Isaiah 11:1-9
December 7
David A. Davis
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“Sing of a Savior.” That is our theme for worship this Advent. Each Sunday service is crafted around the anthem being offered by the adult choir. This morning, the choir is singing a setting of Isaiah 11, the text I just offered for your hearing, entitled Dona Nobis Pacem. Grant us Peace. From Isaiah, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him.” Discerning wisdom. Strong counsel. Knowledge that drips with the fear of the Lord. Delight in the worship of God. “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear.” The poor judged with righteousness. Fairness shall abide with the meek. Evil and wickedness upon the earth will be brought to ruin by his word and by his breath. Word and Spirit. Righteousness and faithfulness will surround him. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them.” Cows and bears will graze in the same place. The young animals will curl up together. Even the lion will eat straw. The nursing child, the weaned child, will play with the most dangerous of snakes. “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” 

Reading Isaiah can be like listening to a symphony, a cantata, or a concerto. An attentive audience can hear how a composer works the melody and the harmonies throughout the piece using different instrumental sections. That recurring melody is becoming more and more familiar in the listener’s ear. That’s how it is with Isaiah’s song.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined….
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Great will be his authority,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
-Isaiah 9

 

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind….
No more shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime…
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat,
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be….
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.

-Isaiah 65

 

Isaiah 9, 11, 65, and of course more. Isaiah’s song. Isaiah’s attentive audience can hear how the prophet works the melody and the harmonies throughout the book. That recurring melody is becoming more and more familiar in the listener’s ear. Of course, for Isaiah and the rest of the Hebrew prophets, it was never about an audience. Prophets don’t look for spectators. They don’t put out the call for religious onlookers. With his kingdom song, Isaiah is calling, creating, shaping, pruning, sending a kingdom people. The tradition labels Isaiah’s song “the peaceable kingdom”. The prophet’s peaceable kingdom song for God’s kingdom people.

Edward Hicks was the early 19th-century Quaker who created the famous paintings of “The Peaceable Kingdom”.  I use the plural because Hicks actually painted more than 60 different versions of  “The Peaceable Kingdom”. Hicks was born in Bucks County, PA. According to art historians, Hicks encountered pushback in his Quaker meeting because of his “worldly indulgence,” which was in conflict with Quaker values. He actually gave up painting and tried to be a farmer, but it didn’t go so well. According to Victoria Emily Jones in an article posted to the website Art and Theology, Hicks struggled with the relationship between his passion for painting and his passion for faith. He opened his painting shop and became a Quaker minister serving a meeting in Newtown.

I have shown you Hicks’s work in a sermon before. But, with Noel Werner selecting the Isaiah passage for this second Sunday of Advent,  I thought coming back to Edward Hicks and his “peaceable kingdoms” was appropriate. What you are looking at is one of Hick’s earlier works now in the Yale University Art Gallery. The child Jesus is prominent there among the animals. To the lower left, Hick’s portrays a group of Quakers marching with a banner that quotes the angel’s pronouncement to the shepherds in Luke: “Peace on earth and goodwill to men.”  Hicks pairs Isaiah’s vision with a worshipful march offering praise and adoration to the birth of the Christ Child, the Prince of Peace.

            This 1834 painting of “The Peaceable Kingdom” resides in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The portrayal is more familiar if not more famous. The eye, of course, is drawn to the three children and the animals, all of whom have no focus to the lower left. Instead of pairing the prophet’s word picture with the angel proclamation of the coming Christ Child, in this painting, Hicks’s pairs Isaiah with a depiction of William Penn and colleagues in a peaceful, maybe even worshipful gathering with indigenous people along the banks of the Delaware River. It would have been members of the Lenape tribe who occupied the land there in Bucks County and the land where we gather this morning. You and I know that the aspirational portrayal of a peaceful gathering with indigenous people along the Delaware River drips with irony and unfulfilled hope. Later in his life, Hicks wrote about his own growing cynicism that the realities of life had destroyed his hope that he would ever see the peaceable kingdom in the here and now. One wonders whether multiple efforts at painting the peaceable kingdom were part of that journey of his. Hicks also wrote that his disappointment only led him to cling to Christ and Christ’s promise more and more.

Perhaps part of the legacy of the work of Edward Hick’s is an affirmation that humanity has never learned the things that make for peace. As Jesus said when he wept over Jerusalem, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace.” (Luke 19:42) Nonetheless, Hicks’s Quaker-influenced theological point should not be tossed away. It is a visual depiction of the prophet’s “already and not yet.” While waiting for that promised glorious kingdom to come, God’s kingdom people are called to point to, work for, shout out, and claim the reign of God now. That sounds like Advent to me. On the one hand, Isaiah’s song is sort of the soundtrack of a lifetime of Christmas Eves. Isaiah’s song played in the pageantry of a Christmas Eve full of carols and hymns and candlelight. But on the other hand, singing the song, singing of a Savior in Advent, offers a different takeaway. It is a vision of Christ’s promised kingdom, casting a light on and transforming humanity’s world so full of darkness. The peacefulness of God’s new creation yet to come spilling into the world, you and I see all around us. The eternal hope of Christ’s glorious kingdom gives perspective to the present reality. Singing Isaiah’s song in Advent comes with some umph, with urgency, even volume, while clinging to Christ and Christ’s promise more and more. Pretty much holding on for dear life and singing Isaiah’s song as a plea, a prayer. Begging Isaiah, your lips to God’s ears, Isaiah! To God’s ears!

Sometimes the song of Isaiah comes right from the scriptures page. Sometimes, in sublime beauty, like the setting of Dona Nobis Pacem, grant us peace. Other times, the vision is communicated with the subtlety of brush strokes and interpretation, art history, and the proclamation of God’s people. Isaiah’s message comes to us in many ways, but now and then, and especially right now, and right then, God’s kingdom people have to shout “your lips to God’s ears”.

The poor bathed in righteousness. The meek showered with fairness. Evil and wickedness plundered. Righteousness. Faithfulness. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them….They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” And yes, it’s about more than our shout because prophets aren’t interested in an audience who just sit and shout. Prophets aren’t interested in a litany of “thoughts and prayers”.  Prophets aren’t interested in self-absorbed pietists who have concluded that Christ’s promise of salvation is just about their punched ticket to eternity. Prophets call people to do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with their God. Prophets inspire people to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Prophets tell of the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God who stood up in the temple and unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read, “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 let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19). Prophets are about pruning, shaping, sending, creating, empowering, inspiring, encouraging, calling, a kingdom people. God’s kingdom people who pray and plea and shout “your lips to God’s ears….Isaiah! ”

People of God, we are clinging to Christ and Christ’s promise more and more.

And we are going to shout, so God can use us.

We’re going to live, so God can use us.

We’re gonna work, so God can use us.

We’re going to pray, so God can use us.

We’re going to sing, so God can use us

To God’s ears

Dona Nobis Pacem.

Revelation 22:1-7, 20-21
November 30
David A. Davis
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He was wrong. He was clearly wrong. John, here in the Apocalypse, to John, he was wrong. There, I said it. John the Revelator was wrong when it came to the “soon” part, the “quickly” part. Revelation 22:20 (KJV): He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” When it came to the Risen, Victorius, Triumphant Christ “coming soon”, John was wrong. As we gather here this morning near the end of the year of our Lord, 2025. It is rather obvious, isn’t it? Amid all of the sensory overload of what John was seeing and hearing, maybe he misheard. Because it becomes apparent to any observer, “quickly” has nothing to do with it when it comes to Jesus’ promised return.

Last week at the memorial service for Audrey Gates, during the homily, I said that any sense of time in the kingdom of heaven must be different. Whatever it is like, I said, I would like to imagine that Audrey’s husband Mosie, who died in December of 2019, has been within the gates of heaven waiting for her. Yes, God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and eternity and the concept of time as we experience it, don’t all go together. Maybe John wasn’t wrong about Jesus coming again quickly. Maybe we just call it a little “loosie goosie” when it comes to time. Quickly-ish.

When our son Ben was very young, there was a season when the words “tomorrow” and “yesterday” were not yet in his vocabulary. It was “next day” and “last day”. “Last day” could have been two, three days ago. “Next day” could be a week or so away. As in Christmas is coming “next day”. Of course, Ben famously said that as long as you still have cake, it’s still your birthday. Ben, something of a philosopher when it comes to time. Maybe we just leave the whole “quickly” thing to theologians and philosophers and quantum physicists. Let them hash it out.

“Are we there yet?” “Are we almost there?” Is there a parent anywhere, in any generation, who has not heard that inquiry coming from the back seat? Is there a parent anywhere, in any generation, who has not fudged a bit when it comes to the answer? “Sure, sweetie, we’re almost there! (with fingers crossed). As I gathered with the Gates family before the service, I stood next to the oldest grandchild, who was trying to encourage his young son, the youngest great-grandchild, when it came to the length of the service. “It won’t be that long, probably about an hour”, he said. Then he added, looking at me, “Right, Pastor Dave?” I looked down and said, “Maybe even 45 minutes”.  I knew that wasn’t true. Five family members were speaking in addition to me. I basically lied to that great-grandson. I was wrong, and I knew I was wrong.  I couldn’t help myself; the ever-present desire of a parent trying to comfort a child when it comes to time. Maybe the Risen, Victorious, Triumphant Christ was showing John some compassion, like a parent who knew “quickly” was a stretch? “Are we almost there, Jesus?”

Regardless, on the face of it, John was wrong. There, I said it. But I am neither the first nor the last to say it. New Testament Scholar Brian Blount said it at the end of his commentary on Revelation published in the New Testament Library series. “In quoting Christ here and elsewhere”, Dr. Blount writes, “and in making his own claims about the nearness of God’s judgment/salvation, John was wrong.” Brian doesn’t stop at the calendar: “Contemporary readers of John’s work are right to consider that his mistake on this critical matter does well imply that he was probably mistaken in other areas of his presentation. His negative presentation of women, his understanding of eternal suffering, and his depictions of God’s authorisation and even execution of extreme acts of violence come immediately to mind.” I have rarely come upon a more liberating sentence when it comes to understanding the authority of scripture.

Dr. Blount’s gift to the reader of Revelation, to the preacher, and to the church is a foundational understanding of how to approach apocalyptic biblical literature. In his introduction to that commentary, Professor Blount argues that the apocalyptic literature of scripture intends to convey a truth about God and the world, a truth that words themselves can simply not convey. That truth is so powerful, so overwhelming that the writers, in this case John, appeal to symbols and codes to bear a weight of meaning that language cannot. Thus, in the Book of Revelation, one reads these complex descriptions and strange puzzle-like narratives and all these weird symbols. “John seems to believe that a person must viscerally feel what cannot be linguistically conveyed,” Blount writes. Of course, what must be felt, is that in a world so full of chaos, suffering, death, and empire-like power run amuck, that the peaceable kingdom of God will ultimately prevail and that God has a future where there is a healing of the nations, and there be no more night and no need of lamp or sun for the people God, “for the Lord God will be their light.”  

What must be felt is that God’s future is the world’s future, is our future. God’s glory. God’s light. God’s presence. God abundantly abounds. Dr. Blount suggests that the light as named by John in Revelation is God’s glory shrouding the city like a fog. God is completely on the loose among God’s people. A future where there is no more sun, no more night, only God’s glory, God’s presence. It is “God with us” on steroids. “God with us” with a bunch of exclamation points behind it. God with us to the nth degree. The Lord will be their light. It is EMMANUEL (with all caps). The Lord will be their light. It is where Advent and the Apocalypse meet. God is on the loose among us forever and ever and ever.

What if “quickly” is less about God’s urgency and more about ours? That’s the conclusion Brian Blount draws when it comes to apocalyptic biblical literature, the Book of Revelation, and John getting the time wrong.  In a way that maybe only Brian Blount can, he concludes his 450-page scholarly commentary on Revelation by bursting into a sermon. “John’s future-oriented visions were intended to impel his hearers and readers into appropriate contemporary action. John appealed to the imminence of God’s intervention not to offer a timeline but to encourage a sense of urgency… In a world where many human and even satanic forces seem to be in control, God and the Lamb reign as Lord. No matter how powerful any country or force becomes, no matter how far the reach of its military, political, and economic empire, God and Lamb reign as Lord…Those who believe in that lordship- despite seeing pretensions to lordship in people and powers…must continue to witness, in word and in action, to the lordship of God and the Lamb. They must do so because the Christ who is Lord, the Christ who is faithful and true, has promised that he is coming….soon.” And you  and I find ourselves echoing John the Revelator’s response, John’s prayer, John’s plea: “Amen, Come, Lord Jesus!”

It’s Advent again, and the world is still so full of chaos with suffering, death, and empire-like power run amok.  Maybe I’m just getting old, but the world always seems to be in chaos at Advent. Here’s the point in my sermon where I would offer a litany of reality, or quote statistics, or cite some article. But you can do it as well as I can. And if it’s not the world’s chaos, there’s always enough of us here in the room whose lives are in turmoil at Advent. And so we sing, “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.” And we strike an Advent light. Because the truth of the promise is so powerful and so overwhelming that words can’t bear the weight of it. That this world, that you and I, that our future is God’s future. Lighting an Advent candle, it’s so much more than comfort food. It is a bold, defiant, persistent way of saying yes to God and spitting at the world’s darkness. The Advent light. “The Lord will be their light”. The Advent light burns with the affirmation that the kingdom of God shall burst forth in us and our life together, and through us and our life together, to the world. The Advent light and the confidence of God’s future. For every time you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death, until he comes again.

Acts 16:11-15
November 23
Lauren J. McFeaters
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Not too many women have ever prevailed upon Paul. 

Not too many women carried the day when Paul was on the loose for the Lord.

Not too many women have ever faced Paul and upped the ante.

But somewhere between a riverside prayer meeting, a conversion, and a festival of baptisms, came the establishment of a church.

 Lydia prevailed.

She prevailed upon Paul and the traveling Apostles to be her guests; and to find a port in the storm.

Before there was Iona or Rajpur; Taizé or Machu Picchu; before there was El Camino de Santiago or Changhua Ching Shan,  followers of Jesus found their way to Lydia’s Home. [i] And it’s not just any home. It’s a thriving compound located in an epicenter of trade and fortune. Lydia has a hefty share of the city’s prosperity. She’s a commercial success: an importer of costly fabrics, a producer of rare textiles.

Eric Barreto describes Lydia as an entrepreneur with vision and initiative. She’s strikingly self-sufficient: bright, creative, industrious. And even though she depends on its adherents to be her customers, she doesn’t bow to the religion of the Empire.

Because in Philippi, it is Caesar who is “lord & god.” There are no synagogues.No places for Jews to worship. Any Jew had to go to the river’s edge, outside the city gates to pray. And it seems that’s where Lydia and her friends went to meet. [ii]

It’s a dangerous walk to the river’s edge when you want to worship God.

Paul, Silas, and Timothy have landed on the shores of Macedonia. It’s the Sabbath and there’s been talk in the streets about the goings-on in Jerusalem, anxious murmurings about a Redeemer who resurrected after being in a guarded tomb; and very quiet instructions about where to find a prayer meeting outside the city gates.

It’s just the thing God’s Chief Apostle wants to hear.Paul is on the loose; on the move, and ready to preach.

And when he does, Paul preaches through lips that only a short time ago had ordered the stoning of Stephen; the annihilation of any Christian; the eradication of any hint of a resurrected Messiah. But now – now Paul speaks and words flow. He speaks as one Converted by the Damascus Road; Altered, Persuaded, Re-Formed. He speaks and acts as one Converted by Christ Jesus. O Paul!

We don’t seem to talk about conversion very often. We don’t readily share about the experiences of God’s unwrapping our hearts and renovating our spirits.

For many of us it’s a private and intimate experience. For some, it happens over the long haul. For some it happens in the blink of an eye,  a dramatic and fully realized moment when we know we will never be the same.

For two of my sisters-in-law, neither one raised in a family of faith, it came because someone invited them to church.

For me, it came when I was a 5-year-old during the Kindergarten Nativity play, like Wee Christmas. I was holding a baby-doll-Jesus in my arms and singing a lullaby and something changed. I have no idea what it was, but there was trust in God, and the trajectory of my life took flight. I was 5-years-old, and I look back and all I can think is, our God is so surprising. O Lauren!

Conversion can seem like a long-gone ancient practice; something that happens for a chosen few; a reward;  an act reserved for those in the early church, or for those headed to ordination.

Anne Lamott says her conversion to Christ did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers.“Everywhere I went,” she says, “I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen:  you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it,slamming the doors of my life.”

“When I went back to church,” she says, “I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the hymns, but it was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices, or something was rocking me, holding me, and I opened up to that feeling – and it washed over me.”

And then Anne Lamott adds this:I hung my head and said . . . ‘I quit.’This was my beautiful moment of conversion.I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in.’” [iii] O, Anne!

That’s what Lydia says, too. Here’s an influential woman who hopes for more, needs more, wonders if there’s more.

And before we picture Lydia as a neat, delicate, elegant, woman who glides through Phillipi offering you a look  at tasteful, luxurious fabrics – She’s not.

 Lydia has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, grit in her hair,  and she’s just spit out a tooth as she rises for another go. [iv]

Lydia’s conversion does not take place in the C-Suite of her Corporate HQ. This is no tidy negotiation for textile distribution and sales.

No.

Lydia’s conversion takes place in the slime of a riverbank  where it’s rough and rocky; swampy and water-logged.  She’s got the smell of sulfur stinging her nostrils and  sludge oozing between her toes.

And in the middle of the mud and muck, she and all who are dear to her are received into Christ’s church; are sealed by the Holy Spirit; and belong to Christ Jesus forever.

And how does Lydia respond?  With tenacious hospitality. She prevails – upon Paul: Not with a sweet plea, not a polite appeal. Heavens no. But with a triumphant and unwavering summons.  

Her home becomes God’s home – for traveling evangelists, refugees, new believers. God’s home for prayer, meals, rest, study.

And because she prevailed – her home becomes the First Church in Europe. O Lydia!

O Paul! O Lauren! O Anne! O Lydia!

O Nassau!

God has converted us. God has put wings on our Mission. We’re not a delicate, sweet, fragile group of converts,  who gently beckon Princetonians to luxuriate in the fabric of our pews.

No.

We’ve got dirt on our face, grit in our hearts, and tenacity in our hospitality, because that’s what it takes to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.

It takes placing people, who can never repay, at the head of the table; at the place of honor.

It takes the smell of sulfur stinging our nostrils to clear our sinuses for truth-telling in the public square, and bridge-building between divisions.

It takes a willingness to have mud oozing between our toes to dive into difficult but faithful conversations, so we may do God’s work for the community & world.

O Nassau!

You are Christ’s church; sealed by the Holy Spirit; belonging to Christ Jesus forever.

I thank you for loving me so deeply; for loving Michael and Josie. 

And that for a time, together, we have, with God’s loving guidance: Mended the broken. Restored the lost. Comforted the grieving. Stitched up the hurt.

Such freedom. Such beauty. Such tenderness.

O Nassau!

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[i] Religious communities: Iona, Scotland; Rajpur, West Bengal, India; Taizé, France; Machu Picchu, Peru; El Camino de Santiago, Spain; Changhua Ching Shan, Taiwan.

 

[ii] Eric Barreto. Acts 16:9-15 Commentary. www.workingpreacher.org, May 9, 2010.

 

[iii] Anne Lamott. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. New York: Random House Inc.; 1999.

[iv] Adaptation of a quote from Matthew @CrowsFault.

 

Luke 11:5-13
November 16
David A. Davis
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It was only a few loaves of bread. That was all the friend was asking for. The one knocking on the door had a late-arriving visitor at the house. One can imagine that the expectations, the understanding, the norms, and the requirements of hospitality in the world at the time of Jesus were pretty well known and set with a high bar. A traveling friend arrives at your house? Yes, you are going to welcome them with more than open arms. A meal and a place to lay their head would likely be the least one would do, even if the visitor shows up unexpectedly and very late at night. Still, a warm welcome, a meal, and a place to stay.

The parable tells of three friends. The unexpected visitor. The one knocking. The one already in bed. Identified by Jesus as friends implies that the one knocking would surely return the favor if the shoe were on the other foot. If the friend, already asleep with the children, needed some assistance in showing hospitality, the neighbor now at the door would surely help. The traveling friend would no doubt receive and show hospitality and provide a meal, and a place to stay if the knocker was the traveler. It is, after all, a tale of three friends. The shameless persistence of the person at the door asking may be less about just being annoying and more about knowing that they would do the same in a heartbeat for the person inside the door. After all, it was only a few loaves of bread. It’s hardly that much to ask of a friend.

Except… it was midnight. “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight…”.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s sermon entitled A Knock At Midnight appears in his book Strength to Love, first published in 1963. Dr. King begins the sermon like this: “Although this parable is concerned with the power of persistent prayer, it may also serve as a basis for our thought concerning many contemporary problems and the role of the church in grappling with them. It is midnight in the parable”, King preaches. “It is also midnight in our world, and the darkness is so deep that we can hardly see which way to turn.”

Martin Luther King builds on the metaphor of midnight throughout the sermon, and with an allegorical take on the parable, the friend already in bed is the church, the Christian. The persistence is the crying need for justice and righteousness in the land. And whether or not to answer at midnight is the question of the church, the Christian’s response of faith in public life. “At midnight,” King writes, “colors lose their distinctiveness and become a sullen shade of grey. Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness.” “Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful.”  King’s sermonic riff on “midnight” has a timelessness to it, almost a constant relevance. Last week, the biblical text from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel spoke of light shining and a city on a hill that can’t be hid. The metaphor of midnight must pretty much be the opposite. The kind of darkness all around that feels like you almost can’t see your hand in front of your face. A darkness that stirs discouragement, pessimism, worry, almost a paralysis when it comes to thinking you can make a difference, you can find a light to shine.

I have told you before about the weekend years ago when a few men from my first congregation were doing some work at our cabin in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. The cabin was unfinished then, and as we settled in for sleep, we were in sleeping bags on the plywood floor. The darkness in a cabin in the woods is the sort of darkness that defines midnight. That night amid the darkness, someone said, “It’s darker with my eyes open than when my eyes are closed.” It’s darker with my eyes open. That’s the midnight Dr. King was describing for the church when the world is knocking with a shameless persistence.

It was only a few loaves of bread. Our Wednesday small group was discussing how it is easy to be discouraged and not be sure how to respond or what to do when the darkness seems so bright. I was reminded of the years when Cathy and I were part of the advisor team with our youth group at the summer gathering at the Presbyterian Conference Center in Montreat, NC.  Absolutely every year, long about Wednesday, we would find ourselves in conversations on the porch with kids who thought they were doing enough to save the world. You understand how that happens. A great preacher or keynote speaker tells stories of a young person with a great idea that takes off and goes really well. Working for clean water. Fighting for the environment. Serving urban food deserts.  Maybe a video was shown that morning as well, telling of a young person in a far-off place doing something transformational in their community. And what is supposed to be encouraging for a young person in their walk of faith actually does the opposite. Because young people of faith want to let their light shine.

In that conversation on Wednesday, one person said, “I don’t have the gifts that some of our church members do when it comes to making a difference, but I can make food. I know how to make food for lots of people.” I know they do, and I have seen them do it. Another person said, “I am just not sure what my gifts are that can make a difference.” I said, “Oh, I know what your gifts are. But I will wait to share it offline.” Yes, those gifts are already being shared. Another person called attention to how we can pray…constantly. And since we all had our Bibles open or on the screen in front of us, someone else turned to II Corinthians. “We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be visible in our bodies.”

A knock at midnight and a few loaves of bread. Perhaps the church, the Christian’s response amid the darkness that surrounds us, begins with just a trickle from that stream of the everlasting waters of justice and righteousness. Or in the baby steps of letting love be genuine. Or in loving the smallest acts of kindness, looking to do justice in your little neck of the woods, and quietly striving to walk humbly with your God. For twenty-five years, one day a week, I think it’s Thursdays, as I pull out of the church driveway, I have watched members of the Quaker Meeting of Princeton stand across the street. Only two, maybe three. Different people each week. They stand and pray, holding a sign that says “Prayers for peace”.  It was only a few loaves of bread.

Professor Heath Carter has done an incredible job this month leading our adult education series. Even as I can only listen on Mondays to the audio, I can tell he has the room in the palm of his hand. This week’s posted readings on our adult education web page include an article Heath wrote earlier this spring that he titled “A World That Might Yet Be”. He tells the story of Amelia Boynton Robinson. If you have not clicked on this posting yet, I really encourage you to do so. I have listened to Heath tell her story to me from the other side of the lunch table. I have witnessed him tell it in front of a room full of people. He can’t tell about Amelia Boynton Robinson without tears in his eyes. She was an unsung hero who worked in the African American community for voter education and voter rights for more than 30 years, beginning in the 1930s. She was beaten unconscious on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. She walked across that bridge 50 years later, holding the hand of the first black president of the United States.

In writing about Amelia Boynton Robinson, Dr. Carter concludes with this: “It is important to remember that Boynton Robinson lived not only to see the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the election of the nation’s first Black president, but also the gutting of that same Voting Rights Act in 2013 and the beginnings of a new era of voter suppression. History is not a story of unbroken progress, but rather of fits and starts, forward and back.

In those moments when it seems clear that we’re lurching painfully backwards, I give thanks for the memory of Amelia Boynton Robinson, who inspires me to do the small faithful thing in front of me that day. One never knows what may come. But we can pray, as she did, not just with words, but with hands and feet, for a world in which God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. A world that might yet be.”

A small faithful thing in front of me that day. Or a few loaves of bread, maybe even at midnight. “Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful”, Dr. King proclaimed. And King continued, “The most inspiring word that the church may speak is that no midnight long remains. The weary traveler by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come…..The dawn will come. Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows. ‘Weeping may endure for a night,’ says the psalmist, ‘but joy cometh in the morning’”. King concludes his sermon, A Knock at Midnight, like this: “This faith adjourns the assemblies of hopelessness and brings new light into the dark chambers of pessimism”.

Len Scales shared another sermon from Dr. King with her small group this week. He concludes with a similar word of hope: “I get weary every now and then. The future looks difficult and dim, but I’m not worried about it ultimately because I have faith in God. Centuries ago, Jeremiah raised a question, ‘Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?’…Centuries later, our slave foreparents came along…They did an amazing thing,” King concludes. “They looked back across the centuries and they took Jeremiah’s question mark and straightened it into an exclamation point..’There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.”

By grace, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the righteousness of Jesus Christ, Nassau Presbyterian Church, straightening the exclamation when darkness seems to carry the day, begins with a few loaves of bread, even at midnight. The Gospel of John 1:5 — “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” Did not. Shall not. Will Not. Shall never overcome it!

Matthew 5:14-16
November 9
David A. Davis
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 I would like to invite you to ponder with me this morning a phrase from the lips of Jesus. “A city on a hill”. But before reading the gospel lesson, a bit of background, an article published in the Humanities magazine in 2020 is entitled “How America Became a City on a Hill”. The author credits mid-20th-century Harvard historian Perry Miller with bringing a sermon from 1630 into focus. The sermon was delivered by layperson John Winthrop aboard the flagship Arabella sailing toward the New World. The title of the sermon was “A Model of Christian Charity.” Prior to Professor Miller’s study of the sermon’s importance to the Puritan presence in New England, apparently, the text was largely ignored. The sermon became infamous for this line: “We shall be as a city on a hill”. 

I figure I am not alone in thinking Ronald Reagan was the one to initiate the political appropriation of the biblical metaphor in political rhetoric and platforms and the establishment of the vision of “American exceptionalism”. But according to the 2020 article, Reagan wasn’t the first or the last. The term was used in speeches by John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Winthrop’s sermon was not even mentioned in American History books until after Professor Perry’s death. In 2010, a high school history textbook was published with the title City Upon a Hill.

The author of the article, Abram van Engen, was on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis at the time, and that year he also published his book City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism. Van Engen points to the irony that Miller’s take on Winthrop’s sermon could not be more in contrast to its lasting political appropriation. His interpretation “differed radically” from any thought of American Exceptionalism. Van Engen writes that Miller understood that the sermon called Puritans to “model radical communal solidarity. It had nothing to do with the American Dream, nothing to do with bettering one’s life, nothing at all to do with making money or getting ahead.”

MATTHEW 5:14-16

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Our granddaughter Maddy turned two last weekend. Maddy and Franny love to listen to music and dance. Saturday afternoon, we were having a bit of a dance fest. During a break in the recorded music, the girls burst into a song they learned and sing all the time at the Broadway Presbyterian Church in NYC. Of course, both girls have a gifted ear and sing beautifully. Maddy’s blaring all the words along with big sister Franny, but most of them are not quite understandable. What was very obvious and easy to understand were the motions that go along with the song. [candle, blow it out, under a bushel, around the world]. It occurred to me as we all joined right in that the first move of the church, letting its light shine, is the generativity of faith in every generation.

The small groups this week took a journey through some of the light in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. You don’t really need the help of a concordance or a device for it. “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations” (Is. 42). Psalm 4: “Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord.” “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in God there is no darkness at all…. If we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, God’s son, cleanses us from all sin.” (I John) Revelation 22: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The Gospel of John. “Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.” Jesus said, “I am the light of the world…and you are the light of the world.” So whose light is it, anyway?  His light or your light. And, of course, the answer is “yes”.

The very light of Christ shining in the world by grace and the power of the Holy Spirit through the good works of those whom Christ has called. Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus could not be clearer. “Let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Not just go tell it on the mountain. Not a religious fervor on the loose. Not showing a glimpse of piety. Letting your light shine is allowing Christ’s light to inspire you, lead you, and anoint you to good works. Jesus preaching and James applauding. James, who wrote “Show me your faith apart from your works and I by my works will show you my faith.” “You are the light of the world”, Jesus said. “People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.”

In his book The Continuing Conversion of the Church, long-time professor at Princeton Seminary and long-time member of the Nassau Church community, Darrel Guder, makes a compelling, even provocative argument for a congregation sending folks into the world to let their light shine. He tells the story of a woman who was a pillar of the church. As one of her pastors, he was growing frustrated that she never said “yes” to a request to serve on a committee or board of the church. Finally, he asked her about it. Her response stopped him in his tracks and influenced his academic/theological life for years to come. She told him her calling was to be a children’s librarian, and it takes a good deal of work and study for her to be good at what she does. “I want to represent Christ there, and that has to be my priority.” Professor Guder follows that example in his book by stating that if a congregation took seriously the call to empower its people to carry the mission of God out in the world, to let their light shine so to speak, the congregation should expect to see people less at activities within the building. In other words, letting your light shine not just in here, but out there!

This week, in our letter to the congregation, Elder Wendy Wakefield Davis and I invited all of you to join us in a month of expressing gratitude for one another, for our ministry together, for the abundant blessings God continues to pour out on, in, and through Nassau Church. I want to share with you that recently I have found my heart strangely warmed and my spirits strangely lifted. I say “strangely” not in homage to Charles Wesley and his account of his conversion. “Strangely,” rather, because these are not really days for warm hearts and lifted spirits, are they? But the privilege of seeing your light shine in these days is a remarkable gift to me as your pastor. I see it all the time, in more ways than I can count, in more ways than I could ever tell. I saw it a few weeks ago when I went to visit a church member struggling with health, and they told me of a visit from a deacon and their young child that very morning. I saw it when going to the 100^th birthday party for a church member last summer, and seeing a church couple and their two kids at the party, and the one celebrating the birthday told me how much their visits have meant to them.

I see it in how your light, the light of Christ, shines all around your continuing efforts to support and care for our current refugee family. I think it is the 14th family to be sponsored by you in almost 60 years. I see how the light of Christ beams from the steady stream of volunteers who come in and out of ArmInArm in the lower level of this building during the week. Some are serving downstairs. Others are loading their car for food deliveries. Your light and the light of other members of the Princeton community. I see your light, the light of Christ, in the generosity that allows us in real time to cut a check to a landlord for an immigrant family about to be evicted. I see your light, the light of Christ, warming the hard work of racial reconciliation in the now years-long conversations between members of the Witherspoon Street congregation and Nassau Church in the “Bending the Moral Arc” small groups.

And this week, I have seen your light, the light of Christ, brightly shining in our congregation’s response to nationally elected officials and appointed judges intentionally letting the most vulnerable among us go hungry. This week, Len Scales received a request from the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen for a $50,000 grant for a third food truck. TASK uses traditional food trucks to serve hot meals out in the community. They often partner with ArmInArm in the city. Going out together to designated spots with  ArmInArm distributing groceries and fresh vegetables from their refrigerated truck and TASK serving hot meals. TASK reported serving 600 people in one day. Thanks to your generosity and the leadership of the Mission and Outreach Committee, $50,000 went out the doors of this building by the end of the week. In addition, almost $40,000 was granted to ArmInArm for a commitment to give every client they see at one of their pantries this month an extra gift card to a grocery store for $25. An absolutely breathtaking example of your light, the light of Christ shining for all the world to see, giving glory to the God we know in and through, and serve through Jesus Christ. The One whom we serve. Jesus, who said, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.”

There is an unexpected plus with our current LinkedIn series that brings together our preaching life, adult education, and small groups. Professor Heath Carter has provided links each week to some secondary readings, videos, and blogs. Heath provides snippets of some of the most important historical materials while also pointing to unexpected examples in the media or on video. You can find these links under adult education, current series, and the week-to-week listing on our website. It is well worth the click even if you are not in a small group.

One of those clicks this week is a blog post from Rachel Held Evans. It is a brief, one-page post about what she does and does not believe evangelicalism to be. It is her response to being excoriated by far-right evangelicals for daring to identify as an evangelical and hold views that others thought to be heretical and evil. Like Rachel Held Evans, it may not surprise you that some among us here at Nassau Church have been on the receiving end of an abusive, “Christian” nastiness you would not believe. Here is how Held Evens described what “evangelical” means to her. “It means, traditionally,” she wrote, “an impassioned personal response to the gospel and a commitment to the scriptures that point to it. And so, as an evangelical, I am deeply invested in my faith, at both a personal and communal level, and I believe that all scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, challenging, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that people of faith are equipped to love God and their neighbors.” Or one might say, to allow their light to shine. Not all lights in this big old Christian tent of ours are the same. When it comes to being faithful to the gospel taught from the lips of Jesus, the loudest light, the most dominating light, the most arrogant light, may not be the light that is shining the brightest.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

A city built on a hill. You and I know Jesus was not referring to America. A city built on a hill. Jesus wasn’t referring to America. Jesus was referring to you.

Romans 12
November 2
David A. Davis
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It occurs to me that we would likely be hard-pressed to find a few verses of scripture that have more variation in translations and paraphrases than Romans 12:1-2. That was evident Wednesday morning as our small group read from the different versions of the bible being used in the virtual room. The variations seem to reflect an attempt to understand what Paul means by “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” and “your reasonable act of worship,” and being transformed rather than conformed. I don’t have time to offer much for your hearing, but I invite you to do a search this week on your device of choice.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, based on God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect (NRSV)

An English translation commissioned by the Church of Scotland in 1964:

Therefore, my brothers, I implore you by God’s mercy to offer your very selves to God: a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for God’s acceptance, the worship offered by mind and heart. Adapt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world, but let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect.

And maybe the most recent published translation to be found is in New Testament scholar Dr. Beverly Gaventa’s hot-off-the-press commentary on Romans:

So I urge you by God’s mercies, brothers and sisters, to present your bodies as a sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing to God. That is your reasonable service. And do not be shaped by this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you discern God’s will for you, the good and pleasing and fully mature

 Do not be shaped by this age. Adapt yourselves no longer to the patterns of this world. Do not be conformed. The gift of the 12^th chapter of Romans. The gift and the wisdom of the Apostle Paul is that he continues in the chapter to describe for the reader what it looks like. A life transformed. A life of reasonable service. A life of sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing to God. While translators and scholars attempt to help you and me wrap our heads and hearts around some of Paul’s vocabulary in the first two verses, Paul launches into practicalities, paints a picture. Paul tells the church at Rome, and the church ever since, “here’s what it looks like”. Or as Dr. Gaventa puts it, “Following the summons, with its depiction of life as radical sacrifice, [Paul goes on] to promote an understanding of that life in terms of shared generosity made possible by divine gift and characterized by love”.

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly that you ought to think…so we, who are many, are one body in Christ…ministering… teaching… encouragement …. Sincerity …diligence …cheerfulness … Let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good,; love one another….rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep…. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”   Interestingly, after the first two verses, there is a remarkable consistency across translations and paraphrases for the rest of the chapter. Paul to the church at Rome and the church ever since: “This is what it looks like!”

When I was in college, an itinerant campus preacher came to visit our Christian fellowship group one Friday night. The next day, Saturday morning, a few of us went with him to the University of New Hampshire. When I describe him as an itinerant campus preacher, I mean he would show up on a campus somewhere, find an outdoor central spot with student traffic, and start preaching. His goal was to get people to engage with him, talk back to him, and even argue with him. It was a form of open forum political debates that seemed to be popular on college campuses today. Even though I was in a different place in my theological journey way back then and felt a call to ministry and preaching way back then, I found it a shockingly strange way to try to share the gospel of Jesus. By means of picking an argument with people. Picking a fight instead of showing someone with your life what being a disciple looks like.

Of course, if we are honest about the tradition, about the history, about the church, in absolutely every generation, in every season, the followers of Jesus, the church, denominations of every persuasion, congregations of every kind, could learn, should learn, a whole lot from Paul and Romans 12.  “Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, pursue hospitality to strangers…live in harmony with one another, do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly….do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” A life of shared generosity made possible by a divine gift and characterized by love.

Our theme for this week in the Linked-In Adult Education/Small Group fall series is “Social Gospels and Smaller Tents”. In looking to the evangelical movement in the first half of the 20^th century, Dr. Heath Carter points to the conflict between the ecumenical effort working to serve the common good and improve equality for all people and those looking to draw boundaries and claim the right kind of Christianity. Professor Carter’s use of the metaphor of “smaller tents” is a reference to the beginning of an ongoing obsession for so many about who is in and who is out. Who is right and who is wrong? Who is a proper believer and who is not? The history tells that the arguments and the language and the vitriol were as heated and unchristian in the early and mid-twentieth century as they are today.

It seems to me that the lasting focus in the Christian tradition on who is in the tent and who is out of the tent could not be in greater conflict with the last 19 verses of Romans 12. At the end of the day, isn’t the persistent longing for smaller tents and more and thicker boundary lines inconsistent with lives of shared generosity made possible by divine gift and characterized by love? Or to say it another way, how often does the intramural nastiness in the Christian world distract from and diminish the call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Understood in Paul’s language: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good…Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers…. Do not be arrogant but associate with the lowly…. Do not repay anyone evil for evil but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all…if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink….do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

As the infuriating inaction/incompetence/feckless behavior of elected officials in Washington has led to lost jobs, lost pay, and now lost SNAP benefits for upwards of 42 million of our fellow citizens including what must be a terrifying number of children, I found myself drawn to the very last paragraph of Princeton University Professor and Nassau Church family member Matt Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. His captivating sociological study of eviction rates and predatory landlord practices is chilling. But this week, his last paragraph is a prophetic, relevant lament about a whole lot more.

“Whatever are way out of this mess, one thing is certain. This degree of inequality, this withdrawal of opportunity, this cold denial of basic needs, this endorsement of pointless suffering—by no American value is this situation justified. No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.”

I wonder how the Church of Jesus Christ has any time to be picking fights when there’s so much gospel work to do. Picking fights instead of showing the world what the life of discipleship looks like. The body of Christ is not conformed to this world but transformed to live a life of shared generosity made possible by divine gift and characterized by love.

In Romans 12, the Apostle Paul paints a picture with words describing for his readers, for the church, for you and me, a life transformed. A life of reasonable service. A life of sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing to God. “Here’s what it looks like.” Jesus, our Savior, shows us with his teaching, his life, his death, and his resurrection. Way beyond words.

Jesus said, “This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

“This is the cup of the new covenant sealed in my blood for the forgiveness of sin. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me.”

Come, people of God. This is what it looks like.

Philippians 3:7-16
October 26
David A. Davis
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Arthur Link was a professor of American Church history at Princeton University and a member of this congregation when it was known as the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton.  In 1967 he edited a volume of the history of First Presbyterian Church that was published in celebration of the congregation’s 200 years. He wrote the first chapter on the earliest history and tells of Presbyterians settling in Princetown, which he described as a “way station on the stage coach line between Philadelphia overshadowed by its larger neighbors of Kingston and Lawrenceville.” Link makes the argument that Presbyterianism in Princeton had a direct correlation to the revivalism of the Great Awakening. “It is entirely possible”, he writes, “that organized Presbyterianism in Princeton was also a child of the Great Awakening.” A movement Link describes as “a revolt against the cold formalism that had begun to ossify the churches and laid great emphasis upon the personal experience of grace.”

 A personal experience of grace. A personal experience of grace, perhaps as opposed to a primarily intellectual exercise, dependent upon the clergy and the hierarchy of the church and the monarchy. Interestingly, Link points out that the Presbytery of New Brunswick turned down the request for a congregation in Princeton before 1755 more than once because of the proximity to existing congregations in Kingston and Lawrenceville. The minutes report that whoever was serving at Kingston might “preach a lecture at Princetown if they can.” “Preach a lecture” sounds like a bit of that cold formalism ossifying the church. A personal experience of grace. That might just be a working definition of the introduction of evangelicalism in this land. A personal experience of grace. An experience of faith that is between someone and God with no need of a clergy conduit. A faith that is not just a matter of the mind but is also a matter of the heart.

In the third chapter of the letter to the church at Philippi, the Apostle Paul comes to both the heart of the matter and the matter of the heart.  “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ”.  Here in ten verses or so, the core of the letter.  “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through the faith of Christ” Right here in the reading for this morning, after that great hymn in chapter two, the hymn that proclaims of the self-emptying of Christ on the cross and God’s exaltation of Christ giving him the name that is above every name, after his mention of his co-workers in the faith, Timothy and Epaphroditus, Paul comes to the crux of things. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection of the dead.”

            After Paul warns the congregation about those who preach what is antithetical to the gospel, after he lists his own stellar credentials, his own CV, his life resume “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh I have more…a Hebrew born of Hebrews…as to the law a Pharisee….as to righteousness under the law, blameless), the apostle then offers to the believers at Philippi, what is for him, the very center of it all, a center etched forever here in the Living Word. “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ..Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” 

These few verses of Paul’s letter, where Paul gets all personal, where Paul opens up about his relationship with Christ, where Paul writes about his own encounter with the gospel, his own longing in a relationship with Jesus, it’s like Act III of a Shakespeare play. The act where the play turns. The act is labeled the climax. Paul tells of what he has let go and considers worthless, how he longs for more of Christ and his resurrection, and how he presses on. These familiar and quotable, and memorable verses are the heart of the letter. It’s what drives the plot. The plot here, it’s not of Paul’s life. That plot line would, of course, tell of his conversion on the Damascus Road. No, it is the movement of the letter, in the structure of the letter; here we have the climax. The core, the key, the transformative part of his correspondence is his own witness to the “prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Losing and gaining. Wanting more. Pressing on. Only this, just this, this one thing, Paul concludes, hold fast. Hold fast to this! Losing, gaining, wanting more, pressing on. Hold fast to your own encounter with the gospel of Christ Jesus. It is the heart of the matter and the matter of the heart.

In the small group I am leading on Wednesdays, I tossed out a question about the group’s earliest memory or understanding of the world “evangelical”. For me, as a young person growing up in a Presbyterian congregation in Pittsburgh, much like this one, I was taught that the term was to be understood much like Arthur Link’s brief portrayal of the Great Awakening. In the preaching that shaped me and my faith, a reference to “evangelical” was not political, not theological. It was a reference to the experience of grace in a relationship to God understood through the love of Jesus Christ. Yes, it was the 70s and television evangelists were “legion,” but they didn’t own the word “evangelical.” Pretty much ever since it has frustrated, to say the least, that the term has been co-opted, twisted, redefined, stomped on, misused, abused, and weaponized. I can remember the last time “evangelical” crossed my lips from this pulpit. It is similar to how I feel about the American flag. It is as if one side of the political spectrum thinks it owns the American flag. Anyone who has listened to a season of my preaching can hear that I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ touches the heart and is a personal experience of grace. I believe it because I have experienced it. A faith that moves me and never just stays above the neck.

Last weekend, I was the keynote speaker for another congregation’s Men’s retreat. 38 men staying in three Airbnbs in Avalon at the Jersey Shore and cramming into one large living room and kitchen area for meals and then for worship and my four sermons. I knew the pastor and one other person. They were all certainly welcoming to me, but they were also enjoying each other’s company. So let’s just say there were multiple times when I found myself alone in that crowded room. It takes a little while for that many people to go through a buffet line. On Saturday morning, as I finished my light breakfast and was waiting for the worship time to begin, I found myself sitting next to a young man who was quiet and not talking to anyone either. Instead, he was leafing through his obviously brand-new, big, annotated bible. I am guessing it was purchased or gifted for the occasion. Since the only instructions on the email thread for the retreat were to bring your own linens and your bible. He was not really reading it, he was leafing through it like he was seeing it for the first time.

I introduced myself and asked him how long he had been at the church. “Not long,” he said. “A bit more than a year. I wasn’t raised with any church background or faith. It’s all new to me. We took our 4-year-old daughter to some of the activities that the church advertised in town. Then we started going to worship. We just love it. This is my first retreat.” The rest of the morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about him, glancing over. It was clear that, like me, he was an introvert. Talking to people he didn’t know wasn’t easy for him. When I was preaching, he was hanging on every word. When we were singing from the little prepared songbook, he didn’t know any of the songs, but he was trying. Then, during those breaks or waiting for the next thing, he had that bible. He was enjoying it more than trying to talk to people.

On the two-hour drive home from Avalon late Saturday night, I was blasting Bruce Springsteen to stay awake and I kept thinking of this young man. I don’t know if it was admiration, jealousy, or nostalgia. The first for him was a whole lot more than that retreat. A whole lot more. Somewhere, along the Atlantic City Expressway, I thought of this verse from the Book of Revelation. “Don’t abandon the love you had at first.” It is from the second chapter, John the Revelator. His letter to the church at Ephesus. In John’s vision, the letters are the words of the Risen Christ. “I know your works , your toil and your patient endurance….I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you. That you have abandoned the love you had at first.”  One paraphrase puts it this way, “you have forgotten your first love”.  They may be able to rob us of the word “evangelical,” but don’t let anyone take away the love you had first when it comes to your journey of faith. Never forget, don’t give up on the matter of the heart and the heart of the matter.

In that letter to the church at Ephesus, John is writing to a congregation about its attempt to remain faithful in a world full of violence, evildoers, false prophets, heretical teaching, and untruth. Sound familiar. Sound eerily relevant? Sound timely? “I know you are enduring and bearing up for the sake of my name.” Don’t forget the first love, the personal experience of grace. When you can’t make sense of the world or what’s going on all around you, when from the neck up it is confusion and discouragement amid a world that seems to be apocalyptically shaking, maybe lead with your heart. Cling to the grace Christ offers. Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, press on, press on. Reclaim his steadfast love for you as if for the very first time.

Luke 18:1-8
October 19
Jess Winderweedle
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Luke 17:11-19
October 12
David A. Davis
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“How about a word or two on behalf of the nine lepers who did not return to give thanks?” That’s how Martin Bell begins his essay on Luke’s familiar passage of the ten lepers in an intriguing collection entitled The Way of the Wolf. “What about the others? It’s simple really,” Bell writes. And then he goes on to tell of the one who was so frightened that he could only look for a place to hide. He describes one of the former lepers who was offended that Jesus didn’t make him work harder in order to be healed. Another one discovered pretty quickly that he didn’t want to he healed. Bell imagines that one was a mother who did not return to give thanks because she was rushing to see her children. One was so happy he just forgot to say thanks. For one of those healed, it was going to take a long time to repair the broken dignity. There’s something that happens to a person forced to beg and shunned by all and still expected to say thank you.

In his sampler of poetic license, Martin Bell writes of a seventh leper who was convinced there would be a perfectly intelligible, scientific explanation for what happened. He didn’t return to give thanks because he believed Jesus had nothing to do with the healing event. And then a leper numbered eight did not return precisely because he did believe Jesus had everything to do with it. To return and give thanks when the Messiah had arrived, when the Kingdom of God was at hand, well that would be unheard of. He ran to tell the news. And one last leper, the ninth leper, Bell invites the reader to just ponder. Because no one really knew what happened to them. If you have ten, one is bound to fade away.

Perhaps you can anticipate this author/preacher’s conclusions. It is much easier to condemn the nine rather than understand them. It is good to give God thanks and maybe understandable sometimes not to because God doesn’t heal people and then stand around just waiting for the note. Jesus knew about the ten and where they were and where they went and why they were and who they were, and he healed them all the same. Martin Bell concludes with the thought; “perhaps the point is not in the one who returns, but in the ten who were healed.”

Perhaps. But then there’s Luke. There’s the author/preacher Luke. The stickler here is Luke. Here in the 17^th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the account of the ten lepers healed falls smack in the middle of some very difficult teaching from the lips of Jesus.  “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come” That’s how Luke’s Jesus begins the chapter. “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble!” And the Lord goes on to teach the disciples about sin and forgiveness, repentance and rebuke. The twelve beg Jesus to increase their faith. He tells them about the mustard seed. “If you had the faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea’, and it would obey you’”. Jesus warns them about doing the bare minimum, only what they have to do, when it comes to the life of faith. A life of obedience defined by only what has to be done and nothing more.

It is also here in this chapter that Jesus goes on to describe those days when the Son of Man comes in all glory. “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.” Jesus tells them. “On that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken, and the other left. There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.” And chapter 17, this chapter where Luke the author/preacher tells of  “the Christian life,” ends with this very uplifting quote attributed to Jesus: “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Whatever on earth that means?

Luke’s account of the healing of the ten lepers rests at the very center of an entire chapter of challenging teaching about discipleship, God’s future, and figuring out how to live the faith. It is at the center of a chapter full of imperatives from the Teacher. Right in the center of all the tough stuff, between forgiveness and the coming kingdom, comes the healing story. And smack in the middle of the healing story, you will find that one leper flat on their face at the feet of Jesus praising God with a loud voice. While the disciples, and the reader, and the church, and you and I are scratching our heads trying to understand the Savior’s teaching, Luke invites us to see the one. One for ten. Luke crafts the entire chapter, inviting the readers’ eye to the very center, suggesting that we focus on the one. Just as Jesus does.

Ten lepers approached Jesus as he headed for the village that day. Ten lepers obediently kept their distance, living their own identity. Instead of shouting out the expected word of warning, “Unclean, unclean!”, ten lepers give the shout out to Jesus, a shout in response to his identity. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Ten lepers were told by the Lord to go and show themselves to the priest. Ten were invited to head down that road toward the proper entry back into community and family. Ten lepers were invited to return to life. Ten lepers were made clean. Ten lepers were healed. Ten lepers were restored to life surrounded not only by the disease and the alienation that defined them, but here in Luke, they were restored to life amid the challenging, complex, even troubling teaching of the Master, teaching about discipleship and the life of faith and living in response to the identity of this Jesus.

But only one, one out of ten, one in ten, one for ten, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, threw himself at the feet of Jesus and said, “thanks.” Only one. Only one offered praise to God with a loud voice. Only one turned back.  And he was a Samaritan. You may recall earlier in Luke, when Jesus insisted on going with the disciples through a Samaritan town. When the Samaritans didn’t receive Jesus, James and John wanted to invoke the fires of heaven on the town. Jesus rebuked them. You remember the man who was a neighbor to the person in the ditch in the parable in Luke, he was a Samaritan. The lawyer trying to justify himself before Jesus couldn’t even bring himself to say “Samaritan.” No, he could only say “the one who showed mercy” was the neighbor. In John, chapter 4, the disciples were “astonished” that Jesus was speaking to a woman and to a Samaritan. The healed man at the feet of Jesus, shouting praise, was a Samaritan. He was an outcast. He had two strikes against him, on his skin and in his blood. He was a foreigner. He was an alien. He was an other. He was one of them. But only one turned back. He’s the one who came back. And Jesus looked around, and said to no one in particular and everyone all at once: “Only one for ten?”

It is interesting to note that one was heading down the road with the other nine. He was on the way with the others. He was headed in the same direction. Then he saw that he was healed. He had to have looked around. He had to sense the peer pressure to be on the way, to get back to life, to finally fit in. But he stopped, looked around, waited just a moment, and he turned back. I’m curious if that’s the moment of grace. The turning point. The work of the Holy Spirit. The gift of faith germinates like a mustard seed. Yes, he knew Jesus by name, but they all knew. Yes, he begged for mercy, but they all begged. Yes, he was healed, but they were all healed. But in that moment down the road a ways, to use the Apostle Paul’s language, “in the twinkling of an eye,” in that window of opportunity that shuts quicker than an instant, in that moment of grace, the person healed by Jesus decided to be the one. One for ten. He turned back.

A pastor friend of mine shared a story of when she was in high school. She volunteered at a food and clothing pantry in the lower level of the Episcopal Church in her town. It had something to do with community service credit for the National Honor Society. She told of arriving to volunteer on a cold winter afternoon. The line was already forming outside. The first thing she did was invite the folks to come inside out of the cold. As the staff and volunteers were assisting people one by one, an older man came down the steps struggling with several bags of clothes. Every month or so, he made the delivery from his congregation using the church van. he made several more trips. So many trips that some of the other folks waiting in line gave him a hand.

A gentleman came to the front of the line and asked the high school volunteer if she had any shoes, size ten. She went back to the box of shoes to check and came back to apologize to the visitor that there were only women’s shoes in the box that day. It was obvious to everyone in the basement that the man needed a new pair of shoes. My pastor friend recalled that the delivery man from the other church was heading back up the steps, but he turned back and asked the guest, “Did you say size ten? I think I just carried in a pair of shoes. Let me check.” It didn’t take long for the man to come back to the counter with a pretty new pair of size ten heavy-duty shoes. “Well, that’s good timing for me!” the man said, adding a word of thanks and putting them on before heading out into the winter afternoon.

After a few more trips out to the church van, soon void of bags of clothes, the man from the other church offered his thanks and good-byes to the staff and volunteers. It wasn’t until he made his last trip up the stairs that the high school student noticed what she said she would never forget. Yes, the man going back up the stairs was only in his socks. There was no bag of shoes.

Have you ever seen someone who knew what it meant to turn back? I have to admit, they are hard to find sometimes. It’s not because they aren’t around. People who turn back aren’t often seen. They seem to avoid the spotlight. They blend in while standing out. Their lives overflow with thanksgiving. They have learned that when it comes to the Christian life, it’s less about piety, it’s not about self-righteousness, or judgment, or having to be right all the time. It’s about being thankful. Their lives are characterized not just by giving, but by giving back. They embody thankfulness. They give back to God in little ways and big ways as a means of offering thanks and praise. There is a certain recklessness to it, to turning back. It’s daringly counter-cultural and by the world’s measure, makes no sense. No sense at all. That’s why Luke puts the one in ten at the center.

Maybe it’s Luke calling you and me. That amid the very real challenges to understanding the Christian life, the life of discipleship, what Professor Migliore describes in the signature title of his book “Faith Seeking Understanding”, that when it comes to understanding our faith in this world especially these days, still, yet, and always, at the center of it all, is our gratitude and praise to the One who heals us and makes us whole in and through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior who so loves us and yes, loves this hurting world.

II Timothy 1:1-8
September 28
Lauren J. McFeaters
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I am reminded of your sincere faith — a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois — and your mother Eunice — and now, I am sure, lives in you. 

Faith — we pass it on — one to another. Belief — we share it — generation to generation. Lois — Eunice — You.

For Timothy, it’s three generations. Life grounded in Jesus; passed on — and then passed on again.

Lois — Eunice — You. Who is your Lois? Who has been your Eunice?

My Lois and Eunice take the form of the Canadian Catholic Sisters of St. Augustine, whose Mother House is in Old Quebec City, Canada. Their story starts four hundred years ago when several sisters, 16 years old, left the shores of France by ship, and traveled to the shores of New France.

They traveled with one goal: to serve Jesus Christ and care for Indigenous people and settlers in the colony. And because they were skilled apothecaries, they brought medicines and grew medicinal plants.

They created a church in a tent. They opened a clinic for the healing of bodies and they shaped holy friendships. They mended and bandaged and stitched up the broken and infirm, and built a small hospital in the middle of the settlement. You see the word hospital in French is Hotel Dieu, meaning House of God.

Over the last 400 years they have created an entire hospital system: 12 hospitals stretching north throughout Quebec Province. Each with a free clinic, a sanctuary, and a Monastery.

Our Loises. Our Eunices. Life grounded in Jesus; passed on — and then passed on again.

Whatever the disease, the Sisters found a way to treat. Whatever the condition, they found a way to repair. Whatever the complication, they found a way to soothe.

I think Timothy’s Church needs the ministrations of the Sisters of St. Augustine. The Epistles of 1^st & 2^nd Timothy and Titus are the New Testament writings known as The Pastoral Letters. They give encouragement, thanks, and instruction concerning pastoral issues in the church. I wrestle with some of what’s in the letters, but pastoral care is front and center I love a good pastoral issue. I live for a good pastoral concern.

Here is a church, probably a number of house churches, that need therapeutic intervention. Spirits need reassurance. Hearts need gratitude. Bodies need strength.

What we know is there is distress and anxiety. Times are bleak. The Romans are bearing down, and Christians are swept into prisons to rot, and into Coliseums to be slaughtered.

Paul himself writes this letter under extreme conditions. He’s been arrested — again — in Jerusalem, transported to Rome, and is in prison awaiting trial — the outcome is his death. So, when he hears his Companions in Christ, his friends in the Book of Life, are in need of care, he is more than eager for things to be set aright.

Paul becomes The Apothecary. He plants medicinal herbs and sends a prescription to the Hotel Dieu du Timothy; to the Hotel Dieu Nassau.

As the world rages, he gives courage. As our fears soar, he lays on his hands. All the while bearing witness that God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather, a spirit of power — and of love — and of self-discipline.

Just a few paragraphs down, Paul says it like this —  In times of distress, people will be self-absorbed, money-hungry, abusive, unholy, unfeeling, haters of the good, impulsively wild, bloated windbags, swollen with conceit, and making a big show of religion — but denying its power. [ii]

We see this every day: Mockery is a profession. Punishment an amusement. Revenge a career.

Beverly Harrison puts it like this: Our world is on the verge of self-destruction because we have so deeply neglected that which is most basic: the work of human caring and nurturance, by the tending of the bonds of community. Because, according to the loudest voices, that work is too insignificant, too non-dramatic, too distracting, from the serious business of world rule.^[iii]

Who is your Lois? Who has been your Eunice? Who made sure your life grounded in Jesus. Who passed it on — and then passed on again? Who murmurs to you: “Remember the gift that kindles your heart.” Who do you whisper: “Remember, God does not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power — of love — of self-discipline.”  Remember. Remember. Remember.

If it’s hard to remember, you’ve come to the right place. Because here, our Lord remembers for us. Here at this table we are Remembered. Re-Membered. Put back together and fed so that we might be courageous for the living of these days.

When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he isn’t calling us to a Memorial Meal, to gather around a funeral table to grieve.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” is not a command to wrap ourselves in memories of days gone by. This IS the Memory. He is the Memory.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” means, “I remember you – in the present tense – I am here, the Living Lord. This is the Living Meal.  I set this table. I invite you. I welcome you.” “I remember you.” Whatever the disease – Whatever the condition – Whatever the fear – Smell the bread. Taste the cup. Pass it on. Come to the table. Our Lord is here. And he is waiting.

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ENDNOTES

[i]  II Tmothy 1:1-8 [NRSVue] Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands, for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, in the power of God, who saved us.

[ii] II Timothy 3. Adapted from NRSVue and Eugene H. Peterson’s The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English. Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress Publishing Group, 1993.

[iii] Beverly Wilding Harrison. Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics. Boston:  Beacon Press, 1985, 12.