaved, was the only one who couldn’t. Once Abraham exerted his power over her, everyone’s relationship with one another became strained. Sarah decided to deal with the pregnant Hagar harshly and so Hagar fled towards home through a wilderness full of dangers. While stopped at a spring, an angel came and convinced her to return to Abraham’s household. God, though, also gave her a promise that – like Abraham – her descendants would be uncountable. Hagar, then, did something no other person in our Bible does. She gave God a name. She named God “El-roi – which might mean “the God who sees.” And when Hagar returned to Abraham and Sarah, she gave birth to a son who was named Ishmael and it appeared as if God’s promise was becoming fulfilled. 

But everything changed once Sarah gave birth to Issac and seemed like he’d survive through the ancient world’s very high infant mortality rate. Ishamel was no longer simply Sarah’s legal son and Abraham’s firstborn heir. He was now only the son of an enslaved woman. Vanessa Lovelace, in a commentary on this passage, described how Sarah’s perspective shifted when he saw Ishamel being affectionate to his much younger brother. The word for “playing” is rooted in the word for “laughter” which is a deliberate play on Issac’s name which meant laughter too. What Sarah saw was “Ishmael behaving in a way that imitated her son Isaac” and she might have been worried their relationship would interfere with God’s promise since there were cultural rules about who has value, who matters, and who gets what when the future comes our way. Sarah demanded Abraham to send Hagar and Ishamel away so they wouldn’t get in the way of what she wanted her tomorrow to be. Abraham was conflicted by this request but he didn’t come out and say “no.” God, though, spoke up and appeared to let Sarah’s fears, worries, anxieties, and way of life shape what happened next. And so early the next morning, before the household started to stir, Abraham gave Hagar and Ishamel some meager supplies before casting them out into the wilderness. 

There was, though, something about this moment that was different from the last time she was in the wilderness. Back then, she executed a plan to return home but this journey was different. Without purpose, direction, and having lived within Abraham’s household for a number of years, she wept and waited for her future to end. We might assume, like before, an angel would show up to respond to her cries for help. But what we heard instead was that Ishamel had to grow up way too soon and the one who didn’t seem to have a say in his own future chose to cry out too. He did the very faithful and very human thing of not letting this be the limit of what could be. Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly what he said which means we’re allowed to let our imagination fill out that gap ourselves. And while our first instinct might be to assume Ishamel was reverent and spoke to God in what we might say is the proper way, I think it’s okay to not limit the words he uttered. Rage, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety – all the stuff we say when the future we expected is no longer on its way – would have been on his lips too. Ishamel, who didn’t ask to be brought into a world that devalued who he was based on what he was born into, imagined a different kind of tomorrow. And God, rather than letting Sarah and Abraham’s vision be all that could be, affirmed that the one who we pushed to the margins will always have a place in God’s kingdom too. 

Now we never hear if any kind of resolution or reconciliation between Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishamel ever took place. Hagar disappears from the book of Genesis and Ishamel only shows up in one verse to help Issac bury Abraham after he died. Like a lot of families, the unresolved harm, conflict, and violence, ends up having a permanent place at the table too. We might imagine that a peaceful family is a sign God is really with us. Yet even in the very mess bits that make up the families we’re born into and the families we choose, God’s promises always remain. When the water was poured over you and God declared you really are a beloved child of God, every other claim on your life and soul was overwritten. You are not limited by what other people say about you nor is every cultural rule and tradition good and true. Rather the God who heard the cry of Hagar, who heard the cry of Ishamel, and who hears every cry we make is also a God who promises to hold you through. And while what comes next is a mystery that doesn’t always match our expectations, the God who never left Ishmael is a God who will never leave you too. 

Amen.

My sermon from the Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 30, 2025) on Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32.

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Today’s story from the gospel according to Luke is all about lives that were lived – which is weird to hear on a day when, in a few minutes, we’ll be celebrating a life that is basically brand new. Jesus, who regularly used stories to explore deeper truths about faith, grace, hope, and love, shared with us a family whose life together was a bit complicated. We often identify this story by focusing on the so-called prodigal son, whose wasteful and recklessly extravagant behavior eventually brought them home. The end of the story, then, shapes our interpretation of what Jesus’ words were all about. But we can’t get to the end without all the stuff that comes before. The parable of the prodigal son is full of all the juicy stuff we love to analyze and gossip about. But if we’re still at the beginning of our own story – not even realizing our parents still exist when they cover their eyes while playing peekaboo – a story about lives that were lived feels a bit out of place. Yet I wonder if – on this day of beginnings – that the beginning of Jesus’ story reveals the kind of grace that carries us through whatever comes our way. 

Now, to notice that, I think we need to remember why Jesus told this story in the first place. He was, at this point in Luke’s version of Jesus’ life, taking his last journey to Jerusalem in a very roundabout kind of way. Jesus regularly made it a point to preach, teach, and heal at various places along the way. And since he – and his friends – were always traveling, finding their next meal was always a bit of a challenge. Jesus rarely ever said no to someone who invited him to eat at their table. And he regularly set a place at his table for anyone who came his way. This, though, caused issues since not everyone who visited Jesus were the kind of people we’d want kneeling next to us at the communion rail. These so-called sinners weren’t simply people who considered themselves good but who occasionally made a mistake. Those breaking bread with him included those who were seen as destroying the very fabric of what it meant to be a faithful community in the first place. The tax collectors often used violence and intimidation to funnel money to the Roman soldiers who occupied the land. Their work required them to violate the religious and cultural expectations that shaped who they knew themselves to be. And Jesus not only took the time to listen and care for them; he also ate with them in a very empathetic and merciful kind of way. Giving that kind of focus to those considered unworthy is something we all struggle with today. Yet instead of telling a literal story about the tables we choose to sit at, Jesus told a story about a father and a son whose table could only be described as completely dysfunctional. 

Now we don’t actually know what life was like for this family before the younger one left. Jesus doesn’t tell us if they got along or if any other family were around. All we get in the beginning is a conversation that includes no small talk at all. Rather, the young son went to the day and said “I wish you were dead.” I know that sounds a little harsh since it feels like all he did was ask for money. But the words he chose show how he wanted what he felt he was entitled to once his father was no longer there. Maybe, in our own lives, we’ve said – or imagined – or slammed a door while shouting down the hallway something that sounds a bit similar. Yet the weird thing that makes this entire parable something odd is how, at the beginning, the dad said “okay.” When it comes to Jesus’ stories, it’s always the weird, the absurd, the that-doesn’t-sound-right that provides us the opportunity to deepen our faith. This dad, after his younger child asked for the future to start right now even though his culture didn’t always give younger kids all that much – this dad agreed to do exactly that. And while there might be those among us who have offered – or received – a fairly significant financial gift like a college education, a wedding, a downpayment for a house, or cash to start a business to embrace some kind of new beginning – we don’t usually give the next generation our 401ks and social security payments before they’ve kicked in for ourselves. We, like the father, have our own needs, responsibilities, and callings from God to live out. Maybe, if we had the foresight and luck to know we won’t need our wealth to pay for our future health needs to be a bit more generous than we expect to be. Yet the need to hoard, to be afraid, and to keep what we feel we deserve often limits just how imaginative we get to be. The father had a lot of life yet to live but decided to act as if his future was already over. 

Then, what followed was a story full of excessiveness, unfaithfulness, anger, worry, confusion, mercy, and grace. And it was a grace I’m not even sure the father fully understood since, when the younger son came home, the ring, the sandals, the robe, and the fatted calf he gave no longer belonged to him in the first place. When the father accepted a future that no longer included him, the kid who stayed home received everything else. That son’s anger, frustration, and belief the one who didn’t repent shouldn’t then get a spot at the table is about more than them simply being jealous of the love the father showed. Rather, the dad was abundantly over the top with stuff he, in theory, no longer owned. It wasn’t his to give and yet, when an opportunity came to show grace to the graceless, he couldn’t help but live into a future where love abound. The father didn’t create a new beginning for his younger son when he came back after living his life. Instead, he built it at the start and refused to live – or accept – that their future could be anything else instead. Before the younger son left, his seat at the table was already set. And when he finally caught up to that different kind of future, a ring was placed on his finger and new sandals on his feet. That is, I think, one of the ways to imagine what our life with Christ looks like. We are, already, wrapped up in the new beginning he brought us by living a human life, going to the Cross, and living into the new future God has already brought about. We, as the Ones already made – or about to be made – as part of the body of Christ, have a seat at a table where God’s love never ends. This future was given to us not because we’re perfect, holy, or get everything right. Rather, the beginning we have with our God is the beginning of just how human we get to be. What allows us to be ourselves – to live and grow and face whatever comes next – is the grace that keeps the spot at God’s table for us. And since it’s God’s grace that holds the spot open, we get to extend that same kind of grace to those we’d rather push aside. It’s at Jesus’ table where we learn to listen, to care, to change, and be changed by one another and our God. And while Kennedy (who will baptize later) might find different parts of her life feeling like the father, or the older son, or maybe the younger one who just wished that the future she wanted was starting right now, the God who promises to be with her will carry her into a more holy future where Christ’s love is the beginning that never ends. 

Amen.

From Dollarstore Children’s Sermon. 

Bring two cards from the sign board. The letters I and F 

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to talk to all of God’s children. I brought with me two of the letters we use to put messages on the sideboard. It’s the letters F and I. These letters can spell a couple of words. One is the word FI which doesn’t sound like a real word to me but something giants say in stories like Jack and the Beanstalk. The other word, though, is one we’ll hear in our reading about Jesus today. It’s the word – IF. If is only two letters long but I think it’s a big word because it’s a word that is used for questions. What do you think is a question we could ask that needs the word if? Accept answers. A lot of times, these questions are really a kind of contract. For example, “if you clean up your room, I’ll let you play on the iPad” or “if you give me your ice cream, I’ll be your friend.” Sometimes these questions are simply negotiations that feel fine – but other times that make us wonder if we are who God knows we are. They’re questions that make us think maybe we’re not good enough or kind enough or loved enough to be a friend or to be a part of the popular kids or to even be liked by those around us. If you do this for us, we will do this for you – can be very scary when it seems related to our identity in the world. If is scary – and it’s a question Jesus will be asked a lot today. After he was baptized, he’ll feel compelled to go into the wilderness and while there, evil will come and ask him a lot of “if” questions. This evil force – the devil – everything that is against God – will ask Jesus to be something other than he is. And the devil does this by using the word “if.” If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread you can eat. If you are the son of God, worship me and I’ll make you the most powerful ruler in the world. If you are the son of God, jump off a high building to force God to take care of you. If – if – if – which implies that Jesus is not. It was a test to prove who he is and to doubt his own story. Yet Jesus doesn’t because he knows who he is. 

There are times when we’ll doubt our own story too. We’ll doubt we’re loved or we matter or we’ll let others around us tell us who were supposed to be instead. But I think it’s important to realize that these questions to Jesus came after his baptism – after a moment when he heard God call him beloved. And that’s because, in your baptism, you’ve already been called beloved too. That doesn’t mean we’re always perfect or that we won’t make mistakes. But whenever someone – or even yourself – wonders if you matter, if you’re important, if you have value, if you’re worth dignity and care and support – know that God has already declared you are loved, that you matter, that you are worth more than you could ever imagine. No one can take away from you that the Creator of the Universe thinks you’re neat. And if we’re loved by the Creatore of everything – then we can live out that love by moving away from always asking others “if” and, instead, shift our words to remember that “since we’re loved – we get to be kind, be patient, to care, to support, and to show others just how much God loves them too.” 

My sermon from the 11th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (August 20, 2023) on Matthew 15:21-28.

So I noticed that after I returned from my vacation, one of my cats became a bit uncomfortable with silence. When we got back, she acted as if we never left in the first place which is her standard operating procedure. But around two o’clock that morning, while I was fast asleep, something changed. She was on the other side of the house and began to meow. The meows were soft, at first, but quickly grew louder as she came over to my side of the building. At first, I thought the smoke alarm was going off so I woke up, ran out of my room, and saw a 10 pound ball of fur meowing at me. I assumed that maybe something outside had surprised her and after getting her to quiet down, I went back to sleep. I didn’t think much of it because cats will be cats but when the next night rolled around, she did it again; and again; and again. For the last few weeks, whenever the silence becomes too much, she feels the need to fill it with sound. It isn’t the most fun experience but it is, I think, something most of us can relate to. Whenever we find ourselves caught in a silence overflowing with tension, worry, or fear, we desperately want to fill it with something else. There are times when we welcome the silence and other times when it completely overwhelms us. And there are other moments, out-of-the-ordinary moments, that surprise us – like when Jesus responded to a mother with silence. 

Now there are plenty of times in Matthew where Jesus is silent. He’s often pretty quiet when he goes off to pray and he chose to answer many questions during his trial and execution with silence. But his actions in today’s story are a bit peculiar since they don’t seem very Jesus-like. Jesus and his friends had taken a bit of a detour, heading towards the cities of Sidon and Tyre located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The region was home to ancient cities who had fought against Israel for hundreds of years over power, money, and their faith. And while the Roman Empire had united the region in an uneasy peace through a robust military occupation, the cultural and religious barriers between the two regions remained. Jesus crossed the border to visit an area where folks like him were not the so-called “norm.” He was the outsider many would have wanted to avoid. Yet this unnamed woman, identified as a descendent of the ancient enemies of Israel, came to see him. We can assume, I think, that she must have been pretty desperate to, in front of all her neighbors and friends, transgress the cultural and religious rules she and Jesus abided by. And it makes sense because her daughter needed help. Her first words to Jesus were a plea for mercy, admitting the hurt and pain consuming her family’s life. Jesus heard her cry, listened to her words, and did what none of us ever wanted him to do: he answered her with silence.  

We, in our own ways, are familiar with this kind of silence. We have, through our struggles, traumas, and various crises, felt as if God was silent with us too. What we want is for God to break the silence – to make the promises declared to us in our baptism – real. The healing, the love, and the hope we see in the Bible is something we want ourselves – and our loved ones – too. And when that doesn’t happen – we are the Canaanite woman. Our text doesn’t put her feelings or her thoughts into words, instead letting the words spoken by the disciples fill the void left by the choice Jesus made. They wanted her gone, so they told Jesus to send  her away. And while Jesus doesn’t do exactly what they asked, he does let the woman know that his mission in the world doesn’t include her or her daughter. It’s a bit of an odd thing for Jesus to say since non-Jews have been a part of his story since the magi brought gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh when he was very young. But here, in the face of deep human need, he told the woman she wasn’t included in what God was up to. This isn’t the fun Jesus, the kind Jesus, the Jesus we lean on when times are hard. But it is the Jesus who puts into words and actions what the silence from God feels like. What she needed back then and what we need during our own moments of fear and worry, is for a God whose heart breaks open instead of being closed and cold. She, though, had a very different – and the very human experience – of, in the presence of God, feeling completely alone. The silence she experienced was a silence of fear and worry; a silence of shame and humiliation; a silence of wonder and one filled with way too many questions. It was a silence we know we’ll – and one we inflict on others who don’t live or act or believe like we do. It’s a silence built on the expectations we use to limit what love can do. 

And maybe that’s why Jesus, after crossing these cultural, religious, and physical borders, did the same. For a moment, he lived everything this silence represents. Jesus wasn’t only the one who walked on water, calmed storms, and fed thousands with a charcuterie board consisting of a little bread and fish. He’s also very human –  who chose to grow up, to be cared for, and to be so emptied of divine power that, when he prayed in a garden before he was arrested and dragged to trial, he experienced the silence that empties our soul. Jesus responded to the Canaanite woman with this silence  and when he and his friends broke it, they showed what this silence can do. But when she was confronted by that silence, she refused to let Jesus be anything other than the God she believed him to be. In the words of Professor Richard Ward, this is what “faith and fulfillment looks like.” It’s through Jesus “whom God makes salvation and justice happen,” fulfilling an ancient promise that Israel would bring this light to all. “It is [this] hope that [drew] this Canaanite woman to Jesus with [a] plea” to break through what silence brings. She refused to let this silence be the last word when it comes to God’s love. And she called all of God’s agents – even Jesus himself – to fulfill the promise God already declared for everyone. When we find ourselves wrapped by a silence that is not the kind of quiet which helps us connect with our God, we can choose to be like this woman and never let go of the promises of God. That does not mean our prayers will be answered in the way we want or that we, or our loved ones, will be fully healed. But it does mean the silences we live through will not be what determines our value or worth. We can, and should, be persistent in asking for help, asking all of God’s people to make the responsibilities given to us in baptism – the responsibility and call to love, to support, and to serve – to make those responsibilities real in the lives of others. And when the silence feels too much and all we can do is let out cries fill empty halls in the middle of the night, we can trust that the One who heard the Canaanite woman; the One who grew into God’s inclusive promise; the One who faced the loneliness of death with arms stretched wide, open to all; and the One who broke through the silence of the tomb with a resurrection of hope and new possibility – this One, this Jesus, – will not let the silence be the last word of our story too. 

Amen.

My sermon from the 10th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (August 6, 2023) on Genesis 32:22-31.

So at 10:00 am last Sunday, my brother-in-law and I were setting up a large canopy for our day at the beach. Eight kids between the ages of 6 months and 11 years old were already covered up to their neck in sand and I was really paying attention to my phone. It took a few minutes to notice the string of text messages letting me know the livestream at CLC wasn’t working. Once I saw the texts, I wrote back and immediately opened up Facebook to see what was up. But my help wasn’t needed since Karen had everything working. Since I was already plugged into worship, I settled into my beach chair and joined in. It was wonderful seeing how you embraced Sydney, our guest preacher. And I enjoyed having the gentle roar of ocean waves as a backdrop for our prayers and music. We’ve known, for quite a while, that not everyone can physically gather together for worship on a Sunday morning. Some beloved children of God can’t safely leave their home while others have vocations that fill their Sunday mornings in different ways. There is something powerful about seeing the body of Christ physically together but it’s also fun to pray the Lord’s prayer with our toes buried in the sand. The gift of technology has made real something the church has always proclaimed: that the body of Christ truly extends across all space and time. For centuries, this was hard to internalize since listening to the Word and celebrating the Lord’s Supper was something we needed to be physically together to do. But now we can see, hear, and do worship even when an Ocean or a Sunday morning committed keeps us physically apart. Our old experience of living as the body of Christ is something we’re all learning how to wrestle with. And as we heard in our first reading from the book of Genesis, wrestling through these kinds of boundaries is what we are called to do. 

The Jabbok River, known today as the Zarqa, begins northeast of the city of Amman in modern-day Jordan before turning west and heading straight for the Jordan River. For centuries, it served as a kind of national boundary, marking the place where ancient Israel ended and the kingdom of Ammon began. Yet before it was a political boundary, it was a personal one for a set of twins who had, for decades, competed against one another. Approaching the river from the south was Esau, Issac’s first born, whose impulsive appetites often got him into trouble. Across from him, coming from the north, was Jacob who, years before, manipulated his way into a position of authority and power that made him, and not Esau, the heir of their father’s household. Esau was, to put it mildly, pretty annoyed at the shenanigans caused by his brother but before he could get his revenge, Jacob fled. Both did their best to live as if their brother didn’t exist by creating large households full of wives, children, servants, and wealth. Esau, though, did a bit better and created a private army that followed his every command. As the years turned, their worlds gradually grew closer together and soon the Jabbok river was the only boundary keeping them apart. 

Jacob didn’t know what Esau was going to do but he assumed it wasn’t good. As he neared the Jabbok, Jacob’s anxiety grew. He didn’t think a little water in the wilderness was going to be enough to protect the future he already built for himself so Jacob did his best to make it bigger. He decided to send gifts and servants to Esau as a kind of bribe. But when one group left, Jacob’s anxiety grew and so he sent more people and more gifts to stop the future he believed was coming his way. Nothing he did seemed to lessen his fear so even sent his spouse, his children, and the future God promised to him towards what he assumed was coming his way. And soon Jacob was all he had left while standing on the bank of Jabbok river. Everything he built and valued about himself was across the boundary and in his brother’s hands. The only one who had yet to cross, or so he thought, was himself. And then, in the middle of the night, a wrestling match broke out. 

Now Jacob’s opponent in the wrestling match is a bit weird since the so-called man doesn’t fit our image of God or God’s angels. They aren’t usually worried about their identity being revealed when the dawn eventually breaks. But I wonder if the “man’s” identity isn’t meant to be the focus of the story. Instead, it’s about what Jacob did: he wrestled. And while waiting to cross the boundary of the Jabbok, Jacob wrestled with more than God. He was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with his past, his story, and the future he tried so hard to create. He wrestled with everything, refusing to let go because, by this point, it was all he had left. He thought he was at the boundary into a future he did not want. But as he wrestled, a new reality came to life. He had, already, crossed the boundary since everything he said and did was already influenced by it. His story had become so shaped by what he thought might happen that he even threw the future God promised to him at it, hoping that could make it go away. The life Jacob hoped for – the life he thought made it good – had been transformed by the fear he refused to let go. He couldn’t imagine anything else to hold onto which is why he, and all of us, need a God who chooses to grab a hold on us. We need a baptism that affirms, in a very public way, the love God breathed into us when we took our first breaths. We need the gift of faith to show us that we never wrestle anything alone. We need the gift of a community to remind us that our worry and our anxiety do not make us unacceptable to God. We need to hear – to trust – and to experience how we really are part of the body of Christ. When we come to a boundary we are anxious to cross, that boundary has already crossed us. Our thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and point of view have been influenced and changed by the fear at the heart of what we think will come next. We imagine the boundary is still ahead of us even though, for all practical purposes, it’s already behind us. So God, through grace, holds us while we wrestle with what we have yet to work through. This struggle isn’t about overcoming what we’re facing; instead, it’s about not letting the unknowing that has already influenced us continue to be what defines us. We get to strive towards God and into God’s future because God, in Christ, has already shown how far God will strive for us. 

Because of what God has already done, we then get to let the body of Christ rather than a fearful future shape the lives we choose to live. If we spend our Sundays inside the sanctuary, we need to always act as if the entire body of Christ is with us. When we run into a fellow church goer after not seeing them in-person in awhile, our words shouldn’t feel as if we’re accusing them of unfaithfulness. If we, through the living of our lives, find our toes buried in the sand on a Sunday morning, living as the body of Christ will ask us to make our worship more intentional and visible. We might post a comment to share that we’re here or make a plan to click play on the video later in the day. When we do that, we’re not watching church; we’re doing church with the community our God has called us to hold onto. We grow through this worship by proclaiming to each other that our fears, worries, and anxieties will not be what defines us. Rather, it’s the Lord who binds us that will always make us who we are. Sometimes that support will require us to humbly listen to each other when the worries become too much. We also make sure to encourage and make sure no one feels like they’re somehow less because their anxiety requires them to access the God-given gifts of therapy and appropriate medications. We, as the church, don’t let old boundaries we’re wrestling with get in the way of the love, hope, and forgiveness God has given us. Together, we strive for God because Jesus, through the Cross, has already shown how far God always strives for us.  

Amen.

My sermon from the 8th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (July 23, 2023) on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.

So I originally thought my sermon today would be a bit shorter than usual since we’re singing so many Christmas carols. Sometimes the best way to experience the presence of God is to be surrounded by it through song. The songs we sing aren’t just heard; they’re also felt through the vibrations caused by the organ, the piano, our speakers, and our own body as we join in the hymns that have fed the faithful for generations. God’s story is, for us, an incarnated story because God’s promises are meant for the lives we actually live. 

But there’s also another reason why today’s sermon feels like it’s allowed to be shorter and that’s because Jesus’ words speak for themselves. Jesus was a storyteller who used metaphors and everyday experiences to reveal truths about the kingdom of God. We call these stories parables and I’ve often said that the key to understanding these stories is by noticing the parts that seem weird. This takes a little work on our part since an everyday experience for us might not exactly match what folks experienced in ancient Israel and Palestine. However, when we finally unpack Jesus’ words, we often discover a character saying something odd or noticing how this reasonable sounding scene is anything but. The absurd bits within the stories are the key that reveals what God’s kingdom is all about. And when we make time to notice all that’s weird, our faith grows. So it makes sense that when we first listened to today’s parable, we kept waiting to hear something weird. And yet the odd thing about this story is how it all kind of makes sense. The setting of a field full of wheat and weeds seems pretty normal and the request to pull out the weed right away is something most of us would agree too. The decision by the farmer to let the weeds and wheat grow together seems weird at first. But when we realize that the wheat and weeds mentioned in this parable looked the same while they grew up, the landowner’s choice to wait until both could be easily separated makes sense. The field, while it grows, will contain a mix of good and bad. And when we extend this parable beyond its literal setting and integrate into our lives, Jesus’ words describe a realistic vision of our world. Within our communities, our neighborhoods, our country, and even our families, there exists the holy, the helpful, the hurtful, the unholy, and everything in between. We only need to exist in this world for a little bit to realize how true this metaphor is. Yet Jesus’ words also reveal how we, in our own ways, are full of wheat and weeds too. This isn’t Jesus trying to tarnish our self-esteem or become some kind of self-help coach. Rather Jesus was pointing out how we, at the same time, participate and resist what God is doing in our world. Jesus wants us to see how sin, self-centeredness, pride, and greed tries to interfere with what God’s love might do. We are not merely good people who occasionally screw up or sinful folks beyond redemption. We are, instead, just as complicated as our communities and our world. We are a field within a field that sometimes loses where we are meant to go. Yet our God chooses to keep planting seeds within it all so that God’s kingdom can grow. 

When compared to the other stories Jesus told, today’s parable isn’t that weird. But it does, I think, reveal something weird about us. When we map the different parts within this story to concrete things in our world, the connections we first make feel easy. The landowner is the One who plants seeds full of grace and truth while the field represents where these seeds take root. Those who serve the landowner have answered the call to tend the places where seeds grow and they recognize how difficult that tending can be. The reapers – those who collect the harvest – show how the world, as it currently is, isn’t the limit of what the world will be. God’s kingdom, made real in the life of Jesus, will become real so that pain, sorrow, and brokenness will be no more. Even without Jesus’ explanation, we can easily map Jesus’ words into our world. Yet when it comes to placing us within Jesus’ story, we don’t always get it right. Since Jesus talks about people, our first instinct is to identify ourselves as one of the people in the story too. We know we’re not the landowner nor do we, in our context, want to see ourselves as enslaved or as the evil one. What’s left, then, is the reapers which is a role were particularly drawn to. Deciding who is wheat and who is a weed is something we do, practically, everyday. And while we often use biblical images and quotes from scripture to justify the judgments we make, we rarely admit how we, ourselves, are full of those same weeds and wheat too. We are not called to excuse behaviors and actions that harm, demean, or demand others to be anything other than the beloved children of God they already are. But we are, I think, invited to wonder why it’s easier for us to reap rather than to patiently tend to the seeds God has already planted. This kind of wondering leads to difficult questions such as: what do we put our trust in? Are our values dominated by our need for comfort or do we work hard to cause discomfort in others? Do we choose to root ourselves in traditions that are merely a sanitized version of a past that never really existed? Or are we seeking a future full of change just for change’s sake? Do we want a kingdom where everyone’s story matches our own or do we prefer the world we’re used to rather than letting ourselves embrace what the world might become? When we spend time reflecting on these questions, we start to notice how we, at the same time, are both wheat and weed, saint and sinner. We are not perfect, we are fully whole, and we are not the hero in every story. Instead we are a people in need of grace, of love, and of a hope that does not depend solely on us. What we need, then, is Christmas – which is why Christmas came. We are not called to be reapers since that kind of judgment is reserved only for God. We can, though, give thanks that through baptism and faith, we have already been granted a seed of grace that will grow. When it seems as if the weeds are all around us or if the wheat within us is nowhere to be found, Jesus’ parable reminds us that there’s still a choice we get to make. Instead of practicing our judgment and doing our best to be the reaper God does not call us to be, we can choose to always make our best, most reverent, more loving guess no matter what comes our way. That does not mean that we’ll always be right or that our intentions should outweigh the impact of the choices we make. But it does keep us rooted in a love so big, so grand, and so weird that shows us how God’s story, our story, and the world’s story keeps going through the Crosses we often build.

Amen. 

My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (July 2, 2023) on Genesis 22:1-14.

So what do we do about a story that, in the words of the Mark Smith, professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, “has no parallels in the Bible or ancient Near Eastern literature?” Christians have, since the first few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, seen the story of the attempted sacrifice of Issac as one foreshadowing Jesus on the cross. There are details within this story that seem to match – such as Issac being the one who carried the wood he would be bound too. Yet this story still leaves us with questions since God, who already promised that Abraham’s descendants would outnumber all the stars in the sky, suddenly out of nowhere asked Abraham to end that promise. We’re told that this whole ordeal is meant to be a test but what that test is trying to measure is a bit fuzzy. Even Abraham, Issac, his family, and their entire household are left in the dark, not knowing that they’re undergoing a test in the first place. Our reading begins with God calling Abraham by name and then quickly moves to God uttering a word we wouldn’t expect. This is a story where God’s intentions aren’t very easy to see. 

Yet I wonder if the opening words between God and Abraham might help us unpack everything else that followed. These words, at first, feel rather one-sided since God does most of the talking. But we can safely imagine that Abraham wouldn’t have been so quiet since he had a regular habit of arguing with God. At worst, Abraham would have kept every response to God safely in his head and I think that that command that punctuated God’s speech provides that space where we get to imagine what Abraham might have said. God began his words with the command “take your son” which Abraham would have made Abraham wonder – which one? By this point in the story, Abraham had two sons – one through Sarah and the other through Hagar, Abraham’s slave. That son was born when Sarah and Abraham tried to make God’s promise come true on their own. God, though, answered Abraham’s question by pointing to Issac but surrounded that name with “an only.” Abraham knew, however, that such a word didn’t fully apply to him but did to the women who never made an overt appearance in the story. Abraham, I believe, loved all his kids – which might be why God didn’t say that Issac was the only one he loved. By this point in the speech, I imagine Abraham was a bit confused – not quite sure what God was doing. The comments God shared didn’t fully describe Abraham’s story as he, himself, knew it to be. God seemed to be shifting Abraham’s story in a slightly different way that left Abraham filled with questions. Abraham probably wondered where God was going with all of this – which shows how faith doesn’t require us to turn off our brain or leave our emotions behind. Instead, God seemed to be engaging with Abraham’s default story – his own self-vision of who he was supposed to be. 

And it’s at that point in the story where everything gets weird. God then told Abraham to take Issac to a new place to be offered up as a sacrifice. Now the idea behind the sacrifice – the intentional killing of a living thing as a way to connect with the divine – is something that’s all over our Bible. But our Bible doesn’t take a few verses to describe why this kind of sacrifice existed in the first place. Instead, it’s just there – a part of our human story that assumes reaching out to the divine requires a life to be involved. Usually the sacrifice used grain or grapes, cattle or sheep, or other kinds of domesticated plants and animals. But there were moments when, during a war or after a natural disaster or while living through a famine or plague that humans were killed. When the world was on the line, a person’s life was used as a way to convince a god or gods or whatever to intervene. Abraham knew that his current situation wasn’t close to being that dire but that concept of sacrifice was simply assumed as part of what it means to interact with God. He, I think, couldn’t even imagine that a relationship with the divine wouldn’t include some kind of sacrifice. A sacrifice was how you convinced the so-called gods to act on the behalf of you, your family, and your nation. Living with the divine meant the world was kind of wrapped up in a pay-per-play attitude where your faithfulness, your love, your devotion, was reflected in and through the living things burnt up to the divine. Abraham, though, doesn’t explicitly hear from God about what this so-called test that he didn’t even know he was taking – would give him. Yet that pay-per-play idea was assumed to be part of every communication one had with the divine. God commanded Abraham to end the promise Issac’s life fulfilled – and every bit of his wonder and doubt and questions were impacted by this sacrificial vision of what it means to be in a relationship with God. 

And so I wonder if this test wasn’t about how close Abraham came to slaughtering his own son but rather was God showing how far these default stories take us into death and how we need God to give us a new vision of what it means to live in the world. Asking, or forcing, others to make all kinds of sacrifices for our own personal benefit – is a story that is still with us. We often require others, especially the most vulnerable among us, to sacrifice their own opportunities for life, love, health, and success so that the story we tell of our own value and importance won’t come crumbling down. We, without always realizing it, live as if God’s creation really is a pay-to-play reality where everything, including love and grace, is a limited commodity that only certain people are allowed to have. God sent Abraham on a journey that revealed to him and Issac just how far the default stories we carry might take us. God was not interested in letting these kinds of stories continue because a sacrifice shouldn’t be about asking others to lose their own life so that we can continue embracing the status quo. Rather, the kind of sacrifice God had in mine was centered on what we can do to help those around us – thrive. 

God gave Abraham and his descendants a new story rooted in the promise of life, opportunity, and hope. Our interaction with the divine and the wider world would no longer be centered on death but rooted in the life God had already brought about. The life of faith is not meant to make us into some kind of holy robot that does whatever it’s told. Rather, our new story helps us undo the default story that believes that scarcity and fear are central to what God is about. And so, after rewriting Abraham’s story, God eventually re-wrote every story by living a human life and ending the power of death. Instead of asking or forcing others to be sacrificed so that we can remain who we are, God intervenes to show us the life-giving people we can be. This, though, requires us to reflect, deeply and honestly, about what our default story truly is. We need to ask what sacrifices we ask others to make so that we don’t have to make any sacrifices of our own. We have to push through our own comfort zone and into a reality where mercy, hope, and forgiveness abound. And we do this not because it’s easy or because we think this will get God to do what we want God to do. But rather, this is simply the way we get to be because God has already acted. Jesus died on the Cross so that we would no longer ask others to die on it too. Instead, we get to embrace a new vision – a holy vision – a Godly vision – that notices just how abundant God’s love, grace, and forgiveness can truly be. 

Amen.