05-04-2025 Approaching Damascus

Thomas J Parlette
“Approaching Damascus”
Acts 9: 1-20
5/4/25
          In the summer of 2021, as the world was slowly emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, an interesting commercial emerged that featured these encouraging words – “We need to come back to feeling our best selves again. Back to inviting. Back to caring. Back to life.”

          Was that commercial produced by a church? Was it a public service announcement promoting good mental health? No, believe it or not, it was a commercial produced by the Jamaican Tourist Board to promote vacations to Jamaica.

          “While everyone has been impacted by the pandemic,” explained the country’s minister of tourism as he introduced the campaign, “we want to let everyone know that Jamaica is good for the spirit. Therefore, it is the ideal destination to help people rediscover their sense of adventure, natural curiosity, human connection, and ultimately realize their most valuable human potential.” (1)
 

          You’ve got to hand it to the Jamaicans – it was a shrewd and winsome message – co-opting vaguely spiritual language for the sake of selling vacations on the beach. This was not simply a quick getaway sitting on the beach under palm trees with a tropical drink in your hand – this was an invitation back to life.
 

          That’s what’s happening in this passage from Acts this morning. As Saul was approaching Damascus, he has an encounter with God, through the person of the Risen Jesus, that literally knocks him to his knees. And Jesus invites him back to life – life as one of his followers, instead of his chief persecutor.
 

          For many Christians, this is a familiar story – one that is often referred to as “the Conversion of Saul.” In his book “Why Preach? Why Listen?”, William Muehl suggests that on any given Sunday when you look out at a congregation, you can imagine that many of those sitting in the pews almost didn’t come that day. They considered staying home because in their minds, their faith does not measure up to the faith of others in the congregation. For Muehl, such a dramatic story of conversion contributes to what he calls a “faith inferiority complex.” (2)
 

          When people talk about their faith journeys, most share a narrative that begins something like this: “I was raised in the church and never knew a time when I was not a Christian.” There is something comforting about having such an early faith identity. There is nothing with such a faith statement unless you compare it with a story like this one, and ten it seems woefully inadequate.
 

          I remember when I started Seminary, it was quite common to share conversion stories around the dinner table. I never really had a good story to tell. I was raised in Presbyterian Churches across the country – with the one exception being when we attended a Congregational church in Topsfield, Massachusetts, when we lived there. I had always been active in church and didn’t really have a conversion story or a “born again” story to share.
 

          I remember one classmate in particular who had an interesting story to tell. She was a second, or maybe third career seminarian, from Georgia, new to the Christian faith. After she converted to Presbyterianism from Catholicism, she was debating about going to Seminary, in particular Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. But then, on her birthday, the man she was dating at the time, gave her a fur coat, and she said, “It was right then I knew I had my answer, it was my Damascus Road moment. God was telling me to go to Princeton Seminary and study to become a pastor – why else would I receive such a warm fur coat unless God meant me to go north and go to Seminary.”
         I’m not sure that was God’s intended message. Anyway, she did not return for the second semester.
 

          If the truth be known, we have some discomfort with the story of the conversion of Saul. It’s such a dramatic story. It’s easy to get a bit defensive and say, “Even though I’ve never had a Damascus Road experience, I still believe God has been at work in my life.”
 

          It’s important to remember that what happened on the road to Damascus was noteworthy precisely because it was not typical of the way most people became converts. Luke goes out of his way to let us know the significance of this conversion by giving us three accounts of it – here in Acts 9, again in Acts 22, and another in Acts 26. Since Luke was a very concise and purposeful writer, this repetition stands out.
 

          In his commentary on Acts, William Willimon encourages us to pay careful attention to this story so that we can gain insight for our own lives. He suggests that the story is so familiar that its meaning may be taken for granted and therefore misunderstood. He cites an interesting quote by Flannery O’Connor, who once said of Paul, “I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse.” (3) Never mind that the passage never mentions that Paul was on a horse. O’Connor was probably referring to the well-known Caravaggio painting of this scene that depicts Paul lying flat on his back with a powerful –looking horse towering over him.
 

          Despite the reference to a horse for Paul, Flannery O’Connor does guide our attention in the right direction. The main character in this and every conversion story is ultimately God. It is God who changes lives. The one thing clear about Saul’s Damascus Road experience is the power of God that turned him from someone “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of Jesus”, to someone who “proclaimed Jesus so that all who heard him were amazed.” Saul’s conversion was not something he decided to do – he did not sit down and make a pros and cons list. No, it was God’s doing, through the person of Jesus Christ.
 

          There is nothing more difficult to preach to 21st century listeners than the “unbelievable” stories in the Bible, and this one surely pushes the limits. It is far easier to leave this story in the past and deem it “ancient and irrelevant” to us modern, sophisticated people. We wonder – “Did this really happen? It’s never happened to me. It’s never happened to anyone I know. Why doesn’t this happen more often? It sure would be easier to take God and Jesus more seriously if this kind of thing happened a little more often.”
 

          Not many of us are “breathing threats and murder against our opponents.” However, we have all been on wrong paths that have been injurious to ourselves and others, just like Saul. We’ve all been headstrong, we’ve all been stubborn, we’ve all been blinded by our own ambition, and caught in addictive behaviors and oblivious to the true cost to others and ourselves. On this level, we’ve all been on the wrong path, just like Saul.
 

          But the good news of Eastertide is that even in our failure – God comes to us. In the person of Jesus Christ, God comes to us and redeems us. God redeemed Saul, gave him a new name, and placed him on a new path. This same mercy and grace and forgiveness is available to each of us, and to our faith communities. The Easter miracle proves that God loves and forgives friends, betrayers, doubters, skeptics – even God’s own persecutors and enemies, even those who breath threats and murder.
 

          The God Who Is Love has no need of being defended by violent means. In fact, Love grabs Saul’s fist in mid-punch and unbalances him, knocking him to the ground and saving him from a life of hatred and violence. (4)
 

          As Carl Jung once said – “Where you stumble and fall, there you find pure gold.” (5)
 

          The gold Saul found was a new name – Paul.
          A new call – to be an Apostle of Jesus.
          And an invitation back to life.
That same invitation is extended to us in this Easter season. Come back to life – life in the Risen Lord Jesus. Amen.
 

1. Homileticsonline, retrieved 4/5/25.

2. William Muehl, Why Preach? Why Listen? (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 11.

3. William H. Willimon, Acts, Interpretation series (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988) 73.

4. Cathy Caldwell Hoop, Connections, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 220.

5. Homileticsonline, retrieved 4/5/25.

04-27-2025 Weathering the Storm

Thomas J Parlette
“Weathering the Storm”
Acts 5: 27-32
4/27/25

          Emily Elliot is a University of Alabama scientist who studies ancient hurricanes. Not storms from last year or from a decade ago – but from hundreds, even thousands of years ago.
          Driving tubes into the bottoms of lakes, she and her colleagues pull up sediment that contains evidence of deadly storms from the past. They have discovered that there were periods when intense storms struck coastlines even more frequently than they do today. According to their studies, oceans can produce hurricane seasons even worse than the ones we have experienced in recent years.
         These scientists are uncovering evidence of some terrible ancient storms. We need to learn from them, especially as modern storms become more intense. Caring for creation is a priority for Christians, not only as we observe Earth Day every April. Caring for the environment is a way of caring for people as well, especially those in the paths of the most destructive of storms. If the past is any indication, says Elliot to The Washington Post, “our coastal areas are really vulnerable.” (1)
           This field of research is called “paleotempestology,” the study of ancient hurricanes. Scientists are trying to predict how hurricane patterns will change in response to rising temperatures. They do this by looking back at what happened thousands of years ago.
           On a recent expedition in Florida, Emily Elliot and her colleagues drilled down 1.5 feet and pulled up a sand layer from a relatively recent storm – probably Hurricane Opal in 1995. Then they went deeper into the lakebed and deeper into the past. The next two core samples were from about 3 feet deep and 13 feet deep. The deepest sample probably dates back more than 10,000 years.
           From studies of sediment, they have made some fascinating discoveries. For instance, there was once a period of intense hurricane activity in the Gulf Coast region – much worse than we see today. It lasted for centuries, and then it ended abruptly around 600 to 800 years ago.
           Why did the Gulf Coast have this long period of storms? Scientists think that a current of warm water flowed close to shore during that time, fueling the storms. Then the current shifted away, no one is certain exactly why – and the water cooled, and the storms were not nearly as common. Paleotempestologists are getting increasingly worried that the Gulf’s surface temperature is now warming up again, so we may face another period of terrible storms.
           The first followers of Jesus were certainly not strangers to weathering storms, especially storms of the political and spiritual nature. In first-century Jerusalem, the followers of Christ were meeting together, following the teaching of the Apostles, sharing their possessions, praying in the Temple and praising God. Because of this, the Christian community grew rapidly. The Book of Acts – or Luke, Part II as I like to call it – tells us that “day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
           One day, Peter and John went up to the Temple. There, they healed a crippled man and spoke about the power of Jesus to heal and forgive. A group of religious leaders came to them, “much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead.”
           So the religious leaders had Peter and John arrested and put in prison. When questioned about the source of their power, Peter said, “this man standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.” – that’s the source of our power. The leaders were amazed and initially didn’t know what to do. Finally, they regained their composure and ordered Peter and John to stop it – stop teaching in the name of Jesus.
           But Peter and John said – Nope, no can do. “We cannot keep from speaking out about what we have seen and heard.” The leaders threatened them, but then let them go. They realized that they were in a tight spot. It wouldn’t look good to the people of Jerusalem if they punished Peter and John, because they were all praising God for what had happened.
           Back in the Christian community, Peter and John prayed with the other followers of Jesus, and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” And they didn’t keep it to themselves, they went out and gave told their story about the resurrection of Jesus to the whole city.
           But because the apostles were having great success healing the sick – the high priest took action. Talk was one thing, but healing people was something else entirely. So, the high priest and the Sadducees threw the apostles in jail. But in the middle of the night, and angel of the Lord freed them.
           The religious leaders rounded them up again and brought them back to the high priest and the religious council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.”
           Well, Peter decides to get a little stormy himself, as he answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” Peter knew he was compelled to follow God by preaching the Gospel – the good news of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He was practicing what we would now call “civil disobedience.”
           Then Peter brings a little thunder with his storm, he throws a couple flashes of lightning into the mix, when he says – “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”
           Three cracks of thunder can be heard in those words – three flashes of lightning:
          1. You had Jesus killed by hanging him on a tree – an act of premeditated murder in Peter’s eyes – crack of thunder, flash of lightning.
          2. God exalted Jesus as “Leader and Savior” – read between the lines, not you guys. Interestingly, this is the first time that the word “Savior” is used to describe Jesus in the Book of Acts - crack of thunder, flash of lightning.
          3. “We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit.” The powerful breath of God has been inspiring everything that the apostles have seen and said – crack of thunder, flash of lightning.
           Not surprisingly, the religious leaders were enraged by Peter’s words and wanted to kill the apostles. Fortunately, there was level-headed Pharisee present named Gamaliel, who calmed the storm by saying to the leaders, “I tell you… let them alone, because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them – in that case, you may even be found fighting against God.”
           So the leaders flogged the apostles and let them go – and they went right back to proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah.
           So, what can this storm teach us? What can we learn if we put on our paleotempestology hats on when looking at this passage?
           Like Peter and the rest of the apostles, we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard. We have to be honest about the presence of the risen Christ in ourselves and the church today, and be willing to speak about it. Jesus continues to forgive us and heal us, and to inspire the Christian community to act as his hands and feet in this world.
           Like Peter and all the apostles, we must obey God, rather than any human authority. This means having the courage to put God first in terms of the things we do in ministry and mission. When we welcome strangers, visit people in prison, feed the hungry and care for the sick, we are putting God and God’s Kingdom, first. When we cry out against injustice and violence, we are part of the movement of God in our world.
           Finally, like Peter and John, we trust Jesus to be our Savior and Leader, as we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the one who saves us from sin and death, in every age and place. The Holy Spirit is the force that guides us into an uncertain future, giving us new understanding and insight. Ultimately, Jesus is our only King – despite rumors to the contrary.
           The storms of the first century have much to teach us. Storms from the past can help us weather the storms we face now with honesty, courage, trust – and confidence. Confidence that God will be victorious in the end.
           May God be praised. Amen.
 

Dino Grandoni, “Scientists find warning signs about extreme hurricanes in the most unlikely of places.” The Washington Post, July 1st, 2024, www.washingtonpost.com

04-20-2025 What Do You Mean There's No Body?

Thomas J Parlette
“What Do You Mean There’s No Body?”
John 20: 1-18
4/20/25, Easter
          Imagine if this happened to you. It’s a lovely Sunday afternoon on Easter. You meet up with some members of your family, and before you sit down to Easter dinner, you decide to go out to Oakwood Cemetery and place some flowers on your grandparent’s graves.
          But when you get to their grave sites, you find that the headstones have been knocked over, there’s a pile dirt off to one side and the coffins have been opened. The bodies are gone, bones and all.
 

          Imagine the emotions that might course through your system – anger, disgust, despair, confusion, fear. The list could go on.
          Well, that’s exactly what happened to Mary on that first Easter Sunday. The tomb had been opened and Jesus’ body was gone.

          The same kind of thing happened to a lady named Sherene Johnson.
          Ten members of the Johnson family are buried in Brighton Cemetery in Alabama. Brighton is a town that gets a lot of rain, and it is not unusual for the cemetery to be completely underwater. This is a problem because when graves are submerged, especially those on hillsides, the deluge can literally raise the dead and send them floating away. After a particularly heavy rainfall, Sherene Johnson went out to the cemetery with some flowers to remember her sister’s birthday. She noticed that several of her family’s headstones had been “rearranged” by the flood waters. She had to pay someone $75.00 per grave to reset the stones in concrete again. (1)
 

          Others are not so fortunate. The bodies either go missing, or need to be reburied entirely.
 

          Mary Magdalene had no idea who had come for Jesus’ body. She had seen him die with her own eyes. She had watched his limp, broken body being taken down from that diabolical Roman instrument of torture – the cross. She assumed now, more than 48 hours later, that her Lord was till captive to what Shakespeare called in Romeo and Juliet, that “detestable maw… womb of death.”
 

          All she knew was that Jesus was not where he was supposed to be.
          This is a truth that many of us have come to understand. Jesus, so often, isn’t where he is supposed to be. Jesus is often found where you least expect him. It’s a reality that speaks to the way we often project our expectations onto God, expecting God to show up in ways we can understand and predict.
          Mary expected to find a lifeless body but was instead met by the risen Christ. Imagining the scene, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there were really two shocking moments for Mary here on Easter morning. The first was finding the empty tomb and the second was being scared to death when she finds Jesus wandering around in the garden. I don’t which one was more shocking!
 

          That’s the way it goes when Jesus shows up when we least expect it – it’s a bit of a shock. Martha expected Jesus to show up before her brother Lazarus died, not afterward. And she didn’t hesitate to give Jesus a piece of her mind. “Where were you – you’re late. Right when we needed you most, you are nowhere to be found. Thanks for nothing Jesus.”
 

          We are accustomed to looking for Jesus in all the right places – such as churches – and we’re surprised when we don’t feel his presence in our rituals, traditions, churches, cathedrals, sacred music, or any of the other places we expect to feel his presence. But we are nonplussed when he acts outside of those boundaries, or at least we should be. The empty tomb symbolizes a new reality, one that challenges our assumptions and invites us to encounter Christ in unexpected ways.
 

          In the end, Jesus did show up for Martha, and the Mary of today’s reading. The truth is, Jesus might not seem to be present when we want him to be present – but he’s there when he needs to be. Frequently, Jesus is at work in the unseen, in the brokenness, in the thin places, in the ordinariness of life where we often forget to seek him.
 

          The other featured actors in our text for today are Peter and John – the guys who run to the tomb, racing to see for themselves what Mary has reported. They arrive at the tomb and they see the linen clothes that Jesus was buried in – but no body. The Bible says that they saw and believed, even though they didn’t fully understand what was happening – much like our own journey in which we can have an intellectual understanding of what’s going on, but we can remain clueless as to it’s significance.
 

          The well-known documentary filmmaker Ken Burns once gave an interview on a podcast called Ye Gods. The interviewer, Scott Carter asked him how he decided to become a documentary filmmaker. Burns said the decision was rooted in his childhood experience of losing his mother at age 11, after a long illness.
         

          Six months later, as he and his father were watching a movie together, Ken saw his Dad cry for the first time since his mom died. At that moment, Ken Burns decided he was meant to make films. Years later, at age 39, Ken himself realized he’d never made peace with the experience of losing his mother. He admitted this to his father-in-law, Gerald Stechler, a psychologist, who said it didn’t surprise him. “Look what you do for a living,” he said. “You wake the dead. You make the soldiers of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Jackie Robinson come alive. Who do you think you’re really trying to wake-up?” (2)
 

          The resurrection can be daunting and confusing if we try to understand it solely from a scientific or rational perspective. Books have been written purporting to “prove” how the resurrection was possible. Not to take away from empirical studies, but one must remember that the resurrection as a pivotal doctrine of our faith doesn’t rely just on rational or empirical possibilities. Remember, Peter and John. They saw – and they believed.
 

          These two great pillars of the church entered the tomb, saw that there was no body – and they believed. They didn’t need any research, they didn’t need any scientific studies. They believed first – understanding would come later. 

          This is precisely the point that Jesus makes to the disciple Thomas, who would later, according to tradition, become a missionary, venturing as far east as India. After Thomas showed him the marks in his hands and side – which Thomas refused to touch – Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” In other words, Jesus seems to prefer belief based on faith, rather than hard evidence.
 

          One of the great minds of the medieval church was Saint Anselm, the 11th century archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote extensively about believing and understanding. He reduced the issue to a nice catch phrase – “Credo ut intelligam”, that is, “I believe so that I may understand.” This, for Anselm, was the opposite of “I think so that I may believe.” Anselm writes, “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand.” This is what he would call “faith seeking understanding.” (3)
 

          Faith first; reason later. Believe first; understand later.
 

          Sometimes the understanding never comes. The unknown author of Hebrews says of the many saints of the Old Testament, “Though they were commended for their faith, they did not receive what was promised.” But often the understanding does come. We go through the dark night of the soul, and joy does come in the morning. All is revealed. The “aha” moment arrives. But it arrives when God is ready for it to arrive.
 

          So, the empty tomb, while initially a source of distress, becomes the ultimate symbol of hope. In a world filled with uncertainty and disruptions, division, arguments and pettiness, poverty and disease – the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides hope that change and redemption is possible.
 

          For believers, death is not the end of the story. This hope is transformative, giving us a new perspective on life and death. We are faced with grief and loss, the resurrection reminds us that death never, ever has the final word.
 

          This hope we carry is not just for the future – this is a hope for the present. This is hope for the here and now. It is a hope that impacts the way we live today.
 

          Many of us don’t feel all that hopeful. We live lives that are littered with bad choices, bad people, brokenness and loss. But what the resurrection shows us is that that is precisely the time Jesus shows up – just like he did for Mary at the tomb. The resurrection shows up. The resurrection tells us that nothing is beyond God’s power to redeem.
 

          Post-resurrection believers can now live with courage, faith and hope. As people of hope:
          Our lives bear witness that we’re friends and followers of Jesus.
          Our lives are filled with the light of Christ.
          We do not despair, but rejoice in the power of Christ.
          We do not give in to fatigue, but continue to work in service of the Lord, because we know that in the Lord, our labor is not in vain.
          We are people of courage, willing to be prophetic voices in the wilderness
          Above all, as people of hope, we live guided by love and compassion.
 

          Will you join me in Affirming our Resurrection Hope, using the Festival of Resurrection printed in your bulletin…
 

1. Dinah Voyles Pulver. “When the dead don’t stay buried: The grave situation at cemeteries amid climate change.” Usatoday.com, sept. 19, 2023.
2. Scott Carter, Ye Gods podcast, March 29, 2023.
3. Homileticsonline, Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion

04-06-2025 Paul's Resume

Thomas J Parlette
“Paul’s Resume”
Philippans 3: 4b-14
4/6/25
          History was made on June 22nd, in Washington DC, when Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first African-American woman to take a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
          Her resume for the job was impressive:
-         Magna Cum Laude from Harvard
-         Cum Laude from Harvard Law School
-         Several years of clerking for federal courts, including the Supreme Court.
-         Service on the U.S. Sentencing Commission
-         Judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
-         Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Justice Jackson’s rapid rise through the federal court system mean that, by the time she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee as a Supreme Court nominee, she’d already been vetted and confirmed by the Senate no fewer than three times. It’s hard to imagine a stronger resume. (1)
Still, her examination before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee was grueling, as they all tend to be. Many of the Senator’s questions didn’t sound like requests for information, but rather like carefully crafted sound bites for social media – more like statements than questions.
Nevertheless, Justice Jackson successfully obtained Senate confirmation. To a large degree, it was because of the strength of her resume.
We often say that the Bible is like a library, containing many different kinds of literature – history, biography, poetry. But today, in Philippians, we come across a different style of writing. Today, we are looking at a resume. It belongs to the apostle Paul:
“…circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”
It would be hard to imagine a stronger resume for an up-and-coming religious le
But since coming to know Jesus, Paul looks at his resume in a very different way.
“Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ… For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and regard them as rubbish!”
The Greek word translated as “rubbish” is actually a much more, shall we say vivid or earthy term that literally means something like”sewage” – you can let your imagination run with that if you like.
But here’s the thing about Paul’s resume – as impressive as it seems, there is a dark side to his credentials. When Paul recalls having been “a persecutor of the church” in his pre-conversion days, he means he was actually kind of a terrorist, he literally caused the deaths of many early Christians. In the Book of Acts, in chapter 7, you can read about how “a young man named Saul” held the cloaks of the furious mob as they stoned the apostle Stephen to death.
Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts as a continuation of his Gospel, also recalls how Saul brought a cold and heartless determination to his work – “And Saul approved of their killing him” Luke writes in chapter 8 of Acts. The passage goes on to say “Paul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” In chapter 9, Saul is portrayed as “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”
The truth is, Saul of Tarsus was a killer, terrorist – a vicious persecutor of early Christians. But after his experience on the road to Damascus and his conversion, Paul came to regard his stellar resume in a very different light. This is why – reflecting on his life years later – he tells the Philippians how his old resume is no longer good for anything but the trash heap. Paul is so determined to make a fresh start that he changed his name. Saul became Paul.
Paul’s life story demonstrates that we cannot come to Christ and expect nothing about our lives will change. As theologian Karl Barth once pointed out in a sermon:
“To be saved does not just mean to be a little encouraged, a little relieved. It means to be pulled out like a log from a burning fire. You are saved! We are not told you may be saved sometimes, saved a little bit. No – you have been saved totally, and for all times.” (2)
In the workplace, when employers seeking to fill a position examine an applicant’s resume, they are not typically looking for signs of transformation. No – most bosses would rather see a smooth and predictable career arc – like Justice Jackson’s steady advance up the career ladder of the federal judiciary. Gaps in a resume are usually cause for suspicion.
“So, what were you doing during those two years that aren’t covered here?”, an interviewer might ask, gazing over her spectacles.
For most jobs, “I was hiking through the Himalayas searching for spiritual enlightenment,” isn’t a great answer.
And a change in name, for any reason other than marriage, isn’t exactly a plus either.
“And why was it that you changed your name three years ago.? Are you running from something, covering something up?”
As it happened, Paul – the guy with the great resume – had both a gap in his resume and a name change. Galatians tells us how, after being struck blind on the road to Damascus, Saul spent three years in seclusion in Arabia – presumably in prayer, contemplation and study – preparing for his new life as an apostle. That’s when Saul changed his name to Paul.
Rev. Debie Thomas recalls her experience guiding her daughter through the college admissions process. Her daughter caught on quickly to the sort of words college admissions officers look for in applicant’s essays – the same kind of words you see in resumes: High achievement. Success. Accomplishment. That sort of thing.
After studying several websites advising applicants how to write their essays, Debie’s daughter threw up her hands in frustration at the kitchen table – “They want battle scars. Not open wounds.”
Later, Debie Thomas wrote, “Her remark stopped me cold. In my experience, Christians put a lot of stock in triumph. We value the race won, the mountain scaled, the enemy defeated, the obstacle overcome. Sure, we welcome stories of sin and struggle, too – but we much prefer to share those stories in retrospect, after the sordid worst is over. Sin that has surrendered to holiness – that’s a worthy Christian story. But sin that clings? Challenges that won’t ease up? A wound that festers, or a doubt that deepens? No, those stories make us squirm – No, thank you.” (3)
Yet, to be perfectly honest, Christian transformation typically doesn’t happen overnight. Often it takes place over a long period of time. Sure, Paul had a dramatic conversion, but it even took Paul three years in the Arabian desert to experience transformation – it took him that long to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.” Only after those long years was he ready for prime time as an apostle.
Debie Thomas comments, “I’ve rarely experienced instant transformation; the changes that matter have always come sideways and in fits and starts. Anyone who has battled addiction, lived with chronic pain or suffered from anxiety knows that genuine transformation is lifelong Maybe this is why early Christians referred to their new faith as “the Way”: not a destination but an invitation to a journey, one step at a time.”
All of us are works in progress when it comes to our faith – although sometimes the church has a hard time accepting that fact. There’s something in us that’s eager to sanitize our spiritual resumes, to deny that our lives of faith have any rough patches at all, to pridefully deny we’ve ever experienced bumps in the road.
So, here’s a story about a man named Larry Trapp, who experienced spiritual transformation, despite having one of the worst spiritual resumes on record.
Larry lived in Lincoln Nebraska, a sad, broken-down shell of a man, who managed to present himself to the world as one very scary individual.
Larry was both blind and confined to a wheelchair due to a case of juvenile diabetes. As he grew into an adult, he fell under the influence of some extremists who preached hate over the radio. Larry joined the American Nazi Party, then he joined the Ku Klux Klan. From his wheelchair, Larry singlehandedly reorganized the Klan in Nebraska, becoming its Grand Dragon. Larry Trapp lived for one thing, and one thing only – harassing racial and religious minorities.
One of Larry’s victims was a Jew named Michael Weisser, who served as cantor in a local synagogue. Larry regularly sent the cantor and his family threatening letters, inserting into each one an ominous business card that read – “The KKK is watching you.” He made anonymous phone calls to their home, spewing messages of hatred on whoever answered the phone. Little by little, a dark pall of fear descended upon the Weisser household. They began locking their doors at all time, something they had never done before. They thought about getting a home security system.
One day, he wasn’t sure why, but Michael Weisser felt moved to call Larry Trapp, who he knew was in a wheelchair, and offer him a ride to the grocery store. He got nowhere with that first call, but he kept calling and kept offering assistance. When Larry was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, Weisser and his congregation prayed for him by name.
The next evening, Larry Trapp called Michael and did something no one expected – he asked for help. The Weissers brought dinner over to his apartment. While they were there, Larry started crying. He pulled off his swastika rings and said, “These rings are symbols of hatred and evil, and I don’t want them in my life anymore.”
Larry resigned as Grand Dragon of the Klan. He publicly apologized for his racist past. Three months later, he even showed at the synagogue for a service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and spoke favorably of the Civil rights leader’s memory.
Even more incredibly, Larry Trapp converted to Judaism and joined Cantor Weissers congregation. As his illness became worse, he moved into the Weisser’s home and they took care of him
Larry died that same year, in the home of the cantor. During his memorial service in the synagogue, it is said that Cantor Michael Weisser sat quietly off to one side, weeping. (4)
Such is the power of God’s love to re-write a resume. God’s love has the power to penetrate and heal even the hardest soul. It did so for Larry Trapp. It did so for Saul of Tarsus. It can do so for us as well – acting on all those dark corners of our souls, the secret places we are reluctant to visit, let alone allow the Spirit of the Lord to enter.
So as we move quickly toward Holy Week and the Passion of our Lord, dare to trust the Holy Spirit to bring about real change in your life, and in the lives of those you love. Dare to believe that it’s never too late for a new beginning. Dare to believe that God has a way to use you and your talents for the work of the Kingdom. Dare to believe that our resumes don’t define us – only God, who created us and loves us, can define us.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. “Ketanji Brown Jackson”, Oyez.org. Retrieved 3/12/25

2. Karl Barth, “Saved By Grace: Sermon 10”, Karl Barth: Spiritual Writings, ed. Ashley Cocksworth and W. Travis McMaken, (Paulist, 2022).

3. Debie Thomas, “Why do we prefer faded scars to open wounds?” The Christian Century, April 13th, 2020.

4. Homileticsonline, retrieved 3/17/25.

03-30-2025 Coming to Ourselves

Thomas J Parlette
“Coming to Our Selves”
Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32
3/30/25
          When the Arab Spring uprisings exploded in Egypt in late January 2011, 24 students from Middlebury College in Vermont, were caught in the crossfire. They were in Alexandria for a study-abroad program. It quickly became clear that they needed to leave the country – the sooner the better.
          The school’s insurance provider was supposed to take care of such things as emergency evacuations – but they fumbled the ball. So the College contacted an agency called Global Rescue, which specializes in getting people home from difficult situations.  Within 2 hours, Global Rescue had personnel on the ground, and shortly thereafter, the agency brought in a plane from Prague and the students were on their way home. (1)
          We’ve all seen movies about emergency extractions. Netflix has made two of them – Extraction and Extraction 2 – starring Chris Hemsworth, with a third on the way sometime in 2025.
          But agencies like Global Rescue are not just Hollywood creations – they’re real and sometimes necessary organizations. According to testimonials on its website, Global Rescue’s people have successfully saved clients from all sorts of life-threatening situations all over the world. National Geographic even recommends them, advising travelers to join Global Rescue, and describing the agency as “a well-tested provider of medical services and evacuation.” (2)
          Too bad Global rescue wasn’t around in Jesus’ day. Had it been, the father in Jesus’ well-known parable could have called upon them to extract his wayward son from the “far country” where he was squandering his inheritance in “dissolute living.” This young man was at rock bottom and living on pig slop. He really needed an extraction. An evacuation. This was an emergency.
          But as we read the whole parable, maybe it’s just as well that Global Rescue wasn’t around yet. Perhaps eating with the hogs was necessary for this prodigal son to “come to himself,” and make his way home with a needed change in perspective and attitude.
          What’s more, the parable tells us something about God, who seems to be represented by the faithful father. In the story, this father can’t wait to welcome his son unconditionally – but he doesn’t really seem interested in rescuing his youngest son.
          You could make a case that that runs contrary to what we hear in other places in the Bible – like Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” – which sounds like we can have God on speed dial and call in the cavalry whenever we need an emergency extraction from our troubles.
          The father in this parable seems more like the God we meet in Psalms of Lament, like Psalm 10 – “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” or Psalm 44, “Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?”
          There is, of course, something to be said about the possible benefit of us extracting ourselves from our problems and heading home under our own steam.
          In psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s classic book, The Road Less Traveled, he tells about a time when he was serving in the Army, stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He was called to an emergency room one day to talk with a soldier’s young wife who had lightly cut her wrists with a razor blade. The dialogue went like this:
Peck asked her why she had done it.
          “To kill myself, of course”
Why do you want to kill yourself?
          “Because I can’t stand it on this dumb island. You have to send me back to the States. I’m going to kill myself if I have to stay here any longer.”
What is it about living on Okinawa that’s so painful for you?
          She began to cry, “I don’t have any friends here, and I’m alone all the time.”
That’s too bad. How come you haven’t been able to make any friends?
          “Because I have to live in a stupid Okinawan housing area, and none of my neighbors speak English.”
Why don’t you drive over to the American housing area or to the wives’ club so you can make some friends?
          “Because my husband has to drive the car to work.”
Can’t you drive him to work, since you’re alone and bored all day?
          “No. It’s a stick shift car, and I don’t know how to drive a stick-shift car, only an automatic.”
Why don’t you learn how to drive a stick-shift car?
          She glared at Peck – “On these roads? You must be crazy.” (3)
          Peck doesn’t tell how or if the woman resolved her dilemma, but it’s clear from her responses that she wasn’t interested in solving her problem – only in escaping it. She was looking for a “go-back-to-the-States” order from Peck, and extraction, if you will, from her situation.
          On the other hand, the prodigal, for all his self-inflicted problems, “came to himself,” the parable says. That’s a great phrase, which was already an idiom in several languages before Jesus used it in the parable. We use a form of it in English when we say that a person is not herself today or that a person came to his senses.
          When the prodigal came to himself, he was in effect acknowledging, “What a fool I’ve been!” He recognized that no one was going to be riding to his rescue, so if things were to be changed, he had to make it happen.
          So, he formulated a plan: “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” Then he started for home, where his father gladly welcomed him back, not as a hired hand, but as his well-loved son – the “himself” the father intended for him to be all along.
          Of course, there are circumstances from which we cannot extract ourselves, and where, if we are to be rescued, someone else, or maybe God directly, will have to intervene. But sometimes that doesn’t happen, and God appears to be absent or hiding from us.
          The fact that God does not usually seem to rescue us on request is a great challenge to our faith. The French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil wrote about God’s non-intervention in our lives, suggesting that the silence of God is one of God’s most essential features, and that God can be present to us only in the form of his absence. (4)
          Most of us have trouble making sense of that or taking any hope from it. But the experience of a man named Arie Brouwer probably connects better for us.
          Prior to his death in 1993, Brouwer was a leader in the Reformed Church of America. He was a spiritual man who remained faithful to God throughout his struggle with cancer, the illness that eventually took his life. His struggle to apply his faith to the experience of dying helped him see the help of the Lord as something between the extremes of total solution and no help at all.
          During that final battle with the disease, Brouwer gave a talk in which he discussed his illness. He explained that while he was coming back from a doctor’s appointment following surgery, one of his sons, Steve, who was with him, said, “Dad, you said something about living by faith. What does that mean under these circumstances?”
          Brouwer said, “It means whatever happens, I still believe that in some way, God and I are together in this and that’s the way I need to live my life because that is what I believe. My whole life has been a love affair with God. I am not about to give that up because I have cancer.”
          Then his son said, “But what does it mean to have faith in God? It doesn’t seem right to me. You, and Mom, too, have spent a lot of your life trying to make this a better world for people to live in. This is a very strange was to be paid back.”
          And Brouwer said, “Steve, I don’t believe that God wants me to have cancer, but what I have come to believe during these days is that God can’t do anything about it. That raises some very fundamental questions for me about what I’ve been taught and believed over the years about the almightiness of God. Because if God can’t stop this, then I have to come to some new understanding of God’s almightiness, or perhaps reject it altogether. I haven’t had time to think about that yet because I am too busy dealing with all sorts of survival questions, but I am going to work on it for that Lenten sermon…”
          Brouwer began to study what the Bible said about the almightiness of God, and that led to a breakthrough in his thinking. Here is what he discovered; “I found that God’s almightiness is spoken of 10 times in the New Testament, and get this – All but one of those times are in the Book of Revelation, the end of history. I looked at those texts and the one exception in Corinthians, and I found that every one of them has to do with God’s ultimate triumph in history. That at the end of history, God’s love and justice and peace and well-being will prevail, and that God will prevail in the struggle and that God is with us in the struggle. And I said to myself, “Arie, why in the world haven’t you always understood it that way before?” (5)
          Frankly, believing God won’t work things out until the end of history is not much comfort when we are in the pigsties of life, and some of us have indeed experienced the help of the Lord in the present time. We also have the Bible’s witness that God is with us.
          But the prodigal son parable helps us to see the merit of “coming to our selves” and taking responsibility for the direction of our lives and the solutions to the messes in which we find ourselves. In fact – “coming to our selves”, coming back to our true selves, as God wishes us to be – that is the whole point of the season of Lent.
          May God be praised. Amen.
 

1. “Testimonials: Middlebury College – Egypt.” globalrescue.com.
2. Ibid… globalrescue.com.
3. Scott M. Peck, The Road Less Traveled, New York: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1978, p 34.
4. Susan Anima, “The Absent God,” The Journal of Religion, Vol. 35, No. 1, Jan 1955, p 6-16. Journals.uchicago.edu.
5. Perspectives, March 1994, quoted in Context, May 15th, 1994

03-23-2025 God's Shopping Spree

Thomas J Parlette
“God’s Shopping Spree”
Isaiah 55: 1-9
3/23/25
          Do you remember the pleasure of staying home from school on a school day? Whether it was because you were sick or the weather was bad and school was closed for a snow day – there was just something special about staying home from school during the week.
          Those of us who are “of a certain age” remember the days before video games and streaming services that you let you watch whatever you want, whenever you want. It used to be that you had the three major networks, maybe one or two other local channels, and that was it. There were only so many choices and if you wanted to watch TV, you watched what was on.
          Part of what made a sick day or a snow day so special was daytime TV. On Saturday morning, we got all the cartoons and then the sports, but during the week, it was a whole different world. Two kinds of programs ruled the daytime airwaves – Soap Operas and Game Shows. I loved the game shows.
          Two of the biggest and longest-running game shows were “Let’s Make a Deal”, with Monty Hall. I’m pretty sure it still on with a different host these days. But the basic format has changed very little. Winning contestants chose their prize blindly – “I’ll take what’s behind door #1, or door #2, or door #3. If they were lucky they’d win something like a trip to Hawaii, or a living room set or even a new car. But – chose the wrong door and you might end up with a can of turtle wax, or some sort of gag gift like a scraggly, old billy goat. You never knew for sure.
          Then there was “The Price is Right” with Bob Barker. Contestants played various games testing their knowledge of how much things cost. If they won, one of the prizes I remember was a shopping spree in a room full of merchandise. They were given a shopping cart and a time limit – whatever they could grab off the shelves and get into their carts with in the time limit was theirs to keep. Trick was – it had to stay in the cart, if it fell out, you lost it.
          Then there was a show called “Supermarket Sweep.” This show took place in a supermarket, and you had to run up as high a total as you could to win – but again, it all had to fit in your cart, and you got to keep what you picked up. It was great fun to see the various strategies as some people went right to the meat aisle and loaded up on steak, while  others went for the imported spices and such. Part of the allure of such shows was putting yourself in the contestants place and dreaming about what you might take home in such a shopping spree.
          In this passage from Isaiah today, we read a little bit about God’s version of a shopping spree:
          “Hear, everyone who thirsts;
  come to the waters;
 and you who have no money,
  come, buy and eat!
  Come, buy wine and milk
  without money and without price.”
          So what’s behind God’s invitation here, why does God offer this shopping spree to stock up on food, wine and milk?
          Remember that Isaiah is writing to an exiled people. These were people who had once been elite citizens in the Kingdom of Judah, and they had been hauled off lock, stock and barrel to the faraway city of Babylon. That was all part of the plan for the King of Babylon, that’s how he managed his empire. He takes all the prominent citizens from the conquered nations and resettles them in his capital city, in little ghetto neighborhoods. It’s an ancient version of the “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,” kind of logic.
          The Judean exiles aren’t in prison, exactly. They have some freedoms. They can come and go within the walls of the imperial city. They are permitted to set up small businesses or practice a trade. Their senior leaders are even invited every once-in-awhile to feast with the King himself.
          But it isn’t like having their own land. It’s a big cage – but it’s still a cage, as nice as it is. None of them are starving, but they’re not well-off, either. The Babylonians always have subtle ways of reminding the Judeans that they are not equals – they are second-class citizens at best.
          So, when Isaiah – the great prophet of hope – spins for them this mad fantasy of buying “wine and milk without money and without price,” it sounds pretty good to the dispirited ears of the exiles.
          What is remarkable about Isaiah’s vision is that he’s promising the Judean’s more than leaving poverty behind and getting back all they’ve lost. He is promising them something entirely new. All the usual economic laws will be suspended. Without money! Without price! He says. Abundance for all, by the grace of God – that’s the name of the game.
          In his book, Who Switched the Price Tags?, Tony Campolo tells a story from his youth growing up in Philadelphia. (1)  In Philadelphia, the night before Halloween is known as Mischief Night, instead of going out looking for candy, young people go out looking to pull pranks. One year, Tony and his best friend devised the perfect Mischief Night prank. They never carried it out, but they sure had a lot of fun thinking about it.
          The prank was to break into the local five-and-dime store. They weren’t going to take anything. All they wanted to do was to switch the price tags on as many items as they could. They rolled around in fits of laughter as they imagined the confusion that would break out the next morning when the staff opened the store and the customers started arriving. Clock radios for a quarter – paper clips for 5 dollars each. What delightful, and mostly harmless, anarchy!
          Tony then makes the point that some evil power in our world – the devil – has broken into our lives and changed the price tags on everything. All of us are living in the chaos resulting from this prank. There’s tremendous confusion about which things in our world have real value, and which things are mis-labeled. More often than not, we go running off in search of things that, in God’s great spiritual economy, are worth next to nothing.
         Isaiah points out that God’s values are fundamentally different from ours:
          “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways
And my thoughts than your thoughts.”
          God’s way is to offer “wine and milk without money and without price.”
          This passage is a warning about misplaced worship, what Christian theology names idolatry. It was the reformer John Calvin who referred to human beings as “a perpetual factory of idols.” (2) It seems we just can’t help ourselves.
          That word “idolatry” sounds quaint and old-fashioned perhaps. The stories of the Hebrew Scriptures are replete with very physical sorts of idols, clear representations of other gods – from the golden calf of the wilderness to the clay fertility goddesses of the Canaanite people. In the New Testament addresses the problem of food offered to idols in the pagan temples, and we know from our church history how many early Christians were sent to the lions in the Roman Coliseum because they refused to bow down to the looming statue of the Emperor in the public square. But isn’t all that stuff in the past?
          Maybe – Maybe not.
          The idols that tempt us today are far more subtle than giant, gilded statues of emperors. You don’t need to look any further than the modern sports world to find examples of idols. Football and basketball and baseball are worshiped so completely that you can definitely look at them as idols. Pop music also produces it’s share of idols – there’s even a long running TV show called American Idol that actually plays right to our desire to worship idols. Or you could look to our American past to examples of idol worship.
          Diana Butler Bass writes, “Most days, I drive over a spot in a road where a statue was once located. Since 1889, a confederate soldier stood on a high podium in the middle of the busy intersection of Prince and Washington Streets in Alexandria, Virginia…”
          “He’s gone now, after much argument and several changes to the law. In June 2020, a month before the city was set to remove the statue, the United Daughters of the Confederacy took him down and secreted him off to an undisclosed location. For several months, his podium remained. But that is gone now as well. The city paved over the foundation so cars can move freely through the intersection. Nothing remains of the dejected Confederate.”
          “That statue is only one of many memorials recently removed from public areas in Virginia. The fight to take down the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville resulted in neo-Nazis and white supremacists invading that University town and ended with a murder. Weeks of dramatic protests in Richmond, Virginia’s capital and once the capital of the Confederacy itself, led to the dismantling of the many statues that once constituted Monument Avenue, a wide boulevard of multiple circles with memorials dedicated to the leaders of the defeated southern army – idols from the past.”
          “After the Richmond bronzes had been removed, I was in the city speaking at a church. The pastor, a religious leader who agreed with their removal, asked me: “Have you driven down Monument Avenue yet?”
          “No, I haven’t been there recently.”
          “It is stark, emotionally powerful – but in a different way than it used to be. You look down the road and the statues, the idols are all gone. There are empty altars everywhere.” (3)
          I think that image would please Isaiah, the prophet of hope. “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help,” says Psalm 146. “When their breath departs, they return to the earth, on that very day their plans perish.”
But the Psalm 146 continues, “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever.”
All the things we idolize in this world, all the things we think have the most value, are actually meaningless. Hope in the Lord – that is our most valuable commodity – Hope.
Listen again to Isaiah’s invitation from God:
“Hear, everyone who thirsts,
Come to the waters…”
Come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price.”
The things we idolize in this world, money, fame and power, they don’t mean anything in God’s new economy. God’s economy is far different than anything we have ever known. God economy is more like a shopping spree - built on grace and generosity and abundance.
And for that, May God be praised.
1. Tony Campolo, Who Switched the Price Tags, Thomas Nelson, 2008.

2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Library of Christian Classic, The Westminster Press, 1965.

3. Diana Butler Bass, “Empty Altars Everywhere,” The Cottage blog, Feb. 22nd, 2023.

03-16-2025 Don't Call It a Phone

Thomas J Parlette
“Don’t Call it a Phone”
Phil. 3:17-4:1
3/16/25
          It’s hard to imagine life without our phones. Have you ever forgotten your phone and left it at home in the morning? I have done that a couple of times – the anxiety is overwhelming. Who’s trying to get in touch with me? What am I missing? What am I going to do if I have to google something? What if I need to know the weather next week, catch up on some breaking news or place a quick Amazon order? How will I get through the day without my phone!?
          And yet we used to do it all the time. In fact, there used to be a day when phones had one purpose – to talk to people. These days our phones are so sophisticated that we can do nearly everything on them. According to survey from electroiq.com, people report using their phones to make calls only 48% of the time, less than half the time they are using their phones are they making calls to talk to people. 75% of the time, people are using their phones to text message or chat. 71% of the time they are dealing with email, 63% for online banking, 62% for music or videos, 57% of the time for shopping and 52% for reading the news. (1) Phones have become something different than they once were. In fact, some people in the tech business don’t even use the term “phone” anymore – they think of our smart phone devices as a “user interface.” It’s a device that helps humans connect and interact with virtually everything – computers, machines, GPS systems, and almost any business you can think of.
          Just take a moment to think about the ways we use our phones as an interface:
-         Boarding a plane with a digital boarding pass
-         Buying a soda or snack from a vending machine
-         Navigating through a strange city
-         Scanning QR codes while shopping at the mall
-         Ordering food at a restaurant
-         Paying the bill and tipping your server
-         Turning off the light, locking the doors and setting the alarm when leaving the house
The list could go on. A good user interface – like our smart phones -  makes our daily life easier and more enjoyable. It is intuitive, user-friendly – at least, it’s supposed to be.
You could think of the church as a “user interface” as well. We are a device, if you will, that helps humans connect with God, and with each other. Just as technology has changed everyday life, it has changed church life as well. Like the old-fashioned walnut phone on the kitchen wall, the church used to be in a fixed location for centuries. You had to go to it. You had to stop what you were doing and go visit the church.
But this began to change about 60 years ago. During the 1960’s, when so much was changing in the culture, the church, or at least parts of the church, got out into the streets, and suddenly the church was relevant again. Young, long-haired followers of Jesus, sometimes called “Jesus freaks”, left the walls of the church, and, anticipating the concept of “user-interface,” got out there among the people. Perhaps you saw the recent movie starring Kelsey Grammer called “Jesus Revolution” that told one of such story.
The church went out into the public square and got involved in cultural and political discussions. The church was no longer a stone edifice in a fixed location on a street corner, but was now something mobile and engaged. The concept of “church” changed. We once thought the purpose of church was to “save souls,” but now we know that church is about so much more.
Preaching shifted too. By the early 1970’s, preachers began to re-emphasize the concept of “every member a minister.” Narrative or story-telling preaching grew in popularity. (2)
Today, the church at its best strives to be a user-friendly organism that connects with its neighborhood, its city and its citizens in a variety of formats. Depending on the church, it works with city councils to provide affordable housing. It sponsors food bans to feed people. It opens its doors to all sorts of groups that try to lift the human spirit and better the lot of humankind. It supports the arts and artists. It takes care of little children. It helps single parents and provides counseling for the grieving and discouraged.
The church of Jesus Christ can be thought of as a user interface. It is an institution that, like a smartphone, offers access to a myriad of attractive, fun and important benefits to the user, not the least of which are interactions with other users, and opportunities to interface as a user with God.
In his book The Welcoming Congregation, Henry Brinton writes, “Every time people sit down to eat and drink together, there is the possibility that community will grow and people will be reconciled to one another. This is good news for a fractured and polarized world, and a strong sign of the importance of being a welcoming congregation that embraces all people with God’s love and grace.” (3)
The goal of the church – and specifically this church – is to make the Christianity user experience as smooth and effortless as possible and focus on the task of being a disciple. Not to say it’s always an easy road – but we needn’t complicate what our faith is either.
Paul has some valuable insights about this in today’s passage. This is Paul’s attempt to simplify how we go about living our faith as a follower of Jesus. Living as faithful Christians really isn’t rocket science. It shouldn’t be hard. After all, Christianity is an intuitive way of life, grounded in love, faith and hope. So, why do we make it harder than it is? Let’s see what advice Paul has for us today.
Paul tells his friends at the church in Philippi that they ought to follow his example and look to those who live according to the model he set. That’s it. Live like I lived when I was among you – imitate me. Following a mentor or modeling your behavior after someone you admire and respect is an excellent way to learn. The great golfer Bobby Jones used to caddie for the best players at his home club and he would imitate their swings, that’s how he learned to play golf. Christianity is often most effectively taught through example, by imitation, instead of through books and doctrines. For Paul, it was really quite simple – do what I do, live like I live, imitate me. That’s what the disciples did. Jesus modeled for them how he wanted them to approach life. Sometimes they were successful, but often they fell short. But they always had Jesus example to come back.
I remember when Thomson was little, Juliet used to take him on deck with her when she was coaching her swim team in Pennsylvania. She would coach and Thomson would nap or watch the swimmers from his pack and play on the pool deck. Turned out he absorbed a whole lot of swimming knowledge before he even got into the water. When we moved here and he started swim lessons, he could do all the strokes in about a week, including flip turns. I’m 61 years old and I still can’t do flip turns or the butterfly stroke. In two weeks, he was ready for the competitive team. All those hours watching the other kids swim and do flip turns, he just sort of absorbed how to do it. So when he got into the water himself – he knew what to do.
Is it really any different when we live out our faith? Paul’s message here today isn’t really all that complicated. He’s not concerned here with complex theological arguments, like he is in his letter to the Romans. No, this is a pretty straightforward call to live out what you’ve learned and observed in others who follow Christ.
In her book Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen tells a wonderful story about a young man from the Kikuyu tribe who worked for her on her farm for three months. Out of the blue, he suddenly announced that he was leaving her to go to work for a Muslim man nearby. Surprised by this, Dinesen asked him if he was unhappy working for her. He told her that all was well, but that he had decided to work or a Christian for three months to study the ways of Christians, and then work for a Muslim for three months to study the ways of a Muslim. After experiencing both, he was going to decide whether to be a Christian or a Muslim. (4)
Pretty simple – but pretty effective. Jesus kept it simple too. He simplified the essence of our faith when he summed up the law and the prophets with two commands: love God and love your neighbor. What is so hard to understand? Every believer can grasp and live out those simple tenets regardless of their level of theological education or life experience.
Sometimes we can overcomplicate our faith. We get caught up in debates about doctrine, ritual and tradition to the point where we lose sight of the simple truth at the heart of Christianity. This was what Jesus was warning about when he spoke of the Pharisees who “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” Jesus was on to those guys. They made faith something that was burdensome and complex, rather than something life-giving and intuitive.
So here’s the bottom line – our faith is not a religion built on endless rules and regulations. It is built on a relationship with a loving God who desires to transform us from the inside out. This transformation doesn’t require a Ph.D. in theology; it’s the work of the Holy Spirit that begins when we simply say “yes” to Jesus and allow him to guide our lives.
Just as we shouldn’t think of our phones as simply phones anymore, the church is not simply a place where we come to learn the rules and the policies of being a Christian. We can think of the church as a user interface for accessing God, as a place where we can learn from Jesus and from each other how to live out our faith, as we seek to imitate Christ.
May God be praised. Amen.

1. electroiq.com., retrieved3/10/25.

2. Homileticsonline, retrieved 3/3/25

3. Ibid…

4. Ibid…

03-09-2025 Giving, or Giving Up?

Thomas J Parlette
“Giving, or Giving Up?”
Deuteronomy 26: 1-11
3/9/25, 1st Lent

         There was once a father and son who went to a spring training baseball game at the beginning of Lent. The Dad asked his son, “What are you planning on giving up for Lent?”
          The son thought for a moment and so – “I was thinking about giving up candy.”
          “I see – good idea.”
          “What about you Dad – what are going to give up for Lent?”
          “Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I think I’m going to give up liquor.”
          The son nodded his head, as if to say, ok then, good choice Dad.
Later during the game, a vendor came by selling beer and peanuts. The Dad ordered a beer and a couple of bags of peanuts. As he handed a bag to his son, the little guy said, “Hey – I thought you were giving up liquor for Lent.”
“Yes, son, I am – hard liquor – this is just beer. It doesn’t count.”
“Ok,” said the son, “then I’m giving up hard candy.”
        That’s the way we usually approach Lent – a time for giving something up. This past Tuesday, we celebrated Shrove Tuesday with a pancake and sausage supper, because years ago it was common to give up such pleasures as meat, eggs, sugar and butter for Lent – and pancakes and sausage meet a lot of those criteria. Until recently, it was quite common, especially for Roman Catholics to give up meat on Fridays during the lent and have fish instead – which led to the tradition of some pretty epic fish fry’s during the season.
          So how did we end up in this situation of “giving something up” for Lent?
          Well, you have to go back to the early years of the church when Lent was a time of fasting and penitence. The 40-day period (mirroring Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness) was seen as an opportunity for Christians to spiritually discipline themselves, often through the denial of physical pleasures – like food and sweets and alcohol. Over time, the idea of “giving up something” extended beyond food and came to include personal luxuries, habits or activities as an act of sacrifice and self-denial.
          In our modern times, for those who still feel compelled to give something up – we usually give up things that aren’t good for us anyway, or that we shouldn’t be doing in the first place. Like giving up chocolate, or alcohol, or salt, smoking, fast food, snacking between meals or that 4th coffee from Caribou – yea, I’ll give that up for Lent. Or we say we’re giving up gambling, swearing or complaining for Lent – all things we probably shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
          But today’s text from Deuteronomy presents a different perspective. Rather than giving something up in this holy season, today’s text from the Torah, as it’s known in Judaism, emphasizes the value of giving in Lent. Giving – not giving up.
          The text does this by way of a discussion about bringing the “first fruits” of our material harvest to the Lord.
          The last few chapters of Deuteronomy, meaning “second law”, are essentially Moses last reminders to the children of Israel concerning God’s expectations for them, and his expectations as well. Most of what’s found in Deuteronomy, we’ve heard before – it’s a little like Moses greatest hits. Or, as I’ve described the book to our confirmation class – think of it like Moses Presidential Library. All the highlights, all the key documents are preserved here. It’s a bit like a commencement address, or even Randy Pausch’s famous “Last Lecture.” In this case, Moses is reminding us of the importance of giving – not giving up. He addresses the importance of the “harvest of first fruits.” In practical terms, it is a ritual of giving.
          The practice of offering first fruits is outlined in several parts of the Old Testament, particularly in Exodus chapter 23, Leviticus chapter 23 and Numbers chapter 18. The Israelites were instructed to bring the first portion of their harvest to the Lord as an acknowledgement of God’s blessing. “The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.”
          So what are “first fruits?” In the ancient agrarian society of Israel, the first fruits were the earliest and best portion of the crops harvested at the beginning of the season. The offering was typically from grains, fruits and sometimes livestock. This act demonstrated that everything belonged to God, and the Israelites were merely stewards of God’s blessings.
          These acts of giving are similar to what happens in neighborhoods all over the United States toward the end of summer. Your neighbors bring over some produce from their garden. They give you some good looking zucchini, rhubarb or squash. They don’t usually give away bags of soft tomatoes or a bushel of rotten apples – unless they don’t like you. They want you to be impressed, to think well of them, so they bring you the good stuff. That’s the first fruits, even though it is toward the end of the season.
          And that’s what we do in Lent – we give our best.
          Usually we approach Lent as a time to get things up, deny ourselves something, usually with the goal being self-improvement, rather than community improvement or the betterment of others. That’s the difference. Giving up smoking or fast food or chocolate benefits you and hopefully your waistline. There’s nothing wrong with that of course. But what if we concentrate on giving instead – or maybe even in addition to – giving up something. What if we seek to contribute to the common good. What if we lived by this text’s example the ritual of giving, infusing the act of giving with meaning by remembering how profoundly we have been blessed, and how miraculously we have been redeemed. Moses, in a way, creates a liturgy of sorts, when he says “When the priest takes the basket from your hand, and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response.” What follows is an ancient version of a litany, with reminders of their former condition:
          They were homeless (A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…)
          They were immigrants (lived there as an alien…)
          Their suffering in Egypt (treated us harshly and afflicted us…)
          They held out their hands for salvation (we cried to the Lord…he brought us to this place and gave us this land.)
          It is a template for what it means to be the people of God. The act of giving, or making an offering, is at its core a communal act, involving not just the individual, but also the priest and the entire assembly. The offering concludes with communal rejoicing, emphasizing the importance of shared worship and gratitude.
          Usually we talk about this during the fall stewardship campaign, but Lent is also an appropriate time to talk about the practice of “first fruits” – bringing our best in service to God. Not just giving up things – but giving as well.
          Let me share a couple of quick stories and examples of what some churches do to replicate the ritual giving we hear about here in Deuteronomy:
1. A large church in southern California provides housing to more than 500 people each night, free meals to families, after-school programs and foster care intervention. Their mobile food trucks go out into the community. (1)
2. Another church in California has various outreach programs that include free medical and dental clinics, food distributions and services for the homeless. They also organize neighborhood cleanups and home repairs for the elderly and disabled. (2)
3. A church in Florida has created an innovative “Community Makeover” program where the church partners with local organizations and volunteers to complete large-scale renovation and beautification projects across several neighborhoods. They focus on helping revitalize schools, playgrounds and parks, making a lasting impact on the physical and emotional environment of the community. (3)
4. In New Jersey, there is a congregation that has developed something called “Lunch Break” – a community initiative where church volunteers cook and serve free meals to local homeless individuals every week. They also offer counseling, spiritual support and guidance regarding job placement, addiction recovery and housing. (4)
5. There is a church in Minnesota that has focused on community restoration through “Community Engagement Sundays,” where instead of holding regular worship, members go into the local neighborhoods to serve. Activities include gardening, home repairs, street cleaning and hosting neighborhood block parties to build trust and relationships with residents. (5)
6. And in Texas, there is a congregation known for its large-scale disaster relief efforts, especially after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The church mobilized to provide food, shelter and rebuilding services, partnering with other faith-based organizations and local authorities to serve thousands of people affected by the hurricane. (6)
          The list could go on and on, the point is that these creative and innovative programs involve giving and giving back – bringing out our best to the Lord for the betterment of others. And when our giving flows out to assist others in need, we find ourselves better for it as well – what did Jesus used to say, “Lose your life to find it.”
          This text from Deuteronomy is a good reminder of the value of giving during the Lenten season. It’s a text that urges us to give God our first and best, even as the Israelites gave the first portion of their harvest.
          During Lent, we are tasked not only with giving God our best, but also trusting that God will always provide. When Israel brought their first fruits, they were implicitly saying that they knew God would provide more in the future.
          So, this Lent, let us remind ourselves that there is more to this season that giving things up. Lent is also about giving. Bring our first fruits with grateful hearts, recognizing that everything we have comes from God.
          May God be praised. Amen.
1. “A caring church for caring times”, St. Martin’s Episcopal Church website, stmartinsepiscopal.org.

2. “Hope downtown.” Hope Community Church website, hopecc.com.

3. “Passion for God; compassion for people.” Water of Life Community Church website, wateroflife.org.

4. The Parish of Christ Church.” The Parish of Christ Church website, Christchurch.woodburynj.org.

5. “Transforming lives.” The Dream Center Website, dreamcenter.org.

6. “You belong here! Let’s do better things.” The Crossing Church website, wearecrossing.com

03-02-2025 Stop, Look and LIsten

Thomas J Parlette
“Stop, Look and Listen”
Luke 9: 28-43
3/2/25, Transfiguration Sunday
          Currently, the most popular – and in the minds of many – most well-done video portrayal of Jesus and his ministry might be the streaming series The Chosen. You can find it on several different platforms including YouTube, where you can watch it for free. My dad is a big fan, so I get weekly updates about what’s going on. I’ve watched a few episodes and I think it’s pretty good. It’s more than a pious, verse by verse depiction of the Bible, in fact – it’s not that at all. The show takes a bit of license and portrays characters and events around Jesus as well as Jesus and the disciples in a rather gritty and realistic way – which I kinda like. It has so captured a loyal audience that many people have contributed money for the ongoing production through a crowdfunding arrangement.
         Many viewers feel invested in the show more than just financially. They want to see the biblical story of Jesus retold on the screen in ways that emphasize not only his humanity – which The Chosen does really well – but also his divinity. The series does that well, too.
          But some fans were taken aback recently when Dallas Jenkins, the show’s creator, director and writer, mentioned in a YouTube interview that he was not planning to portray the Transfiguration. Which is interesting, because most scholars agree that this is the turning point in the Gospels – from here on out, the story is focused on getting to Jerusalem. Jenkins had previously said that the series is intended to support Scripture, rather than simply re-enact its events – which I think is a good way to go about it. In the interview, Jenkins added that showing the face of Jesus glowing, as the Transfiguration scene would require, seemed too much like something out of Return of the Jedi to him.
          Now to be clear, Jenkins is not skeptical about the Transfiguration – but he is not convinced that depicting it visually would contribute to either the cinematic or the faith goals he has for the series. He might be right, if the special effects don’t work quite right, it could turn out cheesy-looking. Maybe it’s better to leave it to the viewer’s imaginations. (1)
          Many of the fans pushing for the inclusion of the Transfiguration scene say it’s important because when God says, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” – it confirms Jesus’ divinity for the three disciples who were there.
          Surprisingly, seeing Jesus transfigured on the mountain, doesn’t seem to change the disciples much. At first, they went to abandon the journey to Jerusalem and stay on the mountain – which of course is not what being a disciple is all about. Then, it’s not long after this story that James and John ask Jesus to be seated on his right and left when he comes in glory, which shows that they were still missing the point of Jesus’ ministry. And, it is after the transfiguration that Peter, who was right there when it happened, denied Jesus three times. So the disciples weren’t changed much. Perhaps Dallas Jenkins is on to something by not depicting this event – it’s probably unlikely to change us either.
          It’s possible that the primary audience for the transfiguration was not the disciples at all, but Jesus himself. The account says that Moses and Elijah talked to Jesus during this radiant experience, though we don’t know what they said. Most scholars agree that they were preparing Jesus for the suffering and death he would soon face in Jerusalem. And God’s voice – the same voice Jesus heard at his baptism – confirmed for him that he was indeed God’s Son, with all the glory, pain and responsibility encapsulated in that relationship. Given that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem…” following this encounter, the Transfiguration clearly had its intended effect on him.
         Nonetheless, when God spoke on the mountaintop, the Divine words were addressed to both Jesus and the disciples. When Jesus became dazzling white, it was God’s way of saying – “Stop what you’re doing, pay attention! Something important is happening.” When God said, “This is my Son, the Chosen,” that confirmed for Jesus and the disciples that Jesus was indeed divine. “Look – this is my Son, the Chosen.” And then God adds, “Listen to him!” a directive obviously aimed at the disciples. In the Bible, the word “listen” implies both trust and obedience. “Stop, Look and Listen.”
          I learned to drive when I was a high school student in Illinois. At that time, driving classes were part of the regular school day – you didn’t have to take a separate class like you do now in Minnesota. Usually our P.E. teachers were also certified as Driving instructors. So, once a week, for a double period, three of us would load up into a driver’s ed. car with our instructor and take turns driving around town.
          Usually, being Illinois, the roads were pretty flat. There were maybe one or two hills where we could practice uphill and downhill parking – but nothing too extreme. This was in Bloomington Illinois, not a huge city, but comparable to Rochester. We could practice driving on the highway, busy city streets and quiet neighborhoods.
          One of our instructors though had this special route that he was known to take his students on. He would have us drive out of town, way out in the country – which wasn’t far being in central Illinois. He would take us to this one particular railroad crossing, that didn’t have any flashing lights or crossbars to lower across the road when a train was coming. Instead – there was a big sign that said “Stop, Look and Listen.”
          Then our instructor would have us put the car in park, get out and go right up to the tracks, usually telling us a story about some teenager who wasn’t paying attention and got hit by a train, to emphasize that the train was much bigger and much heavier than anything we were driving. Never mess with a train. The he would have us turn to the right and look down the track for a few seconds. And then we’d turn to our left and look the other way. And then he’d say, “Now, be very quiet and listen. You can hear a train coming from a long way away – they don’t sneak up on you. If you hear anything, get back in your car and wait until the train passes.” Stop – Look – and Listen. Good advice. That’s what God says about this mountaintop experience as well.
          When we say we’re listening to Jesus, we don’t usually mean that we’re hearing an audible voice. Most of the time we mean we’re paying attention to those spiritual nudges that we get sometimes. Or, we might mean we have received an inner assurance or comfort from Jesus, or maybe we’ve witnessed something that seems like an answer to prayer.
          Personally, I don’t rule out anyone’s experience actually hearing the voice of God or Jesus. Lots of people have such an experience. Hey, if it happened back in the biblical times, why couldn’t it happen now. The Roman Catholic Church even has an established procedure for evaluating such claims. It has endorsed only a fraction of them, but it doesn’t rule them all out.
          But if, by listening to Jesus, we mean something other than hearing a voice we can perceive with our ears – how do we do that? We could start by reviewing the things that Jesus said in the gospels. But, beyond that, listening to Jesus today means seeking to apply what we know about Jesus to the circumstances of our lives and our relationships with other people. If we’ve been fortunate enough to have had a mountaintop experience with Jesus, it’s what we do after that experience that gives it reality and meaning and qualifies it as listening to God’s Son. As biblical commentator R. Alan Culpepper puts it: “Faithfulness is not achieved by freezing a moment – like Peter wants to do – but by following on, in confidence that God is leading and that what lies ahead is even greater than what we have already experienced.” (2)
          Even though it’s a central part of this story this morning, we shouldn’t get too hung up on whether we’re hearing from God, or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. If there’s one thing the Trinity communicates it’s that, as Frederick Buechner says, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit means that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery.” (3)
          Religious leaders rightly tell us that we can listen to the triune God not only through the reading of Scripture, but also through praying and even by paying attention to our thoughts and our consciences. The Lord speaks through those sometimes. The Persons of the Trinity also speak through the circumstances of our lives. C.S. Lewis famously wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is God’s Divine megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (4)
          It would be easy to go home today after worship and feel guilty that we aren’t better listeners, or that we have selective hearing when it comes to listening to God and Jesus. But the prophet Isaiah has some helpful words about listening, especially as we are about to enter the season of Lent where listening is something we are called to do. Isaiah says, “Morning by morning God wakens – wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear.” The original Hebrew for “opened” is actually, “The Lord God has caused sound to flow to my ear.” (5)
          So as we come to the table today to be nourished for our Lenten journey, let us remember to “Stop, Look and Listen” – repeating Isaiah’s prayer, “Open my ears, O Lord – cause sound to flow once more.
          May God be praised. Amen.

1. “Interview with Dallas Jenkins – creator and director of The Chosen” YouTube, www.youtube.com, comments at about 37 minutes in.

2. R. Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol IX, p. 207.

3. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (Harper&Row, 1973), p. 93.

4. “Reflections: God’s Megaphone.” C.S. Lewis Institute, October 1st, 2021.

5. Homileticsonline… retrived 2/5/25.

02-23-2025 Two Sermons, Two Preachers

Thomas J Parlette
“Two Sermons, Two Preachers”
Luke 6: 27-38, Psalm 37
2/23/25
          When the Covid-19 pandemic was at full force in May 2020, the women operating the Navajo and Hopi Families Covod-19 Relief Fund noticed a significant increase in donations to its GoFundMe page. Almost all the new money coming in was coming from Ireland.
          The uptick in contributions was so strong that Cassandra Begay, the Fund’s communications director, wondered if the website had been hacked. They eventually learned that the new donations started with a Twitter exchange between an Irish news reporter and a Navajo engineer.
          Naomi O’Leary, a correspondent for the Irish Times, had tweeted, “Native Americans raised a huge amount in famine relief for Ireland at a time when they had very little. It’s time for us to come through for them now.” Aaron Yazzie, of Los Angeles, the Navajo engineer, responded by tweeting the web address of the relief fund’s GoFundMe page.
          The Navajo and Hopi Families Covid-19 Relief Fund was a volunteer effort to get food and water to those tribes’ homebound elders in remote areas during the pandemic. As of May 7th, 2020, there were 20,000 Irish donors to the fund, who had donated $670,000. From all sources, the fund had topped $4 million since its inception a couple months earlier.
          O’Leary’s reference was to an 1847 act of charity by the Choctaw Tribe – recently off the Trail of Tears and struggling to make its new home in what is now Oklahoma. After learning that the Irish were also oppressed and hungry, due to that country’s notorious Potato Famine, the Choctaws, despite having few resources themselves, raised $170 – about $6500 in today’s currency – and sent it to Ireland to help with food relief. That $170 was the largest donation received by the Irish during those terrible days, which saw starvation and disease claim one-eighth of the Irish population. (1)
          In its report on the surge of money to the Navajo and Hopi Families Covid-19 Relief Fund, The Christian Science Monitor said, “There were thousands of unfamiliar names appearing on the team’s GoFundMe page – each donating small amounts ranging from $10 to $1000, from across the Atlantic. Many posted a common Irish proverb as a comment, “In each other’s shadows the people live.” (2)
          “We’re so grateful to the ancestors of the Choctaw Nation for their generosity generations ago, and to the Irish people for paying it forward,” said Begay. “It just goes to show the interconnectedness of everything, which is our concept of K’e (kinship), and that a simple act of kindness can be profound.” (3)
          For her part, O’Leary said she’s happy her tweet helped spark donations, and she added that the Irish have long felt a kinship with Native Americans. She noted that because of Ireland’s history, “Irish people identify with the oppression and dispossession of Native Americans. When Native American people talk about the importance of preserving their land, languages and culture, that’s something Irish people strongly identify with because their own heritage was nearly wiped out by colonialism.” (4)
         Casey Davis, the Choctaw tribe’s director of government public relations, said her people think it’s great that the Navajo and Hopis are now benefiting from the Choctaw’s generosity back in 1847. “Any time a tribe gets help, we’re happy,” says Davis. (5)
          Begay, who is Navajo, said her group would reach out to the Choctaw and thank them.
          When the donations were pouring in to the Relief Fund, Begay said the present-day Irish were “paying forward” the kindness the Choctaws had shown all those years ago to the Irish people of that day. That’s a good way to describe those acts of kindness and support. Another way to look at it is to say it is the golden rule in action.
          This morning, we begin with some words from Psalm 37. “Don’t fret because of the wicked; don’t be envious of wrongdoers – they will fade like the grass and whither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord. Don’t worry about the wicked – they will get what’s coming to them. Those who wait for the Lord will be saved.” Hopeful words from the Psalmist.
Next, we move to the Gospel lesson, which dovetails nicely with what the preacher in the Psalms has to tell us. Jesus echoes many of themes in Psalm 37. Once again this week, we are back with Jesus for Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount – known in Luke as the Sermon on the Plain. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, turn the other cheek, don’t judge, forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you - and of course, what we know as the Golden Rule – “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
In essence we have two preachers today – Jesus and the Psalmist. Who each have very similar sermons to preach to us. Jesus boils it all down to “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Interestingly, Jesus did not invent the Golden Rule. You can find it in the Leviticus in chapter 19, v 18, in a slightly different form – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus takes the concept out of the theoretical word of love and translates the idea into action, deeds – “DO to others as you would have them do to you – that’s what Leviticus means, my friends.”
It’s such good moral and ethical advice that many of the world’s great religions have their own versions.
-         Buddhists say – “Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
-         Hinduism teaches – “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.”
         Islam says – “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself
-         The Taoists say – “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.
It is said that the famous Rabbi Hillel was once challenged – “I will convert if you can tell me the whole law while standing on one foot.”
Rabbi Hillel took up the challenge, stood on one foot and said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” (6)
          The golden rule is a great summary for an ethic Christianity shares with many other faiths. Golden rule thinking can be the reason for many small acts of kindness, such as finding a wallet and instead of helping yourself to the cash and dropping it where you found it – you use the contact information to find the owner and return it intact. Golden rule thinking can also take the form of larger acts of kindness, as in the Irish – Native American connection.
          There is even some science to back up the power of golden rule thinking. A recent study revealed that when teenagers are shown compassion, feel others care for them, and are recipients of kind deeds – they have a greater likelihood of treating others similarly. (7)
          But the sad fact is, a lot of the world – including our own nation – rumbles along it’s merry way without paying much attention to the golden rule. In fact, in some circles, the golden rule gets twisted in a negative sense – such as “Don’t do anything to others you wouldn’t want them to do to you.”
         There’s nothing wrong with that negative version, but it demands far less of us than the way Jesus taught it. This version is not really about doing good – it’s more about self-preservation. “I won’t steal from my neighbor in the hopes that he won’t steal from me.”
          In fact, if you google “golden rule”, you’ll come up with a bunch of articles that praise it as an “Ethic of Reciprocity.” But is that what Jesus really means by this famous teaching? Is it just another variant of “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours?” I’ll do something nice for you if you do something nice for me kind of Quid Pro Quo?
          In the context of the larger body biblical teachings, including what we hear from the Psalmist, the golden rule clearly means more than that. Remember, Jesus is the one who teaches his disciples to “turn the other cheek” when someone strikes them. When a Roman soldier commands a Christian to carry his pack for a mile, Jesus says, “carry it another mile. The Psalmist says, “Trust the Lord, the wicked will get what’s coming to them.” This is not reciprocity. It’s something else altogether.
          The golden rule doesn’t work when we expect the other person to turn around and do unto us right back. To truly live the golden rule is to do what we would have others do to us without expecting anything in return. (8)
         The golden rule, as taught by Jesus is not an avoidance mechanism, but a deliberate involvement principle.
          In other settings, the golden rule had undergone a more cynical transformation into “Do to others before they do it to you.” Instead of the golden rule, it becomes the gold rule: “I’ll get mine while the getting is good” or “I’ll look out only for number one – Me.”
          This attitude is often coupled with the cynical justification that “Corruption is everywhere, so I might as well lookout for myself because no one else will.”
          Unfortunately, there is some truth to the observation that corruption is widespread and the people who are supposed to working for the public good are primarily looking out for themselves. In that case,  listen to the preacher from Psalm 37 – “the wicked shall be cut off… In a little while, the wicked will be no more. You will look for them diligently, but they will not be there…”
          Even where sin is rampant and widespread, and is seemingly winning the day – God still calls us to be holy.
          Sometimes this seems impossible. Sometimes following Jesus directives here seem weak. Russell Moore, editor –in-chief of the magazine Christianity Today tells of many pastors who have quoted Jesus words here – especially about turning the other cheek – only to have members come up at coffee hour and say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
          Moore said that in many of those scenarios, the pastors would say, “Well, I’m literally quoting Jesus himself.” And the response would be “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That response is weak. We’ve got to be tougher.” (9)
          That would seem to make more sense in our world as it is – but that’s not what either of our preachers tell us today, the Psalmist or Jesus himself. Trust in the Lord. Trust in the way Jesus shows us. Do to others as you would have them do to you. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.
          Parker Palmer is a well-known Christian writer and teacher. He tells the story of a good friend who labors at a particularly difficult assignment at the New York Catholic Worker House. One day, Palmer said to her, “All the facts I can gather and all the feelings I have tell me this work you are trying to do is just impossible. There’s no success in it. We can’t measure our results, we can’t prove the good that we think we’re doing. There’s no gratification. The tide just keeps rolling over you. Why do you do it?”
          His friend answered, “Parker, the thing you don’t understand is this: Just because a thing is impossible, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.” (10)
         It may seem impossible to love our enemies, judge no one, turn the other cheek and do to others as we would like them to do to us. But even in the midst of our sinful world, where evil seems to be winning at every turn – God calls us to be holy, as impossible as that seems. But just because a thing is impossible, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. As that old Irish proverb said, “In each other’s shadows the people live.”
          May God be praised. Amen.

1. Cheyenne Haslett, “Donations flood in from Ireland to Navajo Nation in repayment of centuries-old bond,” ABC News, May 8th, 2020.

2. Harry Bruinius, “In each other’s shadows: Behind Irish outpouring of relief for Navajo,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 13th, 2020.

3. Haslett… ibid.

4. Haslett… ibid.

5. Haslett… ibid.

6. Homileticsonline, retrieved 2/3/25.

7. Sara P. Brennan, “The golden rule may get a boost when teens feel connected to others,” Penn State, Nov. 28th, 2023.

8. Homileticsonline, retrieved 2/3/25.

9. Victor Nava, “Top evangelical says churchgoers view Jesus quotes as “liberal talking points”, warns Christianity ‘in crisis.’ New York Post, August 9th, 2023.

10. Discovery YMCA, July/August 1985, p. 15.

02-16-2025 The Heart of the Matter

Thomas J Parlette
“The Heart of the Matter”
Jer. 17: 5-10
2/16/25
           “The heart wants what the heart wants.” I’m sure we’ve all heard that old adage at some time in our lives.
          Emily Dickinson is credited as the author of those words, although her full quote is: “The heart wants what the heart wants, or else it does not care.” She wrote those words in one of her letters in 1862.
         In 1992, Woody Allen gave Dickinson’s words new life of sorts when it came to light that he was having an affair with his step-daughter Soon-Yi Previn. Some people took it as a bit flippant when a reporter asked him about the appropriateness of the relationship and Allen responded – “The heart wants what the heart wants.” That didn’t set well with a lot of people.
          Analysis of Dickinson’s original quote seems to indicate that she was saying that our emotions and desires, represented by the “heart”, are often beyond our conscious control and can’t be easily reasoned with; we simply feel what we feel, and attempting to fight it is futile; it implies that love and attraction can be inexplicable and not always logical.
         Her last phrase – that often gets overlooked, “or else it does not care”, would seem to imply that resisting our hearts desires can be pointless, as our feelings will remain regardless of our attempts to change them.
          A romantic notion – but a bit fatalistic perhaps.
          An anonymous modern author built on Dickinson’s thoughts when they noted – “The heart wants what it wants, even that which is worst for it.”
          I would venture to say that the prophet Jeremiah might agree. In today’s reading Jeremiah puts it another way. “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse – who can understand it?” Not quite as romantic as The Belle of Amherst put it – but there it is.
          The idea of a heart that is deceptive by nature is a controversial assertion. To begin to think about this, we need to ask what is meant by “heart.”
          We’re not talking so much about the physical organ, but the metaphorical organ. In the Bible, the heart is described as the center or seat of emotions and desires. It is where feelings such as love, joy, sorrow and anger reside.
          But the heart is also the nexus of all our thinking and will. Scripture views the heart as the center of a person’s thoughts, intentions and will. It is where decisions are made and intentions formed. When such a locus is deceitful, then even our reasoning and decisions can be flawed and self-serving.
         The Bible considers the heart to be even more. It is the moral and spiritual core of a person. It’s where one’s true character and motivations lie. Jesus seems to argue that both good and evil can flow from this spiritual core. In his “Sermon on the Plain” from Luke this morning, he says, “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
          So, this is what the Bible means by “heart”: the center of our being that includes emotions, thinking will, a moral compass and our spiritual core.
          But is the heart deceptive? Jeremiah would have made a great Protestant, because he believed so. He believed that the heart was inherently flawed and prone to sin, just as John Calvin and other Reformers taught, making the heart a source of moral and spiritual corruption. The delusional nature of the heart can manifest itself in a variety of forms.
         The delusion might be self-deception. Our emotions and thought processes can deceive us by making us believe that our desires and actions are justified when they are clearly not to any dispassionate outward observer, and certainly not God, who knows the intentions of our hearts.
          The devious nature of the heart might also be seen in our susceptibility to sin. As the Apostle Paul famously noted, doing what is wrong is easier than doing what is right. To paraphrase Paul, “I do the things I know I shouldn’t, and I don’t do the things I know I should. I don’t understand. I’m at a total loss.” Even a spiritual giant like Paul is stumped by the complexity and deviousness of the human heart.
          Our continually lies to us. It tells us that we can ignore the laws of good health and abuse ourselves with unhealthy food and drink. It tells us that happiness can be bought. It tells us that we can use other people and ignore their concerns and needs. It tells us that the path to happiness is the path of least resistance. The heart is a subtle and devious thing.
          But Jeremiah has an answer, one that Paul agrees with as well. Jeremiah starts this passage today by encouraging us to trust in the Lord. Those who put their trust in the Lord shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out it’s roots by the stream. It shall not fear when the heat comes, and it’s leaves shall stay green; in the year of the drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”.
          We hear a very similar message in Luke in which he presents his own shortened version of the beatitudes… “Blessed are you who are poor, hungry and hated – because yours is the Kingdom of God.”
         This, then is good news. Knowing that our emotions, thoughts, will and very spiritual core tend to be self-serving and devious – there are checks and balances to safeguard our moral center.
          Self-examination is a big one. The need for a periodic inspection is like a regular wellness check. It’s good advice concerning our physical bodies and it’s good advice for our spiritual being as well.
          Take it from of history’s greatest thinkers – Socrates, for example – is reputed to have said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius said to his son Laertes, “To thine own self be true and thou canst by no means be false to any man.” Aristotle wrote that “knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” The great transcendentalist thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
          Entering the world of religious thinkers, one of the earliest Christian theologians, Augustine, said, “Know yourself, that you may know God.” And our own John Calvin reminds us, “Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.” (1)
          Self-examination and reflection is a good practice. If we regularly examine our heart and motives, we will do ourselves a great service. This is also the season when we think about establishing some spiritual disciplines to strengthen our inner lives. In the coming Lenten season we’ll talk more about the classics, such as daily Bible reading, praying, Bible study, and meditation. Perhaps you need to carve out a daily quiet time, or find a place to do centering work, just as you would when setting up a regular schedule to get to the gym or workout at home.
          Accountability is another important part of self-examination. Surround yourself with a community of believers who can offer support, encouragement and accountability. Share your struggles and seek guidance from those who are also walking faithfully with the Lord.
          Seek contentment is another part, maybe even a goal of self-examination. We should learn to find contentment not only with our relationship with Christ, but with the material things we have.
          This past May, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, gave a commencement address to the graduates of the University of Colorado Boulder. He said that at the end of his life, he won’t measure his happiness by the size of Apple’s market cap or his personal net worth, but by the jokes he told and the laughter he shared with family and friends. He went on to cite the work of Harvard University professor Arthur C. Brooks, saying, “People often struggle to find happiness because they see it as a destination – if they get married of have kids or get a big promotion, they’ll finally be happy.”
 Brooks calls this the “arrival fallacy.”
“Happiness is not a destination, it’s a direction,” says Brooks. “The way that we get happier has somewhat to do with the things going on outside of us, but it has more to do with our inner lives.”
“Finding things to be grateful for in the midst of hardship – like your loved ones or good health – can shift your brain into a more optimistic mindset and help you overcome those challenges,” added Wozniak.
“So, stay honest, keep smiling and pay your own successes forward,” he said. (2)
As Luke put it: “Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, excluded and hated – for yours is the Kingdom of God.”
Or, as Jeremiah says: “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord – they shall be like a tree planted by the water… in years of drought – which we certainly understand these days – they shall not cease to bear fruit.”
That is the heart of the matter.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
 

1. Homileticsonline, retrieved 1/16/25.

2. Ibid…

02-09-2025 A Story You Can Trust

Thomas J Parlette
“A Story You Can Trust”
1st Corinthians 15: 1-11
2/9/25
          A Duke University professor was hospitalized with an injury. Then someone made a video of him in his hospital bed and posted it on the internet. That’s odd, for sure. Not usually what happens in the hospital with HIPPA regulations and all. But then things got even weirder.
          According to the professor, the video “described how my injury got me to hate healthy people, how that got me to join Bill Gates and the Illuminati in creating the COVID pandemic. It also caused me to attempt to try and kill as many healthy people as possible using the virus and the vaccines, to control people.”
          Every bit of it was false – It was all a lie. But some people believed it. An acquaintance of his even reached out via email and asked, “What happened to you?”
          The experience led that professor, a man named Dan Ariely, to write a book called Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things. The book is a very personal exploration of misinformation and conspiracy theories, and what causes people to fall into distrust.
          He talks about what he calls “The Funnel of Misbelief,” which explains our society’s loss of trust. People fall into the funnel when they are stressed and have a deep need for understanding. They go deeper when they lose their social attachments and begin to feel ostracized. The result is a group of rational people believing irrational things, such as the story of a professor creating the COVID pandemic to kill as many healthy people as possible. (1)
         Conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon – they’ve been around for centuries, from witch trials and antisemitic campaigns to beliefs that Freemasons were trying to topple European monarchies. But the “golden age” of conspiracy theories, it seems, is now. Recent polls show that more than 50% of Americans believe in one conspiracy theory or another…
          According to a study conducted by the University of Chicago:
-         19% of Americans believe the government was behind the 9/11 attacks;
-         25% believe the 2008 recession was caused by a small cabal of Wall Street Bankers;
-         And 11% believe the government mandated a switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs in government buildings because “they make people obedient and easier to control.” (2)
Much of the commentary on conspiracy theories presumes that followers simply have bad information, or not enough, and that they can be helped along with a better diet of facts.
But anyone who has talked with a conspiracy theorist knows that they’re never short on details… They have plenty of information, but they insist that it be interpreted in a particular way – usually the way that feels most exciting or scandalous.
So how does a conspiracy theory feel? First of all, it lets you feel like you’re smarter than everyone else. Political scientist Michael Barkun points out that conspiracy theory devotees love what he calls “stigmatized knowledge,” – sources that are obscure or even looked down upon.
In fact, the more obscure the source is, the more the true believers want to trust it…
One of the most exciting parts of a conspiracy theory is that it makes everything make sense. We all know the pleasure of solving a puzzle – the “click” of satisfaction when you complete a Wordle, a crossword or a Sudoku.
Conspiracy theories encourage their followers to see themselves as the only ones with their eyes open, and everyone else as sheep. But paradoxically, this fantasy leads to self-delusion – and helping the followers recognize that can be a first step. Unraveling their beliefs requires the patient work of persuading devotees that the world is just a more boring, more random, less interesting place that one might have hoped.
To make progress against conspiracy theories, we have to patiently prove what’s happening – to research, learn and find the most plausible interpretation of the evidence, not the one that’s the most fun and exciting. (3)
When Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians, he was addressing the citizens of a powerful city in the Roman Empire. Corinth was a wealthy center of commerce in Greece, and it was full of cultured and educated people who were stressed by politics and economic challenges. Much as we are today.
On top of that, many of these people were feeling spiritual emptiness. Some were joining groups called “mystery religions” that included secret ceremonies in which a person would be joined to a pagan god or goddess. Very popular in Corinth was a drama about the death of Adonis, a celebration of his resurrection, and an invitation to share in his triumph.
Paul knew that these secret ceremonies were irrational, and he worried that the Corinthians would fall into their own sort of 1st century Funnel of Misbelief, believing what he considered to be conspiracy theories of the day. Because they were stressed and had a deep need for understanding, they were vulnerable to these mystery religions. Paul wrote his letter to remind them of the power of Jesus to fill the empty places in their lives with new and unexpected life. He was offering them the truth, a story they could trust – not a myth.
“Now I want you to understand,” writes Paul, “the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which you are being saved.” Here, Paul reminds them of the good news of the resurrection of Jesus, which he had previously shared with them. He wants them to “hold firmly” to this message, and not be distracted by theories or popular myths, like the myth of Adonis.
Paul says, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received – that the Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures…” Paul wants them to know that the story of Jesus is not a myth, but it is connected to something bigger than himself. Christ died for our sins “in accordance with the scriptures,” and he was raised from dead “in accordance with the scriptures.”
None of this is irrational, according to Paul. It is not crazy or out of left field like a conspiracy theory. No, the promise of forgiveness and new life fits what God has been doing all through history, as reported in the Scriptures.
This is good information, not misinformation. This is a story you can trust.
Being aware that people fall for conspiracy theories when they feel unattached and ostracized, Paul tries to strengthen their social cohesion. He writes that Jesus “appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve and then to more than five hundred brothers and sisters…” The resurrection is not some made-up internet meme or YouTube video – it is a real historical event, witnessed by a long list of men and women. You can check it out for yourselves, says Paul to the Corinthians, “most of them are still alive, though some have died.”
Our society relies a lot on trust,” says Dan Ariely. “It’s like fish in water. Fish don’t notice the water… because it’s all around them. Trust is the same. Trust is all around us. Because of that, we don’t often notice how big and important it effect is on our behavior… But the reality is that people who go down the Funnel of Misbelief lose trust, and they pay a price – and we, as a society, pay a price.” (4)
Paul knows how much the Christian community relies on trust. That is why he reminds the Corinthians that Jesus appeared to people that they knew about and trusted – from Cephas to five hundred brothers and sisters. Paul then says that Christ “appeared also to me” – reminding them of the time that the resurrected Jesus spoke to him personally on the road to Damascus, completely turning his life around.
It is by the grace of God – that Paul talks about so many times – that Paul is who and what he is. And because of this, the story he tells can be trusted.
At the end of the day, all Paul cares about is that the Corinthians accept the forgiveness and new life that Jesus offers. He knows there is nothing irrational about the resurrection, since it is God’s grace-filled plan to relieve the stress of sin and death. He reminds the Corinthians that the resurrection was witnessed by a wide community and proclaimed by a number of apostles. “Whether then it was I or they,” says Paul, “so we proclaim and so you believed.” He does not want the Corinthians to buy into conspiracies or fall into the Funnel of Misbelief.
We need to hear this message today – because we are very much like the people of Corinth. Many of us are stressed and spiritually empty, and we are losing our social attachments. A recent study has shown that one third of adults 45 and older feel lonely, and nearly one fourth of adults 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated. (5) Loss of social attachments can cause us to tumble into the Funnel of Misbelief and leave us vulnerable to conspiracy theories.
We need a message we can trust. We have a deep need for understanding, and we want to find the truth.
In a world of misinformation and conspiracy theories – ours is a trustworthy story. It leads us to life, not death. It is based on Scripture, not Internet speculation. It is grounded in the eyewitness accounts of a reliable community of Christians. And it comes from the grace of God, the One who loves us and wants us all to experience forgiveness and new life.
So, let us put our trust in Jesus, the One who died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day. His truth comes through belief, not misbelief. The story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is a story we can trust.
May God be praised. Amen.
 

1. Dan Ariely, “Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things,” Next Big Idea Club, September 20, 2023.

2. Christina Georgacopoulos, “Why We Fall for Conspiracies,” LSU, February 2020.

3. Donovan Schaefer, “Buying into conspiracy theories can be exciting – that’s what makes them dangerous,” The Conversation, July 5, 2022.

4. Dan Ariely, ibid…

5. “Loneliness and Social Isolation Linked to Serious Health Conditions.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 29, 2021.

01-19-2025 A Preview in Cana

Thomas J Parlette
“A Preview in Cana”
John 2: 1-11
1/19/25

         Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. A well-known list of essential wedding ingredients. You could probably add one more to that list, if you’re being realistic – “Something to go wrong.” You could call it “Murphy’s Law: the Wedding Corollary.”
          No matter how well you plan a wedding, something is going to go wrong the day of. It just happens. I have seen brides put together three ring binders of schedules, lists and assignments for each wedding party member – yes, including the groomsmen – to try and make every little detail fall into place. It’s an admirable goal. But still, something always goes at least a little wrong. And that’s okay.
          “Don’t worry,” you assure them, “it won’t go to plan.” There is always something (or someone) forgotten, neglected backwards or late. There’s always a slip-up, mishap or stumbling over words, stairs or long dresses.
          “Don’t worry, something will go wrong – and it will very likely become the centerpiece of your favorite wedding story years from now!”
          Well, at this wedding ceremony in Cana, everything held true to form, and something did go wrong. In fact, it was a social disaster. The wine ran out!
          Midway through the feast, before any of the guests were remotely ready to go home, the final drop of wine dripped into a waiting guest’s cup. Not long after, the whispering began with the next wedding guest in line at the bar, left holding an empty cup in his hand.
          You could almost hear people quoting the Rabbi – “without wine, there is no joy.” This was a disaster. The bride started to cry, the groom turned red with embarrassment – this was an insult to your guests and a bad omen for the wedding.
          Even Mary, the mother of Jesus, is passing on that grim message. But when she turns to her son to tell him the bad news – he declines to pass the rumor on to the next person. In fact, he dismisses it. “Woman,” he says to his mother, “what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”
          But Mary knew her son, she knew what her son was capable of, even though John tells us this was his first miracle, a mother knows. So Mary turns to one of the servants and whispers “Do whatever he tells you,” motioning towards her son.
          Jesus commands the servant to take the six stone jars lined up against the wall – jars typically used to hold the water used for washing hands and feet upon entering the house – and tells the servant to fill them with water. The servant does so, and when he pours some back out – wonder of wonders – it has turned to wine!
          And not just any wine – this is the good stuff, the finest vintage. This is the stuff you serve when you want to impress your guests. This is not wine out of a box – this is the one with a cork.
          The bride and groom look at each other with astonishment and relief. If it’s true that all six of the jars are filled with wine, there’s no chance they’ll run out again. Each jar held 20-30 gallons – that’s 120 gallons of wine! Jesus has taken their family’s shameful deficiency and transformed it into overflowing abundance!
          This miracle story of the wedding in Cana has always been something of an embarrassment to some Christians. I mean, when you set aside the healings Jesus did, the feeding of the hungry, the calming of the storm, the raising of the dead – refilling the wine supply at a party seems kind of underwhelming.
          Then there’s the fact that alcohol is at the center of the story. During the Prohibition years, tee-totaling Temperance preachers worked overtime trying to explain away this troublesome part of the story. Suddenly, conservative scholars discovered a so-called “forgotten fact” that generations of scholars before them had dismissed – that all the wine of Jesus’ day was really unfermented grape juice. Or, according to another theory, people habitually diluted their wine with water, so it had hardly any kick at all.
          If you’re a student of history, you know how hard it was to enforce Prohibition. Now think of the sunny Mediterranean culture of the Bible with an agricultural economy, vineyards everywhere you turn – do you really believe that people voluntarily diluted their favorite beverage with lots of water. Probably not. Besides, you can find lots of warnings in the Bible about drunkenness, so you know that over-indulgence was as much a thing in Jesus’ day as it is in ours.
          Bottom line – it was real wine that Jesus produced at Cana. He did so out of compassion for the bride and groom and their families – to spare them the social stigma of failing to extend the customary hospitality everyone expected.
          There is also ample evidence that Jesus loved a good party – he loved hanging out with people. So many times we see him and his disciples eating and drinking and having a grand old time. In fact, it was one of the things that the Scribes and Pharisees loved to criticize him for. They might have aspired to asceticism – They might have measured their lives by fasting and austere discipline. But this tradesman-rabbi from Nazareth was none of those things.
          Reflecting on this story, preacher Cosmo Gordon Lang had this to say more than a century ago: “There is a time to laugh as well as a time to weep, and the Son of Man, who shared our tears on the way to the grave of Lazarus and the cross of Calvary, shared our mirth at the feast of Cana. All the faculties of life are to be, not suspected, but redeemed from evil by the Christian; and one of the richest and happiest is the faculty of mirth. Our duty is not to check its brightness, but to keep its innocence; and surely in the laughter God is well pleased.” (1)
          Note what the writer reminds us of: that Jesus came into the world as Redeemer. He came not merely to purchase back human lives from slavery to sin, but to redeem the very earth itself. As Paul declares in Romans 8, Jesus came so “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
          Jesus does not come merely as a rule-giver, as the sort of austere and humorless leader for which the Pharisees hoped for. No, Jesus comes to celebrate all that’s good about this world and human life, and to teach us what needs to be done to make sure such goodness continues to abound. Naturally, he opposed sin. And Naturally, he would never have condoned the abuse of alcohol. But Jesus demonstrated such a love of laughter and such a zest for life that he was at times charged with being a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners.”
          By growing to maturity in a small Jewish village – and later in traveling with his disciples across the Galilee, Jesus took in human life in all its rich variety. He took it in – and he redeemed it. By taking on our human life, he made the experiences of birth, marriage, attending parties and playing with children and even death itself more sacred and meaningful. In this small, out of the way village of Cana, Jesus gives us a preview of how the whole of Creation will be redeemed. Jesus will step in and make what looks like a social disaster, into the event of the year.
          In the Bible, there are 35 recorded miracles of Jesus. Of these, Matthew talks about 20 of them, Mark – 18, and Luke also mentions 20. If you’re keeping score – yes, I know that’s more than 35, but there is some overlap in the first three Gospels.
          The Gospel of John though, is unique. It’s quite different from Matthew, Mark and Luke. John tells of only seven miracles – unique to his gospel. John is much less interested than the other three in presenting a straightforward historical narrative. John chooses and arranges his miracle stories carefully to make his point – which is more about Jesus’ identity than the things he did.
          So John is very intentional about choosing this miracle story at a wedding celebration and putting it right at the beginning of his story. This water into wine miracle results in the entire village laughing and dancing and enjoying themselves through the night – even though John is very aware of where Jesus story will end. Maybe John wants to show us something right from the beginning about Jesus as the Messiah.
          You may have noticed that those water jars that Jesus chose were usually used to fulfill ritual purification requirements. All the guests had purified themselves when they arrived so now they were standing empty. Perhaps with tongue-in-cheek Jesus singled out those containers to fill with wine. He could have pointed out some wine jugs or even wineskins – that’s what they were used for. But he doesn’t – he points out the water jars used to fulfill the law.
          Perhaps Jesus is giving us another kind of preview. Yes, Jesus is faithful to God’s law, but he has seen too many people burdened by the over-zealous application of it. He has seen the law, meant to free humanity from the burden of sin – transformed into an intricate machine for crushing the human spirit. Remember what Jesus told his disciples when they were hungry one Sabbath day? He sent them out into the fields to harvest some food to eat, saying “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.”
          For John, the changing of water into wine is a sign. That’s what he calls it. John carefully avoids the Greek word for “miracle” – even though that’s the word most of us would use in retelling this story. People of our age look back on this event and focus on the suspension of natural laws happening here. But people of John’s time would have taken it for granted that supernatural wonders like this could take place. But what did it mean?
          For John, the most important feature of the water turning into wine is the greater reality to which it points – the reality of God’s redeeming love, already at work in the person of Jesus Christ. The wedding at Cana is a tantalizing glimpse, a sneak preview, of all that will one day come to pass – the redemption, the rescue of God’s creation from the forces of darkness – and the everlasting celebration that will follow.
          For the early church, that celebration found it’s focus in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper – and for this reason, it’s no accident that wine is the central feature of the event in Cana. At the center of many other religions of the Roman world was the acrid smoke of burning sacrificial meat, the whispered words of mysterious revelation, or the re-enactment of a cosmic drama. But the center of Christian worship is different. At the center of Christian worship is a feast, a meal of bread and wine – the first fruits of a greater celebration yet to come.
          Of this first sign Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, John says it revealed his glory. That’s the future dimension of this story, that’s the preview of what is to come that we’re so likely to miss if we allow ourselves to be dazzled by the miracle of 120 gallons of fine wine from water. For John, what’s most significant about this wedding in Cana is the way it points us to the future and the way it functions as a sign in the truest sense.
          For this preview of God’s coming kingdom, let us give thanks, and may God be praised. Amen.

1. Cosmo Gordon Lang, “The Miracles of Jesus: Sunday Readings” in Good Words, vol 41, August 1900, 569.

01-12-2025 When You Pass Through the Waters

Thomas J Parlette
“When You Pass Through the Waters”
Isaiah 43: 1-7
1/12/25
          I wonder if anyone else has noticed that there seem to be a lot of commercials for cruises gracing the airways lately. Seems like every time I tune in to the Vikings game, or better yet, the Steelers game, there’s another ad for a Disney cruise vacation, or Carnival Cruise lines, or even Royal Caribbean. I guess it’s because we live in Minnesota and a tropical cruise sounds pretty good after the hustle and bustle of Christmas now that the temperatures are plunging below zero.
          In the constant race for bigger and better, Royal Caribbean has launched a new vessel called “Icon of the Seas.” It has 20 decks, 6 water slides, and 7 swimming pools. At more than 250,000 gross tone, it’s the biggest cruise ship ever built – until next year, I suppose.
          The “Icon of the Seas” can accommodate 7,600 guests. That’s like inviting the entire town of Pine Island, Oronoco and Hayfield to take a cruise together – and you’d still have room for another 600 guests. Wow, sounds like fun doesn’t it!
          Gary Shtenyngart was a passenger on the ship’s inaugural voyage and wrote about his experience in the May, 2024 issue of The Atlantic.  He says that the ship “looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies that make it look like a nightmarish version of Istanbul…” Clearly, not a fan.
          Maybe the food can save the day – how were the buffets?  Gary reports, “The buffet was groaning under the weight of what sounds like exotic and sophisticated dishes – marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws – but every sea creature tasted tragically the same.” OK – Gary was less than impressed. Still, if you want a drink, you can visit the “Swim and Tonic.” Billed as the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. At the very least, I think I might want my picture taken under that sign.
          How about entertainment – cruise ships are known for their entertainment. Well, you can see an ice show, acrobatics in the AquaDome or a comedy show in the Manhattan Comedy Club. Or, stick to the water parks and ride something called “Storm Chasers,” that our friend Gary says “flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism.” (1)
          Not quite the sort of baptism we’re talking about today – but a baptism non-the-less.
          Our passage from Isaiah today has a nautical sort of feeling as well, as he reminds us that “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you,” says God through the prophet, “and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.”
          If you’re a passenger on the “Icon of the Seas,” you are passing through the waters in luxury – but passing through the waters was a dangerous trip for the people of Israel. They remembered how Noah had been saved from the flood by his journey on the ark, and how tier ancestors had been delivered from captivity in Egypt by the parting of the Red Sea. For the Israelites, passage through water was no pleasure cruise. It was an escape from death and enslavement.
          Fortunately, the Israelites were delivered – not by the “Icon of the Seas”, but by the God of the Seas. The people of Israel were saved by the Lord, the one who created and formed them. The first seven verses of chapter 43 contain “the promise of Salvation,” writes Old Testament professor Brevard Childs. “God not only created Israel but redeemed her.” God called her by name and said, “you are mine. Israel is promised God’s special protection by the Holy One of Israel,” says Childs. God made promises to the people: “I will be with you,” said God; the waters “shall not overwhelm you.” (2)
          The God of the Seas doesn’t have 20 decks, swim-up bars, ice shows, stand-up comedians or water slides. But there is salvation, redemption and God’s protection. As we pass through the seas, we are promised that God will be with us, and that the waters of life will not overwhelm us.
          “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” God is holy, more awe-inspiring than anything humans can create. God is our Savior, the one who delivers us from sin and death. God redeems us by paying a ransom for us, and says to us “you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.”
          Now I know it might seem ridiculous to compare God to an enormous cruise ship – in the end even the “Icon of the Seas,” the biggest cruise ship afloat, is no match for God. But the Royal Cruise Line does have a feature to consider called the “Sea Pass Card.” This card, held by each guest, gives access to a cashless system used for all onboard purchases and services. A person with a SeaPass card can be connected to everything that the “Icon of the Seas” can offer.
          Interesting – God has a similar kind of offer. In this passage God says, “To everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” – to all of God’s people is given a precious access card. God’s version of the SeaPass doesn’t give you access to drinks at the “Swim and Tonic” or poker chips at the onboard casino – but it does the carry the promise, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” With this access card, the Lord will always be with us, and the waters will never overwhelm us.
          Now, don’t get me wrong - when we are traveling with God’s version of the SeaPass, we are not promised a luxurious cruising experience through life. But we are given something more valuable and long-lasting – salvation and divine help. We receive these gifts when we trust the Lord God of Israel, and when we put our faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
          For remember, Jesus was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy – “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.” When Mary was pregnant, an angel said to Joseph, “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The angel also said, “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us.”
          Isaiah is the prophet that Jesus quoted the most often – eight times in all. And Jesus began his ministry by reading from the scroll of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.”
          Salvation and Divine help. Both come from God, as promised by Isaiah. Both are found in Jesus. In fact, I’m sure you remember, Jesus’ name means “salvation.” In Matthew, the angel hints at this when he says that Joseph is to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” The Hebrew word for “salvation” is “yeshuah”, a noun derived from the verbal root that means “relief”, in the sense of being rescued from an enemy, trouble or illness. The name “Joshua” comes from this word, and it evolved over time into the name “Jesus.” Throughout its long history, the word “yeshua” has carried the sense of victory over danger, defeat or distress.
          Yes – Jesus means salvation. When we put our faith in Jesus, we are rescued from anything that can destroy us: Sin, enemies, troubles or illnesses. Jesus is our Redeemer, which means that he pays our debt and delivers us from destruction and death. As God says through Isaiah, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you… I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
          Jesus is also given the name Immanuel – “God with us.” This is the gift of divine companionship and help, in the face of any threats or dangers. In Isaiah, God promises that “when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
          The Rev. James Lawson Jr. was a leader in the civil rights movement, committed to nonviolence. At one point, he was confronted by a white man in a black leather motorcycle jacket. The man spit on Rev. Lawson, who calmly asked the man for a handkerchief. The man was stunned by the request – but he handed over a handkerchief just the same. Rev. Lawson calmly cleaned himself off, and then started asking the man about his motorcycle. When the man replied that he had customized his chopper himself, Rev. Lawson opened the door to a conversation, instead of a confrontation. (3)
          Rev. Lawson was walking through fire, he was passing through the dangerous waters, but God was with him. And since he was committed to the non-violent path of Jesus, he found a way to communicate with a man who had shown hatred toward him. In that moment of confrontation, Rev. Lawson defused the tension and established a human connection.
          The prophet Isaiah introduces us to God’s version of the SeaPass, which connects us to salvation and divine help, in the roughest of seas. This all-access pass is seen most clearly in Jesus, whose name reminds us that “God is with us.”
          And with God with us in Jesus Christ, we will not be overwhelmed, no matter what storms we face. We are given salvation, redemption and protection by the God of the Seas.
          And for that – may God be praised. Amen.

1. Gary Shteyngart, “A Meatball at Sea: Seven nights aboard the biggest cruise ship that ever sailed.” The Atlantic, May 2024, 52-65.

2. Brevard Childs, Isaiah (Louisville, Ky, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 334.

3. Paul W. Valentine, “James Lawson, an architect of civil rights nonviolence, dies at 95.” The Washington Post, June 10, 2024.

1-05-2025 Written into the Will

Thomas J Parlette
“Written Into the Will”
Ephesians 1: 3-14
1/5/25
          They didn’t legally adopt him – but they surely did raise him. And he was forever grateful.
          The young African American boy had been born into a poor family in New Orleans in 1900. He grew up in a neighborhood so rough it was known as The Battlefield. His grandmother raised him until he was 5, after which he went to be with his mother – but she barely had the means to care for herself, much less a 5 year old boy.
          What saved him was a Lithuanian Jewish family known as the Karnofskys. They took him into their home. They cared for him as if he were their known. He helped around the house and helped the Karnofskys’ sons, Morris and Alex, gather “rags and bone” and deliver coal. Years later, he recalled how the Karnofskys taught him a song known as the “Russian Lullaby.” They didn’t just teach him the words and the melody – they encouraged him to sing it “from the heart.”
          His first musical performance may have been at the side of the Karnofsky’ junk wagon. He played a tin horn to attract customers and distinguish their cart from those of the other people hawking the same sort of second-hand goods. Sensing his young friend’s interest in music, Morris Karnofsky gave the boy a salary advance so he could buy a cornet from a pawn shop.
          The boy would play the cornet – and its close musical cousin, the trumpet – for the rest of his life. He would also sing – always “from the heart,” as his adoptive family the Karnofskys had taught him.
          There were difficult days ahead. At the age of 12, he was arrested for shooting a gun into the air. Because, at that tender age, he was already what the newspaper called “an old offender,” he was sentenced to live at a Spartan reform school known as the Negro Waifs’ Home. Eventually he was released to the custody of family members and he bounced from one relative’s house to another.
          Eventually, his raw and prodigious musical talent led to jobs playing in dance halls and later in jazz bands on Mississippi riverboats. He ended up settling in Chicago and became one of the most famous musicians in America.
          His name was Louis Armstrong. He never forgot where he came from, nor the Karnofsky family who had taken him in and shown him such kindness. For the rest of his life, Armstrong wore a Star of David as a tribute to his adopted family and – to the astonishment of the Jewish musicians he played with – he spoke Yiddish fluently. (1)
         Our reading from Ephesians addresses this topic of adoption as it relates to our relationship with God. Adoption is really the beginning of a new type of relationship. The adoptee was once in a family relationship with this person, but now they are in a family relationship with someone else. From the moment of adoption, a child is placed into the arms or into the care of an adoptive parent, there is a new relationship – complete with fresh prospects, for good or for ill sometimes – for a different future, a different family, a different nurturing style, an alternative opportunity for education and enrichment, among other reasons.
          Here is what the Bible says: “God destined us for adoption as God’s children through Jesus Christ.” So Paul says OUR adoption into the family of God was a part of the Divine plan. “God destined us…” Paul says. Now, we may not understand what that means, but at the very least, we can be assured that the fact that we’re occupying space on this planet is not some cosmic accident. We’re here for a reason. Our adoption into God’s family is not an afterthought or even a back-up plan B – it was God’s intention and desire all along. Before the foundation of the world, we were always to be included as one of God’s children. That’s been God’s plan from the get-go.
          So, how is this possible? It’s possible “through Jesus Christ,” says Paul. This phrase is crucial because it highlights how our adoption is realized. Again, we may not understand the “how”, but we can still claim the “truth” of it.” Jesus’ sacrificial love on the cross paved the way for our reconciliation with God, breaking down the barriers of sin and separation. Our faith in Christ is one way of claiming the blessing of our adopted status as a child of God.
          But why would God do this? Why would God want to bring us into the family? Why would God want to write us into the will and leave us an inheritance?
          Paul says that our adoption is “according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” This underscores the fact that God’s decision to adopt us was not made out of obligation or necessity, but out of God’s sheer delight and sovereign choice. God takes pleasure in calling us God’s children, just like we take pleasure in introducing our children to friends.
          For instance, think about that friend who has just become a father, mother or grandparent for the first time. When you see them – what’s the first thing they do? Nowadays, they pull out their phones and start scrolling through a couple hundred baby pictures!
          Yes, we bring joy to God. We are a child upon whom, like an earthly parent, love can be bestowed. How great it is to know that we cherished and valued by God, who is often described as a heavenly parent. Think about it – God is showing your pictures right now to everyone up there in heaven, a proud parent or grandparent!
         Paul assures us today that we are adopted as God’s children through Jesus Christ. And since we are God’s children, we are written into the will – we receive a Divine inheritance. Our inheritance includes redemption, forgiveness and the riches of God’s grace. In return, we are called to live grateful lives, transformed by God’s grace, living in a way that brings glory and honor to God, who delights in us as adopted children.
          In July of 1939, a train filled with hundreds of Jewish children pulled into a London train station. It had traveled all the way from Czechoslovakia. The children had been rescued by Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who had cut short a ski vacation in Switzerland, journeyed to Prague and subsequently convinced the Nazi authorities to release 669 children onto eight separate evacuation trains, through a program known as Kindertransport, later earning him the nickname of the “British Schindler.”
          Those children were the lucky ones. Of about 15,000 Jewish children later interned in camps in Czechoslovakia, only about 100 survived the war.
          One of the Kindertransport children was Vera Diamantova, age 11. Years later she recalled how difficult it was for her parents to decide to release her and her two sisters to the Kindertransport program.
          Only one of her two sisters was able to make it out of the country with her. The other was scheduled to travel on a later train that the Nazis canceled at the last minute.
          The scene at the Prague station will be with me forever,” she told a Daily Telegraph reporter. “The forced cheerfulness of my parents – their last words of love, encouragement and advice. Until that moment, I felt more excited than afraid, but when the whistle blew and the train pulled slowly out of the station, my mother and father could no longer mask their anguish.”
          Her mother would die from typhoid a few days after being liberated from Bergen-Belsen. Vera credited her parents with the “moral courage” to give up their children so their lives could be saved.
          Young Vera would be taken in by the Rainfords, a Methodist family from the Liverpool area. The Rainfords had children of their own and couldn’t easily afford another – but they made do. She would later credit them with a different sort of moral courage.
          Years later, a grown-up Vera would ask her adoptive father why they had decided to make room in their family for her. He explained – “I knew I couldn’t save the world. I knew I couldn’t stop the war from coming, but I knew I could save one human life. And as Hitler broke – as Chamberlain broke his pledge to Czechoslovakia and Jews were in the direst danger, I decided it must be a Czech Jewish child.”
          Vera also recalled what happened after the train arrived in London, as she was the last in her group to be adopted. She was greeted by the British woman she would come to know as Mummy Rainford – “And as she saw me, she started laughing and smiling and crying at the same time and she ran toward me, flung her arms around me and spoke some words I didn’t understand then, but they were – ‘You shall be loved.” And loved I was.”
          “And you know,” Vera added, “those are the most important words any child in danger, and child in need, can hear.” (2)
          “You shall be loved” is what God whispers to us all as we are adopted as God’s children, and written into the will.
        So I invite you to begin this new year by taking your seat at the Table as we look forward to the feast of God’s coming Kingdom.
          May God be praised. Amen.

1. . Homileticsonline, retrieved 12/10/24

2. Sam Roberts, “Vera Gissing, Who Was Rescued by Britain’s Schindler.” Dies at 93,” The New York Times, 3/25/22

12-22-2024 In the Sixth Month

Thomas J Parlette
“In the Sixth Month”
Luke 1: 39-55
12/22/24
          Nadia Bolz-Webber once shared an anonymous poem written by pastor from New York:
          “It seems everyone wants at 3-5 years’ experience.
          Except God, that is.
          God looks for the one willing to try something new.” (1)
          How true. Of all the people God could have chosen, God chose a teenage girl named Mary.
          Despite all the songs, all the stories and all the art work – we really don’t know that much about Mary. She was a common person, living a quiet life in a tiny village, just one of many millions of human beings over the centuries who have lived and died without a birth certificate, Social Security number or digital footprint of any kind.
          If it weren’t for the fact that she gave birth to Jesus, we would never know who she was. But her place in history is secured by what happened to her on one particular day, when out of nowhere, Mary had a visit from an angel.
          The scriptural account from Luke – taken from the verses just prior to today’s reading – is pretty bare bones.
          “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.”
          Pretty sparse – but still, packed with details. Did you notice how Luke begins this part of the story – “in the sixth month?” Luke is very intentional to specify the stage of the pregnancy of Mary’s cousin – Elizabeth, as he sets the stage for the annunciation. From this we learn that John the Baptist – Elizabeth’s son – was 3 months older than Jesus.
          Luke never reveals what Mary was doing when the angel appeared to her. Maybe she was doing household chores, or wandering the countryside, or lying peacefully in bed, just before nodding off to sleep. Nor does he tell us precisely how Mary experienced the angel. Was it a ghostly apparition glowing around the edges, or was it an angel like we see in the renaissance paintings with a flowing robe and big white wings, or was it an ordinary person with a heavenly gleam in the eye” We don’t know.
          But we do know what the angel says. “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
          What does Gabriel mean when he says this? What does he mean by “favored one”? Is he saying Mary has been chosen because, of all the young women on earth, she’s real standout, especially faithful and virtuous? Is he saying that she won some heaven lottery to see who was going to give birth to Jesus?
          There’s no reason to doubt that Mary was faithful and virtuous, a very nice young woman – but that’s probably not why Gabriel calls he “favored.” He calls her favored because of the remarkable role God has chosen for her to play. The initiative here is entirely God’s. It’s God who chooses – for some divine reasons – who is going to bear the holy child. For that reason alone – Mary is the favored one.
          But is she? It would hardly seem so to most people who lived in that very traditional society. They had strong and rigid beliefs about the ethics of pregnancy and childbirth. Women were typically married off as young as 12 or 13 – so it wasn’t Mary’s age that was the issue. Plenty of other young women were getting married and having babies at roughly the same age.
          God’s idea of “favor” and our own are radically different. When we hear the word “favor” today, our mind probably goes to party favors, or perhaps which sibling your parents liked more, or which pair of boots you’re more likely to wear in the cold. But “favor” here refers to God’s choice, not Mary’s benefit. The Greek word here is a variation of the word for “grace”, which of course is something bestowed upon us, not something we initiate.
           We don’t get much of an insight into Mary’s emotional state in the angelic encounter. She is probably afraid at some level. You could also expect that she was anxious, confused, and worried – probably a combination of all those emotions flooded over her. Luke does tell us she was perplexed by the angel’s words, pondering what sort of greeting this might be. So, Mary is clearly baffled by this extraordinary new – and no wonder!
          After the angel tells her what sort of child this is to be – the Son of the Most High, who will reign forever on the throne of David – Mary finally musters the courage to ask a question. But it’s not the question you might expect. “How can this be, since I am still a virgin?”
          A very reasonable question indeed. In light of the amazing announcement the angel has just made, it’s not surprising that she would ask “How?”
          What is surprising is the question that Mary doesn’t ask. She doesn’t ask “Why me?” It could be tempting when an angel brings you a message about this life-changing mission God wants you to undertake, to drop your feet a little. Many of the Old Testaments prophets did – Moses resisted God at first – he asked “Why Me? Can’t you send somebody more qualified?” Jonah did the same thing – he too asked “Why me? I don’t like those people in Ninevah, I don’t want to help them, just go ahead and punish the whole city for all I care.” But not Mary. She shows no self-pity at all. She doesn’t try to argue or change God’s mind, or tell the angel – “I don’t think so, tell God to find someone else.”
          No, her response seems to be, “Why not me?” She seems to be all in right from the beginning. She moves directly to the “How?” question. There never seems a chance Mary wouldn’t say yes. I think it may have taken longer for her to get to yes than we sometimes think – but even if she thought about it, she was always leaning to yes, I’ll do it. She is now curious to know HOW God is going to do this remarkable thing.
         That’s not the question most of us would ask if angel showed up and said God has chosen us to accomplish a very important but dangerous task – one likely to lead to being shunned and ridiculed by our community. It might even cost us our lives. No – most of us would probably move towards “Why me? Isn’t there someone else who is more qualified?”
          But Mary isn’t built that way. It’s not long before she graduates from “How can this be?” to “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
          Which is where we pick up the story this morning. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth was also informed by Gabriel that she was carrying a special child. So, in the manner of expectant mothers everywhere, Mary goes off to visit her cousin. Given the amount of time between their due dates, Mary was probably going to help her older cousin with the housework and daily chores. And Elizabeth has an opportunity to share her wisdom and knowledge about what to expect in the months ahead – sort of a face to face version of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”
          The greeting between them is touching – especially the way the infant John leaps in his mother’s womb when the unborn Jesus comes near. But Elizabeth’s words are significant, too – “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
          It’s here that we finally encounter the “Why me?” question. Only it’s not Mary who asks it. It’s Elizabeth – “Why me – I’m no one special- why am I so fortunate to have this woman, the God-bearer, the soon-to-be mother of our Savior, come visit me?”
          Elizabeth sums it up with the statement – “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
          And there you have it – that’s why Mary is favored, that’s why she is blessed. She is blessed because she believes. She believes all along that God’s promise will be fulfilled in her. She takes God at God’s word and never questions the truth of the promise – at least not that we read about in Luke. Her only question is “How?”
          That’s the reason Mary is so blessed, and why she sings the song she does. She never asks Why me? She never sings Woe is me to have to bear this burden. Her question is instead – “Why not me?”
          That’s a useful and important question to keep beside as we move through life – especially in the more challenging times. When something bad happens, we may be tempted at first to to ask – “Why me?” We’re only human, after all. But there’s a distinct downside to asking “Why me?” Wondering why me freezes us in place. We get stuck in self-pity and dwell on questions like – “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” Questions like that guarantee, that as long as we keep asking them, we’ll never make any progress in learning to live with whatever situation we’re facing.
         That’s the remarkable thing about Mary – she moves so directly past the “Why me?” – right to the “Why not me? How will this happen – what’s the plan here God.” Mary, even at her young age, seems to know intuitively that life itself – any life – is a gift from God, and that God is good to us even amid the struggles we face.
          One of my favorite Beatles song has always been “Let it Be.” Paul McCartney has said that the song was inspired by a dream he had about his late mother, Mary Patricia McCartney, who died of cancer in 1956.
          Things with the Beatles were not going very smoothly, and Paul had been weighing his options, thinking about his future and whether he should leave the band. In a dr4eam one night, McCartney’s mother came to him and said – “It’s gonna be OK. Just let it be.” McCartney said he felt a sense of peace and felt reminded that things would eventually work out.
          So he wrote “Let it Be” and sang it as the last Beatles single before he left the group. Just let it be.
          People often wondered if he was making a biblical reference in the song with the line – “Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be.” And it does fit – but McCartney said he wrote it about his own mother, Mary. It still works.
          “Here am I, the servant of the Lord – let it be with me according to your word.” And that’s what she did. That’s what she always did. May we all be so blessed – through whatever ups and downs and struggles we face, through whatever trials and heartaches life might bring – may we follow Mary’s example, and respond – “Let it be…”
          May God be praised. Amen.
1. Anonymous prayer shared by Nadia Bolz-Weber, “Some questions for Mary – An Advent sermon,” Patheos.com, Dec. 24, 2014

12-08-2024 A Shout Out To Isaiah

Thomas J Parlette
“A Shout Out to Isaiah”
Luke 3: 1-6
12/8/24
 
          What if you could bring back a species of animal from the past? Such was the concept of Michael Crichton’s book “Jurassic Park,” in which various species of dinosaurs were brought back to life using DNA found in a mosquito preserved in amber. It certainly made for a great movie.
          Turns out, that is not as far-fetched as it seems. There is a company called Colossal Biosciences that is trying to bring back the wooly mammoth.
          The wooly mammoth was as big as an African elephant, but it was covered with long, scraggly fur. It lived during the last ice age – it’s ears and tail were short, to minimize heat loss in the cold environment. The wooly mammoth ate grass as it roamed northern Europe, Asia and North America. It provided food and clothing for early humans who hunted them for their meat, fur and it’s long, curved tusks, used for fighting and foraging.
          Then it disappeared, with the last survivors dying off about 4,00 years ago. The wooly mammoth became extinct.
          And now Colossal Biosciences wants to give the wooly mammoth a fresh start. It wants to revive the giant animal through modern genetics, and then repopulate the Arctic tundra. According to the Washington Post, Colossal Biosciences “has produced a line of Asian elephant stem cells that can be coaxed to transform into other types of cells needed to reconstruct the extinct giant.” Or, if this is not possible, the want to create “a mammoth-like elephant designed to thrive in the cold.”
          Researchers have sequenced enough of the genetic blueprint of the wooly mammoth to create a guide for remaking the animal. But to discover which genes control the animals curved tusks and thick fur, tissue samples must be grown in the lab. George Church, a Harvard geneticist, wants to use elephant stem cells to engineer mammoth DNA and grow these tissue samples. Sounds a bit like the plot of an upcoming “Jurassic Park – Part 7”
          So, why would a scientist do this? Bringing back a lost species is an attempt to reverse the toll that humans have played in the ongoing extinction crisis. About 800 extinctions have been documented in the last 400 years, although some scientists believe the number is far higher. Even if researchers cannot resurrect wooly mammoths, they want to make discoveries that will help save animals that are still with us from extinction - including endangered animals such as elephants. (1)
          At the beginning of the 1st century, the people of Israel believed that the prophets of God went the way of extinction. Elijah and Elisha had roamed the earth some 900 years earlier. Then came Jonah, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The last prophet was Malachi – about 400 years before the birth of Christ. And then…. Silence. In fact, some scholars refer to this period of time as “the silent years. Between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, there were these 400 years of silence – no word from God, no major or minor prophetic activity. Nothing. The prophets seemed like the wooly mammoths of the Hebrew Scriptures – they appeared gone forever.
          But then, in “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, When Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high Priest hood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”
          John “wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” You might say he looked a wooly, but smaller than a mammoth.
          Luke tells us that John “went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

       John message was not new – he was actually giving a shout out to a prophet the people thought had gone extinct. Isaiah had said all this before – hundreds of years earlier – “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”
          John’s version is certainly not a word for word translation – but John is clearly giving Isaiah a shout out, bringing back to life a prophet thought to have disappeared forever.
          Although the people of Israel thought the prophets were long gone, Suddenly John appeared and stated preparing them to see Jesus as “the salvation of God.” No stem cells needed to bring this prophet to life – all John needed was the inspiration of the word of God, a word that has had life-giving power throughout human history. Isaiah himself said, “The grass withers; the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. Get you up to a high mountain… lift your voice with strength… say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!”
          That’s what John is saying – “Here is your God!” with his finger pointed straight at Jesus.
          The same challenge is placed before us today on this second Sunday of Advent – listen for the word of God, bring Isaiah back to prominence and prepare people for Jesus, the salvation of God.
          First, we listen for the word of God. In a world of competing messages, we need to open our ears, our hearts and our minds to what God wants to say to us. As we know, God’s word can be difficult to follow, but it is always designed to help us. Think of the words of the 10 commandments – “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Or the advice of Isaiah to “seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.” And the command of Jesus to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
          All those words, advice and commands are meant to help us, not hurt us. Keeping the Sabbath gives us time for rest and renewal, what we call “self-care” these days. Caring for the poor makes our community a better place, and loving our enemies breaks the cycle of violence, retribution and revenge. God’s word may be challenging, and it is usually countercultural, but it is designed to maximize our health and happiness. If we are walking away from this word, we need to hear John’s call to repent, turn around, check out your spiritual GPS and get yourself re-routed, as Siri might say.
          Next, join John in giving a shout out to Isaiah by reviving his message. Isaiah lived in the 8th century before Christ, but he was no wooly mammoth. He insisted on the practice of social justice, commanding people to “loose the bonds of injustice… let the oppressed go free… and share bread with the hungry.” He wanted everyone in society to be treated fairly, especially the most vulnerable.
         At the same time, he preached a message of radical inclusion, saying that God’s house “shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” The Old Testament scholar Brevard Childs says that this verse “removes any doubt that God’s purpose for God’s house is directed to ALL people without restriction.” (2) This is a new vision of community, in which all people who honor the Lord in their actions are to be included, even those previously excluded, such as eunuchs and foreigners.
          What a radical shift – to be honest, it still is a radical shift. Suddenly, the community of faith was not limited to people of the same nationality, and being admitted to the congregation did not require being part of a traditional family. Through Isaiah, God called for barriers to fall, which began a movement of inclusiveness that only accelerated when Jesus began his ministry.
          A strong connection exists between Isaiah and Jesus, since Jesus is the fulfillment of many of Isaiah’s prophecies, and Isaiah is the prophet quoted by Jesus the most – eight times, in fact. Do you remember when Jesus cleansed the Temple? He said “My house shall be called a house of prayer,” bringing Isaiah back to life. We give Isaiah a shout out whenever we take action to make our church “a house of prayer for ALL peoples.”
          Finally, we are challenged to prepare people for Jesus, the salvation of God. This connection between Jesus and salvation is made by John, a messenger in the mold of Isaiah, one “who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation.” The Hebrew word for salvation is “yeshu’ah”, a noun derived from a verb that means “relief” in the sense of being rescued from an enemy, trouble or illness. The name “Joshua” comes from this word, and eventually it evolved into the name “Jesus.”
         No surprise there – Jesus means salvation.
          Throughout its long history, the word “yeshu’ah” has meant victory over danger, defeat or distress. I’m sure you remember what the angel said to Joseph – “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Salvation means rescue from every trouble and fear, including being saved from our sins. We prepare people for Jesus when we are messengers of Peace instead of conflict – Good News instead of bad, and Salvation instead of destruction, revenge and retribution. Jesus is the salvation of God proclaimed by John, and now, by us. When we gather to celebrate the birth of Christ, we always hear these words from Isaiah – “All this took place took fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: Look a virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us.”
          Yes, God is with us – in every time and place. God speaks a word meant to help us, and God gathers us into congregations and fellowships that should include ALL people. And most importantly, Jesus is our salvation, saving us from anything that can hurt or destroy us.
          May God be praised. Amen.

1. Dino Grandino, “Scientists say they’re closer to reviving mammoths. What could go wrong? The Washington Post, March 6, 2024.

2. Brevard Childs, Isaiah, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p 459.

12-01-2024 Walking the Desire Path of Faith

Thomas J Parlette
“Walking the Desire Path of Faith”
1st Thessalonians 3: 9-13
12/1/24, First Advent
          I remember in my college days at Eastern Illinois University, there was some construction going on around the campus. They had just finished a new dorm building on the outskirts of campus the previous year, and that was where I had been assigned to live as a freshman. I remember there was a main walkway leading up to the front doors of the dorm, but there weren’t any other defined sidewalks – just the main walkway. But you could see where the students had started to make little pathways, depending on which building they were going to. They were a bunch a little dirt paths beginning to form that led to the library, or the other dormitory building, Old Main with all the administration offices, the student union or any of the other buildings that housed the business school or the social sciences – where I was usually going. It was kind of any interesting strategy, let the people decide the best route. The students were usually going to pick the most direct route, so let them show you the path and pave it later. And that’s exactly what happened – by the time I graduated, all the dirt paths had become sidewalks.
          I later found out that this process actually has a name – “desire paths.” Turns out architects and urban planners want pedestrians to enjoy their walk, so they used to spend a great deal of time trying to plot, guess and surmise how pedestrians would prefer to go from one corner of a campus or a park to another.
          So based on how the urban planners thought you might want to walk, they created paths and laid down gravel, or asphalt or concrete. On the CAD program it all looked great.
          But months later, if you walked those carefully laid out paths, you would start to notice little dirt paths veering off this way and that way. What the planners started to see was how people really wanted to get from one place to another. Rather than follow the traditional sidewalks, people would deviate on random angles to save a couple of seconds, and over time urban planners gave this process a name – “desire paths.” (1) Save some time and money and let the people show you how they want to go before you pour any concrete. A desire path usually represents the shortest or the most easily navigated route between an origin and a destination.
          The Bible is full of ideas about paths – both the good paths and the bad one. In the Book of Proverbs we read:
         Keep straight the path of your feet, and all your ways will be sure.
-         Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insights. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
-         I make in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice.
-         And of course, the words of John the Baptist, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.”
And that’s just a taste. Our scriptures have a lot to say about the importance of choosing – desiring, if you will – the right path. And it’s a good topic as we begin the season of Advent.
In today’s reading from Paul’s first letter to the church in Thessalonica, we get the ancient apostle’s ideas of what makes for good paths. What sort of path should we desire that gives us the best chance to get to the destination we want?
Paul writes, “But Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith.” Later in the passage, he adds, “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.”
What does it mean to walk on the path of faith? It could mean that we’re comfortable when walking by faith and not by sight, trusting in the promises of God even when circumstances seem uncertain and the path ahead appears unclear. The writer of Hebrews put it best with these words – “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” These words are perfectly captured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indy must cross an enormous chasm to get to the Holy Grail. He sees no possible way to get across, and he finally concludes, “It’s a leap of faith,” and he steps out into the void, and an invisible bridge appears only after he takes the plunge. Step by step, he makes it across.
Getting comfortable with that sort of sightless walking takes time. That’s why walking on the path of faith might also mean we must learn perseverance. Faith enables us to keep going in the face of tough times, to find hope in the midst of despair, and to experience joy even in the midst of sorrow. We all get knocked down sometimes – but it’s getting up again that really matters.
Walking in the path of faith is easier when it is done in community. Faith is not meant to be lived in isolation, but in community with other believers. That’s why the Bible places such importance on living together in faith, answering to call to encourage, support and uplift one another, bearing each other’s burdens, and sharing in each other’s joys and sorrows.
The actor Martin Sheen spoke on this topic last year. He was giving an interview about the pandemic and was referencing a movie he made with his son Emilio Estevez. The movie was made in 2011, it was called The Way. Sheen played a bereaved father walking The Camino pilgrimage route in Spain, completing his deceased son’s journey. In the interview he said, “I think that people are looking for something that was sort of heightened during the pandemic, when people began to hear the birds again and smell clean air, despite the horrors of the pandemic and so many deaths, and so they were rejuvenated when the pandemic ended and they were permitted to go outside their homes, and then they wanted to go outside of themselves. They wanted to touch the sacred that exists in all of us. The wanted to find a way, as I often say, to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh, and that what pilgrimage is all about. You know, the flesh is walking, the spirit is listening, and they come together and they form community with all the other pilgrims in front, behind, and right and left of you for the 500 miles from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela. But it’s a journey inside as well as a physical journey outside.” (2)
“To touch the sacred that exists in all of us… find a way to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh.” That’s a pretty good definition of what we try to do in this season of Advent. We search once more for that path that will lead us to God.
We know there are pitfalls, they are dangers.
One of the biggest is that tension that exists between belief and doubt. No one who is walking by faith is going to be immune from doubt or fear. Just imagine that someone stopped by your house, a place you know well, and blindfolded you. And then challenged you to find your way to the kitchen, down to the basement, to the bathroom and finally to your bedroom. How confident would you be? You’ve navigated your house hundreds of times, maybe even in the dark, but you do it blindfolded – or would you have a little doubt, a little fear. Of course you would. It’s only natural. All the great heroes of the faith wrestled with fear and doubt – no one is immune.
Another challenge to walking the desire path is the temptation to prioritize materialistic pursuits and pleasures over what is best for us spiritually. We spend a lot of time in Advent, and then again in Lent, trying to avoid this particular temptation. Walking on the desire path of faith means that we’ll be called upon to make some difficult choices sometimes, we may have to make some sacrifices that run counter to societal norms or maybe even our own personal desires. The path of faith may call for forgiveness, standing up for justice and decency, persevering in the face of persecution, rejection and ridicule, and living a life of simplicity and humility. All of that can be tough at times.
But ultimately walking the desire path is rewarding. It is marked by moments of profound grace, divine intervention and spiritual growth.
In his book, The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner wrote: “To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world’s sake – even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death – that little by little we start to come alive. This was not a conclusion that I came to in time. It was a conclusion from beyond time that came to me. God knows I have never been any good at following the road it pointed me to, but at least, by grace, I glimpsed the road and saw it is the only one worth traveling.” (3)
So, as we begin this season of Advent, we journey on the desire path for ourselves, but also for the sake of the world. That we may catch a glimpse of the only path worth following, that we may touch that sense of sacred that exists in all of us, and find a way to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh.
Let us gather at the Table and be nourished for the journey.
May God be praised. Amen.1. Homileticsonline, retrieved 11/15/24
2. Ibid…
3. Ibid…

11-24-2024 "Let's Hear It For Someone Who Needs No Introduction"

Thomas J Parlette
“Let’s hear it for someone who needs no introduction.”
Rev. 1: 4b-8
11/24/24
          Some of you know that I am a certified Master Biblical Storyteller through the Network of Biblical Storytellers. It takes a couple of years to complete the training. It is something short of a Doctor of Ministry degree, but the training is very similar. We read books and wrote papers, videotaped ourselves telling stories and received feedback. The program culminated with a full evening story telling concert of about two hours and a project such as a teaching resource or a book of some kind. All in all, it’s a pretty rigorous program.
          One of the things we learned was the importance of introductions – how to give a good introduction and what you should suggest for your own introduction.
          We learned it was important to do some research, gather some information, establish the speaker’s credibility, build anticipation – and remember, keep it concise and engaging.
          You’ve heard these sort of introductions at conferences or classes or concerts. You’re familiar with expressions that usually get tacked on the end, such as…
         Please join me in welcoming…
          It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the one and only…
          Please give it up for…
          Let’s have a round of applause for…
          Let’s hear it for a person who needs no introduction…
          An effective introduction takes a bit of thought, and a bit of homework. But if you do it well, it can launch your guest into a great lecture, lesson or performance right from the beginning.
          This morning, in our text from the Book of Revelation, John has the task of giving an introduction for Jesus, our Lord and Savior. An intimidating task, for sure. How would you go about introducing Jesus?
          Well, you might go online and see what one of the Artificial Intelligence apps might provide. For instance, here’s one example that came from Yoodli AI, imagining that the speaker is introducing Jesus to the Jewish Sanhedrin in A.D. 29:
“Honorable members of the Sanhedrin.
It is with great reverence and humility that I stand before you today to introduce a figure whose presence has captivated hearts and minds throughout the land of Judea and beyond- Jesus of Nazareth.
In the bustling streets and dusty villages of our land, Jesus has emerged as a teacher, a healer, and a beacon of hope for the masses. His words, spoken with authority and compassion, have stirred the hearts of the people, drawing crowds wherever he goes.
Yet, amidst the fervor and admiration that surrounds Jesus, there are also questions and concerns that weigh heavily upon the minds of many, including members of this esteemed council… Jesus’ ministry, marked by acts of healing and compassion, and inclusivity, has raised eyebrows among some members of our community. His willingness to associate with tax collectors, sinners and outcasts challenges our understanding of righteousness and purity according to the laws of Moses. Moreover, Jesus teachings have sparked debate and controversy among scholars and religious leaders. His interpretation of the Scriptures, particularly regarding matters of Sabbath observance and ritual purity, diverges from the traditions handed down to us. Therefore, I urge you, my esteemed colleagues, to approach this deliberation with open minds, guided by righteousness and compassion. Let us engage in thoughtful dialogue and prayerful reflection as we seek to discern the path forward in our interactions with Jesus and his followers. May the wisdom of our ancestors and the guidance of the Almighty be our companions in this sacred endeavor.
Thank you.
          Not bad for a computer. But John takes a bit of a different tack. Today’s text is John’s attempt to introduce Jesus to his readers scattered throughout the Roman empire, and subsequent readers from that time on. The intro is short, but powerful. It is all about Jesus Christ, fitting on a day like this when we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, or, as it is sometimes called, Reign of Christ Sunday – the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Next Sunday we start a new year with the First Sunday of Advent. This is when we inaugurate a new journey through the life of Christ, beginning with his birth. But today, we are at the end of our liturgical year, and we end with a celebration of Jesus as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the One and Only, the One seated on his throne as King of kings and Lord of lords.
          So, let’s take a closer look at how John introduces Jesus, our Lord and Savior, seated at the right hand of God. What does John have to say?
          John argues that the Jesus he is now introducing is and has always been eternal. This must be an important point because he begins and ends his introduction by stressing this concept. In verse four he says: “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.” Then in verse 8: “I am the Alpha and the omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” This declaration encapsulates the timeless nature and absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ. He is the beginning and the end, the eternal and unchanging foundation upon which all creation rests.
          We’ve heard it so often we might need to remind ourselves why that is important. In a world marked by uncertainty and transience, the truth of Christ’s eternal nature provides a firm anchor for our faith. He is the unchanging constant in a world of flux, the source of hope amid the ebb and flow of human history.
          It is a pretty recent phenomenon that we have devoted so much time and energy into making sure we understand what is real and what is fake. That’s why in times of uncertainty, conflict and fear, it’s reassuring to remember that Jesus Christ is the one constant we can depend on and that his will is going to ultimately prevail.
          In practical terms, what does this mean? It means that we can trust God’s faithfulness. When we feel overwhelmed by the pace of life or the pressures of the moment, we know that God transcends time – which is why we can trust in God’s timing and plan for our lives.
          It means that we can find comfort in God’s constant presence. It’s no accident that the Angel told Joseph before Jesus was born that the child’s name would not only be Jesus, but Emmanuel, meaning “God with Us.” Remember, John’s audience were people suffering under the yoke of Roman oppression. They were lonely and full of fear. John’s Revelation paints a picture of the triumphant Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega, signifying that in moments of loneliness and fear, we can draw strength from the truth that God is always with us, and Christ will triumph over the powers of this world.
          It also means on this Christ the King Sunday, that we can tap into God’s unlimited power and resources. As we navigate a world filled with uncertainty and turmoil, we can find hope in God’s sovereignty. Knowing that God is God reassures us that nothing happens outside the will of God and that God is actively involved in our lives.
          John’s introduction continues as he calls Jesus the faithful witness. This doesn’t mean that Jesus was an eyewitness to some disputed event, but that he was a martyr who “loves us and frees us from our sins by his blood.” He voluntarily laid down his life for us. The Greek word “witness” in our reading is Martus. If you claim to believe in something, what is the ultimate test? You die for it. A martyr is someone who bears the ultimate witness. Jesus is the faithful witness or martyr of faith mentioned in v. 5. It is Jesus who loves us and died to save us from our sins by his blood.
          And here is the most amazing part – It isn’t just good people that Jesus died for. It was – according to Paul, for sinners like us that he died as a witness, a witness to God’s love and compassion. Imagine someone voluntarily giving up their life for a known rascal, criminal or just all-around bad person… a sinner. John’s introduction notes that Jesus was not only death defying – he conquered death completely.
          John also introduces Jesus as the first born of the dead, having been resurrected from the grave. We understand his resurrection as a complete validation of his divinity, proof that Jesus is the fulfillment of Scripture. We also know that the empty tomb represents total and absolute victory over death – humanity’s greatest enemy – and, finally, that it is the hope of our future resurrection. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we have the hope and assurance that we, too, will be raised to eternal life.
          John wraps up his introduction with the assurance that Jesus will return, to reign in glory – “Look, he is coming with the clouds…” The promise of Christ’s return fills us with anticipation and expectation. It is a reminder that our present struggles and sufferings are only temporary, and that a day is coming when all things will be made new. As the 19th century Scottish minister and writer Alexander MacLaren once wrote, “the early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the grave called a grave, but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory.” And so should we. As we await Christ’s coming, let us live with hope and faithfulness, knowing that the one who promised to return is faithful, Jesus Christ is the One who is, was, and ever will be, the Alpha and the Omega, that he was born to die; but death could not hold him, and we await his return to rule in Glory.
         May God be praised. Amen.

11-17-2024 The Great Dechurching

Thomas J Parlette
“The Great Dechurching”
Mark 13: 1-8
11/17/24
           About 15% of Americans are “dechurched.”
          What does that mean exactly? Well, it doesn’t mean that they are not Christian – most would still say that they are. It does not mean that they’ve lost their faith – most would say they still believe in God. And it does not mean that they have been kicked out of church – because most have not been.
          Those that are “dechurched” are those who used to attend a service of worship at least once a month, and now they attend less than once a year.
          They are dechurched, and their number is huge – more than 40 million Americans.
          Seats are empty in churches across the country, in large part due this exodus. This trend transcends denominational boundaries – all churches seem some evidence of this movement, and we’ve been seeing for years. In fact, I would say that this has been a trend that I have seen since I first started in ministry some 35 years ago.

          Pastors Jim Davis and Michael Graham explore the trend in a book called The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? They write, “More people have left the church in the last 25 years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening and Billy Graham crusades combined. (1)
          Look around, and you can see it. The trend has impacted every congregation, hitting every category, from Evangelicals to Catholics to mainline Protestants. The median congregation in the United States now has 65 people – down from 137 people just two decades ago.
          One man left the church because of the pastor’s sermon.
          “What was the sermon about,” asked a friend.
          “Babylon.”
          The friend was confused, “The pastor preached on Babylon?”
          “No – I’m talking about the pastor’s delivery – Babble on and Babble on.” (2)
        I tell jokes to keep from crying. But I suppose change is inevitable.
          In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus predicted that change would come to the religious institutions of his day. As he came out of the Temple in Jerusalem during the last week of his earthly ministry, one of his disciples said, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
          That unnamed disciple was right to say, “what large stone.” The foundation stones of the Temple, which are still visible today in the Western Wall, are probably the largest building stones in the ancient world. The smallest stones are between two and five tons, and the largest is estimated to weigh 570 tons.
          And Jesus’ prediction came true – the stones above the foundation did indeed come down. In the year 70, the Romans attacked the city of Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Many people were killed or enslaved and the treasures of the Temple were stolen. The destruction of the Temple was one of the greatest tragedies of Jewish history, and it caused Jewish and Christian residents of the city to scatter.
          You might say that these people were “detempled.” But unlike today, their change in religious activity was forced upon them.
          After walking to the Mount of Olives, across from the Temple, a group of disciples asked Jesus privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”
          And Jesus said, “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.” Yes, many violent and upsetting events were going to come, and their lives would be threatened. But then Jesus ends on a hopeful note – “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
          Ah, yes – the birth pangs. Jesus knew that detempling would be painful, but there would also be hope for new birth. In fact, the Jewish faith was completely reshaped by the destruction of the Temple, forcing Jews to shift to worship in synagogues led by rabbis. Christianity also became more congregation-focused, because the followers of Jesus could no longer gather in the Temple as they had done in the early days of the church. The Book of Acts tells us that the first followers of Jesus “spent much time together in the Temple… broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all people” (Acts 2: 46-47)
          Without a Temple, both Judaism and Christianity had to focus on worship and fellowship in congregations outside of Jerusalem. And as painful as the destruction of Jerusalem was, it set the stage for both faiths to become global religions.
          So, what is going on in the American church? No Roman army has attacked us. But still, we are scattered. The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating effect, keeping people away from church buildings for more than a year. We learned ways of being the church, and we are coming back, but many people fell out of the habit of attending worship and they developed new habits instead. Others left because of church scandals or arguments. Others left because they didn’t fit in, their friends were not there, or they didn’t feel much love at church.
          Kristen Fowler of Kentucky was raised going to church every Sunday. But she tells On Point radio that she no longer goes as an adult because, “the views of the church just don’t align with my views.”
          Bill Fowler of Oregon was also raised in a church, but had a falling out with the local church because the sermons were becoming too political.
          And Brigette Bishop of Massachusetts grew up going to church every week. She taught Sunday school, sang in the choir, and was even a church organist. She stopped going to church in her 30’s because they hurt her so deeply. “I got postpartum psychosis after the birth of my second child,” she says, “and the pastor of the church we were attending accused me of being possessed by a demon.” (3)
          The reasons for dechurching may vary, but the losses are consistent and real.
          Despite these departures, there is reason for hope. Today’s dechurching may be part of the “birth pangs” that will create the church of the future. According to The Washington Post, evangelicals are looking for friendship, while mainline Protestants and Catholics are looking for spiritual practices and outreach programs. (4) Many of the dechurched are seeking stable and healthy congregations that find a way to avoid the polarization affecting churches and other institutions.
          Davis and Graham write that, “The single best piece of good news to come from our study is that more than half of those who have left evangelical churches are willing to come back right now. That’s nearly 8 million dechurched Christians. The reasons why they’re willing to come back vary from group to group, but on the whole, people are looking for two things: healthy relationships and a local church that actively demonstrates how the gospel is true, good and beautiful. Those two factors are almost entirely within our control. Church leaders can grow in their ability to exercise relational wisdom and build healthy communities. Our local churches can grow institutionally to be bolder and clearer with our doctrine, religious affection and cultural engagement. (5)
          The bottom line is this: The church is not a building, constructed of large stones that can be thrown down. Instead, it is a stable and healthy community of faith. Davis and Graham say that congregations need to work on “relationship wisdom” and a “quiet calm and curious demeanor.” Church leaders – pastors, elders and deacons – need to be quick to listen and slow to speak. The path toward new life is not easy, but it is simple.
          Birth pangs are not easy. In fact, they are painful. But the path to life is quite simple, if the church is willing to listen to people, respect different points of view, work on developing friendships, and offer spiritual practices and outreach programs.
          In a radio interview, Graham offers a vision for ministry that could really help us in the future. He says that when we put the kingdom of Jesus first, “that allows us to love our neighbor as ourselves. It allows us to love our enemies, and it allows us to live in the sacrificial way that he did. In Jesus’ kingdom, the last is first, and the first is last, and this is the opposite of the American story. And so, we have an opportunity to be radically countercultural and really care for people, particularly the least of these people who have really fallen through the cracks and people who are suffering.” (6)
          He makes a good point. The church that needs to be born today is one in which we love our neighbors, even our enemies – the people across the political aisle perhaps, with radically different points of view. It is a church that focuses on living in the sacrificial way that Jesus did, with outreach programs that serve a world in need. Such a church will be made up of a group of Christians who develop friendships and show that they care for people, especially those who are suffering and in tremendous pain. This new church can be like the old church of the Book of Acts, in which Christians “broke bread at home… praising God and having the goodwill of all people.”
          A woman from Los Angeles called On Point radio once and said she still identifies as a Christian, but she left the church because it no longer seemed to reflect Jesus. Having heard too much in church about “going to hell” and “needing to repent,” she said, “I just don’t feel that is the Jesus I know, it’s not the God that I know, it’s not the Christianity that I have come to know and was raised in. But I would honestly love to go back to church.” (7)
          Can we help create a new church for people like that woman who has become dechurched? A stable and healthy community of faith? A congregation that reflects Jesus, loves people, and engages in sacrificial service? Over half the people who have left the church are willing to come back if they find a true expression of Christianity. At the beginning of this sermon, I invited you to look around to see the evidence of dechurching that is all around us. Well, now I invite you to take a second look around, and see all the evidence that we are stable and healthy congregation, loving people and reflecting Jesus as we engage in sacrificial service.
          The birth pangs that Jesus spoke about are still here – that is true. But here’s the thing about birth pangs. It hurts during delivery – but when the new creation arrives, the pain fades into distant memory, but the joy remains.
         For that, May God be praised. Amen.

1. Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back”, Zondervan, 2023.

2. Homileticsonline, retrieved 11/4/24.

3. Jonathan Chang and Chakrabarti Meghna, “The great dechurching: Why so many Americans are leaving their churches.” On Point, January 24, 2024, www.wbur.org.

4. Bob Smietana, “Pastors book crunches data on “dechurching”, posits how to fill pews again.” The Washington Post, Sept. 16th, 2023, B#.

5. Jim Davis and Michael Graham, “5 Misconceptions About Dechurching in America”, The Keller Center, Sept. 5th, 2023, www.thegospelcoalition.org.

6. Ibid…

7. Jonathan Chang and Chakrabartic Meghna, On Point, Jan. 24th, 2024, www.wbur.org.