It Could Not Have Been Worse, a sermon based on Psalm 22 and Job 23: 1-9, 16-17 preached on September 8, 2024

Traffic is the worst, isn’t it? Last week, I heard about one family in our church who drove to Indiana for Labor Day weekend. The worst leg of the journey was between Chattanooga and Nashville: bumper to bumper the whole way. It sounded like torture, and some of you drive in traffic like that every day. I can’t imagine. Not to brag, but when I’m riding my bike here to the church, it’s often like riding through a Norman Rockwell painting. Last Tuesday, it was that way. There was a breeze, and birds were chirping. I waved to some neighbors on our street. Then, I rode up Stewart, turned onto Maple, where people were walking their dogs, and parents were pushing strollers to our preschool. It was one of the most idyllic experiences of my life. Only then, I rode my bike through our west parking lot. Around 9:00 AM in our west lot, when parents are dropping their kids off for preschool, it’s like a miniature version of 285. The main parking lot isn’t big enough to handle all the parents dropping off their preschool students, and the cars can’t clog up Kennesaw Avenue, so parents and grandparents circle around our west lot on the other side of the bridge. A lot of cars circle up other there. It’s typically the most aggressive driving that I have to ride my bike through during my morning commute, but last Tuesday, it was worse than usual because blocking the line was a semi with a load of lumber. It was parked, while a forklift unloaded that lumber and tried to carry it through our parking lot and across Kennesaw to a house being renovated. I got off my bike, and when I walked past Suzanne, our assistant preschool director, I heard her say, “It’s always something.” So often it is. Neighbors use our parking lot, and I love that people make good use of our parking lot. It’s a ministry of this church, just providing such a large, open area for people to use. How many teenagers, learners permit in hand, have learned to drive in that great big parking lot? Some have learned to ride their bikes in that lot. On Saturdays, a farmer’s market sets up over there, and they bring their surplus to our food distribution ministry. As a church, it’s good to partner with others who are doing good in this community. When people call and want to use our space, we help. Marietta High School holds their AP exam testing here. In a couple weeks, all the school counselors from Marietta, Cobb, and a couple other school systems will hold a big meeting in Holland Hall. We’ve hosted Rotary, the Sheriff’s Department, the Police Department, we host community choirs and retired teachers’ events: all kinds of stuff, and so I can say with confidence that we would have been more than happy for one of our church’s neighbors to use our west parking lot to unload lumber for their home renovation. I would have asked that they not do it during preschool drop off, or those parents are going to kill you. However, I never had the chance to ask because they never called. Now, I get it, asking for things can be hard. Just talking to people can be hard. I was a shy kid. When I was 8 years old, my mom walked me into the Lawrence Street Rec for basketball practice, pointed out my coach, and told me to go over and introduce myself for my first practice with his team. When she came back to pick me up an hour later, I was standing right where she left me because I was too shy to go and introduce myself. I can still be that shy kid. When I have to have a difficult conversation with someone, it takes me a minute to psych myself up, and then it takes me a minute to recover. After a hard week of too many difficult conversations, I may go to the grocery store like I did last Friday, a little too thin-skinned to deal with one more person. Last Friday, our daughter Lily drove me to the grocery store, where we picked out all kinds of stuff. Sara gave us a list, but the new flavor of Pop-corners, nacho cheese, found their way into our buggy. Plus, Moon Drop grapes are in season. We had to have those, so in the check-out line, when the cashier asked us if we’d found everything that we needed, I said, “We found a lot more than what we needed,” then I waited for her to laugh… or smile… or something. Instead, she said, “I hear that same line at least 60 times a day.” Next time, I’m going to the self-checkout line. It can be hard to talk to people. Sometimes, it’s easier not to. After a week like the one we’ve just had and during a week like the one we’re headed into, we can’t just bottle up all the fear and all the anger. Let’s think about how to let some of it out. We’re in the book of Job again today. It’s the perfect book to read in the days after a school shooting and in the days before the anniversary of 9/11 because here, Job shows us what to do with our shattered expectations and some of our darkest feelings. For the month of September, each sermon will be based on a passage from the book of Job, and last Sunday, Cassie introduced us to Job beautifully by saying that Job stands at the boundary of religion and faith. Another way of saying the same thing is to say that in our second Scripture lesson, Job is stepping away from the routines and trappings of a religious life and into having a soul-bearing relationship with God. That’s the difference between religion, as Cassie was talking about it, and faith. Another way to say it is to say that there’s a difference between going to church, following along with liturgy, singing the hymns on a Sunday morning and learning what it really means to trust in Jesus in the midst of the storm. There’s a difference between wearing a cross, having religious home décor on the wall of your house so you look like a Christian and trusting God with your deepest fears and darkest emotions. Do you know what I’m saying? Religion is a box that we check when we’re filling out paperwork. Faith is a relationship, and relationships must weather disappointment and heartache. Sometimes, there is anger and misunderstanding that must be expressed, so when a reporter asked Ruth Bell Graham, who was married to that great preacher Billy Graham, if she had ever considered divorce, she responded: “Divorce? I never once considered divorce. However, I often considered murder.” What’s the difference between calling yourself a Christian and having a relationship with God? When you have a relationship with God, you open your mouth and let God know what you’re really feeling, even if what you are feeling is ugly, so we read in our second Scripture lesson that Job answered: My complaint is bitter; and God’s hand is heavy despite my groaning. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me. If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face! For Job, his whole world had fallen apart. His children were dead. His flocks of camels and goats were gone. His home had been destroyed. Things could not have been worse, and in our second Scripture lesson, he lets God know about it. Can you imagine? Friends, the last time I preached on this passage from the book of Job, it was 2021. We were in what was, for me, the darkest days of the pandemic. We were passed the time when we were all leaving our groceries in our cars. We were passed the time of thinking that everyone was going to die. We were in that point of the pandemic when some of us thought we needed to be careful and others of us were wondering if maybe the whole thing was a hoax, which meant that for people like me who were trying to lead organizations of mixed-opinioned individuals, it was the darkest days of the pandemic in 2021 because of the stress. I started having migraine headaches. I wasn’t sleeping a whole lot. This passage from Job was a difficult scripture lesson for me to wrestle with then because, despite Job’s honesty, if you would have asked me how I was doing in those stressful days of 2021, I would have said, “I’m doing fine.” Why? Because it takes a whole lot of faith to be honest when things are going badly. It takes a whole lot of faith in our relationships with God to let God know about our greatest vulnerabilities or our deepest pain, and so we say that the book of Job stands at the edge of religion and faith because in this book, Job trusts God with how he’s really doing. How’s he doing? Awful. Everything has fallen apart. If his boss had walked up to him in this moment, he might have lied. If his grandkids had walked up to him in that moment, he might have put on a brave face. Maybe that’s how we need to be around some people; however, we put on a brave face before God to our own detriment. Many who have reached that dark place in life must wrestle with a lie. They must wrestle with the lie that there’s nothing to be done and nothing to say, that no one wants to hear it, and no one really cares. Doubt that lie. Dismantle that lie with the truth that God will listen, for when we begin to open up about our fears, we live our courage, and when we trust God with our heartache, we live our faith. Our first Scripture lesson, undoubtably one of the most depressing, gut-wrenching psalms we could ever read, Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Where have you heard those words before? Jesus quotes this psalm while He’s being crucified because life for Jesus wasn’t perfect, yet He was perfect. He was perfectly faithful, and so in His darkest moment, He trusted God enough to reveal to Him His pain. If another school shooting has you broken hearted, or if the state of affairs in our nation and our world keeps you up at night, do not bottle up what you’re feeling. Instead, live your faith. Trust God with what you’re feeling. Let your Father in Heaven know. Trust Him with your hurt and your heartache. Doing so may not make all your problems go away. However, doing so will strengthen your relationship with Him, which will change everything. Amen.

In the Strength of His Power, a sermon based on Ephesians 6: 10-20, preached on August 25, 2024

“Put on the whole armor of God.” That’s stronger than how I end each worship service. When we get to the end of each worship service, I always say the same thing: As God’s own, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, and patience. Clothe yourselves is different from arm yourselves, but sometimes the world outside requires armor. People are fighting all kinds of battles every day. The great preacher Dr. Frank Harrington, who served the Lord at Peachtree Presbyterian Church, used to talk about how he was all the time fighting the battle of the bulge. He wasn’t talking about what happened on the Western Front during the winter of 1945. He was talking about how hard it was some mornings to button the top button on his white shirt. He was talking about the battle of temptation to avoid the potato chips and to go for the carrot sticks instead. He was talking about the belt he put on and the feeling he got when he ran out of holes. Just last week, I received a joke from Fran Hammond put out by “The Laughing Christian.” It said: I got on my bathroom scale this morning, and let me tell you, the full armor of God is heavy! Halleluia! In the days of the Ephesians and the Apostle Paul, the battle was different, but it was also the same. Each day, those Ephesian Christians walked out into a world in which their faith was tested and their identity was questioned. Likewise, we will all walk out of this worship service, going into a world where our patience will be tested, and it will happen the minute we try to turn out of our parking lot. We live in the world where sin and death, evil and hatred, envy and vanity still have power, and if we are to resist, some days it takes more than just clothing yourself with love. Some days, what you need is the belt of truth. Speaking of the battle of the bulge, whenever I put on a belt, I’m noticing the hole I used the last time I put that belt on. I wear the same belt often enough that I can tell which hole is my standard. Then there’s the hole one notch up that I use for the week after Thanksgiving. My friends, we are not living in exile in Babylon or under the power of the Roman Empire, thanks be to God, but we are living in a society so overrun with standards of unattainable beauty that girls are turning to anorexia and bulimia at younger and younger ages. If a little girl looks at her reflection in the mirror and says anything other than, “I am a beautiful child of God,” then she needs to add a belt of truth to her outfit. As you think about the armor of God this morning, think about what it takes to extinguish the arrows that come at us. Do you have your shield? Do you have your helmet? Have you put on your belt of truth so that you know who you are while living in a society that tells you you’re only as good as you look? This is what Christians have been doing for generations. We have maintained our conviction despite the world around us. Let me tell you about the Huguenots. Do you know anything about the Huguenots? About 500 years ago, John Calvin, the theologian, became so popular that Christians throughout Europe were reading what he had to say. He lived in Geneva, Switzerland, and there, those who followed his interpretation of Christianity were called Calvinists. In Scotland, they were called Presbyterians. And in France, they were called Huguenots. Many of those French Huguenots immigrated here and became some of the first Europeans to settle in Charleston, South Carolina. One of the oldest churches in that city of Charleston is the old Huguenot church, established in 1687, but not all of them left France. Other Huguenots stayed, and during World War II, when the Nazis invaded and took over the country, a small village of Huguenots wrestled with what they should do. How would they live their faith under Nazi occupation? How would they go on living without compromising their convictions? How would they survive without losing their souls? With the armor of God in mind, their pastor stood in the pulpit of that town occupied by the Nazis and said, “The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the Spirit.” In other words, put on the breastplate of righteousness, for they may have invaded our borders, they may be occupying our nation, their hatred and cruelty may surround us, but we can still defend the state of our hearts. That’s part of what a breastplate does. It guards your internal organs. It protects your heart, and those Huguenots, they couldn’t push back the Nazi tanks with their hunting rifles, yet with pure and loving hearts, they provided sanctuary to Jews all during the war, and by the time the war ended, the total number of Jews they had saved was over 5,000. “The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the Spirit.” “Put on the whole armor of God.” Wear that belt of truth. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. And lace up the sandals in preparation for the gospel of peace. That’s such an interesting phrase: lace up your sandals in preparation for the gospel of peace. I think it means that if your boots get too used to marching off to war, if your fingertips get too used to arguing on the internet, if your brain gets too good at criticizing, you won’t be ready for the dawn of peace. You might come home from the battlefield, the cease fire may be called, but if you’re too used to fighting a battle, you won’t be ready for peace. On the other hand, those Huguenots knew that the Nazi occupation wouldn’t last forever. They didn’t surrender nor give in, but they resisted. They were so rooted in the faith that they were like a tree whose trunk twisted by the wind, whose branches were battered, but remained standing once the hurricane passed. That’s the main thing about this armor of God. It’s not about winning the battle. It’s about standing firm until the battle is won, and Who is it who will win this battle for us? Who is it who’s always fighting on our side? For several years now, every day, I’ve been reading a morning devotional. I went through “Jesus Calling” a couple times. Do you know that one? I just moved from “Jesus Calling” to “Jesus Listens,” and last week in “Jesus Listens,” I read this line, that amid all the headlines we read each day, something most important is always left out by the journalists. We read the headlines of the conflict in the Middle East. We read about the desperation of the Palestinian people. We read about the plight of women in Afghanistan. We read about the upcoming presidential election. And we think we know who the major players are in all those conflicts, but unless we remember that in the midst of all of that, God is working His purpose out, we’ll never really know what’s going on out in the world. My friends, we don’t need to worry about the outcome of the battle, for the war is already won. We just can’t lose our souls in the midst of it. Don’t sacrifice your friendships. Don’t spend your time spreading the division. Put on that belt of truth, and the breastplate of righteousness, and the helmet of salvation, and lace up those sandals in preparation for the gospel of peace. Don’t take up your sword to fight the battle that He’s already winning. Notice with me that the sword in the whole armor of God isn’t a lethal weapon for us to wield. It’s the word of God. The sword is the word of God, but in the Bible, do you remember how Peter used his sword? Jesus was being arrested to be taken to His trial, where He’d be condemned and crucified. Peter thought Jesus needed him to defend Him, so he took out his sword and he cut off the ear of an enslaved man named Malchus. I think about that, and I remember how impulsive we all can be. We want to stand up and defend ourselves and our religion and our convictions, forgetting that Jesus doesn’t need us to fight for Him. He’s already won the victory. My friends, we are in the middle of a spiritual conflict that will not be solved with a political solution. Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the cosmic powers of this present darkness. That’s what the Bible says. So, we need to be, not Christians who are ready to lash out at our brothers and sisters, but mature Christians who are always wearing the armor of God. A great preacher named Oswald Chambers once said, “Spiritual maturity is going from being thin-skinned and hard-hearted to thick-skinned and soft-hearted.” Have you ever been around someone who was thin-skinned and hard-hearted? Of course you have. They’ve taken over the internet. However, the spiritually mature wear the armor of God to maintain a tender heart, open and compassionate. Wear that armor and be quick to listen, slow to judge. Don’t break under criticism but remember who you are. Be spiritually mature. May the state of your heart remain steady in spite of the chaos around you. Stand firm, knowing that the storm will pass, and that Christ will have the victory. Be strong in the strength of His power. Amen.

All God's Creatures Have a Place in the Choir, a sermon based on Ephesians 5: 15-20, preached on August 18, 2024

I once had the honor of preaching at a tiny Presbyterian church in South Georgia. I was a seminary student, preaching as a sub for their pastor, and that Sunday, the choir loft was empty, and there were 15 or 20 sitting in the pews. When we got to the choir anthem, those 15 or 20 sitting in the pews stood up, walked to the choir loft, and sang the anthem. All God’s creatures have a place in the choir. That’s what I titled this sermon, “All God’s Creatures Have a Place in the Choir,” but Dr. Jeffrey Meeks hasn’t had the chance to sign off on that title. I’m not sure that he would endorse the message that all God’s creatures have a place in the choir, for the truth is that not all God’s creatures can sing. While we can all make a joyful noise to the Lord, it’s not necessarily a pleasant noise, so while many a cross-stitched sampler has declared that all God’s creatures have a place in the choir, most people know better than to think that they can just walk into a choral group and sing. However, if you walked into a kindergarten classroom, they wouldn’t. I once heard a story about a teacher who walked into a classroom full of kindergarteners. She asked, “Who in here is an artist?” Those kids had just painted pictures that were hanging on the walls, and so every kid in there raised his or her hand. They had all donned smocks and had handled a paintbrush, so every one of them considered him or herself an artist. Then the teacher asked, “Who in here is a musician?” One kid raised his hand and said, “I can play the triangle.” Another, “I can play the maracas.” On they went. The classroom was full of musicians. Then she asked, “Who in here can sing?” Again, every hand shot up. Why? Because no one told them that they couldn’t, and they were all young enough to still be trying everything they could possibly try. That changes by the time we get to high school. By the time we get to high school, most of us specialize in one thing or another. I specialized in baseball. I gave up Boy Scouts and playing the trombone so that I could sit the bench for the Marietta Blue Devils. Last Sunday, I ran into the older brother of a team member I had played with. We talked about how his little brother could throw a fastball right by you. Our conversation was as though that Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days” had come to life. Do you know that song? It goes: I had a friend who was a big baseball player, back in high school. He could throw that speedball by you; make you look like a fool. Saw him the other night at this roadside bar. I was walking in; he was walking out. We went back inside, sat down, had a few drinks. But all he kept talking about, was Glory days. Well, they’ll pass you by, glory days. In the wink of a young girl’s eye, glory days. Glory days. That song is so good, maybe because it’s so true. Most of us who played sports in high school have taken up watching sports rather than playing sports, apart from pickleball, which everyone is playing these days. Think with me about the difference. Watching is not as life-giving as doing. Now, consider this verse from our second Scripture lesson: Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. You’ve likely heard this verse before, but don’t just interpret the obvious lesson of this verse. Visualize with me the old football player, sitting in front of a TV or in the stands, beer in hand, watching players on a field do the thing he used to do. Keep that image on the one hand and consider with me the second half of that sentence: Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves. Did you hear what the author of our second Scripture lesson did there? On the one hand is the old baseball player from the song who thinks all his best days are behind him, so he has a few drinks and reminisces on the bar stool, yet the alternative is to sing. Not listening to music but singing it. Not remembering the good old days but looking forward to tomorrow. My friends, most of us can’t play the sports we played in high school or college anymore, so we stop playing and start watching. That won’t work in here because Christianity is not a spectator sport. You don’t have to sing in the choir. You don’t have to preach the sermon or play the organ. These things are not for everybody, yet when you’re in here, you must sing. You must praise. You must lift up your voice because of all the seats in this room, not one of them is for the audience. Everyone in here is a participant in praising God, and when our hour of worship is over, the service begins. I’ve been reading this book that I’ve told you about. It’s a book titled, The Anxious Generation, and in it, the author, Jonathan Haidt, calls for all kinds of changes. He’s all for these changes that Marietta City Schools is already implementing, like those locked bags that kids put their cell phones in so they’re not distracted by them in class. Assistant Principal Anthony Booker, he told me this morning that it’s hard to implement, but it’s worth it because his students are talking to each other again. In addition to those locking bags for cell phones, Jonathan Haidt encourages no social media before the age of 16 and no smart phones before high school, but the big thing this guy encourages is to restore independence, free play, and responsibility to childhood. He says that our playgrounds are too safe to be any fun, and that we parents are so nervous about our kids getting hurt, that we haven’t given them chores or let them walk to school or ride the bus, and so our kids grow up without feeling the joy that comes from independence and having a purpose. According to Haidt, we all have two big human needs: community and purpose. We all need to be around people, which makes us feel loved, and we need to have the chance to do something that we love and that serves a higher purpose. That makes us feel like our lives have meaning. In other words, while washed-up old football players are sitting back drinking beer and watching the game, our kids are sitting back and looking at their phones, and the result is the same. We lack purpose. We lack community. We’re watching more than we are living, and Christianity is not a spectator sport. You don’t have to sing in the choir, but we all have a place here. We all have a part to sing and a gift to bring. Of all the seats in this room, not one of them is for the audience. Everyone in here is a participant in praising God, and when our hour of worship is over, the service begins, and when we serve, we are filled with the Spirit. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. You might know that groups of musicians from our church have been going around to retirement communities to sing. The group that went out the week before last went to Atherton Retirement Community one afternoon and sang songs like “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.” That one’s not in our hymnal. To talk to some of these singers and to ask them why they’re doing it, I talked with Lynne Sloop abut it one afternoon, and she said that she loves doing this. It brings her joy. If you could see Amy Sherwood singing. She and Lynn were the first two to go out to sing as a part of this program, and they sang “Moon River” during lunch at Atherton on the birthday of our church’s oldest member, Betty Kuhnen. The Cobb County Sheriff’s department heard that they were doing it, and they brought flowers and made Betty an honorary sheriff’s deputy for the day. It was an amazing experience to witness, and it never would have happened if Amy and Lynne had grown used to listening to music rather than singing it. We listen to music too much, when we were created to sing. We watch people do the things that we are meant to do. We wait around, frustrated with the world, and we wish someone would come along to do something about it, when we were created for just such a time as this. My friends, let us sing to remind ourselves that our Glory Days are not behind us, but before us. Let us lift our voices to praise the One who has promised that ahead of us are brighter days, brighter than all the days we have known before. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O, what a foretaste of glory divine! Not an aftertaste, but a foretaste. Sing the wondrous love of Jesus. Sing his mercy and his grace. In the mansion bright and blessed, he’ll prepare for us a place. When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be, If you want to be ready to rejoice when we make it there, you had better stop mumbling through the words now. Together, let us sing will full hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Strength for the Journey, a sermon based on 1 Kings 19: 4-8 and Ephesians 4: 25 - 5: 2, preached on August 11, 2024

Many years ago, in a small European village, the priest decided it was time to teach the town gossip a lesson. I don’t know what it was that finally pushed him over the edge. Whatever it was, he had had enough, and so he asked the town gossip to come to the church, where he led her up the stairs to the steeple There, he cut a slit in a feather pillow, handed it to her, and asked her to empty it out. She did. She shook the feathers out from the pillowcase. Some didn’t go far. They just hit the roof and glided down along the shingles to the gutter, but others were caught by the wind, and they went far and wide, over the tops of houses and through the streets of the town. Pointing to the empty pillowcase, the priest then said, “Put them back. Pick up all those feathers and put them back into the pillowcase.” “That’s impossible,” the town gossip said. “It can’t be done.” The priest agreed. “You’re right,” he said, “And your words are the same. Once you’ve whispered a rumor to your friend or your neighbor, you have no control over where those words go next. You can’t get them back, and your words have swept through the streets of this town like those feathers, damaging reputations for years.” After that, the town gossip changed her ways, but this morning I ask you: Why did she gossip in the first place? My friends, nearly 2,000 years ago, the words of our second Scripture lesson were written. Since then, have we gotten any better at using our words to “build each other up?” That’s what the Apostle Paul urges us to do this morning: Put away falsehood. Speak the truth in love. Be angry, but do not sin. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths. Be imitators of God. That’s the word we’ve read this morning. Yet, judging the state of our nation by the headlines or my social media feed, some days it appears as though we have only gotten worse about using our words since the Apostle first penned these words to the Ephesians. A member of our church sent me a joke yesterday that the legion of evil spirits Jesus sent to inhabit that herd of pigs in the Gospel of Matthew must have jumped out of those pigs and landed on Twitter. I read the headlines, and I scroll through my social media feeds, and I wonder, why do we talk this way to each other? Why do adults today violate the standards of speech enforced in our preschool? If we won’t allow the children of this church to call each other names, then why are we doing it? Why do we spread rumors? Why do we put each other down? In traffic, why are we so quick to honk the horn so aggressively? I think it was my mother-in-law who forwarded an email to me about why it’s good to be patient while driving. I wonder what it was about my driving that inspired her to send me this email. The email was about how, when we’re on the road, we don’t know where the person in front of us is going. It may be that the driver in front of us is driving so slowly because he’s on the way home from a funeral and is wiping tears from his eyes. Likewise, we don’t know why the couple is moving so slowly down the grocery store aisles. While we’re trying to get in and out of Kroger as quickly as possible, it may be that the couple slowing us down is taking their time because they just heard the news that she only has weeks to live, and so they’re trying to savor every moment. My friends, we don’t know what kind of day our neighbors are having. We don’t know what kind of day the bus driver or the garbage man is having. We don’t know if our mail carrier has been bitten by a dog or if the waitress just heard she was rejected from another graduate program. We don’t know what kind of battles the people around us are fighting, so be kind, the email said, and that’s lesson of our second Scripture lesson. Build each other up. We can’t mirror the standard of speech out in the world. We’re not supposed to imitate the world. We’re called to be imitators of God. Likely you’ve heard all this already, so think with me this morning about why it’s so hard to do these things. Why is it so tempting to say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.” Why is gossip fun to hear? Why do we lash out at strangers? Why are we rude? Why are we attracted to politicians who slander their opponents? Sometimes, we are our worst selves just because we’re hungry. I love our first Scripture lesson. It’s the story of Elijah, who needed a snack. He had been running and running. He was so tired, he fell asleep under a broom tree just after saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.” Have you ever felt that way? Sure, you have, and notice how God responds. God responds the way my mother did when I came home grumpy after a day at school and an afternoon of baseball practice. “How was your day?” she’d ask. “Fine,” I’d say. “Tell me about it. What happened?” “Nothing,” I’d respond. Then she’d say, “Why don’t you get yourself a snack, and then we’ll talk.” Likewise, the angel of God said to Elijah, “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.” There’s so much wisdom in just that statement, so my friends, if you ever catch yourself saying things to your neighbor that we would not tolerate in our preschool, have a snack. If you ever catch yourself losing your mind over an email you just read, and you hear yourself typing a response more loudly than usual because your fingertips are slamming down on the keyboard, take your lunch break. One of the greatest technological advances that I can think of in recent years is this feature on our email program at the church. After hitting “send,” you can “undo send” for a few minutes just in case you think better of it, and so to the question of “Why don’t we use our words to build each other up?” part of it is because we’re hungry or tired. We’re not so different than infants who cry when we get tired or hungry or wet. When I make the mistake of riding my bike on a rainy day, I walk into the house in a bad mood because I’m wet. Our physical state affects our emotional state. That’s not my opinion, that’s science, and it’s Scripture, so before you speak, have a snack, stop, and think it over. Take your time in using your words, for once your words are out of your mouth, they are like feathers taken up by the wind. That’s just how it is. If you’re really needing to criticize somebody, if you’re really wanting to knock someone off his pedestal, look at your feet and consider the ground you’re standing on. My friends, we can’t build each other up if we’re not standing on solid ground ourselves. If we’re trying to leave someone out of the circle, it’s likely because we don’t feel like we belong. Life is this competition, it seems sometimes. When I was a kid, I thought that it would get better once I was grown. It’s not. Parents are as nervous at the parent meeting as the kids are on the first day of school because adults are not as different from children as we like to think. We adults get hungry and grumpy and throw temper tantrums. We feel insecure and worry if we’ll be included. Christians, we can’t help others feel good about themselves if we don’t feel good about who we are. That’s why I remind you on Sundays at the very end of the service: Remember who you are. If you notice yourself losing your temper or spreading gossip, take a nap, have a snack, and remember who you are. We are on a journey to the Kingdom of God, and we need strength for that journey. Stand on the truth, and then you’ll have the strength to put away falsehood. Rejoice in the promises of God, and then you’ll be able to build up your neighbor. Remember who you are, and then remind your neighbor who she is. My friends, we won’t be able to be true imitators of God until we experience His love for ourselves. Last week, I remembered this moment in the Metro State Women’s Prison. I was a chaplain intern there one summer years ago. It was a hard summer because my eyes were opened to realities I hadn’t ever considered before. There was one woman who asked to meet with me because she was afraid God was going to send her to Hell. “What got you thinking about that?” I asked her. She told me about this dream she had, this memory that was coming back. There was a campfire, and around the campfire, she remembered doing things that she regretted and men who took advantage of her, and so she asked me if I believed God would send her back into that fire. I told her that I believed she had already been to hell, and that Jesus came to save her, not send her back to the place she’d already been because I believe that Christ has saved us from condemnation, and as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, let us be kind to one another. I see such kindness in our preschool. This little preschool student invited me to his birthday party last week. His birthday is in February, his mom told me, but I’m looking forward to it. Just that invitation reminded me of the joy that we are promised in Christ Jesus our Lord. Remember that promise. Remember His love. And love one another. Amen.

The Parable of the Rich Fool, a sermon based on Ruth 2: 1-7 and Luke 12: 16-28, preached on July 28, 2024

As we consider this parable, called the Parable of the Rich Fool, I’d like to start with a question: Why did God call this man a fool? Fool is a strong word. When I was a kid, most of my days were spent either in my own house or in the home of Buck and Cindy Buchanan, and neither my mother nor Mrs. Buchanan would allow that word to be used in her home. We weren’t allowed to call each other “fool.” In our house today, our daughters aren’t allowed to call each other “stupid,” even if the designation is justified. Why would God call this rich man a fool, a strong word that does not typically describe those who take the time to save for that rainy day? Typically, ancient wisdom calls for saving grain, calling those who save wise and those who don’t foolish. In one of Aesop’s Fables, there is the story of the grasshopper who didn’t prepare for winter. That grasshopper who spent his summer bouncing around and relaxing in the sun was left out in the cold starving once the snow fell, while the ants who had spent their summer building their ant hill and accumulating a storeroom of grain were not only warm that winter but also had food that lasted them until the next spring. This rich man was more like an ant than a grasshopper, so why would God call this man a fool? Let me give you the context, which has helped me to understand this parable better. Just before Jesus tells this parable of the rich fool, someone in the crowd said to Jesus: Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. Think about that. How many relationships have fallen apart when money was involved? Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me, this man says, and Jesus responds by saying: Don’t save up all your grain in barns. Instead, bake a loaf of bread for your brother and tell him that you’re sorry for being a jerk in the lawyer’s office. Why is this man with a barn full of grain called a fool? It is because he put grain before his relationships. He had the chance to send his grandchildren a little bit of money in their birthday cards, but instead, he said to his soul, “Instead of sending them money, I’ll put a little more grain in my barn.” Instead of taking his wife out for dinner, he put a little more grain in his barn. Instead of going on vacation, instead of giving to the church, instead of making a loaf of bread for his neighbor, instead of burying the hatchet, he built for himself a bigger barn. Then, he filled up that new barn with grain. Did he even eat a loaf of bread himself from that stockpile? Maybe he was thinking, “Winter is coming, and no one is going to come take care of me in my old age. I had better get prepared by filling up this barn full of grain so that I don’t have to live on charity when I can’t work.” That’s not a bad way to think, but to plan for the future, we can’t just think about the grain in our barns or the money in our savings account, let’s also pay attention to the people in our families as well as those who are out in the field. In our first Scripture lesson, we read about Ruth. Do you know about Ruth? Ruth is among the hardest books in the Bible to find. I have to go to the table of contents every time. The book of Ruth is an amazing account of love and dedication amid hardship. Ruth and her mother-in-law were reduced to gleaning. Gleaning is as close as the ancient world got to food stamps or welfare. There was no WIC, SNAP, or free and reduced lunch. If you lost the family farm, had a lazy husband who didn’t get the seed in the ground on-time, an early freeze came through, or the locusts swept your field, you could glean in your neighbor’s field, so long a drought didn’t ruin his harvest as well. In the case of Ruth, there was nothing left in Moab, so she went with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. There were fields in Bethlehem with grain in them, and after the workers went through the field to harvest the grain and had put it in storehouses, the gleaners were permitted to walk through the field to pick up whatever was leftover. That reminds me of going to the yard sale after lunch. Have you ever been to a yard sale after lunch? That’s the time to get the good deals. Once the good stuff has been picked over, you can get a great deal on whatever is left because the owner doesn’t want to bring that old couch back into the house. Likewise, the workers who went through the field once don’t want to go through it again and the owner doesn’t want to pay them to, so the gleaners were allowed to take whatever was left. That was hard work, and likely, the gleaners were both grateful and ashamed to be doing it. It kept them alive, but it was humiliating, and it was dangerous. As it is true today, so it has always been, desperate, migrant people are taken advantage of. As a woman who didn’t speak the language and didn’t have a husband, the men who worked the field had their eyes on Ruth, yet the owner of that field, a man named Boaz, saw her, protected her, cared for her, and as the story goes, eventually married her. Together, they had children, and when we get to the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we see all these generations. Throughout the generations leading up to the birth of Jesus, four women are mentioned in addition to his mother, Mary. One of the four is Ruth, and as I think about the difference between the Rich Fool who invests in the future by spending all his time storing up a barn full of grain, and this Boaz from the book of Ruth, who notices a young, helpless woman gleaning the field and takes care of her, I realize that one of them left behind a barn full of grain and the other one left behind a legacy that leads to the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the World. Who made the better investment? Who was wise and who was the fool? When we think about the future, we are wise to invest in people, not in barns, so invest in relationships. Mend your fences. Think about the future and consider your legacy in terms of who needs you to invest in them. Warren Buffet is famous for saying, “I want to leave enough money to my kids so that they can do anything they want, but I don’t want to leave them so much that they can do nothing.” How many people have died knowing that they had invested too little time in their children or too little time in their neighborhoods or their churches? Don’t be a fool, filling up your bank account while people need you. The future is at stake. Our legacy hangs in the balance. If the barn is full yet the people are perishing, what kind of a future are we heading towards? Last Sunday, I was complaining about the cameras in here. I was talking about how the camera that records this service hits me right in the bald spot, but what I really wanted to do was to celebrate the impact that our livestream has. Today we’ll be commissioning Jeff Knapp as a chaplain to the Cobb County Jail, where our livestream is viewed. Our livestream goes out into the world. Some people join our church in person after having worshiped with us online for months or even years. When I mentioned all this to you last Sunday, one member of our church came out of the service and volunteered to pay for the new camera that we need to make our livestream better, saying, “I want to recognize the blessings I have received by giving some of what I have away.” This is how we are to live. We are to use what we have to make this world a better place. Only then will we be able to say to our souls, “Soul, you have done so much for the church and for your community and for the people you love. You’ve set the example. You’ve run the race. You’ve loved them all well, and they will be able to continue the work that you showed them to do, so relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Jesus urges us to be mindful of the fact that our days are numbered. That reality doesn’t need to make us afraid. We don’t need a barn full of grain to relax as we face the uncertain future, for He is our hope and our salvation. Trust in Him. Don’t trust in barns. We don’t need to be worried about the end, for when we breathe our last, the One who knows the number of hairs on our heads will receive us fully into that mansion with many rooms. Don’t worry about where you’re going. Instead, worry about how you will leave this earth once you’re gone. Do you want to leave behind a barn full of grain? Or a well-adjusted child? Do you want to leave behind a storage unit full of crystal wrapped in tissue paper? Or a letter to your brother, asking for forgiveness? How many of us have taken the time to fill up a pantry with canned goods, and yet we’ve never made the phone call that we really need to make? How many among us have an attic full of National Geographic, telling the story of people in far off lands, and yet we’ve never sat our friends down to tell them how much they mean to us? Have you been investing in people, or have you been filling up a barn full of grain? Have you asked for forgiveness? Have you mended your fences? Are you filling up your barn without dealing with the skeletons in your closet? We’re running out of time, so don’t wast the time that you have filling up a barn full of grain that you’re never going to eat. My friends, yesterday I tended bar for the third time in my life. If you’re not used to coming to church here, let me tell you what this place is like. Last night, someone just getting to know our church said, “So we can’t clap during the worship service, but the pastors serve beer. How does that make sense?” Yesterday, I worked the bar at Two Birds Taphouse for the third year in a row. Last night, a Saturday night, the whole place was dedicated to a fundraiser for our food distribution ministry. Not only were all the profits going to our Pantry on Church, but this was a Saturday night. Most restaurants are trying to make money on a Saturday night, but not Two Birds. All the money that might have gone in their barn was coming here, to feed hungry people, and when we left that place last night, I looked at the face of the two owners, Jeff and Rachel Byrd, and there were smiles on both their faces. You have time left, so how will you use it? When we use our treasure to invest in people, we will change the world. But should we store up our treasure in barns, what will happen when we’re gone? Amen.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed, a sermon based on Matthew 17: 14-21 and Luke 13: 18-19, preached on July 21, 2024

Since it’s my birthday, I hope you’ll tolerate me telling you my favorite joke about Presbyterians again. My favorite Presbyterian joke is, “What do you get when you mix a Presbyterian and a Jehovah’s Witness?” “Someone who knocks on your door but doesn’t know what to say.” I’ve told that one a few times before, and I keep telling it because I think it’s funny, and I think it’s funny because there’s some truth in it. Presbyterians have been called the “frozen chosen” because when we worship God, we aren’t like our brothers and sisters in the non-denominational praise service. We keep our hands down during the hymns. We don’t dance in the aisles like they do it in the Pentecostal churches. We remain seated until we’re told to stand, and if the preacher isn’t clear on whether to stand or remain seated, a wave of anxiety crashes over the congregation because nobody knows what to do. But what’s worse is when somebody claps. Presbyterians want to clap. Some people feel like clapping; however, we’re nervous about whether or not to do it. It’s a disputed practice. Is it appropriate to clap? Is it decent? Is orderly? In some Presbyterian churches, the same goes with laughing. Someone told a joke in a Presbyterian church and said, “The joke was so funny that the congregation smiled just as loud as they could.” As a denomination, we can be a little reserved, so you won’t see many Presbyterians preaching out on the street, yet when Presbyterians finally do open their mouths, it can be so profound a display of deep and abiding faith that it will move you to tears. You all know that Marilyn Barton died last week. She died on Monday, July 15th, which is meaningful. In 1995 on July 14th, her son Scott died in a car accident just after he graduated from Marietta High School. I was in the youth group with him, and I remember where I was when I heard that news. Terry and Marilyn have honored his legacy. They have remembered him well, so the last words I heard Terry whisper in his dying wife’s ears were, “When you get to heaven and you see our son Scott, tell him I love him.” That’s a powerful faith. It’s a deep and powerful expression of faith to trust that, in the time of death, our goodbyes are not forever, and that death will not have the final word. This morning, my hope is that we all would be able to face death with such a profound and abiding faith, so this morning I want to talk about where and how such a faith begins. I want to preach about tiny faith. Miniscule faith. I want to speak openly and honestly about the kind of faith that is just the size of a mustard seed, for while Jesus said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move,” many think of tiny faith as a failure. I knew a man who was engaged to a wonderful Roman Catholic woman who asked him to convert. When he told me that, I was interested because I might have been in the same situation had I not been on my way to becoming a Presbyterian minister when Sara and I got married. My wife, Sara, and her sister were raised Roman Catholic, but she married me, a Presbyterian minister, and her sister married a United Methodist minister. There was not much talk of my brother-in-law or me converting. The protestants invaded the family, and my father-in-law will sometimes say, “One son-in-law is a Presbyterian minister, the other a Methodist minister, which makes me the Pope.” Conversely, this man I knew was engaged to the wonderful Roman Catholic woman who asked him to convert. He wasn’t too tied to the Presbyterian faith he had been raised in, so he relented, and with his fiancée, he began going to the classes that the Roman Catholic Church requires of converts. As a young man raised Presbyterian, so much of what he was learning in the class was new and, to him, seemed strange. Raised a Presbyterian, he’d been taught that communion was mostly symbolic. We don’t think of the bread as literal flesh or the juice as blood, yet he was hearing that Roman Catholics believe the bread becomes His body and the wine His blood, not symbolically, but literally. While that new understanding of the Sacrament stretched his mind, he said to himself “OK, I can handle that”. Then he got to the celibacy of the priests and the veneration of Mary. That was going to a different level. Still, he was OK going along with it. However, somewhere in learning about the saints, all the feast days or the angels, he hit a certain limit, and against his better judgement, he impulsively asked the teacher of this class a plain-spoken question: “Just how much of this stuff do I actually have to believe?” “All of it,” his teacher said. Now, I’ve told this story to several Roman Catholics, including my father-in-law, and each one of them disagrees with the teacher. You don’t have to believe in all the saints and all the angels to become a member of a Roman Catholic Church. Yet, some people think that you do. Some people think that joining our church requires believing all kinds of things, too, while in reality, the only qualification to become a member of this church and many other Christian churches is a willingness to say publicly, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” People outside the church will say things like: “I don’t think I can be a Christian because I don’t believe the earth was created in seven days,” or “I can’t go to church. I don’t believe in angels, or miracles, or that the Moses really wrote the first five books of the Bible.” I’ve heard people go through a long list of things they don’t believe in, all while assuming that I’d sign off on each and every one. That’s not necessarily true. In fact, there’s a famous preacher who used to say to the atheists who would come and talk with him about their issues with the church and faith, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. Chances are, I don’t believe in that God either.” My friends, before we squabble over orthodoxy and right belief, let us remember that faith, in its beginning, is simply a seed, a relationship with Jesus who knows what it’s like to be pushed out on the margins because He was born in a small town called Bethlehem, on a night when there was no room at the inn. He was raised as a carpenter in a small town called Nazareth, so He knows what it’s like to work hard, and to feel sweat on His brow and splinters in His fingers. As a man, He ate with sinners and tax collectors. He walked the earth in sandals and felt the sun on His back. He loved us so much that He died on the cross, choosing a relationship with us over His own survival. The shortest verse in Scripture is also among the most important: John 11: 35: “Jesus wept.” He wept because He feels our pain and knows our sorrow. He came to earth to live among us. That’s the meaning of His name “Emmanuel,” God with us, so when I hear Him saying, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed,” I hear Him saying that a faith just the size of a mustard seed may not appear to be very much, and yet it will grow to become a tree, large enough for “the birds of the air to make nests in its branches.” You don’t have to sign off on all the standards of the Westminster Confession of Faith to be a Christian. You won’t be disqualified from this church if you can’t recite the Apostle’s Creed by memory. “Lord, I want to be a Christian,” the hymn goes, for that’s enough. Maybe it’s more than enough, for Christianity is a relationship. It’s a relationship with Jesus, whom Christians believe is the Son of God, and even those who don’t believe agree that we need to place more emphasis on relationships. Lately, I’ve become interested in an author and researcher named Jonathan Haidt. I was introduced to him as he was being interviewed about his recent book called, “The Anxious Generation,” which is all about the negative impact of cellphones on our kids. In the introduction and the first chapter, he lays out his argument through painfully clear statistics that show that kids raised in the last twenty years are far more likely to be depressed, harm themselves, and suffer from mental health issues like anxiety than generations before them because these kids, whose brains are being rewired during adolescence, are spending less time during those delicate and difficult years with people and friends who might build them up and support them and more time with their phones, where they’re constantly comparing themselves to others, and where, should they be bullied, their phones make it possible for bullies to bully them constantly. There’s a lot of data out there telling us that smart phones are hard on our kids. The negative trends are getting worse, and adolescence is getting harder; however, the exception to the rule of these alarming trends are teenagers in that same generation who are a part of a religious community. Kids who are surrounded by a church that grounds them, builds them up, and loves them well are far less likely to suffer than their classmates and friends who are not a part of a family of faith like this one. Hearing Dr. Haidt say all that made me so thankful because on national TV, he was saying all the things that I wanted to say, but listen to this: Dr. Haidt isn’t a Christian. He doesn’t go to church. He calls himself an atheist, and he claims that he doesn’t really want to believe what his findings illustrate because he has some issues with organized religion, and yet he can’t argue with the trend he is seeing. I want to say to him that this trend he is seeing, let it be enough to walk through our doors because faith the size of a mustard seed is enough. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to get started. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move mountains and to reverse a dangerous trend that we’re seeing all through our nation. Don’t worry about your questions. Trust that a relationship with Jesus and His people will change your life. Last Friday, I met a couple in our parking lot. They were lost and were looking for the Square. I hated to tell them that they had already found it. If you made it to our church, you’ve arrived at the Square. Then, I invited them to go to our church, and they pretty much ran away. My friends, how many are lost? How many are running away because they see us and think that we are offering a set of dusty rules and dogmas, when in fact, what we have to offer is a relationship with the Living God? When what we have is a family of faith? It makes me think that, should we open our doors just a little bit wider, should we open our arms just a little bit wider, should we welcome all God’s people in with a little more hospitality to even and especially those who wrestle with their faith, and should we tell them that faith just the size of a mustard seed is enough, we will move some mountains, we will change the lives of some children, we will be like a tree where birds can make their nests. May it be so. Amen.

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree, a sermon based on Luke 13: 6-9, preached on July 14, 2024

Friends, I was worried about partisan division and the state of our nation before one of the presidential candidates was shot. Yesterday, two people died. One was the 20-year-old shooter. He’s been killed. He killed one in the crowd. President Trump was injured, and as I pray for his healing, as I mourn with those who lost a loved one yesterday, I also worry over our nation, for it feels as though we are coming apart at the seams. It appears as though we are losing our grip on what makes our nation great. On the day the Constitution was signed, September 17, 1787, a woman named Elizabeth Powel asked Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from the Constitutional Convention, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic,” he said, “if you can keep it.” Can we keep it? I’m starting to worry about that. However, here in this parable that we’ve just read, the Parable of the Sower, I see that Jesus is not so quick to give up as I am. “Cut it down,” the man says to the gardener, “Why should this fig tree be wasting soil?” Yet the gardener (who is Jesus, by the way) says to this man, “Why give up? Why not try something else?” That’s no radical suggestion. Just dig around it. Just add a little fertilizer. And this not-so-radical suggestion makes me think about the small things that God calls on us to do in the face of hopelessness. Just dig around it. Just add a little fertilizer. Just try. The first church I preached in was Druid Hills Presbyterian Church on Ponce De Leon Avenue in Atlanta. I was the summer intern. I preached my first three sermons there, which was daunting enough, but even more so because that church’s sanctuary was built to seat 1,000 people. It was a huge space, yet, each time I preached that summer, only 50 or 60 people were there. Most of my jokes went out from the pulpit and lost steam and petered before they reached anybody’s ears. It was empty in there. The church was dying, only nobody knew what to do about it. The fig tree was dying, and some there were ready to say, “Cut it down. It’s wasting soil. The members here can go to some of the other Presbyterian churches around. Let’s close this place down, for decline is inevitable,” they said. In fact, someone looked at the marquee sign out by the street and said it looked like a tombstone. They could imagine the inscription on the tombstone: “Here lies what was once a great church.” It was a sad place to be. One afternoon, someone heard that I had worked on a lawn maintenance crew. They asked me to consider planting some flowers out around the marquee, and that’s what we did. We pulled up the grass around it. We turned over the soil. We put down a little fertilizer and planted some flowers. It was a nice dose of life and beauty, and while I know those flowers didn’t save the church, sometimes my greatest wish is simply that we had faith enough to try. I wish we would give up on our giving up and find faith enough to doubt the negativity that pushes us to declare that all is lost. All is not lost. In the face of hopelessness, remember that the light of hope may flicker, but it’s just as likely to spread. “Who knows?” Mordecai asked in our first Scripture lesson, “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this?” Who knows? Perhaps all the tree needs is a little bit of fertilizer? Who knows, maybe all we need to do is to break up the soil around its trunk? Perhaps you and I are here for just such a time as this. Perhaps this church is here for just such a time as this. I think about this church a lot. And I think about how many places in our world are so socially divided. Did you know that when politicians gauge the political leanings of a region, they look for Cracker Barrells and Whole Foods Grocery Stores? That’s because republicans tend to eat at Cracker Barrell and democrats like to shop at Whole Foods. There might be some truth to that. Certainly, our divided nation is becoming more and more divided. Parents worry that their children will marry outside of party lines. Churches lean to one pole or the other, too, but when I look around our pews, I see something different. I see an alternative to the depressing narrative that the evening news keeps us fixated on. While the news tells us that division is getting worse and worse, and that the left is further from the right now more than ever, I look around this sanctuary and I see people who I know don’t vote the same way, singing the same song. When I think about our food distribution ministry, I know that people who vote differently are serving the Lord together. When I hear about who all went to visit Marilyn Barton in the hospital last weekend, I know that here, there is something more important than which side will come out on top in November, and so I remember again that the fig tree isn’t dead yet. We just need to dig around it a little. We just need to fertilize the roots. We just need to remember that hope is not lost. “Don’t give up yet,” the gardener says. “Let’s try something else and see what happens,” for with God on our side, even our meager efforts may lead to long-lasting change if we simply try. Sometimes we get so stuck in habits that we can’t imagine trying anything new. A man in our church who has become a friend of mine is a specialist in habits. This man, his name is Neale Martin, and he told me that there are between 39,000 – 50,000 products in our local grocery stores, yet the average shopper buys the same 300 repeatedly. If you doubt that statistic, then think about the kind of ketchup you buy. Or the kind of mayonnaise. I believe my grandmother would have preferred that I marry a convicted felon over a woman who used a brand of mayonnaise other than Duke’s, which is what happens to all of us. With a few purchases, we blaze the trail, and over time, the trail we’ve blazed becomes a well-worn path, then it’s a rut that we can’t get out of. Likewise, we watch the same news, and we hear the same message. We talk to the people who think like we do, and we get sucked down the same rabbit trails. Try something new, Jesus says. Don’t give up. Dig around the roots. Add a little fertilizer. Befriend someone new. Think some new thoughts. Go out of your way to show kindness. Be open minded. Start asking more questions rather than standing in judgement. We’ve been trained not to talk politics at the dinner table, but what if we try something new: talking politics at the table and listening to people who think differently than we do? Or what about respecting people and loving those we disagree with? The fig tree may yet live. In fact, you and I, it may be that we are here for just such a time as this. Amen.