Jerusalem, Jerusalem, a sermon based on Luke 13: 31-35, preached on March 16, 2025

One of the greatest challenges in preaching is maintaining the congregation’s attention. The key to success comes from following the advice of the great comedian Groucho Marx, who said, “Every sermon should begin with a joke and have a really good ending, and those two parts should be as close together as possible.” Some Sundays, I feel as though I’ve followed his advice and succeeded in keeping your attention. Other times, I know I’ve failed by the number of you who have fallen asleep. The other great sign that I’ve failed to keep your attention is to find a bulletin on Monday morning, left in a hymnal, covered in tic-tac-toe games. This is the challenge of every preacher, every teacher, every person or ad agency who is fighting for your ear. The number of advertisements we see each day is between 4,000 and 10,000. A 30-second slot for an ad during the Super Bowl costs about $8,000,000. All kinds of voices are fighting for your attention. I would go so far as to say that multiple voices in your life are fighting for your soul. To whom do you pay attention? To whom are you listening? Some speak because they want the best for you; others whisper in your ear because they want something from you, will take it, then throw you aside once they have what they want. Discerning between all the voices is a crucial skill, and it isn’t always easy. According to Jesus in our Gospel lesson, Jerusalem couldn’t tell the difference between which voice to listen to and which one to ignore. There, we read Jesus say: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and yet you were not willing!” By making this statement in our Gospel lesson, Jesus is positioning Himself on the one hand with King Herod on the other. Jesus calls Himself the mother hen who just wants to protect the people from harm. On the other hand is Herod, whom Jesus calls “that fox.” Herod is the fox who wanted to eat the people of Jerusalem as a fox eats the chicks of a mother hen, and while it defies logic, Jesus goes so far as to say that not only does Jerusalem chose to listen to the fox, but Jerusalem will stone the hen. So it is with humanity. We can’t always tell which voice to listen to. Sometimes, we reject the one who loves us to rush towards the open jaws of the one who will devour us. That happens in all kinds of movies, like Pinocchio for example. Do you remember Pinocchio? Pinocchio is a powerful movie. I was watching the remake that came out a couple years ago the other night when I couldn’t sleep. In this recent version, Tom Hanks plays Geppetto, Pinocchio’s father, because Tom Hanks can play anyone apparently. All these voices are fighting for Pinocchio’s attention. Pinocchio is learning which voices to listen to. On the one hand is Geppetto, this kind, lonely man, who so longs for a son that he builds one out of wood. The wooden boy comes to life, and Geppetto cherishes him. He loves him. He clothes him, feeds him, provides him a bed to sleep in and treasures him as a precious gift. This is what parenthood is supposed to be like. We parents pour our hearts into our children, only then, our children are seduced by voices that are not our own. Pinocchio tries to make his way to school, but on his way, he hears the voice of a fox named Honest John who knows that the great puppeteer Stromboli would pay handsomely for a puppet like Pinocchio. After this fox encouraged Pinocchio not to pursue an education but to take to the stage to see his name in lights, he’s thrown into a cage by Stromboli, who locks his new source of income behind bars. They make that guy so nasty. He eats an onion like it’s an apple. Do you remember? Had Stromboli led with that kind of behavior, Pinocchio might have known not to rush towards him, but the promise of fame comes first; the onion eating comes later. Because the fox is seductive, Pinocchio struggles to learn which voice to trust and which to ignore. By listening to a series of other people, all who want something from him, Pinocchio drifts further and further from his father who loves him. Eventually, he ends up on Pleasure Island, a cursed island with all the junk food a boy can eat and all the free cigarettes a boy can smoke, but all the boys seduced to this island are turned into donkeys. Do you remember all that? Voices are fighting for our attention. Many of them just want something from us, but the most sinister lead us to destruction, and we listen. Like headstrong toddlers, we reject the hand of those who love us because we want to walk on our own. Like self-assured teenagers, we think we know everything already and won’t listen to wisdom or advice. Like lost sheep, those who love us call us home, but we blunder down broken paths that lead to ruin. That’s who we are, so we must be careful about whom we listen to. Will we listen to our doctors, who tell us to cut out saturated fat and to exercise more? We don’t want to hear that. Or will we listen to our children’s teachers, who offer us an assessment of our children that we don’t like and can’t agree with? Likewise, the Bible so frequently tells us what we don’t want to hear. Scripture calls us to stay out of debt and to beware of lending money. Interest is mentioned in Scripture not once, but nearly as often as we are warned not to commit adultery are we warned not to lend with interest, yet the fox encourages us to spend money that we don’t have to buy things that we don’t need. Such voices as these who will us lead to enslavement are everywhere because we live in a culture full of foxes. Thousands upon thousands of voices call us towards what they say is an easy way sure to lead to happiness, and we are listening. We listen to the fox while we push away from the hen. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and yet you were not willing!” I wonder if here Jesus sounds a little like your mother. In some ways, Jesus sounds like mine because there were and still are so many things that she wants to protect me from. Years ago, she wanted to protect me from cigarettes, and not only was she on my case, but I am confident that she enlisted the help of my doctor who told me during an appointment when I was 13 or 14 years old that my asthma was so bad that if I ever so much as tried a puff of a cigarette, I might just die there on the spot. Regardless of whether that was true, I don’t know because I’m still too scared to try. That’s not entirely true, but she was successful overall. She kept me under those wings and away from smoking, but she couldn’t keep me completely away from my friends who did. The mother hen has her work cut out for her because there comes a time when the chicks want to go out into the world and desire the approval and acceptance, not of their mother so much as their peers, so Willie Nelson sings, “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys,” Mama can try to “make them be doctors and lawyers and such” but they may not be willing because if all their friends want to be cowboys, then they want to be cowboys, too. My mom couldn’t keep me from wanting the approval of my peers, and when it came to several other temptations, I was unwilling to be gathered under her wings because I wanted not her protection but their acceptance. Do you remember how much it mattered to have the right clothes in high school? Every teenager pushes her parents away and is tempted by the voices of those from whom she wants approval and acceptance. And that never changes. Longing for approval and acceptance, we listen and we follow, and we find ourselves in the jaws of the fox. Like puppets, we are pulled and manipulated by so many messages, but our Gospel lesson is not primarily about the fox and his seduction. This Gospel lesson is about the mother hen who so longs to gather us under her wings that she never stops calling us home. Do you remember how the story of Pinocchio ends? The story of Pinocchio is really the story of a father who never stops looking for his son. While that son did things that he was surely afraid to tell his father about, Geppetto didn’t love him any less no matter what he heard his son confess. He just wanted his beloved child back under the safety of his wings. Such love as this reflects the awesome love of God. Sometimes, the shame that we feel keeps us silent and afraid to return home. If the fox has caused you to do something that you’re afraid to mention, if in underestimating the allure of the fox, you’ve turned down that road that led to your ruin, do not underestimate the love of Christ Jesus our Lord and His power to redeem. The Mother Hen would rather die than see us harmed. The Mother Hen would sooner be pelted by stones than abandon us to violence and destruction. The Mother Hen will face death, die, and rise again, for so wonderous is the love of God. Trust in His grace. In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Come home to the wings of mercy. Amen.

Be Reconciled to One Another, a sermon based on Isaiah 58: 1-12, preached on Ash Wednesday 2025

My sister has been in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. While the roots of Mardi Gras are religious, she’s not there on a pilgrimage. Mardi Gras is a big party that ends today, with Ash Wednesday. Traditionally, the high point of Mardi Gras was yesterday, Fat Tuesday, the last day you can eat all the things you give up for the season of religious fasting that we call Lent. Lent, which begins today, leads us to Easter. The 40 days of Lent are days of preparation and fasting, meant to remind us of the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness tempted by Satan, and the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering after leaving slavery in Egypt before they reached the Promised Land. For 40 days, beginning today, we prepare for Easter, Resurrection, and the Promised Land. Now is the time to leave behind that which stands in the way. It’s a time to let go of heavy baggage that’s holding you back. Now is the time to repent and be saved. Many Christians give something up like wine or chocolate during these 40 days as a daily reminder of what they’re doing without. That seems like a good thing to do, but our daughter Cece used to always say that she was going to give up church for Lent. It’s a good spiritual practice to give up something for Lent, but you must be careful about what you’ll give up. Giving up something for Lent wasn’t something that I ever did until I was a student in seminary. Going through seminary and becoming a pastor can make you a more observant Christian in a lot of ways. Once you’re a pastor, you’re going to church every Sunday. I didn’t realize how many Sundays I wasn’t going to church until I was working every Sunday. Even 4th of July weekend. I also didn’t develop much of a prayer life until I was praying all the time and encouraging people to pray. Likewise, I didn’t tithe until I had to ask people to tithe. Now I start each day with prayer and a devotion, and we give 10% of my income to the church because I can’t stand up here telling you to do those things unless I’m doing them. I also started giving up something for Lent in seminary, and seminary students are competitive, as all students are competitive, but because seminary students are preparing to be pastors, it’s weird the things that seminary students are competitive about. I remember classmates competing over who was giving up the hardest thing for Lent. I was thinking about giving up dessert until I heard that a classmate was giving up meat. Then another was giving up driving a car. For the whole season of Lent, he’d be walking or riding a bike. Someone else was giving up coffee. Another alcohol. Regardless of the severity of what we were giving up, we were all missing the point. What kind of fast does the Lord require? Our second Scripture lesson from the book of Isaiah draws a clear comparison: there are those who fast, who humble themselves, but do so expecting God to notice how hard they’re being on themselves. Don’t fast trying to impress God with your suffering. Jesus warned His followers not to use religious observance to impress anyone. What kind of fast does the Lord require? It was there in our Scripture lesson from Isaiah. Is not this the fast that I choose, To loose the bonds of injustice. To undo the thongs of the yoke. To let the oppressed go free. And to break every yoke that God’s people labor under. In other words, give up that which stands between you and your neighbor. Give up doing the things that cause your neighbor to resent you. If the way you are managing your business is building resentment among your employees, if they’re complaining about you at the water cooler and behind your back, then change the way you’re managing people. If your family is in conflict, then consider what you’re doing that makes things worse. What are you doing to add to the conflict? Don’t give up chocolate or French fries. Give up resentment, anger, or stress. Don’t give up something that makes you harder to be around than you already are. If giving up coffee makes you grumpy, then keep drinking it. If giving up beer keeps you from hanging out your friends in the neighborhood, then keep drinking it, but if drinking gives rise to anger, then let it go. If you drive your car through the neighborhood and never slow down to greet your neighbors, then consider with me that your car is keeping you so isolated that it’s getting in the way of better relationships. God doesn’t care about fasting for the sake of fasting. The goal of Lent is to consider everything that we’re doing that keeps us from being reconciled to each other. Back to alcohol. If you’ve seen my favorite TV show, Ted Lasso, then you’ll remember in the first season the strained relationship between the young superstar, Jamie Tart, and the aging veteran, Roy Kent. Seating them at the same table for a benefit dinner, Coach Ted Lasso brings over a round of beers and says, “This is either going to make things a little better or a lot worse.” So often, this is the case with alcohol. So many substances and devices in our lives started out as making life a little bit better, a little bit easier. They were fun until they took over so much of our time that they started making our lives worse. Some of our habits are like pet boa constrictors. They’re little and cute and easy to control, but they grow so large that they can suffocate you. What is suffocating you? What is isolating you? What are the bricks that you’re using to maintain the wall between you and your sister? What would it take to bring that wall down? You don’t have to give anything up for Lent. You can start doing something new. I wonder what would happen in your life if you gave up playing Candy Crush on your phone to take up texting a different member of your family every night. I wonder what would happen if you gave up watching TV and started inviting the neighbors over for dinner. I wonder what would happen in your life if you gave up ordering Starbucks coffee in the drive thru in favor of going in and learning the name of the tattooed graduate school student who is working behind the counter. Do you know how fun life can be if you take the ear buds out of your ears to listen and greet the people in your neighborhood? Sara asked me to walk our dog, Izzy, last week, and I was putting the ear buds in my ears so that I could listen to a podcast while I walked, when Sara said, “That’s a good way to let everyone know that you don’t want to talk to them.” I felt a little resentful when she said that. Not only was she asking me to walk the dog, but she was also telling how to walk the dog, but she’s right. What am I doing that is shutting other people out, and why am I doing that when it’s other people that make me happy? Where are your damaged relationships and what can you do about them? Wouldn’t it be nice if you got back together with that friend whom haven’t talked to? Maybe you had a falling out. She said something mean. Then you got defensive. Maybe it all took place on Facebook. As it turns out, Facebook is a good place to destroy a friendship, and it’s not a good place to rebuild one. What if you gave up Facebook for Lent and took up face-to-face meetings with someone whose feelings you hurt? What if you gave up running on a treadmill in your basement and invited your mom to walk the neighborhood with you? Speaking of moms, my mom’s favorite thing is to walk with me around the neighborhood, but when I walk the dog, I just listen to this history podcast about the emperors of the Roman Empire. I don’t need to establish a relationship with any of them. With whom do I need to establish or reestablish a relationship? Which friendships of mine are frayed and why? What are you doing that is taking so much of your energy that when you get home, there’s nothing left for the people you love? Ike Reighard, who runs MUST Ministries, is known to have defined success this way: Success is when the people who know you best, love you most. Do the people who know you best love you most, or would they describe you as distracted, frustrated, and preoccupied? Give up over-functioning. Give up turning on the TV as soon as you walk through the door. Give up listening to the biggest complainers in your office and take up a new practice of writing thank-you notes to the people who make you happy. It’s been said that the opposite of addiction is relationships. We substitute so many substances and so many mindless activities for relationships. Give up the substances. Give up the distractions. And be reconciled to somebody. If we all tried to lay down the grudges, to speak to each other with respect, to try to understand, to be curious rather than judgmental, can you imagine where we would be at the end of these 40 days of Lent? It would be a lot more like Heaven. It would be something like the Promised Land, which is where He’s taking us. Lay down your burdens, your bad habits, your addictions, and follow where He leads. Amen.

What Happens on the Mountaintop, Stays on the Mountaintop, a sermon based on Luke 9: 28-42, preached on March 2, 2025

Last Monday, Ken Miner invited me to attend a special lunch at NorthStar Church in Kennesaw. Leaders in the community were invited to glean faithful leadership skills from Scripture. Our focus was Joseph, whom we read about last Sunday in the book of Genesis. Joseph was a leader in Pharoah’s Egypt. What did he do, and how did he conduct himself? What lessons might we learn from his example as we work and lead in this community? There are seven days in a week, but how often do we leave faithfulness to Sunday? What about Monday? That’s a challenge. It’s a challenge to lean on your faith in a world where people are ashamed to ask for help. That’s a challenge for us. That was a challenge even for the disciples who saw Jesus up on a mountaintop. In our Gospel lesson for this morning, notice with me that the miracle of the mountaintop doesn’t last. It doesn’t last for the disciples as they make their way back down into the valley. Today, we celebrate what happened up on the mountaintop. Today is one of those high holy days of the year that no one pays too much attention to. You might say that Transfiguration Sunday is the Arbor Day of the Church year. It’s an official holiday, but no gifts are exchanged. No one plans a big family meal to celebrate the Transfiguration. Does anyone even know what it is? The best example from popular culture is probably in Star Wars. Either Star Wars or Harry Potter. In both, the hero faces death. In Star Wars, our hero, Luke Skywalker, goes to fight his great enemy, Darth Vadar. Likewise, in Harry Potter, our hero, Harry, the boy wizard, goes to face the evil Voldemort, but before either goes to face his foe and his probable death, he’s suddenly joined by figures from beyond the grave. In Star Wars, it’s Luke’s greatest teachers, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. In Harry Potter, it’s Harry’s parents and the two most important figures from his days at Hogwarts, Professor Remus Lupin and his godfather, Sirius Black. My point is not to reveal to you how many times I’ve watched these two movies, but to assure you that you know more about the Transfiguration than you think you do. You just didn’t know that Star Wars and Harry Potter got the idea for those scenes from the Bible. As Jesus fully recognizes that He’s going to the cross to die in order to defeat the greatest enemy, death itself, He is encouraged up on that mountain by the two great heroes of our Old Testament: Moses and Elijah. The disciples recognized them, and I remember that once, in a Bible study, someone asked, “How did the disciples know that it was Moses and Elijah?” They had never seen a picture of them. No one knew what they looked like. Someone else in the Bible study said, “Maybe they had on nametags.” They didn’t have on nametags. The disciples just knew, and how they knew isn’t as important as considering why they were there. Why did Moses and Elijah appear to Jesus? It was to encourage Him as he prepares to face the cross. You can’t overcome life’s greatest challenges all on your own. That was true for Jesus, and that is true for you and me, and yet, the next day, they had come down from the mountain, and a great crowd met Jesus. Just then, a man from the crowd shouted: “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Why not? Disciples can’t always do what the Master can do, but if the Master is with them… Bring your son here, Jesus said. While he was coming, the demon dashed the boy to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. My friends, Jesus can do things that we cannot, and He is with us, not just on top of the mountain but down in the valley below, but are you trying to heal the world’s demons all on your own or will you call out for help? Now, that’s not easy. I don’t like asking for help. I don’t like people knowing that I need it. Just last Thursday, I was trying to get out of the hospital’s parking lot. I’d just been to visit a member of this church who’d had surgery, and I was trying to pay for parking at the kiosk. The machine didn’t like my debit card. A young woman asked if I needed help. She was in her 20’s. She asked me if I needed help, and I was too proud to accept it. I decided just to stay trapped in the parking garage, as though what I say from this pulpit has no bearing on how I live my life. Are we not always in need of help? Then call out for it. Ask and you shall receive, but so long as we go along this road thinking it’s all up to us and we know all the answers, we will be paving our way to Hell with our good intentions and our best-laid plans. Yet, the moment we turn to Him to confess our sins and rely on His grace; He will lift us up and take us to the Promised Land. My friends, we call him the Savior because we need saving. Watch the news if you don’t think we’re broken. Yet after watching, call on Him for help and trust Him to cast out demons and make us whole. Amen.

Love the Porcupines, a sermon based on Genesis 45: 3-11, 15 and Luke 6: 27-38, preached on February 23, 2025

I’ve always believed that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who dip their French fries into their ketchup, and those who squeeze ketchup all over their French fries. Jesus also believed that there were two kinds of people: neighbors and enemies, and He commands us to love them both. That’s a tall order. It’s hard enough to love your neighbors, but everyone does that, Jesus says. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Well, that’s a good point. Our neighbor Dan McCloud, a couple weeks ago, he was driving out to County Farm Road to take his glass to be recycled. He offered to take ours as well, which was so kind. I’m thankful, but every time I drive out to County Farm Road, I do the same. He carries my glass to the glass recycling center, and I return that favor. Before too much longer, things will change. Thanks to Jim Sommerville, we’re going before the City Council tomorrow night to place our own glass recycling bin in our church parking lot, and I suspect that we’ll be heroes to our entire community who have grown tired of driving out to County Farm Road. Even the Mayor told me that he’s tired of driving so far, but what credit is it to us to be kind to our neighbors? Even sinners love those who love them. Love your enemies, Jesus said. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Why? I have a friend who works for the federal government. Anyone else have a friend who works for the federal government? Is your friend as scared as my friend that he might lose his job? Whenever people are angry and afraid, the world divides into two kinds of people: friends and enemies. Love your enemies, Jesus said, and some have done it. Have you seen Les Misérables? I hadn’t seen it before last week. It was mentioned on my favorite TV show of all time, Ted Lasso, so last week I watched it. In this play-turned-movie, the main character, Jean Valjean, is out on parole. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. Upon release, he must present his papers, which state that he’s a criminal, so no one will hire him. No innkeeper will host him. He falls asleep in a cemetery where a bishop takes him in. To repay the bishop for his kindness, Jean Valjean steals the silver from the bishop’s church. Caught red-handed on the run, he’s dragged by the police to kneel before the bishop with his bag full of the church’s silver. Expecting condemnation, he’s surprised to hear the bishop say, “I tried to give him the silver candle sticks as well, but he left before I could. All this silver I gave him freely. Release this man. He’s done nothing wrong.” Love your enemies, Jesus said. Why? Because such love as this changed Jean Valjean’s life. Divine love is the only force that can change your enemy into your friend. Divine love is not so much concerned with fairness as it is with mercy. Divine love is patient. It is kind. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Divine love does not delight in evil but always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Think with me about God’s divine love and consider with me the very essence of who God is. How has God been at work in your life? When have you felt His mercy? We read about it in our first Scripture lesson, which is the conclusion of one of the truly great narratives. The narrative begins when the boy Joseph was thrown into a pit and sold into slavery by his brothers. Do you know the story? Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wrote a musical about it. It was on Broadway. But just as the book is better than the movie, so also the Scripture lesson is better than the Broadway play. This narrative that unfolds in the book of Genesis begins with a little brother, Joseph, Daddy’s favorite, who, by his brothers, is thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and is locked behind bars in Egypt, but because he can interpret dreams, he ends up the Pharoah’s right-hand man. While he advises Pharoah and accumulates grain for the Egyptian Empire, his brothers and their families face famine. Desperate for food, they go to Egypt, begging for grain before the throne of the one who controls the granaries of the Pharoah. My how the tables have turned. As his brothers kneel before him, Joseph finally had the chance to get revenge. Can you imagine how many times he thought of it? From the bottom of the pit they threw him in, he swore he’d get even if they ever let him out. Then, bound in chains on that slaver’s caravan, he plotted retribution. On those cold nights in his cell, he was warmed by the thought that payback would rain down on the brothers who put him there, only as he looked down on them from his throne, saw the gaunt looks on their hungry faces, the thought came to him, “You threw me into a pit, sold me into slavery, so that I ended up imprisoned in Egypt, but had you not done that, I would be just as hungry as you are now. God put me here. God sent me before you to preserve life.” Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” Why? Because they deserve love? Why should we bless those who persecute us? Because they deserve our blessing? Such love makes no sense to those of us who follow the social contract. A social contract is this agreement. It’s not necessarily a formal agreement. It can be nothing more than a handshake or a nod, and it works like this: If I take my neighbor’s glass to the recycling center then he’ll likely offer to take my glass to the recycling center. If my neighbor Jamie blows the leaves off part of my yard, then I’m going to blow leaves off part of his yard. There are these social contracts. The few people who don’t abide by them are called sociopaths. They’re like the people who put ketchup all over their French fries. No, seriously, some people just take. They never return favors, but most people do. Even sinners, Jesus says, love people who love them. They return generosity with generosity. That’s a social contract. We’re used to that. We give favors to those who do us favors. But love your enemies, Jesus says. Why? Because our lives are not governed by the social contract. Our lives are not governed by a human contract, but by divine love and divine mercy. Jesus is saying, “Give to your enemy expecting to receive nothing in return, for you’ve already received everything from God.” Don’t forgive expecting to receive forgiveness. Just forgive because you’ve already been forgiven. Consider God’s abundant mercy, so don’t just invite people over for dinner who invite you over for dinner. Instead, consider the feast we are invited to in the Kingdom of Heaven. Can anything compare to the glory about to be revealed to us as the children of God? Notice what God has done and consider what God has promised. I think about His mercy today as I watch a cycle of revenge unfold before my eyes. Russia invades Ukraine. Terrorists from Palestine commit atrocities in Israel, so Israel strikes back until there is nothing left in Palestine. These cycles go on and on and on, for the dark deeds of our enemies fill our bodies with rage. We long to return evil with evil. To stop the cycle, Jesus says, “Lift up your eyes to consider, not what your enemy has done, but what God has done,” and what has God done? What has God done for you, in your life? Consider His mercy and His blessing especially amid affliction, for people are mean. Last Thursday, I sat down at a table. One I sat down with asked me if I’d gotten a haircut. Hearing the question and noticing my lack of hair, another asked me, “Which one did you have cut?” My friends, there’s a great story in the Bible about the Prophet Elijah who calls a bear to maul a group of boys who call him “old bald head.” I can relate to that thirst for vengeance. It’s not my fault I’ve lost my hair, yet while I may have so few hairs that my Creator will have no trouble numbering them all, I will never be able to count all my blessings, so will I fume in anger or buy my neighbor another round? You know which is better for your heart, and you know which response reflects the divine love and mercy of our God. Don’t lose yourself in getting even. Get lost in counting your blessings, for the blessings of God are not just a little, but a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. That’s what will be put in your lap, for the measure you give, that will be the measure you get back. You see, it’s not the social contract that matters most, but the divine contract that has made all the difference in our lives. It’s God’s mercy that defines us. That’s what the bishop taught Jean Valjean. That’s what Joseph realized as he looked down on his brothers, and that’s what Jesus always knew, but that is also what this world is always forgetting. That God gives. God forgives. God provides. God suspends judgement. Consider these things and share with your enemies out of the abundance of what God has provided. Now, somebody said, “Pastor, my enemy doesn’t deserve it.” Somebody said, “I’m not going to give them that. They’ve taken too much. They’ve done too much evil,” and I say to you, “Harboring hate in your heart is like drinking from a bottle of poison and hoping that your enemy is going to die.” Hate is doing harm to your heart. Hate is doing harm to the heart of our nation. Hate is too great a burden to bear, so I choose love. That’s a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was beaten, imprisoned, slandered, criticized, and maligned, but trusted in the dream of a new heaven and a new earth where all God’s people lay down their grudges to love one another as brothers and sisters. My friends, we are living in scary times, and fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. It was Yoda who said that in one of the Star Wars movies, and he was right about where hate will take us, while love will lift your soul towards Heaven. Love your enemies. Do good and lend expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Amen.

The Fisherman, a sermon based on Isaiah 6: 1-8 and Luke 5: 1-11, preached on February 9, 2025

It’s hard to imagine Jesus recruiting His first disciples, considering how the Church has grown since this moment by the Lake of Gennesaret. At last count, in 2020, there were 2.4 billion professing Christians in the world. That’s more than 25% of the world’s population. We just baptized another one, Adeline Elizabeth Garcia. This room is full of His disciples. In just the city of Soel, Korea there are as many Presbyterians as there are in the entire United States of America, so while today, our world is full of His disciples, as we read this Gospel lesson, we are asked to imagine Jesus trying to recruit the first one. How did He do it? Where did He go? How did He start? Last Monday, at the funeral of Dr. Clem Doxey, who founded what became the largest dermatology practice in the state of Georgia, Dr. Bob Harper, who became his friend and colleague, told the story of Clem coming to Marietta and trying to recruit his first patients. Having few patients to care for in his new office, he spent time at Kennestone Hospital asking doctors to please refer to him some sick people. Today, we stand in line for our appointments at that same practice, but it started slow, and this is how it is for most everything in the beginning. The ministry of Jesus begins, and it wasn’t much different. Jesus wasn’t born having followers. He had to go out and find them. To do so, He didn’t stand in some grand pulpit like this one, waiting for disciples to come to Him. No, He went out into the world. Standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, He saw two boats there at the shore. The fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Jesus got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore, so that He could preach from the boat. Our daughter Lily helped me to notice the significance of this detail of our Gospel lesson. Our daughters are preacher’s kids, so they’re a little different. We were discussing this Gospel lesson over the dinner table last Thursday night. Lily told me that she remembered a sermon preached on this same Gospel lesson by Sadie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame. When she preached on this Gospel lesson, she wisely observes that Jesus steps onto Simon’s boat and preached from there. Then Sadie Robertson asked, “What boat are you preaching from?” Jesus didn’t need some grand pulpit like this one to proclaim the Gospel. He went out into the world and preached the Gospel from Simon’s boat. What boat are you preaching from? If you have a desk job and know the Good News, then you can preach the Gospel from right where you are, and it serves the Kingdom for you to preach from your boat or your desk or your neighborhood walking group, for it’s out there where the people are who need to hear what is said within these walls. Jesus went out into the world looking for sinners to save. In the same way, Dr. Doxey went into the hospital looking for sick people to heal, but when Simon Peter saw the catch of fish that Jesus provided, he fell at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” I can’t get over this part of our Gospel lesson, yet this is the way it always happens. Maybe this is the way it always is. If you remember our first Scripture lesson, which tells the account of the prophet’s call to ministry, when God comes to speak to Isaiah, Isaiah is so amazed by the glory of God and amazed by his own sinfulness in comparison to God’s glory that he says, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” I think about this because Jesus the Savior came to earth not looking perfect people. No more did He come looking for perfect people than Dr. Doxey was searching for perfect skin, yet Simon said to Jesus after Jesus provided him a catch of fish so large that their nets began to break, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” This is the power of shame. I read in a book about Alcoholics Anonymous that guilt and shame are different. Feeling guilty can be OK. Guilt tells us when we’ve made a mistake and provides the motivation we need to make it right again. Shame is more destructive, for while guilt tells me “I’ve made a mistake,” shame tells me, “I am a mistake.” This is another lesson that the Church needs to learn from AA, for it’s been said that “AA is to shame as a hot knife is to butter.” Reading our Gospel lesson and hearing the call of Isaiah, I realize that the Church should be no different than AA, for when we reveal to Him our brokenness, we are saved, only sometimes the Church makes such vulnerability even more difficult than it already is. Denominations will literally look at the demographic breakdown of neighborhoods before they’ll consider building a new church, looking at things like rates of college diplomas, value of homes, and median income, as though building the Church of Jesus Christ were no different than franchising the Publix grocery store chain. Now, I love Publix, but our call is not to sell fancy produce to rich people. The Great Physician came to heal the sick. As His disciples, our target is the lost and the lame, the blind and the hopeless, the poor and the afflicted, and yet church youth groups try to recruit the popular kids as though recruiting people for the church were just like recruiting players for a football team. My friends, when Clem Doxey went looking to build his dermatology practice, he was looking for people who suffered with skin cancer and melanoma. When you go out into this world and you find your boat to preach from, don’t try to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the people with perfect skin, but the people with broken hearts. I began this sermon saying that there are 2.4 billion professing Christians in this world. That’s true, but it’s also true that there are more than 800,000 people here in Cobb County, and more than half of them have no religious affiliation. Some of you remember the days when everyone in your neighborhood, or it seemed like everyone in your neighborhood, went to church on Sunday morning. I don’t remember that. That time in human history was already ending when I was growing up. The only business I knew of that was closed on Sunday was Chick-fil-A, and by the time I was old enough to buy beer, I could buy it any day of the week I wanted. The world outside our doors is not as full of disciples as many remember it being. For many, today, Sunday, is a day for playing soccer and going to Home Depot, and the way I hear people talk about Christianity these days, they’re describing a religion that barely resembles what I read in the Bible, for people suffer from a level of Biblical illiteracy that’s reaching epidemic proportions. But don’t let me get self-righteous here. That’s not what the world needs. The world is cloaked in shame. Many out there would respond to the Gospel the same way Simon did: with shame and misunderstanding, and while some have said that our religion is under assault, if we take that mindset, if we go out into the world defensive and braced for attack, then how will we comfort those who are just as full of shame as Simon Peter was? My friends, today let us take this account of the calling of the first disciple as an example for us, for the world is full of sick people who are suffering. Full of people who are isolated and alone. Full of people who are hopeless and distracted. Full of people who are anxious and afraid. So full of people who are hurting that rates of suicide in our community have risen by 14% in the last year. My friends, when Simon Peter revealed his brokenness to Jesus, Jesus stepped towards him. Jesus gave him a new name, a new identity, a new calling, a new purpose, yet when the church hears of brokenness, do we not too often step away? There’s a story that so broke my heart that even though I read it 15 years ago, I still remember it vividly. It’s a story that Bishop Gene Robinson told when he was interviewed by GQ magazine. I used to subscribe to GQ magazine, which explains why I’m so fashionable. Well, when the good Bishop was telling his life story to this journalist, he remembered how present the church was on the day he was married to the woman who became his wife. On their wedding day, the church was there in full force, celebrating that happy day, but on the day they were divorced, no one was there. There were no flowers. There was no reception. There was no music, nor singing, nor presents, nor words of encouragement, and as he looked back on it, he reflected that he needed the Church far more when he was going through his divorce than he did on his wedding day. My friends, when we step away from broken people, we do not bear in our actions the image of Jesus Christ. We do when we step towards them. You may have read this, but you need to know it because it’s miraculous. As we’ve been more and more involved in the Cobb County Jail, we’ve become more and more aware of the realities that the men and women who work there and who are incarcerated there face. We started with livestreaming our worship service, then after one of our members felt called to serve as a chaplain in the jail, he made us aware of the bare shelves of the jail library. You filled those shelves, and now hundreds of books are checked out every week. Then, more recently you were made aware of those men and women who are released from jail and are handed the clothes they were arrested in as they reenter society. If they were arrested in July but are released in January, that means they’re walking out of the jail in a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. Those outfits are not warm enough for the winter, not to mention how those clothes carry the shameful memories of what happened the last time they were worn. My friends, when the call went out to provide the jail with seasonally appropriate clothing, you so fulfilled the call that after just a couple weeks, the jail has already said, “No more. We have enough. We have no more room to put these clothes!” I’m so thankful to be a witness to such an act of love. I’m so thankful for the way you have stepped towards the imprisoned. If there is a Simon Peter among those who you have clothed, I expect that by the grace of God, our world will be transformed by the ministry of that new disciple of Jesus Christ. May it be so. Amen.

The Divine Agenda, a sermon based on Nehemiah 8 and Luke 4: 14-24, preached on January 26, 2025

A good friend of mine is the president of the chamber of commerce in Bentonville, Arkansas. Every Sunday, he listens to my sermon, and every Monday, he calls to let me know how it could have been better. He’s a good friend. Last Friday, we were talking. He asked me how this sermon was going, and I told him that after reading and studying our Gospel lesson, “I can’t help but think that Jesus might care more about the poor than we do.” “I don’t think there’s any might about it, Joe. Jesus definitely cares more about the poor than we do,” my friend said, and he’s right. The Bible spends more than 300 verses telling us how much the poor matter to God, and Jesus, God incarnate, having been baptized by John and having turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, is now beginning His preaching ministry by declaring: Our God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. This is His divine agenda. This morning, let’s take time to realign ourselves with His words and His priorities because the human agenda and the divine agenda are not often the same thing. As we always have, we are distracted by issues that matter to us but hardly matter to God. There are more than 300 verses in Scripture concerned with the poor. Jesus begins His earthly ministry, declaring, “God has anointed me to bring good new to the poor,” and our church does a lot: We feeds hungry people every Tuesday, and our church members fill up the church vans with cold families looking for a warm place to sleep all winter long, yet think with me about why churches divide and what gets Christians really upset. I’ve witnessed near fistfights break out over the color the poinsettias should be at Christmastime. So much time and energy has been spent deciding who can serve as a church’s pastor and who cannot. The elders will ask, “Now, when is that meeting?” And the deacons will ask: “When I light candles, is it the right and then the left, or do I light the left one and then the right?” When Jesus stood in the synagogue to make plain His purpose, how close to the top of His agenda was lighting candles in the correct order? He was focused on the poor. He was focused on people. In this new year, let our agenda be realigned with the divine agenda. Let us take notice of the words of Jesus, who laid out His purpose clearly in the synagogue. He told the people clearly what He was about and what He had come to do. It was all rooted in Scripture, for He read from the scroll handed to Him. Likewise, the priest Ezra, in our first Scripture lesson, did basically the same thing. When the people returned from exile in Babylon where they were exposed to so many new ideas, where they had lived in a foreign culture, they returned home, and he read to them from the book of Moses, that their agenda might be realigned with the divine agenda. That’s what it takes. We return to Scripture, to see what it says, and to judge our agenda against the divine agenda. Our minds and our purpose must be realigned by what Scripture says and what Jesus said He had come to do because sometimes, our focus drifts to poinsettia colors and candlesticks. That’s just human nature. We are easily distracted, and once distracted, we get stuck in our routines. I’ve told you before about Neale Martin. Neale Martin sits in the balcony at the 8:30 service. He just had knee surgery last week, so he’s not here with us this morning, but I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Neale. Neale is an expert in human habit formation, and so he’s consulted with product developers who want to get their products on the grocery store shelves so that they can meet the daily needs of consumers and make a lot of money in the process. Neale told me that introducing a new product in a grocery store is incredibly difficult, and it doesn’t always matter how great your product is because it’s so hard to grab the attention of shoppers. A typical grocery store carries anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 products, but when we go to the neighborhood Kroger, we end up buying the same products again and again. We don’t spend time debating which mayonnaise to buy. There’s no time for that. We just buy Duke’s or Hellmann’s or the cheapest one on the shelf. There’s just not enough space in our brains to make decisions about everything. We walk into the grocery store and we’re thinking about stress at work or if our kids are going to get into college. We’re not thinking about the best toilet paper brands or a whole lot about which carton of eggs to buy. We’re just grabbing the same one we bought last time again and again and again, until the day a dozen eggs costs $7.50. The only time the masses are likely to entertain a new product is when we are shocked out of our patterns. We won’t consider having toilet paper delivered until it’s gone from the shelf. We’re not interested in raising chickens in our backyards until we have to take out a loan to buy a dozen eggs. Something has to happen to knock us out of our routines. Likewise, people are going to go about their business Sunday after Sunday. If they go to church, they’re going to go to the same one. If they don’t go to church, they’re going to sleep in. If anything disrupts their patterns, if suddenly they walk through our doors, it’s because they went to the shelf and the shelf was empty. If you break a habit and walk in here, it’s no small thing. The first time you came here, it’s because something big happened. You moved, or your old church didn’t feel right anymore, or your mother died, or you hit a dark time in your life. If you suddenly go from not going to church to going, it’s because you’re looking for something, so the work of the deacon is not to pay attention to the candles but to pay attention to the people who just walked in the door. The primary task of the elders and the pastors is not to review the words that they have to say or worry over the next meetings, but to greet the lost sheep whom the Good Shepherd is calling home. Pay attention to the people, Jesus was saying. Especially the poor ones, whom we are often slow to see. My friends, we all need a wakeup call. I need one, for I find myself worrying about the state of my car until I look out my office window to see how many people are waiting outside in the cold for the bus. I get stressed about how much work I have to do until a landscape truck drives by, and I remember that I used to cut grass and blow leaves for $7.00 an hour. I avert my eyes from some people walking towards me on the sidewalk, worried about making it on time to my next meeting, until I remember the divine agenda. Did you see the front page of the paper yesterday? My favorite reporter who writes for the Marietta Daily Journal is Hunter Riggall. His article made the front page, and there were these numbers: 1,535 – That’s the number of homeless students enrolled in Cobb County Schools. 259 – the number of homeless students in Marietta City Schools. 283 – the number of people living in tents within the city limits last January. Jesus said, God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The poor are everywhere. But do you see them? Do I see them? Or am I so stuck in my own concerns and my own routine that I am blind to God’s people? Maybe you’ve heard the story of the man who wrote that great hymn of salvation, “Amazing Grace.” The man who wrote it is named John Newton. His name is listed in your hymnal, for all the hymns in our hymnal list the name of the one who wrote the words and the name of the one who came up with the tune, if we know the tune writer’s name. Who came up with this great tune? Where did it come from? Well, you may know that John Newton sailed on slave ships. He made a living shipping people from the western coast of Africa across the Atlantic, and one tradition tells us that from the belly of that ship, he heard the tune sung by the men and women who were chained in the bowels of that boat. Can you imagine that sitting upon the deck of that ship while those people were taken from freedom to slavery, Newton heard the tune coming up from the people below and began to realize that he, who called himself a Christian, was complicit in putting men and women in chains? To the tune he heard them singing, he penned the words: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see. My friends, we are all blind to the suffering of people, yet Jesus said, “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind.” Coming out of the 8:30 service, LouAnn Sago looked me straight in the eyes, and she said, “When I could no longer look away, He set me free.” When we recognize the poor as our brothers, the imprisoned, our sisters, and remember that their struggle is our struggle, we are made whole. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to feed hungry people and to pay attention to all God’s people in our midst, and that’s not just in response to their need. We serve in response to ours. I’ve had the recent pleasure of interviewing about 20 members of our church, several of them because they’re involved in our food distribution program, and I’ve asked them why they do it. Why do they give out food? Why do they come back again and again, in the rain and the cold, to help people they don’t know? Is it because Jesus told you to? Is it because of some sense of duty? They all said the same thing: “The reason I do this is because it makes me happy.” I used to be a kid most concerned with making the baseball team and having the right kind of shoes on my feet. Then, one summer this church took me on a mission trip to Mexico, and I looked into the face of the poor, and I was set free: set free from a culture that worships wealth and beauty, where people have so much stuff that we fill our attics, and when our attics can’t hold it, we rent storage units; where doctored pictures of beautiful people flood our consciousness and keep us chained by insecurity. Consider with me that the more money we have, the bigger the house, the bigger the yard, the more isolated we become. My friends, when He said, he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captive, and recovery of sight to the blind, He was talking about setting all of us free. He was talking about setting all of us free from this consumer culture, where people are isolated and afraid, to care about each other again. Let us follow Him in the path of our salvation. Amen.

Every Wedding Needs a Miracle, a sermon based on John 2: 1-11, preached on January 19, 2025

Our second Scripture lesson is the account from the Gospel of John of Jesus’ first public miracle. The miracle takes place at a wedding, which is the perfect place for a miracle because every wedding needs a miracle. Every marriage needs a miracle, doesn’t it? Marriage isn’t easy. I’ve had the great honor of officiating around 200 weddings. At several of them, I’ve quoted Ruth Bell Graham, who was married to the great evangelist Billy Graham. Rev. Billy Graham traveled the world preaching the Gospel. Traveling like that can put stress on a marriage, so a reporter once asked Ruth Bell Graham if she’d ever considered divorce. “Divorce? Never,” she said. “However, I often considered murder.” Maybe you get that. I know my wife, Sara, does. She’s perfect, but she’s married to me, and I leave a lot to be desired. Marriage is hard. Think with me about marriage this morning. We just read that there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no more wine.” Now, it’s no surprise that the wine gave out at this wedding because something goes wrong at every wedding. As wonderful as weddings are, there’s always something that goes wrong, but when the problem comes along on the big day, it’s extra hard because we’re already tense. I remember well the reaction of a bride whose mother-in-law-to-be insisted on making the dresses for her bridesmaids but hadn’t finished them on time and was still working on them when the wedding was scheduled to start. The bride was panicked. Her father looked like he was going to have a cardiac event. I had to ask the congregation to talk amongst themselves for an hour or so until the bridesmaids could get dressed. Or there was a wedding at a Baptist church. The groom walked out into the sanctuary through the wrong door and fell into the baptismal font. On that occasion, everyone laughed, except for the bride’s father, who suddenly realized that he had been right about this guy all along. My point is that something always goes wrong. The preacher gets COVID, or the DJ has too much to drink. The bridesmaid’s gowns are sleeveless, and one has a giant tattoo of an AK-47 on her arm. The groomsmen leave their dip cups for the wedding guild to clean up, or the bride is showing that she has a baby on the way. All these things happen, but on the wedding day there is this pressure not to let the congregation know because while every wedding needs a miracle, no one wants to let the cat out of the bag. The wine has run out. Has anyone told Jesus? Bible scholars say that the entirety of the Gospel is here in this short passage from the Gospel of John. Everything that you need to know about the Christian life is right here in these 11 verses. Don’t worry about studying theology or Christian doctrine, just notice that the wine runs out and someone let’s Jesus know about it. That’s step one of being a Christian. Step one of being a Christian is admitting that we have a problem and need His help. There’s a great article written by a champion of Alcoholics Anonymous. You may know that churches have supported AA since the very beginning. Many churches started substituting grape juice over wine at the communion table because the AA groups who met in their buildings requested it. This article written to the church by a champion of Alcoholics Anonymous is titled, “What the church has to learn from AA.” You can google the article. It will come right up. It’s by Samuel Shoemaker, and while it was written many years ago, it makes the great point that every member of AA knows that she needs help and has come ready to ask for it. She has stopped the charade of pretending that everything is fine. How much healthier would our churches be if every member of every congregation felt that same freedom to let Jesus know that he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel? The wine has run out. We’re grasping at straws. We need His help because we’re lost, yet how many of us feel comfortable getting out of the car to ask for directions? Which brings me back to marriage. A few weeks ago, we were focused on the magi. The Church started calling them magi rather than the three wise men a couple generations ago because someone finally noticed that there were three gifts, but no mention of three men, and they probably weren’t all men because when they got lost on the road, they stopped in Jerusalem to ask for directions. Is that joke still funny? In another generation, no one will even get it because now we all ask for directions using our phones, but what we used to have to do was stop at a gas station, get out, and ask the gas station clerk, “How much farther is it to Lawrenceville?” and if you weren’t even close, he might laugh at you, and if he didn’t like people from out of town, he’d tell you to go the wrong way. I’m so thankful for these phones because I don’t have to stop to ask for directions as much as I used to, but what about when the wine runs out? Will I then have the courage to ask for help? Or will I be so out of the practice of being vulnerable that I’ll suffer in silence, afraid to let the Savior know that I need His help? In AA, they practice the art of confession in every meeting. They’ve all admitted that there is a problem in their lives that they need help with, and there’s less shame in that circle of folding chairs because everyone is doing it. Every wedding needs a miracle, but when the wine runs out, are you comfortable asking for guidance? Have you asked a trusted friend to pray for you? Have you sought out help from a counselor? There’s a book out by a divorce lawyer entitled, If You’re In My Office, It’s Already Too Late. Don’t wait. Help is near. When the wine has run out, go find Jesus. Every wedding needs a miracle. Every mortal needs a miracle. Every marriage needs a miracle, and you can’t go looking into the eyes of your spouse expecting her to turn water into wine. Do you know what I mean by that? It’s hard for us to ask for help, so we’ll only admit that we need it to those we trust the most, which creates a second problem. If you only trust your spouse, might you be expecting a miracle from a mortal? Or might you be putting all your relationship needs on just one person? We know from studies that many men in this world work for years and years dedicating so much to their careers that they don’t develop any hobbies or make any real friends outside of the office, which puts so much pressure on their spouses once they retire. Do you know that saying, “I married you for better and for worse, but not for lunch?” There’s a lot of wisdom in that. While some needs should only be met within the bonds of marriage, while emotional and physical intimacy belong within the bonds of committed relationship, don’t expect a miracle from a mortal. Go and find Jesus when the wine has run out. Have friends. Play golf. Don’t count on one person to do everything for you. And this is just where the church fits perfectly into human life. This is where the Christian walk meets so many of society’s needs. When people show up to do good work here, they find purpose and they make friends. Notice something with me in our second Scripture lesson. The wine had run out, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, said to the stewards, “Do whatever he tells you.” Emphasis on “He.” What does Jesus tell us to do? That’s what we ought to do, because Jesus calls us to give of ourselves, which brings us joy and fulfillment. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, which saves us from isolation. When the church does what Jesus commands and when we follow His instruction, suddenly this institution, this Church, becomes the balm for so many of our wounds. This place can be the antidote for isolation, providing purpose and community, faith, hope, and love, but I was watching Young Sheldon this week, and if you’ve seen this series, then you know that the church that Sheldon and his family attend isn’t always like that. Interestingly, (this is an aside) last time I mentioned Young Sheldon, our superintendent of schools was here, and he told me that his brother-in-law is the preacher on that show. More than that, did you know that the youth pastor on that show is the son of two of our church members, Jeff and Rachel Byrd? The whole pastoral staff on that TV show has roots here in Marietta. Amazing, but that’s beside the point. Let me get back to my point. My point is that when Sheldon’s brother gets a girl pregnant, that whole congregation turns their backs on Sheldon and his family. His mother gets fired from the church staff, and no one in the family feels comfortable attending that church again, but where in the Gospels did Jesus tell us to turn our backs on anyone? “Do whatever He tells you,” Mary said, for in obedience to His word lies freedom and abundant life. I told you before that the entirety of the Christian life is right here in these 11 verses, and I wasn’t kidding about that. Step 1: Let Him know that the wine has run out, then, step 2: Do whatever He tells you. Step 3: Notice with me that this first miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ occurred on the third day. The third day of what? The Gospel of John isn’t clear on whether it was the third day of the wedding or the third day of the week. That’s because we don’t really understand the significance until we get to the end of the Gospel and discover that He was crucified, dead and buried, but on the third day, He rose again from the grave. My friends, did you know that we can worry about the wine running out, yet we are promised an inheritance of such abundance that the memory of our present suffering is not worth comparing to the glory that is going to be revealed to us? We get so focused on what people may say that we’re afraid to reveal our brokenness. We get so deep into despair that we’re afraid the light will never come. Jesus told the servants to fill six stone water jars, each built to hold twenty or thirty gallons. “Fill them with water,” He said, and they filled them to the brim. Then He said, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward,” so they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from, the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this. Halleluia! But someone had to ask Him. Let Jesus know that the wine has run out, then do what He tells you. Come here to this place where there is not condemnation for broken people but abundant grace. When we do what He tells us, this is not a place of judgement but of forgiveness. When we do what He tells us, this is not a place of fear, but of love, as together we walk the great Christian life of discipleship that leads to joy. Should you dare to open up about your struggle, you may just find the community that you’ve been looking for. If you are looking for purpose, then take advantage of one of the many ways that you can serve right here, and above all else, remember that the Miracle Worker, the One who turned the water to wine, promises us a life of abundance so great that the sufferings of today will be washed away by the glory of tomorrow. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Wrapped in Bands of Cloth, a sermon based on Luke 2: 1-14, preached on Christmas Eve 2024

Friends, this is it. Christmas Eve. Some of us have been getting ready for this moment since Halloween. Do you remember what happened in Walgreens on the day of Halloween? There had been Halloween candy. When I walked into Walgreens, it was there on the shelves, but by the time I checked out, it was all gone. All that candy was pushed out of the way by a green and red wave of lights and gifts. The pumpkin Reese’s cups had to be replaced by Christmas tree Reese’s cups. The Halloween costumes were replaced by tinsel and lights. We all skipped right over Thanksgiving, and we can’t go back now. This is Christmas, but yesterday I was at Kroger, and they were putting out the Easter egg Reese’s cups, so if we’re not careful, this moment is going to speed right by, too. I don’t want that to happen. In so many ways, this is my favorite day of the entire year, only it’s not easy to savor something that you’ve been rushing towards since October 31st. You can’t just stop on a dime to savor something you’ve been sprinting towards, so some of us aren’t in this moment, at least not fully. There’s just too much to do, right? My wife, Sara, sent me a meme the other day. Do you know what a meme is? Or a gif? It doesn’t matter. She sent me something that said: “Here’s your annual reminder that 95% of that ‘holiday magic’ is actually just the invisible and physical work of women.” That’s true. I can remember my grandmother coming home from her Christmas Eve shift in the maternity ward of Roper Hospital to make us Christmas dinner. She’d been up all night delivering babies, then she’d come home to cook us macaroni and cheese, ham, and a turkey. I can see her in the kitchen, still in her pink scrubs. At some point, she’d ask me to pour her a Tab with a little vodka in it. That’s all she needed to keep going so that we could enjoy that “holiday magic” the meme was talking about, but this is Christmas, so I want to address those of us to whom Christmas means working hard, and I’m guilty of it, so I can talk about it because I’m talking to myself. Some of us are so used to preparing for the next thing that, while the rest of the family is opening presents, we’ll have the garbage bag ready to pick up all the wrapping paper. Only what is the next thing after this? What are we cleaning up for? This is it. Christmas Eve. It’s a day that we work for because we want it to be perfect, which is the absolute pinnacle of irony if you think about it. It’s like we’re all working for perfect, forgetting that He came because we can’t ever achieve perfection no matter how hard we try. Remember that Martha Stewart spent five months behind bars. That’s where chasing perfection will get you. There is no “perfect” for mortals like us. If we could save ourselves, we wouldn’t need a savior. If we were without sin, there would be no need for Him to take upon Himself the sins of the world. What’s worse is that all this work we’re doing to reach towards perfection always keeps us from noticing the baby wrapped in bands of cloth. That’s what happens in all the best Christmas movies, right? The turkey is so dry that it’s nothing but skin and bones, and the dog destroys the kitchen. The tree goes up in flames, and a squirrel gets in the house, which is what it takes for the Clark Griswolds of the world to take notice of the real reason for all of this, the gift from God wrapped in bands of cloth. That first Christmas broke into our world, and yet the innkeeper didn’t notice. What was that innkeeper doing? He was worried over the guests who had already checked in. He had put little mints on their pillows and was getting ready for breakfast. The inn was full. There was no more room. Toilet paper was in short supply, and he was moving quickly from one task to another. When Mary and Joseph showed up at the door, I imagine that their knock interrupted that peaceful moment when he finally had the chance to sit down to take a breath. His glass of wine had been poured, he had knife in hand to carve a lamb shank or break the loaf of bread, freshly baked from the oven, when that knock on the door interrupted the moment that seemed so perfect. He snatched the napkin from his collar or laid down his carving knife not too gently, and with thinly-veiled frustration opened the door to see Joseph and Mary standing there. What did he do? “There is no room,” he said. Might as well have been, “Bah humbug.” “Go to the barn, and don’t bother me again. Don’t you know it’s Christmas?” Of course, he wouldn’t have known anything about Christmas. The baby hadn’t been born, and yet, how ironic that the Christ Child was born in the innkeeper’s stable, and there is no record that he ever went out to see that baby wrapped in band of cloth. Who did? The shepherds. Do you know anything about shepherds? Shepherds smell like sheep. Shepherds never took the time to brush their teeth or wash their hands, but the innkeeper and his family were too busy, so the angel invited the shepherds, and the shepherds saw the miracle of Christmas because the ones who know they need a miracle are the first to find it. Those who of us who are busy picking up discarded wrapping paper in the living room don’t always see that it’s here. This is it. Our temptation this Christmas Eve is the same as our temptation all the rest of the year. We are in a rush moving in the wrong direction, missing all the miracles that God provides. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. I was giving the children’s sermon two weeks ago, and I’m a Presbyterian minister. If you don’t know much about Presbyterians, then know this: There are two things that Presbyterians want from their minister: 1. That he pick hymns that they know the words to. 2. That he doesn’t preach for too long. Therefore, our worship services last one hour and not a minute more, and I must achieve that goal because I’m prone to picking hymns that no one knows the words to. I’ve got to move from the children’s sermon to the next step in the worship liturgy because if the service goes past 12:00, First Presbyterian Church will go up in flames and no one will make it to Piccadilly before the Baptists get there, so when little Charlie still had his hand raised as I was making my point in the children’s sermon, I was so tempted to ignore him. I was tempted to just keep going on to the hymn that would follow the children’s sermon, for I had already asked them what they wanted for Christmas and had already heard plenty of cute and interesting comments, and yet there was Charlie’s hand raised as it had been since the children’s sermon began. Something told me to call on him. When I said, “OK, Charlie. It looks like you really have something you want to say,” he boldly declared: “Peace will come to our land.” That’s what Charlie said, and I nearly missed it because I was worried about what I had to do next, not what God has already done. Notice that Charlie didn’t say, “Peace will come to our land once everyone gets in line.” He didn’t say, “Peace might come to our land if we’re all good little boys and girls.” He said, “Peace will come to our land,” for God brings us a gift wrapped in bands of cloth. Have you stopped to notice? If there is darkness in your life, consider this with me: Maybe you’re moving in the wrong direction. So much of the time we’re in such a hurry that we don’t take the time to ask, “Why is my life so full of shadow?” Where is satisfaction? Where is hope, peace, joy, and love? This is our pattern. To keep going. To strive. To work. To spend so much time looking into the future and what’s to come that we fail to be satisfied. The gift, though, is here already. Glory to God in the Highest, they sing. Lay down your burdens. Rest in the promise that peace will come to our land, or you’ll never be at peace. Rest in the promise that you are forgiven, or you’ll never find it in you to forgive. Rest in the promise of salvation or go on trying to save yourself. My friends, I’m a preacher. It’s my job to preach sermons on Christmas Eve, and sometimes I wonder if my Christmas Eve message, while under 14 minutes so that we can get out of here on time, just sounds like me giving you one more thing to do on an already overwhelming to-do list. That’s not what this is about. This is about a gift that comes from God to people who walk in darkness. Take this moment to notice His light. Amen.