The Tempter, a sermon based on Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7 and Matthew 4: 1-11, preached on February 22, 2026

This Gospel lesson from Matthew describes the first temptation of Jesus, and so temptation is my focus for this sermon. Your temptations. My temptations. As well as the particular temptation that Jesus faced. I say the particular temptation that Jesus faced because Jesus was tempted by none other than the devil himself. Our daily temptations are not like that of Jesus. He gets the Son of God treatment, so the great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor once said, “When it’s our turn, none of us is going to get the Son of God treatment from the devil because the devil only needs an all you can eat buffet and a tax refund to get our attention.” That’s true. From Adam and Eve down to us, let’s be honest: The devil doesn’t have to work too hard to tempt any one of us. It just takes an apple. Or a chicken wing. I was at a breakfast buffet determined not to get a donut yesterday, but someone suggested that I have at least one and so I got two. The devil tempts Jesus in ways that are particular to the Son of God. When the devil whispers in our ear it’s particular temptations to each one of us, and so the devil may not use the same words that he did with Jesus with us, for to Jesus, he said, “If you are the Son of God,” while to us, the devil might say, “Don’t you want just one more slice?” The devil may not say, “Throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple,” but you may hear the devil tempt you to do harm to yourself in more subtle ways. My point is that the temptation of Jesus described in our Gospel lesson is more personal to Jesus, and Jesus, being the Son of God, can withstand so dramatic an attack from the devil himself, yet do not underestimate the devil, for he comes to us all, whispering in our ears, and we are most tempted to listen when we are hungry and desperate in the wilderness. After 40 days and 40 nights, the Tempter said to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Don’t you know that He was tempted to do just that? He was hungry. His belly was empty. He would have eaten the crumbs that fell from the table right off the floor, and this is when temptation comes to us. This is when the devil’s words have the most power to tempt us: not when we’re full, but when we’re empty, so we’re cautioned never to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach because when we are hungry, everything sounds good, and just as the food we shouldn’t eat calls to us when our stomachs are empty, so we are tempted to do the things we shouldn’t do when we are far from home and we long to be accepted. Do you remember the old cartoons when the angel would sit on one shoulder and the little demon on the other? The angle would lead towards virtue. The demon towards destruction. But if you’re hungry, and the Tempter offers you something to fill up your belly, then his voice is hard to ignore. Therefore, fill yourself up. Before you face temptation, eat a healthy breakfast, for when we are empty, the voice of temptation is hard to ignore, and that goes for all kinds of emptiness. Before you leave the house, look yourself in the mirror and remind yourself that you’re beautiful. Before you make a big decision, HALT. HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, for whether we’re desperate for food or desperate for affirmation, the devil has far more power to tempt us when we are empty, so fill yourself up. Remember who you are. Many of you know that I grew up in this church. Last week, I had lunch with the new pastor of Maple Avenue United Methodist Church. She asked me how long I’d been here. “I’ve always been here,” I said. Then she said, “That history comes with a lot of trust and probably a lot of baggage.” She’s right about both. When I was in confirmation class here as a 7th grader, for whatever reason, my friends and I thought it would be more fun to skip confirmation class and to hang out by the railroad tracks. I don’t know why we thought that would be such a good idea. Our parents would drop us off at 4:30. Confirmation class met right before the evening youth group back then. My parents would drop me off, and my friends were waiting right by those front doors. We’d wait for our parents to drive off and then go to the back of the building rather than confirmation class to run around and do a bunch of nothing, really. Why did I do that? Why was I tempted when I knew it was wrong to go with my friends and not to confirmation class? I wasn’t hungry for bread, but I was hungry for acceptance, and if the hungry are tempted by bread, what will the desperate do to be accepted? Parents will say, “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?” I literally did. There was an old railroad bridge that went over Lake Allatoona that I jumped off more than once, not because it was fun but because everyone else was doing it, for the hungry are tempted by bread, the desperate are tempted by acceptance, but Jesus knows who He is and doesn’t need the devil’s approval. Do you know who you are? These days, plenty of people are looking for an answer to that question, and they’re finding answers on social media. Young men, especially, are searching for meaning. They’re searching for purpose. They’re searching for affirmation and approval, and who is whispering into their ears? I’m so interested now in livestreaming and modern technology. I’ve just been to another conference to do a presentation that Rev. Cassie Waits and I created, telling the story of our church and how God is at work here through livestreaming and our tremendous outreach to the community, and so I’ve read all these books about the internet and social media. There’s a book out about the dangers of social media called The Anxious Generation. This book presents a convincing argument for keeping kids off the internet for as long as possible because they are so susceptible to the voices of temptation that come through those phones and tablets. The statistics are concerning. Young kids on social media suffer from lower self-esteem and higher anxiety because they are bombarded by the message that they don’t look good enough and don’t have the right clothes. It’s not just the cool kids at school who send them the message but the advertisers and influencers who have access to them, plus the kids at school aren’t just at school, for our kids still hear from them through text messages all day long. It’s constant. The only group resistant to the statistics are those kids who are active in a faith community. Why? It’s because kids who are a part of a faith community like this one know that they are loved by God, and so they don’t chase after the world’s approval. Kids who are part of a faith community like this one are accepted so they don’t compromise their morals chasing affirmation from those who would do them harm. They know what love is. They know that they matter. They know that they are beautiful. Do you remember who you are? Do you remind the people around you that they are beloved in the eyes of God? My friends, it’s true that the temptation of Christ is not our temptation, for He gets the Son of God treatment, yet His temptation is not just His. It is for our salvation. Remember what He did for you and rejoice in the truth that you are worthy of His love. Don’t go out into the world empty, and don’t let your neighbor. Before you go back out there to face the tempter’s voice, remember that you are God’s beloved and that Christ is ever by your side, and look to the person next to you and tell him the same. Amen.

Peter Didn't Want Him to Go, a sermon based on Matthew 17: 1-9, preached on February 15, 2026

People are full of surprises, and that includes Jesus. In this Gospel lesson that we just read, Jesus was transfigured or transformed before three of His disciples. When they reached the top of that high mountain, His face shone like the sun, His clothes became dazzling white, and suddenly appeared before them two great and long-dead heroes of the Old Testament: Moses, who led the Israelites out of Egypt, and Elijah the Prophet, who in his own time, went up to the top of a mountain and was taken by God into Heaven. Our Gospel lesson describes the disciples as afraid in this moment. Why wouldn’t they be? Perhaps, they thought they were hallucinating, thinking to themselves, “I knew we shouldn’t have eaten those mushrooms Thomas found back in the valley,” or more likely they were thinking to themselves, “I thought I knew who this Jesus was, and now I feel like He is someone else entirely. Have you ever had such an experience? I’ve been watching a TV show called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It’s about a knight who travels around with a young squire who turns out to be an heir to the throne. This surprise is so shocking to the knight that he’s rendered speechless. He feels betrayed. How did those disciples feel when the Jesus they thought they knew appeared before them next to Moses and Elijah, with His face shining like the sun? While people are full of surprises, sometimes those surprises are so terrifying that we steer our relationships towards the routine, the safe, the predictable, and the secure. Do you remember writing in your friends’ yearbooks, “Don’t ever change?” We want our friends to stay the same. We want our spouses to stay the same. Yet monotony can turn into a prison. Last week, I was at Kroger, and I had the pleasure of running into Jane Pratt in the baking goods aisle. There, she told me that when she got married to John some years ago, she had no idea that saying “I do” meant she’d have to come up with something to cook him for dinner every night from now until the day she dies. At that, another woman shopping for baking goods started to laugh out loud. She was eavesdropping in the Kroger aisle and told us, “That’s why I became a flight attendant. I had to get away from cooking dinner night after night, always coming up with something new. My husband would wake up in the morning and ask me, ‘What’s for supper?’ I said to myself, ‘I have to get out of here!’” The monotony of cooking dinner night after night after night seemed to her like a trap to be escaped, for while routine can feel safe, people need room to grow. Relationships thrive on both routine and variety. If you cook and he cleans, why not trade jobs for a week? Or, better yet, go out to dinner. Try something new. Allow each other to break out of the rut. That’s important in a marriage, and if that’s important in a marriage, wouldn’t that also be important with all our relationships, including our relationship with Jesus? Does Jesus still surprise you? Are you still dedicating yourself to the study of Scripture to learn about who He is? Does following Him push you beyond your comfort zone, or have you put Him into a little box of your own expectations? Has your relationship with Jesus fallen into a monotonous pattern of meatloaf on Monday, chicken on Tuesday, and then church on Sunday? Peter didn’t want Him to change. Up on the mountain top, Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” When you hear Peter say, “Lord, it is good to be here” up on this mountain top, know that what he’s really saying is, “Lord, let me keep you where I’m comfortable.” Friends, we must let Jesus be who He is, not who we want Him to be, just as we must let our kids be who they were created to be. We’re back in that season of high school seniors getting accepted to college. Parents are thinking of their kids growing up and leaving home. I tear up just thinking about Lily and Cece leaving home, so I ask parents who have already watched their chicks leave the nest for advice when I have the chance. One parent, years ago, told me that watching your kids leave home is heartbreaking. The only thing worse is watching them stay home forever. My friends, you know that a part of every human relationship is allowing the people we love to grow and change and become who God called them to be. Christ was called, not to be Peter’s best friend, but to be the Savior of the world. Are you letting Jesus be Jesus or trying to put Him in a box and place Him on a shelf? Nailing Him down was what they tried to do to Him 2,000 years ago, and people are doing it still. We can’t put Him in a box and confine Him to our agendas. No one can keep Him up on the mountaintop. Instead, we must follow Him down from the mountain to encounter again all the broken and hurting people in the valley below, who are just as full of surprises as any one of us. One of the great ministries of our church is the food pantry. Leadership of this ministry has just changed. Martie Moore, who led this ministry and brought it so far, has decided to really retire, so she’s passed the baton to Megan Rubio, an actual rocket scientist with a passion for service. For the first time this month, it was Megan sending out the monthly report of meals, diapers, books, and dog food distributed. You see, under the leadership of Martie Moore, our pantry expanded. Not only do we give out food on Tuesdays, but we also give out diapers, dog food, and children’s books. One station even collects prayer requests, but back to the children’s books. Megan’s monthly report from the food pantry included the story of one child who went through our food line and received a brand-new children’s book a couple weeks ago. That child was so touched by the gift and moved by the sentiment that the next week, she donated 10 of her old books to contribute to our effort. I don’t know how you think of the people who come to our food line, but I assure you, those people, like all people, are so full of surprises that you can’t know them without coming down from the mountain top to meet them face-to-face. People are full of surprises, and that goes for all people. That goes for all people, even us. Even Peter. You may know that this road down from the mountain leads towards the arrest of Jesus, after which Peter will deny Him three times. Such a moment of weakness filled Peter with such shame, and yet Jesus didn’t confine Peter to that moment. Jesus doesn’t confine us to any one step on our spiritual journey. So long as He is beside us, He will lead us beyond our sins and to salvation, so let us continue being surprised by each other just as Jesus is always willing to be surprised by us. I want you to know that I plan on giving up social media for Lent because getting to know people based on what they post on social media makes me feel like I don’t like anyone. I want to be surprised by the goodness of people, so I’m going to try to get to know some of them face-to-face again. If all people are full of surprises then I’m not going to give up on people based on what they post on the internet. I’m asking you to do the same thing. Leave the comfort of your pew to get to know somebody new. Leave the safety of your living room to be reintroduced to your neighbors. Start up a conversation with the ladies you see in the grocery store aisle and be surprised by how much you have in common, for we live in a world where people are not all that different, and yet we often act like some are good and others are the enemy. Did Jesus not come to save all people? Did He not go down from the mountain to encounter even those who would arrest and crucify Him? My friends, we cannot hide from the world up on the mountaintop, nor can we rest in our assumptions concerning the people of God, but being continually surprised by the people around us, let us follow Jesus out into the world. Learn something new about someone who doesn’t look like you. Learn something new about people who are suffering in this country. Let us all come down from the mountain, following Jesus out into the world as He leads us all in the path of salvation. Amen.

Exceeding in Righteousness, a sermon based on Isaiah 58: 1-12 and Matthew 5: 13-20, preached on February 8, 2026

Friends, I haven’t preached a sermon in three weeks. The weather has been crazy. I’ve been traveling a little bit. Someone said to me as I was on my way into the early service, “It’s been so long since you preached, are you sure you remember how?” I guess we’ll see. The first Sunday we didn’t have church was January 25th. We made the decision to call off worship services while I was in Pittsburgh at a conference for Christian educators. Rev. Cassie Waits and I had the opportunity to present a workshop at this big international conference. I wasn’t sure I would know anyone there, but I did. I had the chance to reconnect with classmates from seminary and old friends from college. A group of us went out to dinner at a great restaurant known for hamburgers and beer. We had a group of 15 or so, and we knew that this place was big enough to accommodate us because this restaurant had once been a church. Have you been to one of those places before? The pews were taken out. The chancel was still there. You could tell where the pulpit had been, and up above the chancel on the ceiling were words in Latin that Cassie translated. Where the pulpit would have been was a stainless-steel vat used for fermenting beer. That image has haunted me ever since, but salt that loses its saltiness is no good for anything. This morning, we come face-to-face with a stern warning from Jesus. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” In fact, we could say that the Pharisees did not even enter the 21st century. There aren’t any Pharisees left. You might say that all their synagogues have been turned into breweries. No one knows what a Pharisee is anymore, so in seminary, they gave me a rhyme to remember them and what they believed: In the time of Jesus, there were two major groups, we might call them denominations, within the Jewish community. They were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees loved the law, so they were fair, you see. And the Sadducees didn’t believe in heaven, so they were sad, you see. Then there were the scribes, who were literate, able to read and write. Those scribes were important because both groups needed them to read the Scriptures, comprehend the law, and keep records of who got married, who had children, who would inherit what, and who had done wrong. But back to the Pharisees: Unlike the Sadducees, they did believe in heaven. They wanted to get there as we do, and they believed that the way to get there was by following the law, that’s why they loved it. They followed 613 commandments, and they loved those laws, those commandments, more than they loved people. They remind me of a doctor I heard about once. This doctor insisted on not doing any doctoring after 5 o’clock. He lived by that law. At 5 o’clock, he left his office, drove home, pulled into his driveway, pushed the button that opened his garage door, pulled in, pushed the button that made his garage door go down, and didn’t do any doctoring until he was back at his office the next day. One day, a little girl fell off her bike right in front of his house. She was so badly injured that she nearly blocked his driveway, unable to pick herself up from the ground, yet, while he could have helped, instead he navigated his car around her, pulled into his driveway, pushed the button that opened his garage door, pulled in, and pushed the button that made his garage door go back down. Can you imagine doing such a thing? Neither could Jesus, so He healed people on the Sabbath day. That’s what got Him in trouble with the Pharisees who loved the law so much that they wouldn’t do anything other than rest on the Sabbath. They would wait to heal until the next day. Jesus said, “Why are you using the law to justify ignoring human suffering?” When we use the law to justify ignoring human suffering, we become the Pharisees. We become like salt that has lost its saltiness, for what good is a church that cares more about laws than people? If we are no blessing to our neighborhoods or our communities, then we are better off serving hamburgers and beer, for at least then we are giving Christian educators and pastors a place to relax and enjoy each other’s company. I’ve been in churches that were on their way there. Have you? A church that cares more about rules than people shushes babies, fights over what color the poinsettias should be at Christmas time, and asks for papers from hungry people before feeding them. A church who cares more about rules than people is hesitant in giving water to the thirsty and cares more about finances than injustice. A church without a higher purpose than following tradition and rules asks her congregation to pay for a new roof, and the congregation says, “Why should we? Every time we go in there, it’s nothing but conflict and shame.” You, on the other hand. Do you remember this? I held this ceiling tile up at the beginning of our capital campaign, and when I did, I was nervous. I was nervous about asking you to give twice what you normally do. I was nervous about asking you to give of your time and treasure to make this church strong, and you answered the call, giving $5,000,000 when you typically give less than half that. Why did you do it? My friends, I believe you’ve given so generously to the glory of God because you believe in the mission of this church. I believe you did it because you believe that we are called to be salt and light in this community. You believe that here the light of the Lord Jesus Christ shines, and it shines through the music of our new organ. It shines through our new youth room. It shines through our new vans. This morning as I walked up to the church, those vans were just pulling in. It was about 7:30. Drivers had already been transporting cold families from a winter weather shelter back to the MUST shelter so they could eat a warm breakfast. Those are vans that you bought, and I believe you gave because you believe in the ministry of this church, and the ministry of this church is not just about following the commandments of our God, it’s about following the two most important commandments of Jesus Christ: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what Cassie’s doing this morning. She didn’t have a role in this worship service, so she prayed at our breakfast in Holland Hall then drove over to John Knox Presbyterian Church. They don’t have a pastor at the moment, and she’s not trying to become theirs, but because she had a little free time, she thought she might be helpful over there. That’s not in her job description. That’s not required of her, but her righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees. You can think about so many of your staff in this way. Jeffrey is the Director of Music and Fine Arts and has been the substitute organist for months now. How he directs the choir and plays the organ I will never understand, but he’s doing it. He’s doing more than what’s on his job description, over and above what’s expected, and you’re doing the same thing. I want to tell you what happened to me last Thursday. A couple made an appointment with me. I vaguely recognized their names. They introduced themselves and explained why they had made an appointment with me. It was because her mother lived in one of the retirement communities where our church members go and sing. For years now, groups organized and directed by Lynne Sloop have toured local nursing homes, memory care units, and assisted living communities here in Marietta. This couple made an appointment with me last week because her mother lived in one of the retirement communities where our church members go and sing, and they took an hour out of their day just to sit in my office to say, “Thank you.” “We just want to thank you because when our mother heard that your members were coming to sing, that’s all she wanted to talk about because she was so excited that they were coming, then once they sang, all she wanted to talk about was how wonderful the concert was. They sang Christmas music in December and Itsy Bitsy Teeney Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini in the summer.” I don’t know how many songs they know now or how many concerts they’ve provided, but I can testify to the light that their ministry brings to our community because this couple sat down in my office and told me all about it. My friends, Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand. Let your light shine.” People searching for Light in this dark world are drawn in by such light, by your light. God is at work here, through you. Halleluia. Amen.