He Rebuked Peter, a sermon based on Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16, and Mark 8: 31-38, preached on February 25, 2024

A legendary preacher named William Sloane Coffin once said: While Abraham lived through “summer’s parching heat,” Jesus died young; but didn’t both show us that it is by its content rather than by its duration that a lifetime is measured? Deserted by his disciples, in agony on the cross, barely thirty years old, Christ said, “It is finished.” And thus ended the most complete life ever lived. I love that quote. That word “complete” used to describe the life that Jesus lived is different from the word ideal. Saying that He lived a complete life is different from saying that He lived a superlative or sensational life. Living a complete life is different from living an efficient life, yet sometimes I want to live efficiently. I think about how to spend the limited amount of time that I have, and so when I go into Kroger, I’m thinking about how to get in and out as quickly as possible. However, living an efficient life and living a complete life are not the same thing. I was at Kroger years ago when those self-check-out lines were first being introduced. I had some place to be, but I wasn’t in too much of a hurry. I only thought about the self-checkout line because it was empty, but it wasn’t necessary, so I went to the line with an actual cashier, even though in that line there were a couple customers there in front of me. I remember that the man right in front of me bought cigarettes, cat food, and a newspaper. I remember that because I’m nosy. I was surprised that he started talking to the woman at the register about a book he’s reading. “It’s a work of science fiction,” he said. “It will probably take me six weeks to read it. You must have a physics background to understand it. I sit and think awhile after I’ve only read five pages. And could you also give me change for a ten? Two fives, please,” the man said. She handed him the two fives, and he explained: “I’m taking my mother to get her hair done, and if I only have a $10 bill, she’ll want to tip the stylist the whole $10.” “It looks like you got a haircut, too,” the woman at the register said to the man. “You look nice,” she added. “Not too nice, though,” he replied. “I lost another tooth, so I’m scared to smile because when I do, I look like I’m from Appalachia.” That was a mean thing to say about people from Appalachia, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. I just kept eavesdropping. “I’m getting a new tooth though,” he said. The woman at the register looked pleased. “Come in here smiling once you do,” the woman said. He covered his mouth, “I’m smiling now, but don’t look. If there are any banjos around, this smile might inspire them to stary playing the theme song for the movie Deliverance.” Then he left. The cashier looked to me and said, “I love seeing that man. He makes me smile every time I see him.” I wasn’t sure what to say in response, but I knew to be thankful for having witnessed the whole interchange, which never would have happened in a self-checkout line. The self-checkout line would have been faster, but there are things more important than efficiency. Self-checkout lines don’t get jokes. They can’t smile. You can’t touch them. They can’t hold your hand. People can do those things. Jesus did these things. God incarnate came down to make covenant with us, to have a relationship with us, so today as we consider our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus rebuked Peter for setting his mind, “not on divine things but on human things,” I ask you: How should we be living? How should we be spending our time? A few summers ago, I was checking out at the Kroger on a Friday. It was a hot day, so when I was at the Kroger at about 5:00 PM, the woman in front of me had taken off her wig while shopping and put it with the produce in her basket. The reason I know that she took her wig off in the produce section is because the cashier bagged all this woman’s produce, and nearly bagged the wig along with them. “Ma’am, you forget your hair,” the cashier said, handing the woman back her wig. Today, as I remember the cashier handing this woman back her wig, once again, I think about the difference between divine things and human things. When I think about Kroger, I think about getting in and out as efficiently as possible, and yet there are divine things happening all around us. God is at work all around us. There are great acts of compassion for us to witness; however, our focus is so often on the human, on the temporal, on the business, or on the hardship, all of which is temporary. There’s a C.S. Lewis quote that I love: “The devil’s greatest trick is making us believe that our temporary pain is not in fact temporary, but permanent.” We get wrapped up in worries that come and go. I have no idea what I was on my way to either of those times I was tempted to go through the self-checkout line, yet the first story I told happened 15 years ago and the second back in 2019. I don’t know what I was rushing to get to, yet when I slowed down, I saw a glimpse of the divine. Jesus rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Last Tuesday morning, I witnessed the divine. Last Tuesday morning, I walked into the church to find that the power was out. Our Director of Administration, Melissa Ricketts, had already talked with the crew working out on the corner replacing the power line. They didn’t know how long the power would be out, so she was on the phone, cancelling the Tuesday morning Bible studies and meetings. The rest of us waited there with her, not wanting to go to dark offices. We just stood by the glass doors waiting and hoping the lights would come on so that we could get on with our day and do something productive. There are so many things that must happen on a Tuesday. I was thinking about emails I needed to respond to. I was thinking about the bulletin that needed to be prepared. I had a sermon to write and phone calls to make. Would I be able to get anything done in the dark? Should I just go work from home? And what about all the food in the refrigerators? Or all the clocks we’d need to reset? Those were the kinds of things I was worrying about while waiting for the lights to come back on. Maybe everyone else was thinking about the same kinds of things. I don’t know for sure what anyone else was thinking because I was looking down at my phone, trying to make efficient use of my time. Then, our Tuesday front desk volunteer, Amy Sherwood, walked in. With her, we had a big enough crowd standing there in the gathering area for Melissa to suggest that I lead a morning devotion while we wait. I knew already that Fran Sommerville had written one for me. Having begun my day with the Lenten Devotional our Stephen Ministers prepared for us all, I grabbed a copy and read what she had prepared. This is what she wrote for last Tuesday: Anxiety and worry. Who among us has experienced these? Probably most of us at one time or another. In Matthew, Jesus teaches us that worry is unproductive. He implores us not to worry about tomorrow but to live in the present moment. Attend to his words: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Remember that God is in complete control of everything. As I read those last words, the lights came back on. I’m not kidding. Ask Melissa or Amy. They were there when it happened, and I tell you this true story now to say that God is in control, but sometimes I think I have more important things to do than to sit and wait. Christ goes to the Cross to ensure our salvation, but some days, I’m still working so hard to make something of myself that I forget I don’t need to do anything to earn His love. My friends, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him, but Jesus rebuked Peter, saying, “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Let us focus on divine things, for we read in our Call to Worship, which used the 22nd Psalm: Future generations will be told about the Lord, Saying that he has done it. In his death on the Cross, he has giving us everything, so stop acting like everything depends on how you use your next five minutes. It will be OK if you’re late. Next week, will you even remember what you were rushing to get to? It will even be OK if you leave your wig in with your produce. If you do that, you might help some preacher write his sermon. Let us focus on divine things. Like the people around us. I was struck by a podcast my wife, Sara, encouraged me to listen to. In it, a man was interviewed who said that for his 50th birthday, he invited his 11 closest friends to dinner, and over dinner he told them each how much they mattered to him. One by one he did it. Can you imagine such a dinner? This man enjoyed doing this so much, telling his friends how much he appreciated them, that when he turned 70, he traveled to them, and thanked them all for making a difference in his life. As he described the experience, I could hear it in his voice, how it brought tears to his eyes. And I get it, for what matters most in the end is not how efficiently we’ve lived, but how completely. How complete are your relationships? How completely have you enjoyed your time? How completely aware have you been that God is alive in our world, working His purpose out? My friends, we will overcome the hardship that we face. Future generations will be told about the Lord. All the nations shall worship before Him. Not because we have done it, but because He has. The God of our salvation will come in glory to set all things right, and when He does, let us not be so rushed that we fail to see Him. Amen.

The Water that Almost Drowned Us, a sermon based on Genesis 9: 8-17 and Mark 1: 9-15, preached on February 18, 2024

In 2007, I became the Associate Pastor for Mission and Outreach at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church in Lilburn, Georgia. That job description didn’t last, however, because after I began my ministry as Associate Pastor for Mission and Outreach, the Director of Christian Education left, and I suddenly became the Associate Pastor for Christian Education. Then, a few months into my second year, the Senior Pastor left, and I became the Senior Pastor. Three different job descriptions in two years was a lot of transition, which I would not have asked for. I wouldn’t have asked for all that change, not only because out of the three roles (I was barely qualified to fulfill one of them.), but because that much instability made me anxious, and that much change didn’t just challenge me; it overwhelmed me. During those years, I experienced so much stress that I broke out in hives. I started to see a counselor. I was pushed beyond my limit, and I needed help. All that change wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t enjoy it, and I wouldn’t have asked for it, so, in 2007, as I was considering this opportunity to go to Good Shepherd as their Associate Pastor for Mission and Outreach, had I been able to forecast the future and see that if I agreed to go, my job description would change three times in two years, I never would have gone there in the first place. However, today, as I look back on those challenging years, I can easily see how those years prepared me. I know now that the rapid change strengthened me, and so today I give thanks to God for the water that nearly drowned me. The title for this sermon is “The Water That Almost Drowned Us,” and I’m wondering if that title resonates with you. Were there events in your life that nearly took you out? Were there hard years that made you feel like you were drowning? Sinking? Struggling? Fighting to come up for air? Was there a season in your life that tested you, challenged you, pushed you beyond your limits so that you nearly drowned, yet instead of drowning, the hard time made you who you are today? When I think about such challenges, the challenges that nearly drown us but instead make us more than who we were, my mind goes back to my first hours as a parent. The night our daughter Lily was born, her mother had labored for hours. As the contractions were coming in rapid succession, Lily’s heartbeat slowed, Sara was rushed into surgery, and by an emergency c-section, our daughter came into the world. As they were stitching Sara back up, I was in the nursery with our newborn daughter. She couldn’t be held right away, but I stood right by her side, and so long as my hand was on her stomach, she wouldn’t cry, so I stood there, looking at this new person who had merely been a kick inside Sara’s stomach a few hours before. Now, she was here, and I was her father. Do you know the feeling? I learned how to swaddle her in class, so once I was allowed, I wrapped her up and rocked her in a rocking chair. Rocking her for the very first time, I felt both overjoyed and overwhelmed. Once the adrenalin left my body, I also felt tired, only when we were back with Sara in a new room in the hospital, the nurse walked us down there, then she left, so Sara and I were on our own with a brand-new baby girl who had needs all her own. When baby Lily cried, it was up to us. When she was hungry, it was our job to do something about it. It seemed like I only slept in five-minute increments, so slowly but surely, the overjoyed part melted away, and I was simply exhausted and overwhelmed. Do you know the feeling? If you’ve read the book or watched the TV series “Lessons in Chemistry,” then maybe you remember the mother who, during a season when her infant daughter cried incessantly, confessed to her neighbor: “I’m a terrible mother. I’m not having any of those special moments that you’re supposed to have with your baby. Those blissful moments that I’ve read about in the women’s magazines. I’m ashamed to say I’ve been ready to give her away at least twice now.” That last comment made her neighbor stop in her tracks. Turning around, she asked, “You’ve wanted to give her away… twice?” Then the neighbor shook her head and laughed. “Twenty times would still make you an amateur.” I love her neighbor for saying that. New parents need to hear things like that, and after sympathizing so effectively, later she said to this new mother, “Soon enough, you’ll expand.” These days of early motherhood may not be easy, yet because they are hard, they are stretching you in such a way that you’re becoming someone new, for sometimes, from the water that nearly drowns us, we rise to new life. In a universal sense, this is the story of Noah and the ark. I’m thankful that this is a story that every child learns from a young age because we all need to know that there are moments in life when the world we knew dies, that a new world may be born. There are moments so challenging that we’d never choose to go through them again, yet in the process, our old selves die that our new selves may be born. This is the way it always is, and so repeatedly, we hear this story. More than that, repeatedly, we live this story. A great author and scholar is Joseph Campbell. I hope you’ve heard of him. His most famous book is called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In this book, he explores common elements found in myths and stories from around the world. After studying thousands of stories about heroes like Osiris, Prometheus, as well as the Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, and Jesus, Campbell identifies universal themes and proposes that many of the stories we tell about our heroes follow a similar pattern: that of separation from the known world, then a crisis or series of catastrophes and tests, which, should the hero endure them, enable him or her to return home enlightened and changed. This pattern is easy to see in classics like The Iliad and The Odyssey, in which the hero, Odysseus, leaves home. When he finally returns home after a war, multiple shipwrecks, and temptations, he is not the same man who left. He comes home a new person, for from the water that nearly drowned him came a new life. The new man is mature in ways he wasn’t before, enlightened in ways that only a process of harsh refinement can explain. So it has been with us. The challenges of life change us, and while what we’d all ask for would be peaceful days filled with crossword puzzles and ice cream sandwiches, it’s our greatest challenges that have made us who we are. My favorite line from Joseph Campbell is that the hero and the villain must swim in the same water. What drowns one baptizes the other. In our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is baptized by John. What happens immediately after His baptism still surprises me. Our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Mark begins with His baptism, which is as picturesque as a baptism could possibly be. Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” How special is that? It’s the most beautiful baptism account of all time. Only then, the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts. Now, that part doesn’t sound so good. After most baptisms, the family has a nice lunch at the house. Sometimes there are cupcakes. That didn’t happen with Jesus, for while His hair was still wet from His baptism, His temptation began. Yet this is often the case: From the water that nearly drowns us, we rise to new life. I believe that. I believe it because I’ve lived it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have lived it, too. In our lives are many struggles, and the ones that don’t break us sometimes make us stronger. Sometimes, from the struggles we gain strength we never thought we had. Other times, it’s through the hardship that we see God most clearly. This week, I read through our church’s publication. We used to call it a newsletter. Now, it’s too fancy to be a newsletter. We used to use this publication to advertise events that were coming up. Now, we do so many of the announcements through the bulletin, emails, and the church website, so we use this publication to celebrate ways that God is at work among us. If you’ve read the Lent issue, then you’ve heard already about Dr. Bob Smith, who, in his 35 years as a member of First Presbyterian Church, has been through some difficult times, and yet during the hard times, he learned how to listen to the heart and what it means to be chosen for a purpose – not a destination but a journey. Clyde Grant’s story is published in this issue as well, and if you read about this man who’s been on the battlefields of Afghanistan, providing medical care to the men and women injured on the front line, then you’ll hear that he has been through that deep water as well, yet through the struggle, he’s learned to breathe. He’s learned how to be present. He’s learned to take a walk in his backyard to find peace. Katharine Wesselink wrote an article as well. You may know the story she tells, how she was diagnosed with stage III bile duct/pancreatic cancer in 2022 and learned during her treatment that great lesson from the Apostle Paul to put on the whole armor of God. During her hardship, she discovered the kind of faith that only comes from adversity. Now, I don’t like adversity. I would never ask for adversity. If I had some knowledge to offer to help us all avoid adversity, I would preach about that. However, the Bible doesn’t teach us to avoid hard times. Instead, Scripture teaches us that even Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days tested by Satan, yet the Bible also tells us that the angels waited on Him as well. If you’ve been reading the devotional the Stephen Ministers of our church prepared for this season of Lent, then you’ll know that the devotional for this morning was written by Bennett Frye. Bennet’s doctor ordered a test out of an abundance of caution. Unfortunately, the test found something serious. On the way home from the hospital, having just heard the news, he stopped off at the grocery store to buy some bananas. “The cashier handed me my change” Bennett wrote, “a quarter, two pennies and a nickel. Funny how I remember that. On the way to the car, I looked at the quarter and to my surprise saw it was not a quarter, but a rather crude silver coin with the impression of a flying angel stamped upon it. I suddenly felt the presence of an angel and the assurance of God; not assured that I would survive but assured that He was present.” Bennett still carries that coin, and may you continually be reminded that by the water that almost drowned us, we may see the power of God. Amen.

Get Up and Go, a sermon based on Isaiah 40: 21-31 and Mark 1: 29-39, preached on February 4, 2024

Near the beginning of our Gospel lesson, we just read: “[Jesus] came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” Couldn’t she have taken a nap first? Or might Simon have made her lunch? This moment in Scripture sounds like what may happen in your house. When Mom spikes a fever, she keeps working, whereas, the moment Dad gets a cold, he can’t leave the couch for a week. It’s safe to assume that Simon’s mother-in-law was so grateful to Jesus that she wanted to serve Him supper, or that she bounced back from the fever so completely that she felt better than she had in years. Mark’s gospel, originally written in Greek, uses the Greek verb “diakoneo,” which, translated into English, means, “to serve,” and gives us the basis for our word “deacon.” Many have read this passage with its use of the verb “diakoneo,” and concluded that Simon’s mother-in-law was the Church’s first deacon, for she was called into a particular kind of service that many here have been called to and that may also lead to feeling overworked. I once knew a Presbyterian who agreed to be a deacon in the church, and he told me that on the night he received a phone call asking him to serve as a church officer, he was so honored, he couldn’t help but say yes. Then, at the church service when he was ordained, he was moved to tears when all the past elders laid hands on him in front of the whole congregation, only just as he stood up and wiped the tears from his eyes, a man handed him a toilet brush and said, “Congratulations. Now get to work.” “[Jesus] came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” That verse can be problematic, yet our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Mark doesn’t end there, so let’s keep going. After Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law, word spread about this man who could do miracles, so the town lined up to be healed by Jesus. We read that after Jesus “cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons… in the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” It might not sound strange to hear that Jesus prayed. Of course He prayed. We could go into the nursery right now, and every child there would be able to tell you that Jesus prayed. Think, though, about what the Gospel of Mark is telling us about Jesus here. The theologians tell us that Jesus is fully human and fully God. He’s like us, but He’s also not like us. When we hear that, it’s difficult to know exactly how to understand what it means to be both fully human and fully God. Does that mean that He was faster than a speeding bullet? More powerful than a locomotive? Was He able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound? That’s Superman, not Jesus. Jesus is like us in the sense that His time was limited as ours is. Jesus is like us in the sense that He also had to prioritize His day as many different needs competed for His attention, yet He was unlike us, He was divine, in the sense that busyness never got the best of Him. It gets the best of me all the time. As my friend Victoria Chastain walked out of the 8:30 service, she thanked me for my sermon. “We needed to hear it,” she said, “but you know who needed to hear that sermon most of all?” she asked. Then she answered her own question: “You.” She’s right about that. I get busy. I want to keep going so that I get to everything and everybody, and it feels like weakness when I can’t. It feels like failure when I let someone down. Yet Jesus is divine, not in the sense that He could do it all. He is divine in the sense that He couldn’t yet never gave into the feeling that He had to. Jesus is different. Jesus wept like we do. Jesus laughed like we do. Jesus got mad like we do. Jesus got tired and stressed like we do, but when He got tired, He didn’t just keep on going. He didn’t forge ahead. He left his friends and took a break. He went off to a deserted place and prayed, rather than give into the pressure to keep going. Listen to this: When the crowds of sick people who needed the Great Physician lined up, Simon felt anxious. He felt that human anxiety that we all feel when people come around asking for help, and he did the most human thing that we so often do. He went looking for Jesus, and as though he were handing Him that toilet brush, he said “Congratulations, Miracle Worker. Now get back to work.” “Everyone is searching for you,” we read in verse 37. Do you know that feels like? A dad in this church told me that once he sits down on the couch, if he lays down to rest his eyes, it’s like a sensor goes off in the house. Suddenly, the kids line up to ask questions: “Dad, what time is my basketball game?” “Dad, where is my soccer jersey?” “Dad, what’s the weather going to be like next Tuesday?” That question about the weather is the one that really gets him. In his house, they each have a phone that he can’t keep them off, plus there are two Alexas, one in the kitchen and another in the living room. Any of these devises can tell them the weather, while for some reason, they go asking Dad about it.” My friends, Jesus knows that feeling. He knows about the demands people make for our time. He knows the feeling of being pushed and pressured and wanting to lock Himself in the bathroom, only here’s the difference between Him and all of us: When He felt His tank go to empty, He snuck off to be with God and wouldn’t allow Simon to make Him feel guilty about it. He went to that deserted place. He voiced His concerns to His Father. He listened to the Creator’s voice, and He remembered again who He was and what He was meant to do. On the other hand, while I aspire to begin each day with prayer and meditation, when I get too busy, what’s the first thing to go? Prayer and meditation go in favor of answering emails, yet emptying out my email inbox won’t fill me up when my tank is empty. Shopping on Amazon might make me feel better for a minute, but no amount of scrolling is going to lead me to the thing I’m looking for when I’m so tired that I lack direction. We must stop and rest, and we can’t give in to the feeling that we can’t rest because we haven’t done enough. Jesus didn’t give into that feeling. What about the mom who shows up at the bake sale with store-bought cookies? Does she feel like she deserves a break, or does our culture make her feel ashamed? A few years ago, I finally remembered to bring my carpool number when I went to pick up our daughter from elementary school. I couldn’t ever remember to bring my number for the line, and Mrs. Williams got used to that. She’d be there, plugging in the numbers. I’d wave and give her an apologetic look, then she’d laugh a little bit and forgive me, until one day I remembered that number. I pulled into the line, and as soon as I got to Mrs. Williams, I showed it to her, saying, “Look, Mrs. Williams. I did it.” She responded, “What do you want, a parade? For doing the bare minimum required of all parents?” Dads get more grace when it comes to this kind of thing. We get celebrated more for doing things like bringing cupcakes to bake sales. However, I don’t think we should be harder on dads for forgetting the carpool number. I think we should be easier on everyone, for if Jesus needed to be alone to recharge His battery, taking time for yourself can’t be wrong. Jesus was divine in accepting His human limitations and living within their bounds, so if you’re giving so much of yourself at the office that you come home and can only offer your family the leftovers, take a lesson from the Great Physician, and take a break. Now, I’m really preaching to myself. Hear me say this from personal experience: If you’re feeling pulled in a million directions, and you feel pushed into such anxiety that you’re losing sleep, follow the example of Jesus and go to that deserted place to rest and reorder your priorities. You can’t do everything, so do the most important things. Some, like me, say “yes” to everything and never get it all done. Others say “no” to every opportunity and never really get started. When Jesus felt stretched, He went to that solitary place, and He rested. Then, He listened and went on to Galilee, leaving a whole lot of unfinished business right outside Simon’s house. Were those people disappointed? Surely, yet even Jesus couldn’t do everything. He’s like us in that way. He’s limited, yet He’s different from us because He accepted it. If you’re stretched so thin that you’re miserable, remember that if life stops being fun, it may be that you’re doing it wrong. We were created, not for toil, but to worship the Lord our God and to enjoy Him forever. Jesus lived that principle, so go and do likewise. Do not lose direction. Do not be swayed by the crowd. Do not surrender to the anxiety of the ones who hunt for you because you were born, not to be busy, but to mount up with wings like eagles, to run and not grow weary, to walk and not faint. Amen.