Matthew 28:1-10
April 20
David A. Davis
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It starts with a “great earthquake”.  The resurrection morning, according to Luke, begins with the earth shaking at sunrise as the women are on their way to see the tomb. Perhaps the earthquake was the divine tool used by the descending angel to roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. The angel’s countenance and attire has quite a glow. So startling that those guarding the tomb are scared to death. Like most angels in the bible, the radiant one perched on the rock tells the women not to be afraid. The angel goes on to explain that the crucified one they are looking for was not there, for “he had been raised, as he said.” The women are invited in to see where the body had been. “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” The women leave quickly with “fear and great joy” to run and tell the disciples. It must not have been far from the tomb when the Risen Jesus suddenly appears and says, “Greetings!”

You will remember that when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary in Luke, Gabriel said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Also, when Judas leaned in to betray Jesus with a kiss in Matthew, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi”.  If I have done my homework correctly, I have just shared with you the only three times in the gospels that “greetings” occurs. The Greek word translates as “joy”. These three occurrences represent a formulaic use or expression that was a common form, even an informal greeting. Like “hi there” or “how’s it going”.  On the one hand, these three “greetings” happen at pretty important moments in the gospels: the Annunciation, the Betrayal, and the Resurrection.” On the other hand, the Risen Jesus suddenly appears and uses an everyday, mundane, routine expression of greeting that seems a bit out of place, even underwhelming, after a great earthquake, a stone rolled back, a blinding angel, guards frightened out of their minds, and an empty tomb.

Like any grandparent, when a phone or an iPad in our house rings with a FaceTime chime, Cathy and I race to answer as quickly as we can. We run not with fear but great joy, we run great joy and greater joy. If I am being honest, most of the calls are at the instigation of soon-to-be four-year-old Franny, who wants to talk to Gram. You answer the call, and there isa  screen full of Franny’s face as she holds the phone. Franny wants to talk to Gram about their respective cups of seeds growing and their gardens, soon to be planted. But last week, a FaceTime call came that warmed a grandfather’s heart. It was fifteen-month-old Maddie calling to talk to Pop. She was holding the phone, and all we could see was from her nose up. I could hear her smile, though. We exchanged the greeting I taught her. “Pop”, she says. I say “Haaay,” To which she says, “Haaaaay!” That was about it. That was all she wanted. She dropped the phone on the floor and ran off.  That was about it but it was way more than enough!

The Risen Jesus appears to the frightened, joyful women on the run to go and tell the news. He suddenly appears and says “Haaay”. No don’t be afraid at first. He doesn’t call Mary by name like in the book of John. Here, after all the divine, bible-like special effects that one would expect to trumpet that first Easter morning, with the rolled away stone still within view, Jesus says “hi there, how’s it going, good morning, cheers mate, what’s up, hey there, yo.” A startling every day, informal, common greeting amid what was a far from everyday encounter. The women fall to his feet as both fear and great joy escalate. They take hold of his feet to try to somehow tell if he is real or not. The same feet the woman anointed with expensive perfume. The same feet that had been nailed to the cross. Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

In Matthew, the only appearance of the Risen Jesus beyond the fist bump with the two Marys somewhere near the tomb is in Galilee. The eleven disciples returned to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. They saw him there, the Risen Jesus. The bible says, “They worshipped him, but some doubted.” That’s when Jesus gave the eleven the Great Commission. “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

There’s not much else happening here at the end of Matthew in terms of resurrection. Oh, there are a few verses about the powers that be cobbling together a story about the disciples stealing the body.  But in Matthew, not much else is going on after Easter morning except the Great Commission. No Emmaus Road; that’s in Luke. No breakfast on the beach; that’s in John. No Jesus putting Peter on the spot with, “Do you love me more than these?”; that’s John as well. It is as if Jesus’ ordinary greeting here in Matthew marks a shift away from the miraculous way the morning started and a shift toward an extraordinary promise of how resurrection power is unleashed in the world. “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

In Galilee. In Galilee is where Jesus called the disciples. It is where he taught. It’s where he ate with sinners and tax collectors. In Galilee is where he healed the sick. It’s where he fed the thousands with a couple loaves and fish. It’s where he told parables. It’s where he drove out demons. In Galilee is where he preached the Sermon on the Mount. It’s where the Pharisees and Sadducees first came to test him. It’s where he welcomed little children and challenged the rich young man by telling him to sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor and follow him.

“He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” “Go to Galilee, they will see me there”, he said. In Galilee is where you will find my resurrection power unleashed. A resurrection life that comes not with trumpets blasting, or the earth shaking, or angels appearing, but with the poor being fed, and with the outcasts being served, and the unclean are embraced, with the first being last and the last being first, with turning the other cheek and loving one another, with the kingdom of God being taught, announced, proclaimed, served. In Galilee. In Galilee, there they will see me. An extraordinary understanding of how resurrection power is unleashed in the world.

I remember visiting a saint of the church years ago. I was a young pastor, nowhere near 30, young enough that he had been widowed longer than I had been alive. His name was Ray. He had his struggles when it came to health, but he explained that his father lived to be 102 so he didn’t expect to be going anywhere soon, though he wished the good the Lord would take him just like his wife, take him when he was sound asleep. “I’m ready anytime,” he said with a smile. His personal faith statement was as well-worn as the Apostles’ Creed itself.

Much of our conversation was about his worries and anxieties about life; his children, grandchildren, great children. He was worried about their marriages and jobs and challenges. He was worried about the economy and politics and the war in Iraq, and the Phillies who were in a slump. He wasn’t just complaining or being cranky. His worry was genuine. Then Ray used one of those clichés that are so often said, but his use had a weight to it. “David, I just don’t know what this world is coming to.” And he waved a hand like he was swatting a fly.

We all know I could have had that conversation yesterday. I’m sure I had little pastoral wisdom to offer back then for that saint who has long since gone to glory. Not sure how much I have now.  But his faith statement and that weighty cliché of his, the assurance of his own spot next to the throne of grace and his angst about what this world’s coming to….they don’t match real well when it comes to the power of God’s resurrection promise. The promise of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ has been unleashed in the world now. Because the promise of the resurrection is for life eternal, yes! And it is also for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. “In my Father’s house are many mansions, I go to prepare a place for you…..and…Go to Galilee, you will see me there…I will be with you always”.

You may have read or heard of some conservative Christian pastors who have quite a following on social media. They embrace the evil of Christian nationalism. Recently, they began calling for an end to empathy. Here is one astonishing, heretical quote: “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary. Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.” It is way past time for everyday preachers, disciples, congregations, denominations, for the Christian Church to respond in word and deed with “umm, hell no!

The followers of Jesus who listen and believe what Jesus taught us don’t have the luxury of basking in the piety of our Easter finery, or waiting for divine earthquakes or angel mic drops. Because the Risen Jesus is calling us to Galilee. The Risen Jesus yearns to say hello where the poor are being fed. The Risen Jesus is waiting to say “how’s it going” where the outcasts are being served. The Risen Jesus is saying “good morning” where the strangers are being welcomed and immigrants are protected, and international students are embraced. The Risen Jesus is shouting, “What’s up?” where acts of kindness and mercy carry the day. The Risen Jesus is hugging it out every time and every place where the people of God live resurrection power with the strength to love, the courage to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and the bold resistance to love your neighbor as yourself. I have said it before from this pulpit, and I will keep saying it louder and louder. In the most difficult of seasons of life, the simplest parts of the gospel of Jesus Christ become all the more compelling, essential, and true.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Keep the strength to love.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Don’t lose the courage to do unto others as you would have them to unto you!

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Live the bold, resistant to love your neighbor as yourself.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Luke 22:1-23
April 13
David A. Davis
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You. “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” You. “Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” You. “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” You. “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But see, the one who betrays me is with me…” You.

The “you” at that Passover table that night included the Betrayer. The one who went away and “conferred with the chief priests and officers” to make a plan. To make a plan with the chief priests who were looking to kill Jesus. “You” that night included Judas. The “you” at this first supper of bread and wine included Peter. Not long after the bread and cup, while still at the table, Jesus said to Peter, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day until you have denied three times that you know me.” “You” that night included Peter. But it was not just the Betrayer and the Denier in the ‘You”. As Mark tells of this night, Mark concludes “They all forsook him and fled.” A night of betraying, denying, deserting, and forsaking by those he called, taught, and loved. Immediately after the bread and cup, the disciples who are the “you” get into an argument about which one of them was the greatest for goodness sake! And still, “You”. “This is my body, which is given for you.” “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” You.

In the liturgy of the sacrament of communion, his body broken and his blood shed are labeled “the Words of Institution.” The liturgy quotes the Apostle Paul from I Corinthians. “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread.” I am not sure I have thought about it much before, but “the night when he was betrayed” seems like a massive understatement. Betrayed. Denied. Deserted. Forsaken. Slept on. Kissed. Seized. Arrested. Mocked. Beaten. Blindfolded. Insulted. That’s all just here in the rest of Luke 22. Yes, “the night when he was betrayed” doesn’t begin to describe it. The night when he was betrayed and the night before he was tried, tortured, and murdered by the ruthless, evil, dark powers of Herod’s empire. The night when Jesus looked into the bottomless, timeless pit of human sin, disobedience, lust for power, arrogance, and obsession with self. And still….you. “This is my body, which is given for you.” “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” You. A great big, universal you for every time and every place. You as in all. Humankind. Creation. ALL. “God so loved the world…. God saw everything God had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Given for You. Poured out for you.

This Palm Sunday our service began with the Triumphal Entry here in Luke. As Luke puts it, “Jesus went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.”  Matthew’s Palm Sunday is more triumphal than Luke’s. Matthew tells of a very large crowd, and people running ahead and coming up behind shouting. Matthew writes of the whole city of Jerusalem in turmoil. Matthew’s Palm Sunday seems more stirred up, a sort of flash mob, a bit more “oomph” when compared to Luke. In Luke, people kept tossing their garments on the road, maybe even the same people. No branches, no hosannas. The “whole multitude of disciples”? That could have been just twelve. Maybe the irony of shouts to a king and folks trying to make a bit of pomp while the king rides on a colt was pretty evident.  The royal treatment of a meandering, winding procession from one hill to another with no army, no galloping horses, no chariots, just one innocent animal to ride, maybe the absurdity of it all was just as plain as day. At the very least for Luke, the whole thing seems more intimate. Jesus going up to Jerusalem.

Jesus tells the Pharisees that the stones would shout if the disciples were silent. Creation’s shout coming from those stones. Echoing creation’s praise described by the prophet Isaiah, “For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before shall burst into song, and the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Is 55:12) After Jesus’ nod to creation’s praise, the procession continues. Luke tells of one more stop before Jesus enters the city gates. “As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace.” You, even you. There’s that “you” again. Luke is the only gospel that tells of Jesus weeping over the city. There is lament elsewhere but only in Luke does Jesus weep while looking up at the city ahead of him. If you, even you. You.

Luke goes on to describe the destruction of Jerusalem; enemies, ramparts, crushed to the ground, not one stone left upon another. Gospel scholarship informs the reader of the unique sense of timing here. Jesus predicted what was to come. Luke writing about what has already happened; the fall of the city in the year 70. Chronology and timeline take the back seat to the symbolism of the city, of this city, being ravaged by war and the Savior’s tears. Tears that are not about the march of time. The tears are more about HIS march. THEE march to Jerusalem. This last stop along the way, it’s only in Luke.  Here between the Mt. of Olives and the city that looms just up there. Jesus, his last stop on the way to the cross, and he looks and sees the holy city once and forever devastated by violence, humanity’s violence. If you, only you. And still….he goes up.

When we draw near to Jesus and his last stop along the way, usually what strikes, what lingers, what moves the heart is his tears. But this morning, paired with his words at the Table, his words at the bread and cup, it’s the imagined tone in the voice of Jesus that hangs in the heart as he refers to the city and to humanity all at once. If you, even you, you, and you, and even you. If you only knew. A timelessness to both his tears and his exasperation in the face of humanity’s inability to grasp peace. A great big, universal you for every time and every place. You as in all. Humankind. Creation. ALL! “God so loved the world…. God saw everything God had made, and indeed, it was very good.” If you, even you.

In our Lenten small group on Thursday we were sharing our earliest experiences of communion and whether or not our experience of the Lord’s Supper has changed over the years. Whether the more meaningful, moving parts of communion that nurture our faith might have shifted over the years? Interestingly, there was a bit of consensus in our group. Several people talked about how over the years communion became more of an experience of the faith community together. Less about an individual’s relationship with God and more about something we do together. Less a prayer between God and more a prayer about God and us. A sacrament that nourishes our life as the Body of Christ. A turn away from the self and God and a turn toward community and God. Our relationships in the community and the community of God as in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And every time we gather at the table: “You proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again.” You as in us. You as in all. A great big, universal you for every time and every place. You as in all. Humankind. Creation. ALL. “God so loved the world…. God saw everything God had made, and indeed, it was very good.” You proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again.

 

The Last Supper. Palm Sunday and Jesus’ last stop on the way to Jerusalem. When you remember his body given for you and his blood shed for you on that night when Jesus looked into the bottomless, timeless pit of human sin, disobedience, lust for power, arrogance, and obsession with self. And still….you. When you, even you, stop with Jesus for that tear-filled view of Jerusalem, when humanity’s inability to grasp the things that make for peace never, ever seems to get any better, when you stop to ponder how he still goes up, somewhere deep down the magnitude of God’s plan of salvation kind takes the breath away. I claim, lean on, bathe, and bask, tell myself again and again of God’s love for me, a love that will not let me go. But then there are those days, those seasons, when I find myself claiming, leaning on, bathing, and basking, telling myself again and again that God’s love is so much greater than just for me.

Because when Jesus kept going, when he went up, he took all of us, all of this, he took ALL of it to the cross with him.

“God so loved the world…. God saw everything God had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

Luke 9:1-9
April 6
David A. Davis
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“Now Herod the ruler, the tetrarch, heard all that had taken place, and he was perplexed.” Herod was perplexed. Herod was confused. A possible translation of the Greek is that Herod “was at a loss.” These few verses go on to explain that he was perplexed because some were saying John the Baptist had been raised from the dead or Elijah or some other ancient prophet had appeared. “Now Herod the tetrarch heard all that had taken place.” Herod the most powerful man in the land heard all that had taken place. One should assume that hearing it all means hearing it all. Indeed, back to John the Baptist. Luke chapter 3: “So with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by John because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.” Oh, yes! Herod heard it all.

He heard about a man named Jesus standing up in a synagogue in Nazareth and reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord 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.” Herod heard about Jesus sitting down and saying “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” and how they tossed him out of his hometown trying to hurl him off a cliff. He heard about Jesus teaching on the sabbath, healing people tormented by demons, and his followers catching great hauls of fish. Herod heard about people healed of their diseases, lame folks walking, a tax collector leaving his job to go with Jesus, and Jesus plucking grain on the Sabbath. Herod heard it all.

That sermon from Jesus was full of blessings and woes favoring the poor and the hungry and the weeping. Threatening the rich and all who had so much. He heard about that too.  “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…Give to anyone who begs…do to others as you would have them do to you…Be merciful just as your Father is merciful…The good person out of good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evo;; for it is out of abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” Herod heard about the healing of the centurion’s servant and the widow of Nain. The scandal of the woman anointing Jesus’ feet in the Pharisee’s house. The parable of the sower. The stir Jesus caused in the country of the Gerasenes by healing a tormented man and sending all the pigs to their death in the sea. Jesus stopping to heal the woman who touched his outer garment. They raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead. And yes, Jesus sent the disciples to the villages “curing diseases everywhere.” The most powerful and feared man in the land had the sources, the resources, and the connections to have heard it ALL. And he was perplexed. He was confused. Herod was at a loss not just because of the rumors surrounding John the Baptist, Elijah, or a prophet. Herod was perplexed by it all.

Jesus gathered the twelve and bestowed on them the power and authority to do what he had been doing. To do what Herod heard Jesus was doing. Send out demons. Cure diseases. Proclaim the kingdom of God and heal people. Jesus sent them out on the journey to the villages with nothing: no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no change of clothes. Find a house where folks will take you in and stay there. Stay in their home until you leave the village. If no one welcomes you, move on. Shake the dust. It’s their loss. The gospel is not something to be imposed, mandated, forced, legislated, ordered, or nationalized.

Take nothing. The evangelism, the mission, and the ministry of those who follow Jesus begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in God and God alone. The ministry of those who follow Jesus also begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in the hospitality of others. The only way this was going to work was if others offered the disciples a place to stay in their homes. If others gave the disciples something to eat and drink. If others offered to share some extra clothing with the disciples. The disciples could not have done anything with their Jesus-gifted power and authority without the help of others. According to Luke the twelve were “bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.” It never would have happened without the others. A divine miracle story all its’ own that begins with bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing acts of hospitality and kindness. The ministry of those who follow Jesus is defined by, dependent on, not possible without a reliance on and a relationship with others.

A few days ago, I went over to the Seminary Chapel to hear our resident guest preacher Jess Winderweedle preach at daily morning worship on campus. As you would expect, Jess preached a powerful and memorable sermon. After chapel, I told Jess she is the most subtly subversive preacher I have listen to. There was one riff I kept coming back to in preparation for this morning. As I pondered Jesus telling the disciples to take nothing.  Jess was preaching about Paul ending up in prison after sending a spirit of divination out of a slave girl who was likely then in great danger since her owners made lots of money off her and that spirit. “Here in this chance encounter” Jess proclaimed, “their precarities- his perhaps unexpected and hers a tale as old as time—their precarities were revealed to be inextricable from one another….I want to imagine” Jess went on, “that Paul, there in prison couldn’t stop thinking about liberation, and about how getting free isn’t always as simple as we want it to be, nor is it ever an individual endeavor…There is no way of salvation that any one of us can walk alone, and no real liberation in which we can be preciously selective about who will walk with us.”

Our life in Jesus and our way of salvation and the first disciples’ journey, it doesn’t happen alone. As Carol Wehrheim notes in our Lenten study guide “Recognizing and accepting our interdependence might not be so easy for a nation that claims to be built on rugged individualism”.  As Nate Stucky has been teaching all these Sundays in Lent, the idolatry of autonomy is struck down again and again in scripture. The beginning of ministry in Jesus’ name here in Luke strikes a blow to the myth of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. It forever slays the go-it-alone, self-made human success narratives. Serving in Jesus’ name can’t be any more different than all the rich and powerful with such influence in the world who start on third base and think they have hit a triple. The gospel we learn from the lips of Jesus and the testimony of his life is so perplexing to the world and its powers and principalities. The world and its tetrarchs and tyrants.

Which brings us back to Herod. Herod was perplexed about the one whom he was hearing about. He had beheaded John. The conjecture among the crowds about whether it was John, Elijah, or another one of the ancient prophets. That conjecture is messianic conjecture. That’s wondering about whether this person saying and doing all that Herod heard was indeed the Messiah. What Herod is hearing is messiah talk. And as Luke writes “he tried to see him.” Herod tried to see Jesus.

It might be a no-brainer but it seems to me that if Herod, the most powerful man in the land with all the sources, resources, and connections wanted to see Jesus, it would not have been all that difficult to arrange. Have your people contact his people. Send some armed guards with face coverings to go round him up off the street. Tell your staff to go hang out the next time there is a crowd gathered and bring the one doing all the talking and healing back to your fortress. Before the disciples hid in the Upper Room after Herod’s empire tortured and murdered Jesus, Jesus, and his disciples were hardly staying under the radar. Send a Zoom invitation for goodness sake. If Herod wanted to physically see Jesus, there is little doubt he could work something out to see Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s son, Mary’s child.

“He tried to see him” It has to be more than getting a meeting. Herod was perplexed, confused, and lost. He couldn’t wrap his head or his heart around ALL that Jesus was teaching and ALL that Jesus was doing. Herod couldn’t see the Messiah and the messianic world he was painting.  Like Pharoah before him, his heart was hardened. Herod was never going to see a messiah who was a servant. A messiah who claimed the great must become the least to follow him. Herod would always be perplexed, confused, and lost when it came to the gospel teaching about caring for the poor, the orphans, and the widows.  Herod was always going to be perplexed, confused, and lost when it came to a journey of proclaiming and healing that depended on acts of love and kindness. Herod was always going to be perplexed, confused, and lost when there was “no way of salvation that any one of us can walk alone and no real liberation in which we can be preciously selective about who will walk with us.”  Herod tried to see Jesus but he was incapable of seeing Jesus and the way of the gospel.

The tetrarchs and tyrants, the forces of empires, the powers and principalities of the world’s darkness are incapable of seeing Jesus and the kingdom he brings. They have no vision for a world where the last will be first, the poor will have favored status, and the common good that builds community will be prioritized. They can’t look at the most vulnerable in the world and see the face of Jesus. They can’t see a world where love is stronger than hate, where welcoming the stranger is an act of faith and gives glory to God. Where doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God is an aspirational way of life. Where justice can roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

It is still true. The witness of those who follow Jesus begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in God and God alone. The witness of those who follow Jesus begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in the hospitality of others. The only way the powers and principalities of this world are going to see Jesus and the kingdom he brings, the beloved community he intends, is when disciples, when followers, when simple folk like you and me, find a way to show them. I’m in. You?

Exodus 16:1-21
March 30
David A. Davis
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This is my first memory of listening to a sermon. I was sitting in the sanctuary of the church I grew up in during worship with my parents. Sermons were at the very end of the service just before the final hymn. When it came time for the sermon, the sanctuary lights would dim and the spotlights would go up on elevated pulpit at the front left side of the chancel. I don’t know how old I was when I heard this in a sermon but I know that pastor left to serve a congregation in Michigan when I was in elementary school. His name was Kirk Hudson. In Pittsburgh at the time there was a fast-food burger chain called “Winky’s”. Winky’s slogan in signage and advertising was “Winky’s makes you happy to be hungry.” I don’t remember anything else about that sermon except this. At some point, this distinguished formal pulpiteer wearing a Geneva gown with a clergy collar and tabs absolutely shouted with what I remember must have been the very top of his lungs. “Nobody is EVER happy to be hungry.”

Bernie Flynn, the CEO of Mercer Street Friends, shared sobering news this week with various non-profit partners throughout Mercer County who operate hunger, housing, and anti-poverty programs. The federal government has cut $26 million from the grants and funding that come to the state of New Jersey, much of which is intended for social services. There have been significant cuts to Feeding America which supplies the bulk of food distributed from food banks. There is a continuing resolution before Congress to cut SNAP benefits significantly. For every 10 charitable meals provided in this country, 9 of them come through SNAP.  You may have read that there is also a proposal to raise the qualifying threshold for publicly funded breakfasts and lunches at public schools drastically reducing the number of eligible students. “Nobody is EVER happy to be hungry.”

One of the tasks of a preacher week in and week out is to bring the world to bear on unsuspecting biblical texts. Rather than attempt to translate the strange old world of the bible for the contemporary listener, a preacher who brings the world to bear on the text is seeking that living word for both the preacher and the hearers of the word. With that in mind, and mindful of all going on in the country and in the world, I don’t see how we can read Exodus 16 as the same old, same old.  In my past reading of the story of manna from heaven, my eye has typically been drawn to the complaint. “On the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron.” The word in Hebrew is more like “murmured”. Some scholars write about “the murmuring motif” or the “murmuring tradition.” But then “Nobody is EVER happy to be hungry.”

The Lord hears the people murmuring. When they are thirsty in the next chapter, Moses goes to the Lord on behalf of the murmuring people. Here in chapter 16, the Lord makes the first move in response to the people’s hunger. God tells Moses that bread will rain from heaven and the people will gather enough for the day. Twice as much on the sixth day. Moses and Aaron then gather all the people. “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord…” As Aaron spoke the people look toward the wilderness and see the glory of the Lord appear in the cloud. The Lord tells Moses, “At twilight you shall eat meat and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”

That evening the quail came in abundance. The next morning the people awoke to “A fine flaky substance as fine as frost on the ground.” At the dawn of the day, no one knew what it was. Moses told the people of Israel, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.”  Or as Moses and Aaron told them the day before, “in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord because the Lord has heard your murmuring.” What is described next by the narrator is so easy to miss when your eye is on the complaining. “Gather as much of it as each of you needs….some gathering more, some gathering less…those who gathered much had nothing left over and those who gathered little had no shortage.” Here in Exodus 16 there is a “loaves and fishes” kind of moment going on. Not the twelve baskets full left over but the “All ate and were filled” Part.  Here in Exodus 16, there is an Acts chapter 2, post-Pentecost kind of moment going on. A community taking care of one another. All have enough. The evening quail. The morning glory bread. Just enough for all. Gathering as much as each one needed. Twice as much on the sixth day. The people resting on the seventh day. Forty years of meat and bread in the wilderness. Forty years of God hearing. Forty years of God providing. Right here at the beginning just a glimpse of life together for the people of God. The life together for the people of God that God intends. God and God’s beloved on the way to the promised land.

There at that first manna breakfast, Moses gave some further instruction. It doesn’t say whether Moses spoke before, during, or after breakfast. I imagine that Moses spoke again before everyone began to eat. “Moses said to them, ‘Let no one leave any of it over until morning.’” You get the gist, right? Give us today our daily bread. Don’t worry about tomorrow, let’s today’s worry be enough for today. No squirreling away. No hoarding. No storing up treasure. No pulling down barns just to build larger ones. No sneaking more so others have less. No messing with the loaves and fishes balance. No putting self above the community. No forgetting of the most vulnerable. No serving God and mammon because you will be devoted to one and despise the other. No turning from the face of Jesus in the face of the least of these. “Let no one leave any of it until morning.”

“But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning.” They did not listen and some left part of it until morning. Strange way to say it there in the text. They and some. They did not listen makes it sound like “all” did not listen. But only “some” tried to save some for later.  But the manna didn’t keep. “It bred worms and became foul. And Moses was angry with them.”  When it came to gathering twice as much on the sixth day so you can rest on the sabbath, later in the chapter again it is “some.”  “Some of the people went to gather and found none. The Lord said to Moses, how long will you refuse to keep my commandments and instructions?!” I don’t know, Lord. It was only some, not all the people. Maybe some were still so hungry they had trouble listening. Here in Exodus 16, not only a glimpse of the community of faith God intends for God’s people but also a lasting image of what it means to be human and how hard it is fully trust in God. How easy it is to for the old sinful self to run over the new self God desires. The manna bred worms and became foul. That’s just nasty.

The takeaway this week is not the murmuring. God hears the people and responds with a promise. “At twilight you shall eat meat and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”  The takeaway is more about the old self. Humanity’s ever-present sinfulness. Some but not all turn from God’s commands and threaten the community of kindness and concern that God intends. Threatening the community God calls us to be. God invites us to be. Seeing visions of God’s justice, yet some but not all repeatedly return to a care only for self.  Hearing of God’s expectation of care for all while some but not all work to cause division and spark mistrust; watching as kingdom life turns afoul. Receiving the gospel promise of life eternal and life abundant and then some but not all wrongly concluding that salvation is just about their seat at the banquet table. Hearing about the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus call to go and do likewise and then some but not all demonizing nameless immigrant workers, faceless federal employees, and lab-coated researchers.

Maybe the takeaway is how quickly visions of the kingdom life God intends can be torn apart by the some but not all who want to save more for themselves rather than making sure everyone had their fill. Feasting on the words of the Apostle Paul, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, and then some but not all drawing boundary lines that perpetuate stereotypes and prolong bigotry and pass hate to yet another generation. Saying “Amen” when the words of the prophet Amos are read on Sunday, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”, and then some but not all on Monday doing absolutely everything to preserve their own power and privilege. Setting aside manna for themselves, a lot more manna than just for the next day.

It’s not about the complaint. You and I, we rise each day feasting afresh on God’s glory, knowing that the Lord requires us to do justice and to love kindness, and walk humbly with our God, only to realize sometime after breakfast how easy it is to melt into a world where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, a world full of empires and voices that try to convince us that we had better grab all the stuff that we can so we can save it for the morning.

Manna from heaven. It’s a glimpse of the community God intends. A testimony to how God hears and God provides. It’s not about the complaint. It’s about how easy it is to breed worms.

Genesis 3:17-19
March 23
David A. Davis
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Adam, Eve, the apple, the snake. Genesis 3. The Hebrew bible’s account of the fall. A .story most of us have been told, heard, and read as long as we can remember. One cannot approach Genesis 3 apart from all the chaff that comes with it. The swirling history of use, misuse, and abuse that comes with Genesis 3. It’s not like we just come to a whiteboard this morning with a dry eraser and start over. Rather, we bring it all with us, and by God’s grace and in the power of the Holy Spirit we humbly seek a word, a living Word. We dare to yearn for what God might have to say to us through this first and oldest story of faith, boundaries, rules, and our relationship with the Creator God.

After the serpent successfully tempts Adam and Eve to eat the apple and they cobble some fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, God is taking a stroll through the garden as evening falls. God sees the two of them and their silly outfits. An awkward conversation ensues. Adam throws Eve under the bus. Eve throws the snake under the bus. God then responds that the tradition tends to label “the curse”. Unlike the last few Sundays when we read the entire portion of both creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, I will read only a small snippet of Genesis 3. It’s God’s response to Adam.

Genesis 3:17-19

“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The last few words of God’s response to the serpent, to Eve, and to Adam. The last words of God’s curse after the fall. Curse. It is important to note that the word “cursed” comes only in God’s response to the snake and then again as God speaks to Adam. “Cursed” is not directed at Adam but at the ground. “Cursed is the ground because of you.” “Cursed” is never used directly in reference to Eve or to Adam. Yes, their garden days are over but in Genesis 2, God told Adam if he ate of that tree of good and Evil, “you shall die.” Here in the Genesis account of the fall, they don’t die. Yes, of course, Adam and Eve eventually die. But here in the story of the first and oldest lesson about boundaries, rules, and a life in relationship to God, amid language of temptation, fall, death, and expulsion, God’s grace and love abound.

Last weekend I had a conversation with our soon to be four year old granddaughter Franny. For a few precious moments, we were the only ones in the room sitting on the couch. I asked her about her school. She named some of her friends. She told me how they share chores. Each day, each student has a responsibility. Franny’s favorites are collecting the trash and giving the weather report. I asked about her teachers and Franny told me all of four of their names. No Miss or Mr, just names. I asked if she had a favorite.

“I like Anna. She is our art teacher.” “Is art your favorite part?” “Yes, Pop. And I am good at following Anna’s rules. Well, pretty good”. “Well, that’s good. I bet Anna likes it when you follow her rules.” Franny nodded her head. Then there was a pause. Not a long pause but you could see Franny was thinking about something. “Pop, I am gooder at following Anna’s rules than I am Mommy and Daddy’s rules.”  “Following rules can be hard, Franny, don’t you think?” Franny nodded yes again. “And Mommy and Daddy love you even when it’s hard to follow the rules!” I thought about telling Franny that her Mommy and Daddy love her even more when she doesn’t follow the rules. But I thought that might be risky.

It doesn’t take long, does it? For a child of God to learn perhaps the first and oldest lesson of life about boundaries and rules. It is part of growing up. The metaphor of “growing up” is how one scholar of the Hebrew Bible ends his commentary chapter on Genesis 3. Professor Sib Towner taught the Old Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA for a generation. “What Genesis 3 gives us is a paradigm,” Dr. Towner writes. “ A story about every human being rebelling against the commandments of God…It is a powerful, primitive rendition of a reality all of us know full well—the truth that life is a pilgrimage from innocence to maturity, through a land fraught with the dangers of loving and hating, growing powerful and cowering in humiliation, living and finally dying. It is a story about God too, whose name is not only Yahweh, but also Emmanuel, and who will not leave God’s own beloved creatures to their fates even when they defy him to his face or thrust a spear in his side. Genesis 3”, the professor  concludes, “is a story of growing up.”

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

“Almighty God, in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, we comment this your beloved child to you. These remains we commit to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They will rest from their labors for their works shall follow them.”  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I scoured the bible this week trying to find the phrase I have read out loud in a cemetery way too many times in the last 40 years. Well, the phrase in that form isn’t in the bible. The phrase is from the earliest versions of the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer from the Church of England. “For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear departed, we, therefore, commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.” That’s the closest the bible comes to “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. When it comes to the New Testament, well the New Testament isn’t very dusty. The only dust that shows up in the New Testament is when Jesus tells the disciples to shake the dust of their sandals and move on when folks reject them and the gospel. The liturgy at the grave that affirms our resurrection hope has to be rooted here in Genesis 3. “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” But when you are getting dirt and mud on your shoes around an open grave and you say ashes to ashes, dust to dust while loved ones are trying not to look at you, I am just not sure it sounds all that much like a promise. If I am honest, in that context, it sounds more like a stark reminder. Less of a trumpet blast of resurrection hope and more of a cymbal crash reminder of human mortality. Yes, that committal service liturgy quickly arrives at the Apostle Paul’s riff on resurrection hope. “Behold, we will not all die but we will be changed.” But “dust to dust” doesn’t sound like much of a promise.

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.” With his leadership at adult education and our series entitled “Called to the Impossible; Life through Death,” Dr. Nate Stucky is inviting us to reclaim the invitation and promise of dust. (If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the audio recordings of Nate’s weekly conversation with us, I invite you to do so on the adult education tab on our website). In Genesis 2, God creates Adam from the dust of the fertile soul. “The Lord God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Rather than bind dust to dust to that singular, once, and for all experience of life and of death, Nate Stucky the farmer theologian suggests linking it first to the promise, gift, and rhythms of the creation stories. In sending Adam out from the garden to the very world we know as real, God reminds Adam that he came from the dust of the fertile soil. An invitation to return to the dust perhaps can be understood as an invitation to repentance and a renewed experience of the life God creates. A life defined by death and resurrection over and over and over again. Yes, this side of heaven too.

That historic liturgy that ends with “dust to dust” begins with these words, “In the midst of life, we are in death. From whence does our help come? Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” In the midst of our everyday lives, we are surrounded by the promise, the gift, and the rhythm of God’s creation. God’s gift of grace comes as we experience life and death, death and resurrection. And also as we experience sin, repentance, forgiveness, new life, God’s “no” and God’s “yes” in the day-to-day. “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Everyday. From dust to dust as God continues to breathe God’s spirit of life into our nostrils. Maybe, just maybe, with the gift of breath, of Spirit, in Hebrew, ruah, God also gives us eyes to see and lips to bear witness to all our creating God has done.  Death and resurrection not just with a capital D and capital R. But God’s love, grace, and rhythm of creating. Creating all that is very good. And continuing to create each one of us as one of God’s own beloved.

When in the midst of this life we are in death and chaos and kindness and compassion seem too hard to find. When war and rumors of war abound, when leaders rage, when government shakes and institutions teeter and markets tremble, when the most vulnerable among us and around the world are threatened by the decisions of the most powerful, I wonder if we are being called to pay attention to our experience of the extraordinary presence of God in the most ordinary places of our lives. In Luke, in what scholars describe as “the little apocalypse”, Jesus says “This will be a time for you to bear testimony”. Maybe, just maybe paying attention, bearing witness, and sharing our testimony to our experience of the Holy Dust moments of our lives past and present is at least one way to strive to be faithful these days.

Perhaps an example of what I am trying to describe would be helpful. In the fall of 1999, I was in the third year of the PhD program in homiletics in the seminary. I discovered that one of the aspects of teaching I enjoyed most was listening to a student preach and then gathering the class together and leading the discussion about the strengths of the sermon and how that sermon might be improved. I fully expected back then that I would become a teacher of preaching. Some of my classmates were getting jobs prior to finishing their dissertations at various Presbyterian seminaries. A position was posted at Pittsburgh Seminary. I applied. I networked. I scored a breakfast at the Academy of Homiletics with the Dean of the Faculty at Pittsburgh Seminary. I was born and raised there. My parents were still alive and living there. Okay, this it God! I didn’t even get an interview.

Disappointment wasn’t a strong enough word. A few months later over on the seminary campus, I heard how the search committee at Nassau Presbyterian Church down on Palmer Square had been left at the altar by a candidate who said no after saying yes. The candidate was a professor of preaching who had no congregational experience. I said to a friend who had some connections at the church that if Nassau Church was willing to call a pastor with a PhD in preaching who had never moderated a Session meeting, maybe they would be willing to talk to a pastor who had been serving for 12 years at that point and would eventually have a PhD in preaching.

In April and May of 2000, members of the search committee from Nassau Church came in small groups for six Sundays in a row to hear me preach and lead worship in the 250-member congregation I served. And in May, the congregation called my 38-year-old self to the ministry God had in store. Something beyond what I would have thought impossible. Serving as a pastor and preacher in a university town and routinely teaching as a visiting lecturer. 24 years later, through that experience of life out of death, in that holy dust experience, God taught me what God already knew. I am not a frustrated scholar who couldn’t get a job and so went to serve a congregation. I am a pastor who enjoys sharing my love of preaching with others.

How about you and I, how about we pay attention, bear witness, and share our testimony with one another to the holy dust moments of our lives? I think we could use some of it these days. And remember what Jesus said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”

 

 

Genesis 2:4-25
March 16
Youth Sunday
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1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13
February 2
David A. Davis
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When you have seen someone stand up to read “Love is patient, love is kind”, I am going to guess that more often than not, it wasn’t a member of the clergy. When you have heard someone read “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”, I am thinking most of the time it was not a Sunday morning. The last time you heard reader conclude with “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love”, I am guessing it was Uncle William or cousin Sandy, or a college friend still in seminary, or younger sister or brother. The reading came after all eyes were on the three-year-old hoping she made it down the aisle. After Pachelbel Canon in D. After the others walked down the aisle. Sometime soon after Trumpet Voluntary and before the two make their solemn vows, someone stands up to read “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love…”  The familiar words presume their place, just before the vows, just after the procession.

But in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, the words don’t come after Canon in D or Trumpet Voluntary or The Wedding March. In the letter to the church, the “love part” comes after Paul writes about the varieties of gifts that come from God in the power of the Holy Spirit. The singable phrases about love come after Paul writes about how the church is like a body, how every part, every one in the community is important. Paul writes about God arranging every single part, just as it should be in the body, in the community, in the church. Hands. Ears. Eyes. Feet. Every single part is important. “If one member suffers, all suffer together, if one member is honored, all rejoice together,” Paul writes to the church. These so familiar verses about love come after Paul affirms that everyone has gifts to be used and celebrated in service to the community. “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?….Strive for the greater gifts”. When you read I Corinthians 13 on Sunday morning, you have to start somewhere in chapter 12. You have to at least start with Paul telling the church, I will show you a still more excellent way.”

You will remember that the church founded by Paul there in Corinth was a community of faith that found themselves threatened by allegiances and favored relationships. A community of faith that disagreed about things, some of them really important things. A people of faith wrestling with their own thirst for knowledge, mistakenly thinking that the Word of the Cross, the message of Jesus, was primarily a matter for the mind rather than the heart. People of God trying to hold on to their faith in an ever-challenging secular world. A gathering of God’s people trying to be faithful in their witness to Jesus, in their proclamation of the gospel, and in their desire to live in the power of the resurrection. A fledgling faith community covered in all of the dust of life, trying to be church. Or, in Paul’s language, a community called to live as the Body of Christ in the here and now.

“And I will show you a still more excellent way.” That’s what it follows. The famous chapter on love, the words that sort of create their own atmosphere when they are read into the room, their own aroma of romance. The Apostle Paul on love. It doesn’t come after the wedding march. It comes after this: “I will show you a still more excellent way”. A still more excellent way when it comes to life together. The more excellent way. The Apostle Paul on love in church. “Let me show you”. But Paul doesn’t “show” anything. He keeps writing. The church looks around, but Paul just writes some more. “Let me show you,” and the church forever looks around. Where’s he pointing? Who is he looking at? A picture. A parable. A drawing of the dirt. Anything Paul! But he just kept writing, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love.”

I have told you before about the saint in my first congregation who took me to McDonald’s for breakfast every Tuesday for 14 years. His name was Mark. He joined that church right after he came home from World War II. He landed at Normandy Beach the second day. One morning over an egg McMuffin, I asked him if the war was as bad as the movie “Saving Private Ryan” made it look. He said, “It was much worse, David”. Mark worked in sales for ten or so years. Vacuum cleaners door to door, then caskets to funeral homes. He then worked as a custodian in the local schools. I think he retired before I was born. On more than one occasion, Mark brought home someone who had no place to live. One year, when the church hosted twenty or so unhoused men in the fellowship hall for two weeks, it was Mark who arrived every morning at 4:30 to take one of the men to work who had just landed a job driving a truck. Without knowing it, Mark mentored generation after generation of young men in that church when it came to faith and being a father and a husband, including me.

When I arrived as a 24-year-old pastor, it was Mark who took care of me. We talked about everything over the years. One day, we shared our breakfast with a mission co-worker /friend of Mark’s who was on furlough and home visiting friends and family. At breakfast, he expressed his disappointment that we didn’t say grace before the meal. “After all”, he said, “I’m eating with the pastor and an elder”. I wanted to say, “We’re in McDonalds for goodness sake”. I didn’t say it. Mark didn’t miss a beat and, without a hint of judgment or defensiveness, said, “I pray long enough at dinner for all three meals.” I believed him.

Like many seminary graduates and new pastors, I landed in ministry with all kinds of information, ideas, opinions, and critiques of all that the church needs to be. I hit the ground back then, ready to leave my mark on the church. But in the power of the Holy Spirit, and by grace, I was shown a more excellent way. God was pointing at Mark’s life. Mark showed me. Mark taught me more about the gospel, more theology, more about the church than I ever learned in the classroom. Never an unkind word. Always had open arms for those he disagreed with. Unfailing in his care for others. Visiting a dying friend. Laughing with a lonely widower. Constant in prayer for those on his heart. Mark taught me about being a pastor. Mark’s life was a witness to the gospel in so many ways. But especially in the way he showed me the still more excellent way. The love he shared in and through that community of faith. Love in a particular community of faith. Love made very real. Love made very real to me.

“Let me show you,” Paul wrote to the church. And yes, he kept on writing with words, with poetry, that you and I will not soon forget and neither will the church or the world or the romantics, or Hallmark, for that matter. But when you read it, when you hear it on Sunday morning, remember the context, the place, the atmosphere that these familiar words actually presume and create. A community of faith that by God’s grace and as a gift of the Spirit, strives for the “still more excellent way”. Members of the body of Christ here and now who live like and know that “the greatest of these is love”.

A collection of the followers of Jesus Christ who know that when tragedy strikes, when death comes to soon and for too many, the first move is for love because “love never ends”.  They know that because they have seen it. They have lived it. God showed them. People of God who believe that in the hardest of seasons and the most difficult of days, the simplicity of the gospel becomes all the more profound. “Love is patient; love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” They believe that because they have seen it. They have lived it. God showed them. A community of God’s people who witness to the clearest and most basic teaching from the bible as the most important, especially when listening to those who choose to contort it and abuse it for their own gain. “Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.” They witness it because they have seen it. They have lived it. God showed them. A community of faith who come to understand that the world’s complicated way of being can never erode the lasting power of a timeless teaching like “love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.”  They understand it because they have seen it. They have lived it, God showed them.

Before the Apostle Paul wrote, “I will show you a still more excellent way”, God showed that more excellent way: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…full of grace and full of truth.” Before Paul wrote to tell the congregation “I will show you”, Jesus sat at the table with his disciples and said, “This is my body broken for you….This is my blood shed for you.”  Jesus pointed. Jesus showed them. Jesus did more than write about the still more excellent way. “Every time you eat this bread, do this in remembrance of me….Every time you drink this cup, do this in remembrance of me.” Yes, Jesus shows us he is the more excellent way.

I don’t often associate coming to the Lord’s Table with the physical, biological yearning to be fed. Though I do love the aroma here at the Table, Yes, yes, I know Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be fed.” But I don’t often experience hunger pangs or a craving for this meal. Maybe that’s because of the Reformed tradition that shaped me without weekly eucharist. Maybe that’s because somewhere deep inside, I always assumed it was more polite to wait for Jesus to invite me through those words of invitation at the start of the communion liturgy.

But then again, some days, some weeks, there is a longing. A desire far beyond words. A need that comes with hunger pangs A longing to feast on Christ’s love like you can never get enough. To rush to the table for the dinner bell of righteousness is being rung. To sit down at this Table of grace even before Jesus says “come and get it”. To sit down and be nourished now and forever, to be encouraged now and forever, to be strengthened now and forever, to be sustained by nothing more than Christ’s righteousness, grace, and love.

The Apostle Paul concluded, “The greatest of these is love”

Come to the Table this morning. Come to be fed and receive the love of God in and through Jesus Christ that we all crave.

Luke 5:1-11
February 9
David A. Davis
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In the church’s collective memory, Jesus’ call of the disciples can become pretty boilerplate, even formulaic. Jesus walks by the water where some fishing boats are pulled up along the shore. Some fisherman are tending to their nets after the latest outing. Jesus says, “Come, follow me and fish for people.” The fisherman-disciples immediately drop their nets and go. And you and I start singing, “I will make you fishers of people, fishers of people, fishers of people, if you follow me!” Truth is, when it comes to Matthew and Mark’s gospel, that crisp formula is pretty close to what’s there. Early in the two gospels, after Jesus is baptized and John the Baptist leaves the stage, after Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus walks by Peter, Andrew, James, and John and calls them to follow. Immediately, they drop their nets and go.

In the Gospel of John, the first two disciples are identified as disciples of John the Baptist. They heard John point to Jesus and say, “Behold, here is the Lamb of God!” They promptly left John to follow Jesus. They asked Jesus what he was looking for. Jesus answers, “Come and see”. One of those two was Andrew, who then went to get his brother Simon Peter. The next day, Jesus found Philip. Philip found Nathaniel. No net drop. No immediately. Only “Come and see.”

That brings us to Luke’s gospel and Jesus’ call of the disciples. In Luke’s telling of the gospel, Jesus already knows those of those fishermen, and they know of him. In addition to telling of Jesus’ baptism, his temptations in the wilderness, and his call of the disciples, here early on Luke tells of Jesus teaching in synagogues, healing, and casting out demons. As Luke tells, “a report  about Jesus spread through all the surrounding country.” Just before Jesus calls the disciples, Jesus heals Simon’s mother, who had a fever. After a long day of teaching and healing, the fisherman hosted the carpenter at his house. Jesus knew of the fishermen, and the fishermen knew of Jesus. That makes it all feel a bit different.

Luke 5:1-11

Lake Gennesaret is another name for the Sea of Galilee. Clearly, the pressing in crowd has already heard about Jesus. Heard from Jesus. The word choice here of “pressing in on him to hear the word of God” connotes a sense of urgency in the Greek text. When those fishermen were out of their boats washing their nets, Jesus wasn’t just walking by. Having been to the house the night before, Jesus asks Simon to take his boat out just a bit so he could turn and teach the crowds from the boat. Not the Sermon on the Mount, the sermon in the boat. As Jesus finishes preaching to the pressed in crowd, he tells Simon “To put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Or as the King James version puts it, “Launch out into the deep.”

Simon must have wondered about the carpenter giving the fisherman advice. But there had been this report about Jesus doing and saying amazing things, and Jesus had been over to the house. So Simon bites his tongue and drops a net that immediately fills to the point of bursting. Other fishermen come with their boats to help with the catch. Such a catch that all the boats are about to sink out there in the deep water. Simon drops to his knees among all those fish. “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man!” Jesus doesn’t go anywhere but stays right there among the fish and boats. Jesus stays right there smack in the middle of their way of life in the deep water and says, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people”. They all bring the boats, the nets, and fish to shore, and “they left everything and followed Jesus.” They didn’t just drop their nets. They left everything. Even all those fish left there for the crowd.

John tells a similar story of an abundant catch of fish in his gospel.  You will remember it, John’s account of an appearance of the Risen Christ along the shore of the Sea of Tiberius. Yet another name for the Sea of Galilee. The disciples were all together again at their boats. Simon Peter announces that he is going fishing. The others decided to join them. At the break of day, Jesus is standing at the water’s edge. The disciples can’t see that it is him. “Children, you have no fish, have you?” The weathered fishermen admitted they had not caught a thing all night. Jesus said, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you fill find some.”  Once again, they catch so many fish the nets are about to break. John counts them. 153 fish they caught. When they came ashore, there was a fire burning. Instead of saying “Come and see” there in John, Jesus says “Come and have breakfast”

New Testament scholars raise the possibility that in the oral tradition that shapes the gospels, we might have one miraculous, abundant catch of fish story made two ways. Told two ways. Luke takes a resurrection story and turns it into the call of the disciple,s or perhaps John takes the call story and allows it to radiate with post-Easter Risen Christ. Either way, the relationship Jesus has with those first disciples begins and ends with fish. Which is to say the call of Jesus on their lives bursts into their ordinary way of life. The appearance of the Risen Christ breaks in as they return to their day job. They were fishermen. Their encounter with God came right in the midst of the labor and the sweat and the sounds and the frustrations and the smell of everyday life. When Jesus stepped onto Peter’s boat to teach the crowds, the Savior stepped right into Peter’s office, his classroom. Jesus stood right in front of his computer. Jesus walked right onto Wall Street. Right onto campus. Right into the home office. He turned off the television and sat down in the living room. He came into the nursery right next to the changing table. Jesus pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and turned to face the world.

In the Gospel of Luke, the call of the disciples doesn’t come when Jesus stands up in the synagogue at Nazareth to unroll and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord 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.”  The call of the disciples doesn’t come the sabbath when dared to heal the man who had been tormented by an unclean spirit. The call didn’t come that sabbath evening when Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law. Neither did the call come as Jesus was healing the crowds at sunset on the Lord’s Day. Jesus’ call to the disciples came sometime during the work week. Which says to me that you and I ought to seek the presence of God, hear the Word of God, see the grace of God out there as often and as intentionally as we seek God’s presence, God’s Word, God’s grace in here. Pressing in as called disciples of Jesus Christ in the very fullness of life, the complexity of life, the challenge of life, with the sure expectation that indeed, God is present.

Jesus said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets”. Launch out into the deep. Deep Water. Only a few chapters after Jesus calls the disciples in Luke, he calms a storm out in the deep water. Luke tells of Jesus and the disciples setting out in the boat to go to the other side of the lake. Going to the other side of the lake, by definition, would be crossing the deep water. Jesus falls asleep in the boat. A storm comes. The boat is filling with water. The disciples know they are in danger. They wake Jesus up shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing!’ Jesus wakes up and rebukes the wind and the “raging waves”. There is a sudden calm out in the deep water,r and Jesus says to them, “Where is your faith?” Deep water faith.

I am guessing in the ancient world, fishermen had a fraught relationship with deep water. I imagine people who fish for a living today still have a fraught relationship with deep water. Jesus telling the freshly called Simon, who he had already come to know, to put out into the deep water has to be about more than the actual depth of the sea. Jesus telling Simon to launch out in the deep has to be about more than locating a huge school of fish. Perhaps deep water is a kind of metaphor for life when the storms rage and the wind gusts. Perhaps Jesus telling Simon to launch out into the deep is his way to show the fishermen, now disciples, that he had come to know that God is present in the world. Early on in the journey, he shows those he knew and would come to love that following him is going to require a deep water faith.

Deep water faith clings to the assurance of the presence of God in day-to-day life when the storms rage and the winds gust. Deep water faith finds a way to get stronger when the days get harder and the nights get longer. Deep water faith presses in to hear a word from Jesus when the world’s clamor and blather gets ever louder. Deep water faith finds a way to soothe the soul with a calm and an assurance despite chaos unleashed all around and every day. One ought not to miss that here in Luke, Jesus’s call of the disciples doesn’t come out of the blue. It comes out of the relationship. When your relationship with the world, with the day-to-day, is fraught with deep water, deep water faith inspires the courage, the strength, and the determination to make a difference one person, one moment, one breath at a time.

The reference to “deep water” is not common in the bible. I could only find one other occurrence in the Book of Proverbs. “The purposes of the human heart are like deep water, but the intelligent will draw them out.” And the Greek word for “deep” doesn’t show up all that often in the New Testament. But here’s one you will know. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth…nor deep…nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That’s a promise for deep water. A promise that rises to the top with deep water faith

Luke 6:17-26
February 16
David A. Davis
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Tradition calls it “The Sermon on the Plain”. This teaching from Jesus is here in Luke. “He came down with them and stood on a level place.” The Sermon on the Plain. If you keep reading the Sermon on the Plain beyond where I stopped this morning, you will come upon “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return”. And “do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” As you heard, it all starts with the blessings and the woes. Jesus stood on a level place surrounded by a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people and began to teach with….these blessings and woes.

Blessed are you who are poor….Blessed are you who are hungry now….Blessed are you who weep now…Blessed are you when people hate on account of me. Woe to you who are rich…Woe to you who are full….Woe to you who are laughing…Woe to you when all speak well of you. Jesus starts with the blessings and the woes. Then goes on to love your enemies and turn the other cheek. Give to anyone who begs. Do to others as you would have them do unto you. Jesus and the plain sense of the Sermon on the Plain.

In the first few weeks after I was ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament, a retired pastor in the presbytery named Ed Shalk came to visit me. In that conversation of welcome, he gave me plenty of advice, most of it very helpful to me over the years. One thing he suggested to me was to make sure I understand the church budget and the monthly financials better than the church treasurer. It didn’t take me long to live into his advice. That church budget in the late 1980s was well under $75,000. There was very little in the line item for what we call around Nassau Church “Mission and Outreach”. Very little. I observed early on that the members of the Session sort of just took the church treasurer at his word and didn’t pay much attention. Of course, his word was that the church was barely getting by. One afternoon prior to a Session meeting I went back and read ten years of annual financial reports. I noticed that the balance in the church operating fund had grown every year. Even after a year of paying me as a full-time pastor.

As I prepared to take to session my rationale for increasing the congregation’s mission giving, I knew those financials front and back. I graphed the increasing balance of the operating fund with a pencil on graph paper. The treasurer was not a member of the Session. The Trustees were a separate board, and he reported to them monthly. I invited him to come to the Session meeting and told him we would be discussing the mission budget (or lack of it). That night I shared my research with the 9 members of the Session, including copies of my carefully prepared graph showing the increasing balance. Mind you I was 25 years old, and most the elders were my parents’ age or older. The discussion was not tense. It wasn’t an argument. But at one point, the treasurer said to me and the rest of the Session that the bible says “charity begins at home.”

No, that is not a verse from the bible. I hope I responded pastorally, but I don’t really remember. As Pope Francis reiterated this week a position he has offered in the past, “charity isn’t just a series of concentric circles extending from the individual to family, friends and fellow citizens and ultimately the world, but it is centered on human dignity with a special concern for the poorest.” Or as Jesus said, “blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” No conditional clauses when it comes to the plain sense of the Sermon on the Plain.

“Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place,” and he started with blessings and woes. We all know that in the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew there are no woes. Comparing and contrasting the Sermon on the Plain in Luke with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew is more than just content. In Matthew, “when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain.” He sat down and began to speak. Matthew’s Jesus is the Teacher, the Rabbi, the one who embodies the tradition of Moses and Mt. Sinai and the Law. There is a sense in which Jesus went up the mountain as Moses went up Mt. Sinai. Instead of two tables with the Ten Commandments, Jesus offers to the disciples and the crowd listening his list of blessings and then a whole lot more. The beatitudes are from above, from on high, from the Great Teacher. Like a burning bush and a voice calling, pillar of fire by night, cloud by day. A theophany, a divine appearance there on the Mount of Beatitudes. According to Matthew, after Jesus calls the disciples, after he goes throughout Galilee proclaiming good news and healing the sick, with the great crowds now following him, Jesu goes up the mountain and begins to teach.  He says, “blessed….blessed…blessed…blessed.”

It is different in Luke when it comes to the gospel from a level place. Very different. In Luke, Jesus had gone out and up the mountain to pray. He prayed up there all night long. The next day he called his disciples, choosing the twelve of them. It was then that “he came down with them and stood on a level place.” As you heard and read, Jesus was surrounded by a great crowd of disciples and multitudes from all around. “They had come to hear him and to be healed by their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him for power came out from him and healed all of them.”

There, among the press of humanity near and far, Jesus looks to his disciples and says, “blessed…blessed…blessed…blessed” and “woe….woe….woe…..woe.” Not up on the mountain, not from on high, not like tablets of sone, but there smack in the middle of the crowd on a level place. Right there among the rich and the poor, among the hungry and the full, with the weepers and the laughers, surrounded by some who were hated and some who were praised. Jesus came down and stood among them. He stood on a level place surrounded by the disciples and a crowd from all around. Jesus stood on a level place surrounded by everyone then and ever since. Jesus looks at his disciples and offers the gospel from a level place.

The plain sense of the gospel from a level place. Jesus teaches the gospel, fully immersed in all that is human. A plain sense from a Jesus surrounded by the extremes of our experience: poor-rich, hungry-full, sorry-joy, hatred-praise. Here, so early in the Gospel of Luke, listeners of Jesus and John the Baptist before him have already heard him proclaim the kingdom: Every valley being filled. Every mountain and hill made low. The crooked made straight. The rough places smooth. All flesh seeing the salvation of God. The kingdom come. The reign of God. Good news to the poor. Release to the captives. The blind seeing. The oppressed going free. The year of the Lord’s favor. And surrounded by everything that it means to be human in the world, it is as if Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “This just isn’t it”. He stood there up to the eyeballs in the human condition, surrounded by the rich and the poor, the hungry and the poor. He saw the joy and the sorrow, the hatred and the praise. He looked over to his disciples, and with those blessings and woes, he was saying, “Yeah, this isn’t it.”

Blessings and woes. One really can’t avoid that for many of us, it is more the woes that apply. But maybe with Jesus’ rhetorical flare, it is more than promise and threat. Jesus is trying to communicate how the ways of this world will be so turned upside down when the simplest parts of the gospel prevail and the level-headed faithful let their light shine. How the first will be last and the last first, how the valleys will be lifted and the mountains made low. Blessings and woes. It is a way for Jesus to proclaim that the kingdom of God is something other than getting all the praise while some are so hated. The kingdom of God is something other than some dancing with joy as others live like the psalmist describes “my tears have been my food day and night.” In the reign of God, you can’t have it where some are so rich and others so poor. Jesus looked at the disciples and the crowds and the multitude and the world and said, “This isn’t it!”

To those who listen, those that ears to hear, that see, that look around and yearn to live the level-headed plain sense of the gospel, Jesus says  “Turn the other check. Give to anyone who begs. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Give. Do good. Be merciful. Forgive. Don’t be judgey. Don’t condemn. Love”.  So when we find ourselves confronted, surrounded, up to our eyeballs in something other than the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, when we know “this isn’t it”, then as followers of Jesus there ought to be certain plain sense of the gospel that kicks in; that takes over, that guides, that inspires, that defines us.

My father-in-law, Hank Cook, lived at Stonebridge during the last years of his life. One afternoon, a few weeks before he died, he and my wife  Cathy were remembering Friday night pizza in the Cook house. Apparently, up in Millburn, NJ, there were two pizza shops side by side owned by feuding brothers. In the clouds of his faded memory, Hank knew the name of the favored pizza shop. It wasn’t an every Friday night thing, Cathy said. More like once a month. Cathy, her older brother, her younger sister, and her parents. Five eaters. One pie. That didn’t sound like enough pizza for five people. So I said, “Hank, didn’t you ever consider getting two pizzas?” He looked at me rather incredulously, shook his head, and said, “Dave, Dave, Dave”.

That’s sort of how I hear the blessings and woes from Jesus’ sermon from the level place of our humanity. Jesus looking around at the timeless tableau of humanity and then turning to the disciples, the church, you and me and saying all our names all at once. “Dave, Dave, Dave… this isn’t it.”  His call, his invitation, his plea to you and to me for this time and place, is to lean into the plain sense of his gospel. As I said in a sermon a few weeks ago, in the most challenging of seasons, the simplest parts of the gospel become all the more compelling.  Inspired by the he level-headed faithful let their light shine. “Turn the other cheek. Give to anyone who begs. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Give. Do good. Be merciful. Forgive. Don’t be judgey. Don’t condemn. Love”.

Jesus and his gospel from a level place inspiring level-headed followers of the Savior to so let their light shine.

1 Corinthians 15:51-58
February 23
David A. Davis
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“Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” I have read these verses from the end of I Corinthians 15 more times than I could ever count. I have read them a few times from here at this pulpit. Mostly, I read them down there at Princeton Cemetery next to an open grave. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead shall be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed.” I had been here at Nassau Church for more than fifteen years before I learned an interesting fact about our cemetery. When a visit to the cemetery includes a casket burial, the pastor leads the procession. I was taught in seminary that when standing at the grave, the appropriate and respectful place for the pastor to stand is at the head of the casket rather than the foot. In Princeton Cemetery, all the caskets are interred in the same direction. The head of the casket, the head of the person in the casket, is closest to Witherspoon Street. That means all those buried in Princeton Cemetery for hundreds of years are facing east. Those who have been to an Easter morning sunrise service at the cemetery know that the congregation stands with backs to Witherspoon Street, facing east to the rising sun.

The tradition of burying the dead goes all the way back to the ancient church and the practices of the earliest Christians. When the trumpet sounds, on that day of resurrection, when Christ comes again, on that “great getting up morning”, at the dawn of that day, at the first sight of the rising sun, the dead will be raised. The dead are buried facing east so they can be ready. For that day “when this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.”

            I have told you before about a conversation I had a long time ago when Zorba’s restaurant was still across the street.  It was a conversation with Duke Divinity School New Testament professor Richard Hayes. You may have seen his obituary last month in the NYT. Dr. Hayes spent a full year on sabbatical here in Princeton shortly after he published his commentary in the Interpretation series on I Corinthians. Most Sundays he worshipped with us. That day at lunch in Zorbas, I was looking to offer a pastoral welcome to a well-known visiting scholar. What I didn’t expect was a conversation that year that changed how I thought about preaching resurrection hope. One of our casual conversations turned challenging and intriguing for me as I listened to the scholar’s stinging critique of the church’s proclamation on Easter and at most, funerals. The gist of Richard’s argument was that preaching resurrection should not sound like the content of a Hallmark card. Examples he gave ranged from preaching that denies the reality of death to sermons full of kitschy illustrations that promote the concept of the immortality of the soul. Something along the lines of “he is not dead; he’s just gone to the other side of the lake to fish” is what comes to mind.

Professor Hayes was leaning into I Corinthians 15 and arguing that the resurrection doesn’t happen until that trumpet sounds. I said to him, “So if I am standing next to a hospital bed, and a loved one says that ‘at least now their family member is in a better place’ I should say ‘well, not yet.’? The New Testament scholar looked at me across the table and said, “yes”. “Richard,” I responded, “that’s why you are a professor, and I am a pastor. I also quoted Jesus’ words to the thief next to him on the cross. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Despite our disagreement about the mysteries of the resurrection, when I sit in my study typing a sermon for a memorial service or for an Easter sermon, the professor’s concluding remark in that conversation both inspires and haunts me a bit. Richard Hayes said to me, “Well, resurrection hope has to be about more than whether you and I get to heaven.”  His reference was to a resurrection hope for the here and now.

A funeral service in witness to the resurrection, or an Easter morning service for that matter, is not dependent upon our ability to figure it all out or to work out the timeline or to even understand what earth “resurrection of the body” is referring to in the Apostles’ Creed.  For when the followers of Jesus are confronted by everything that death has to offer, the Church rises to proclaim the power of God to bring life out of death, the power of God to transform the dark shadows of despair into the rising light of a bright morning star, the power of God to anoint the sufferings of this life with a hope-filled balm of the kingdom yet to come. To read the Apostle Paul standing around an open grace is a bold and courageous affirmation of God’s resurrection power when death has the loudest voice. These verses from Paul offer a shout of resurrection promise and hope not just for the eternal life to come but for life here and now. It’s more than just Paul, it is all of creation standing to sing and to stomp. “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”  

Some years, some months, some weeks, some days, it becomes glaringly obvious that the psalmist’s reference to “the valley of the shadow of death” isn’t only about cemeteries. It is not death that has the loudest voice, but the voices of this world. When the followers of Jesus find themselves trying to shout and sing and stomp resurrection hope while “wrestling” as the Apostle Paul writes in the Book of Ephesians “not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age” Living into resurrection hope when our experience is like that of Mary Magdalene that first Easter morning described by John. She headed to the empty tomb when it was still dark. On a morning filled with brilliant sunshine under a cloudless sky, we gather to live into resurrection hope while it is still dark. To cling to a daring, defiant word of resurrection hope unleashed on a world that seems increasingly to look like anything but “thy kingdom come on earth as it is heaven.”  Maybe an even bolder and more courageous affirmation of resurrection is required today as compared to when you and I gathered around an open grave.  “The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. When the darkness in the day-to-day of life all around us is so magnified, the Easter acclamation comes with a louder shout. Remember, our tradition affirms that every Sunday is an Easter Sunday. Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

One ought not to miss, should not miss, cannot miss, that at the conclusion of the Apostle Paul’s resurrection argument that runs the entire 15^th chapter of I First Corinthians, after the soaring, ethereal rhetoric of the verses we read this morning, after all the words about the mystery of the resurrection, don’t miss maybe the most important part of the chapter. “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Back in the cemetery, as I read these verses, after I focus on not slipping up on all “the immortality and imperishability” words, when I get to Paul’s “therefore”, I have done it enough that I can lower my pastor’s book. “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”  For me, it is the most meaningful, powerful, and moving moment is at the cemetery committal service. To look directly in the faces of those who grieve, leaning into the resurrection promise of God and say, “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”  It is what the people of the resurrection do. In the face of the harsh reality of death and the world’s ever-present darkness, we speak of life, we live life, we yearn to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ in life. Still.

Years ago I sat in my office with a person whose spouse had died about a year prior. They were still struggling and struggling to understand why they were still struggling. The person said to me “if you tell me to just take it a day at a time, I will punch you right in the face.” So I didn’t say that. I wouldn’t have said that. I don’t remember what I said. But I could have said, “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” When death’s voice rage, when the world’s voices of darkness rage, Paul offers us a refrain that has to stand right up there with Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

You can take this tip from Dave for no charge. When reading the Apostle Paul, there are a lot of “therefore’s”. Sometimes what comes next is really important.  “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”(Rom 5). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 8). “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (Rom 15) “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Rom 12) Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, (Phi 2:9 NRS) “Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.” (Eph 6:14) And yes, Paul’s exclamation point on resurrection hope. “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

Paul’s exhortation to the faithful is that in the face of death, the people of God dare to sing and speak about life. It is who we are as resurrection people.  Paul’s encouragement when grief and lament are real. “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”  The people of God know that here in the world it is “still so dark”. Yet, we keep marching in the light of God. The one whose goodness shines on us. The one whose grace has pardoned us. The one whose love has set us free. Paul and his “therefore” when the fear and anxiety are real. “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”  

When the world’s challenges seem so vast and you and I feel so small. When the strategic press of change and disruption in the land isn’t just dizzying, it’s intentionally paralyzing. God is still calling us to live each day to God’s glory and to never forget one of the Apostle’s other exhortations. Never forget to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3) Pressing on while the empires rage and compassion is lost, all the while remembering, repeating, living the exclamation point of resurrection hope for the here and now.  “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”