I'm Not Mad; I'm Just Disappointed, a sermon based on Colossians 1: 11-20, preached on November 23, 2025

Last Sunday marked our 23rd wedding anniversary. For 23 years, I’ve had the pleasure of being Sara’s husband, and she’s suffered the burden of being my wife. I’m so thankful for her, and I’m thankful that she bears with me because after 23 years, some of the shine begins to wear off. When you live together for 23 years, you notice each other’s unique attributes. I won’t go into mine with you, but I want you to know that one of Sara’s unique attributes that I’ve come to love is that when she reads a book - and she reads about two a week - if she’s reading a book that’s particularly suspenseful and she’s started to worry about the fate of one of the characters, rather than anxiously wait page-by-page to find out how everything will turn out in the end, she’ll just skip to the last page. I didn’t even know you could do that. But Sara does. When she begins to feel anxious about how things are going to turn out in the end of a book, she’ll skip to the last page so that she can enjoy reading the story without the preoccupation, without the worry, without the fear, and I ask you to consider with me how in today’s second Scripture lesson, we’ve just done the same thing. We’ve read the last page. If you’re anxious about tomorrow, know that our God has already determined how our story ends. If you’ve been doom scrolling late at night, and you’re worried about what’s going to happen next, here is the assurance that our God holds the whole world in His hands. While we may ask: Are we going to be OK? Is AI going to take over everything? Are we on the brink of a recession? Is the sky going to fall? Skip with me to the last page of the Book to remember again that Christ is King, and everything is going to be alright. Let me highlight a few verses that we just read: May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power. May you be prepared to endure everything with patience, for he has rescued us from the power of darkness. He has transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. In him we have redemption. In him we have the forgiveness of sins. In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, by making peace through the blood of the cross. Hear these words so you don’t suffer through the night without the promise of the rising sun. Don’t get tossed around like those who don’t know who they are. Instead, skip to the last page with me today, so you know how our story ends. If you don’t, the Apostle Paul will be disappointed. Tradition tells us that Paul wrote this letter that makes up our second Scripture lesson. The purpose of the letter was to tell those Christians: “You’ve fallen for their lies, you’re giving into fear, you’re wavering in your faith, but I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.” Did your mom or dad ever say that to you? After they caught you smoking cigarettes or skipping school, did they ever say, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed?” When I heard that phrase, I’d sometimes counter with: “But everyone else was doing it.” Everyone else is scared. Shouldn’t I be scared? Everyone else is anxious. Shouldn’t I be anxious? Everyone else is worried. Shouldn’t I be worried? That’s the culture we’re living in today: a culture where everyone is scared, even scared of their neighbors; where everyone is worried, as though God were not at work in our midst. Today, let me remind you what your parents said, “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?” My friends, all we like sheep have gone astray. We all fall into fear. We all fall into sin. We all accept the teachings and the patterns of this world. Sometimes, we Christians end up looking and acting like everyone else. Why? It’s because we want to be liked and accepted. Speaking of being accepted, this is the week that all the seniors in high school find out whether or not they got into the University of Georgia. I know some parents feel the pressure because they want that in-state tuition, but I also know that some seniors feel an increased pressure because it can feel like more than college acceptance is at stake. To all those who can’t sleep over worrying about acceptance into UGA, let me remind you that 25 years ago, the acceptance letters to Georgia used to come in the mail, and because everyone got into Georgia back then, the letters used to read, “Dear Joe Evans, or current resident, congratulations, you’ve been accepted to the University of Georgia.” That’s not a true story. I didn’t get into the University of Georgia. I applied and was rejected. The only other school I applied to was Presbyterian College, but had I been accepted to UGA and gone there, I never would have met Sara Hernandez, who is now my wife of 23 years. I never would have studied religion with Dr. Peter Hobbie who encouraged me to be a Presbyterian minister. I never would have become the person that I am today, so listen to me and remember that rejection from the world does not mean rejection from God’s plan for your life. Don’t you remember that He called you by name? Don’t you remember that you are precious in His sight? Don’t you remember the water in which you were baptized? I’ve been thinking about baptism lately getting ready for this baptism at the 11:00 service. I remember the first time I ever had the honor of baptizing a baby and walking her around the sanctuary, telling her what it is that we believe. I walked her around the sanctuary of Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church nearly 20 years ago, and I was fighting tears the whole way because the good news of the Gospel is just so good. The good news that even when we fall, He picks us back up again is such good news. That even when disappointment strikes, the promise of salvation still holds. That even should it take us 40 years to get there, the Promised Land is where we are headed. Whenever you get discouraged, skip to the last page and remember. For when we allow despair to creep into our bones, When we run around like the future of the world depends on us, When we seek out pleasure in all the wrong places, When we step on the scale and let the number define how we feel about ourselves, When we watch our team lose and mope around for two days, we are giving too much importance to issues that will not matter in the end. I’m not saying these things don’t matter. They do matter, but they don’t ultimately matter, so don’t give them your ultimate attention. The Apostle Paul rotted away in an old Roman prison cell and still rejoiced in the promise of salvation because he skipped to the end of the book to remember again how his story would end. Next time you fall into despair over the ups and downs of this human life, I hope you hear the Apostle Paul’s voice in your ear saying, “I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed,” for in Christ we are more than conquerors no matter the outcome of today’s battle. In Him, all things will be made new not matter how old the car we drive. In Him, there is no reason to fear when the storms come, for the storms won’t last. There is no reason to be anxious for tomorrow. Consider the lilies of the field who neither toil nor do they spin, yet even kings in all their glory were not clothed like one of them. What is it that you’re working so hard for? What is it that you’re striving for day in and day out? Trust in the Lord, and He will put you under His wings and fly you home. Halleluia. Amen.

God of the Living, a sermon based on Luke 20: 27-38, preached on November 9, 2025

Do you know any annoying people? People who really get on your nerves because they can’t stop moving their legs up and down? Or who chew too loudly? When I’m hiking on Kennesaw Mountain, trying to enjoy the peace and quiet, I get annoyed by the people who play music on their speakers. Do you know who I’m talking about? Why do they do that? Maybe, though, they get annoyed by people who walk around in kilts pretending to be from Scotland. What annoys you? What do people do that gets on your nerves? One of the things that most annoys me is when someone asks me a question that’s actually a test. Do you know what I mean by that? For example, when someone asks you, “Who’d you vote for?” it’s not because they’re curious. It’s because they want to know whose side you’re on. The Sadducees were asking Jesus this question in our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Luke for the same reason. “Whose wife will the woman be?” they ask, only they don’t want to know what Jesus thinks about this ridiculous scenario. They’re not interested in His opinion. They just want to know whose side He’s on, so they ask Him “In heaven, whose wife will this woman who was married to seven different brothers be?” That’s the question that they ask, although we know that they’re not curious about what Jesus thinks about the details of the scenario because they don’t believe in Heaven at all. Did you know that about the Sadducees? They were one of the big religious groups in ancient Israel. In the days of Jesus, there were no Democrats or Republicans, but there were Pharisees and Sadducees. Two different parties, always vying for control. The Sadducees and the Pharisees were different in ways that seemed very important to them at the time, but not everyone remembers the differences between them today, so let me refresh your memory. The Pharisees worked so hard to follow all the laws in the Old Testament from Leviticus to Deuteronomy. They took those rules seriously, and so, when we read about them in the Gospels, they were often the ones giving Jesus a hard time about eating with unclean people or not resting on the Sabbath. They heard that Jesus and His disciples were bad about not resting on the Sabbath, and Jesus said, “The Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath,” but that didn’t make much sense to them because the Pharisees loved the law, so they were fair, you see. That’s a good way to remember what the Pharisees cared about. The Pharisees loved the law, so they were fair, you see. What made them different from the Sadducees? The Sadducees didn’t believe in Heaven, so they were sad, you see. I learned that in seminary. But seriously, the Sadducees didn’t believe in Heaven, so why did they ask Jesus this question about the woman who was married to a man who died so she married his brother then that brother died so she married his other brother, on and on until she’d been married to seven different brothers? “In heaven, whose wife will that woman be?” that’s what they asked, yet they asked Jesus this question not because it was a realistic scenario that they needed His help with, not because they wanted to provide support to a woman who was about to be remarried to her husband’s brother, but because they wanted to know, “Are you with us or are you with them?” Do you know anyone who asks you that kind of question? An “Are you with me or with the idiots?” kind of question? It’s these kinds of questions that make Thanksgiving dinner so uncomfortable. Imagine you’re at Thanksgiving dinner, and your uncle asks you to pass the gravy, and then he says: Can you believe whom New York City elected for their mayor? Don’t answer that question. If your granddaughter who went to college up north interrupts the conversation at the table to ask, “Is this turkey organic?” Don’t answer. Instead, just say, “I feel sure it lived a happy life because he didn’t have to live through this awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation.” My friends, there are questions that come up at Thanksgiving dinner that are not actually questions, and they should not be answered because they’re traps. Stay away from such topics if you want the meal to remain civil, and if you want to avoid the divisive conversations altogether, you can come volunteer at the church on Thanksgiving day. We’re hosting Thanksgiving for about 200 people. More than 50 have volunteered to help. One guy says to me, “Are you telling me that I can be away from my mother-in-law from 8:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon? Where do I sign up?” But that’s not the point of the meal. We’re trying to feed people, not help you avoid your family. Only consider with me why you may want to avoid some of your family at Thanksgiving. Consider with me why it is so hard to live in a community. The word that we use for relationships when the relationships are driving us crazy is “politics.” Have you heard that before? When relationships are complicated and stressful, we call them politics, so when I hear someone say, “I loved my job, but I couldn’t stand the office politics,” I know what the real problem is. Likewise, when someone says, “I love the club, but the politics are getting to me,” I know that they’re not talking about the rising fees or the quality of greens on the golf course, but unnecessary stress between the board members. No one likes it when relationships become political. No one likes it when religion turns political, so folks back out of church when they have to choose between one side or the other. How many people have loved a church until some issue came along and the peaceful sanctuary felt just like everywhere else: a den of divisive issues in a world where it’s already so difficult to get along? It’s a tale as old as time. In the time of Jesus, there were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the Sadducees asked Jesus a question about Heaven because whether Heaven existed or not was the hot topic of the day, and Jesus responds, “What makes you think this issue has any eternal significance?” What He’s leading us to see is the way that we do permanent damage to relationships over issues that will not matter in Heaven. If you want to make it there, don’t invest all your time and energy into the divisive issues of today. Jesus says to the Sadducees: Stop fighting and listen. In Heaven, there are bigger issues than who is married to whom. Listen to this: Years ago, I went to visit a woman named Wanda Turner in the hospital. I walked into her hospital room, and the air was a little too still. I had gotten there too late. She had already died. A few days later was her funeral, and this all happened in a small town in Tennessee where Wanda knew the funeral home director and the man who managed the cemetery, so when I arrived at the cemetery for the graveside service, there were two graves dug, but I didn’t know why. I asked the funeral home director why there were two open graves. He told me that Wanda was Mr. Turner’s second wife. She paid extra to have the grave digger dig up his first wife and to move her one spot over so that Wanda could be buried next to Mr. Turner. I promise that’s a true story, and I bring it up today just to remind you that it can seem like this kind of thing really matters. It can seem like all kinds of issues have real and lasting significance. Who will be buried next to whom? Who will this woman be married to in the Kingdom of Heaven? Imagine that the issues that divide us today will take a back seat to what matters most in the Kingdom of Heaven. Don’t imagine that what we are arguing over right now has any eternal significance. Don’t jeopardize your place there by getting locked into a debate here on earth, for in Heaven, Christ is King and He will not tell the Republicans and the Democrats whose side He’s on. Instead, He will ask them why they thought fighting over issues was worthy of denying hungry children their food. Will any excuse be good enough when Jesus asks them why they stopped feeding hungry children? When it comes to this government shut down and the suspension of SNAP benefits on the eve of Thanksgiving, the suspension of pay to members of our armed forces on the eve of Veteran’s Day, I don’t know which side you think is worse than the other, but I do know that I want to be on Jesus’ side far more than anyone else’s. Don’t get trapped by the Sadducees. Don’t fall into thinking that the debates of today have eternal significance. In Heaven, what will matter most? My 7th grade Sunday school teacher, Ken Farrar, told a joke the other day about Heaven. A young Presbyterian died, and one of the first people he saw in Heaven was his father. When this son saw his father, he shouted out with joy. “Dad!” but his dad said, “Son, I’m so happy to see you, too, but please keep your voice down. The Baptists are right over that hill. They think they’re the only ones who made it up here. We don’t want to spoil it for them.” Jokes like that are funny because churches used to fight just like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but this last week, the Baptist Church, the Episcopal Church, MacLand Presbyterian Church, and Highlands Church have all sent money and volunteers to this church to help with our Tuesday food distribution. In the wake of SNAP benefits denied, churches are helping our community remember what ultimately matters, and there is hope for our community. There is hope for Thanksgiving dinner. There is hope for our world, our nation, our republic, if we would give up our infighting to kneel before the cross. It’s not about who is worse and who is better, whose fault it is and who has done wrong. Salvation comes not through comparison but through confession. Bow before Jesus to confess. Come to Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Follow Jesus, who is the God of the living. Amen.