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Minor Prophets

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Jeremiah 1:4-10
July 13
David A. Davis
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“Ah, Lord God! Truly, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” Jeremiah and his response to God’s call. “I am only a boy”. Jeremiah is hardly unique when it comes to his efforts to dissuade, deflect, or deter the call of God. “Only a boy”. Only. Standing before the burning bush, Moses said, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” “I am only slow of speech and slow of tongue”, Moses said to God. “How can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest…and I am the least in my family.” That’s Gideon responding to the angel of the Lord. “I am only from the weakest clan and I am only the least in my family,” Isaiah responded to the Lord, sitting on a throne high and lofty. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips…” I am only a man of unclean lips. Only. I am only. “But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say I am only a boy’. God said, ‘Don’t say only.”

The call stories of the Hebrew Bible can sound so… well, biblical. Moses and the burning bush. For Gideon, it is an angel of the Lord under an oak tree. Ezekiel’s call story goes on for chapters. It all starts with “a stormy wind that came out of the north.”  Isaiah tells of an angel and some hot coals touching his lips. Here in Jeremiah: “Then the Lord put out a hand and touched my mouth.” These call stories, these theophanies, come with all the divine flair that a reader of the Old Testament has come to expect. The detail of God touching, angels acting, mouths and lips anointed, they sort of make Jesus’ call of the disciples sound rather pedestrian. The whole “drop your nets and follow” is kind of barren compared to the call of Jeremiah and his prophet colleagues. Prophets, angels, burning bushes, burning coals, voices, the touch of God, the Word of the Lord. The bible’s world seems so far from our world, our experience, and our relationship with God.

Yet, that strange old world of the bible hits surprisingly, uncomfortably, timelessly close to home, close to the heart when God says to Jeremiah, “Don’t say only.” Only. I’m only. God must hear it all the time, still. “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’, for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them for I am with you to deliver you.” Don’t say only for I am with you. So far beyond prophets and preachers is the call of God. The God we know in and through Jesus Christ calls each one of us, sends each one of us, anoints each one of us, empowers each one of us to a deeper, profound life of discipleship in and through him. The last words of the Risen Jesus to his disciples, to the church, to you, and me in the Gospel of Matthew, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Don’t say only.

Frank was a member of my first congregation. He was old enough to be my grandfather when we arrived. He was the church’s all-around handy person. Cathy and I still have the mailbox he put up for us at the manse where we lived right next to the church. I am guessing he didn’t quite understand, but he didn’t bat an eye when we asked him if he would add to the hardware store sticky letters on the mailbox frame he built that said “Davis” so it would say “Cook Davis”.  One day, as Frank was putzing around the church doing some odd job or another, I asked him if he ever served as an elder on session. His response was swift and strong. “Oh, no, no, no. I’m not religious enough. I’m only a guy who is good at fixing stuff.” It didn’t take long for me to hear the stories about Frank back during World War II. For a reason I never knew and never asked about, Frank was unable to serve in the military. During the war, he was one of the very few men left in that small town. It takes a long time for me to start hearing stories from folks in the church and beyond. People are telling me how Frank pretty much took care of the whole town during the war. especially those whose husbands and fathers were serving overseas. Caring for widows and those whose husbands were prisoners of war or landed at Normandy. Serving as an elder may not have been for Frank, but don’t say the only. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress.” (James 1). Don’t say only.

God’s call to Jeremiah continues: “Now I put my words in your mouth. See today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant”. For a reader who likes to keep score, that’s four tear downs and two constructions. Four negatives and only two positives. Pluck up. Pull down. Destroy. Overthrow. Build, Plant. By any math, that’s a call with a lot of judgment and a bit of hope. It is an equation, a balance, a ratio that is reflected throughout the book of Jeremiah and the testimony of Jeremiah’s life. The call of God pushes against the worldview of nations and kingdoms. Pushing and bringing discomfort to the powers that be. The voice of Jeremiah, the Book of Jeremiah, according to the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, “is a hard, demanding theological tradition, mostly unwelcome.” A line of teaching and perception not so fully “seduced” by the world’s promises that too often float around unchallenged or worse, unnoticed. The call of Jeremiah is a crisp and lasting reminder that the Word of the Lord will always be in opposition to the empires of this world. “I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms.”

A preacher doesn’t have to work very hard these days to affirm that all of us are pretty much up to our eyeballs, in over our heads when it comes to the ways of nations and kingdoms. With a nod to the hard and demanding theological tradition embodied in Jeremiah and his prophetic call, you and I are called to live out our faith amid the ongoing and ever-growing dissonance and discomfort that comes as we cling to the gospel of Jesus Christ and strive to live the everydayness of our faith in this blasted world. To use Brueggeman’s image, God is calling us to hear the teaching of Jesus, to follow him in a life of discipleship, knowing full well that it conflicts with the promises of the world that try to seduce us. God is calling each one of us to a life of discipleship in, to, and for the world. God is calling us to be part of the body of Christ, refusing to say “only” to the call of God on our lives.

Brian Blunt, the now-retired president of Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA, taught New Testament for many years here at Princeton Seminary. Brian raised his family in the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church. In my early years of ministry at Nassau Church, Brian and I would have lunch at Karen’s Chinese restaurant on Witherspoon Street about once a month. Brian was instrumental in helping me understand and start to build a relationship with the Witherspoon congregation. At that point in time, Brian was beginning his work on the Book of Revelation. I attended a lecture he gave entitled “Preacher as Prophet”. Over lunch, a few weeks after the lecture, I brought up the subject of local preachers and the call to speak a prophetic word to their congregations. My own sense was that a preacher ought to establish a pastoral relationship first, maybe even over a few years (as I was attempting to do at Nassau back then). Tend to the pastoral things first, and then later say harder things from the pulpit out of a trusted pastoral relationship. “Brian, do you think preachers are called to be pastors first or prophets first.” Without missing a beat, Brian said “yes.” Firmly asserting that the gospel itself comes with a disconcerting word to the nations and kingdoms of this world, to you and to me…to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant. And of course, Dr. Blount would be the first to add that the gospel’s call is not just for pastors, preachers, and prophets.

A bit more than a week ago, I was standing in the rain with a group of friends and colleagues from our presbytery on the wall that surrounds the city of Derry in Northern Ireland. We were there to learn about the history of the conflict and hear from those who are working hard to build and preserve a lasting peace. There in Derry, we listen to two men, Mickey and Peter, one catholic, one protestant. Both had participated in the violence. Peter, the Presbyterian who seemed to be a bit younger than me, had spent time in prison. He had been involved with a Protestant paramilitary group. Peter and Mickey were now reconciled friends, working to help others on both sides of the history build relationships and work especially with youth to try to stop the never-ending cycle of hatred and violence.

A member of our group asked Peter how he was able to move beyond the mindset of violence, bitterness, and hate. Peter told us that as Presbyterians, we would understand that he never had a Damascus Road experience (referring to the conversion of the Apostle Paul described in the Book of Acts). Peter told us of the day he went to visit the mother of a dear friend of his who had been killed in the conflict. In her grief and heartbreak, she said to him, “The violence, the killing, the conflict has to stop. How many more mothers have to suffer like this? You have to stop Peter.” Peter told us that he knew right then that she was right. His life was forever changed by the words of a mother with a broken heart. It was a Damascus Road-like experience coming from the voice of a grieving prophet who refused to say “only” and spoke in opposition to the powers of the present darkness.

The tradition defines “minor prophets” as the collection of the twelve shorter books of the Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament. Minor as opposed to longer books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Minor as in Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. But what if a “minor prophet” could refer to something, someone other than a book in the Old Testament? What if a “minor prophet”
was simply a child of God who, in their way, chose to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. The Risen Christ has promised to be with us always to the end of the age. The Risen Christ is calling us to cling to the gospel of Jesus Christ and strive to live the everydayness of our faith in this blasted, broken world. The God we know in and through Jesus Christ calls us to not say only.

Indeed, God calls you and me to be minor prophets.

Salvation Road

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Galatians 1:1-12
July 6
Lauren J. McFeaters
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I hope you can hear the sound and the fury, that is Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. It’s a tsunami of Biblical proportions. You picture him in some far-off region; feverishly picking up the papyrus, dipping pen to ink, and writing in a frenzy.

And he doesn’t stop for the niceties or blessings. There’s no “Peace be with you Galatians,” or “O how I love you Galatians!” or “How I give thanks for you Galatians!”

He doesn’t give thanks because he’s infuriated about the news that the Galatians have deserted their faith for a gospel that includes some and excludes many. [ii] [iii]

And Paul will have none of it. He’s entirely annoyed, completely exasperated, and out of his mind with worry. I love him for that, because sometimes we need to be shaken out of our Greeting-Card faith; stunned out of our soft-indulgent faith; and startled out of passivity.

Sometimes we need to be plopped back into the faith of tumult and whirlwind – where Christ crucified is not a sugary treat that keeps us content, but an all-out hurricane of guts and glory.

Before I was a pastor, I was a pastoral counselor, and I served at a counseling center here in Princeton called the Northeast Career and Pastoral Counseling Center. This Center was founded by our General Assembly in 1965 as a place for church members, clergy, and seminarians to do the work of vocational discernment and psychological assessment. They go hand on hand. Our General Assembly created 10 of these centers to be located near our 10 Seminaries.

Over a 3 day session, and through a series of evaluations and conversations, we guided people to assess their faith, their life, and work. We asked the central questions:

  • Who is God calling you to be?
  • Where is God calling you to serve?
  • What are the gifts and liabilities you bring to your work in the world and your life of faith?

It’s very meaningful work for any of us to take stock of our lives and to prayerfully discern the movement of God’s Spirit. Everyone should have a chance to do this. It’s not easy.

  • It takes vulnerability to lay our lives before God.
  • It takes trust to share our burdens and joys.
  • It takes an authenticity to hold God’s hand and to walk together on Salvation’s Road.
  • It takes maturity to be teachable.

What I found, and I certainly include myself, is that the number one thing that holds us back from full maturity in Christ is our resistance to our Lord’s authority. And here’s what I mean:

  • We struggle to be obedient.
  • We fight against obedience to the Gospel.
  • We oppose anything that seemingly takes away our control. And Oh how we love to be in control. I do.
  • We pretend we are not utterly dependent on the Lord who has given us life.
  • We deny our own authority as Christ’s disciples: using our voices to speak, our hearts to pray, our bodies to act, our wills to serve.

The Galatians feel our pain. They, too, are being told by powers and principalities to scorn the authority of our Lord who loves all people; to mistrust the Gospel of Justice & Joy; and to bow at the altar of a church that excludes and judges.

For Paul, when we live as if our life of faith is ruled by personal enrichment, without the healthy discipline of Christ’s authority, the effect on our lives is beyond devastating.

This week, the Rev. Jihyun Oh, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) sent a letter, an epistle, to all the U.S. churches. She, like Paul, knows it is Jesus Christ who sets us free from the present evil age.

Jihyun Oh writes, servanthood is the heart of Christian life: to serve others instead of insisting on one’s own greatness, to lift up others instead of pushing them down, to show honor to the least, instead of denigrating their humanity, to use one’s power and authority to work toward the wholeness of God’s beloved world, instead of harming those who are most vulnerable in society.

We find ourselves in a nation in which leaders, who purport to be people of faith, are attacking those who preach the mercy and love of Christ Jesus, and are arresting those who pray for justice.

Instead of emulating Christ’s ministry of justice and love, these leaders seek to create a society that is marked by fracture and violence, a society in which power matters more than truth. This is not Christian. This is not Christian leadership. [iv]

And so we of Nassau Presbyterian Church; we will continue to stand with and for the most defenseless in our society, especially on this weekend when we celebrate 249 years of our beloved country. We stand beside, sit beside, kneel beside the most vulnerable in our society, whether that is because of economic status, identity, ability, gender, resources, or anything else; for we are all created in the image of God. All.

As we travel along Salvation’s Road and come to the Table our Lord has prepared, Paul’s words, Jihyun’s words, draw us closer to:

  • The One for whom we offer our obedience.
  • The One who has all authority in our lives.
  • Who is all authority in Heaven and on Earth.
  • The One in whom we live, and move, and have our being:
  • Jesus, our Deliverer and our Salvation;
  • Our Way. Our Truth. Our Life.

ENDNOTES

[ii]  Margaret Whyte. “Sermon:  Galatians 1.” www.churchofscotland.org, June 2013.

[iii]  Jaime Clark-Soles. “Commentary on Galatians 1.” Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, workingpreacher.org, June 2010.

[iv] Jihyun Oh. Presbyterian News Service, pcusa.org/news-storytelling, July 1, 2025. Note: The Rev. Jihyun Oh is the Presbyterian Church (USA) Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency.

Every Family

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Ephesians 3:14-20
June 22
David A. Davis
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I am not sure I have ever started a sermon like this, but I am going to give you a tip for listening to the sermon to follow. My hint is not about the content of the sermon. It is more of a glimpse into the movement of the sermon or the structure of the sermon I have attempted to shape. I know most of you are not preaching nerds like me. But I also know this congregation well, and you are full of really good, experienced listeners to sermons, not to mention the pastor emeriti among us who spent a lifetime writing sermons. There is no charge for this, so you can take it or leave it. The sermon, the homily, I am about to offer on the second half of Ephesians 3 is an example of expository preaching. Expository preaching is most common in more conservative traditions where preaching is synonymous with teaching. The preacher moves through the text verse by verse, often with the bible in hand, referring to the verses by number. I am going to work my way through Ephesians 3:14-21 verse by verse without the numbers. An expository sermon and just for fun, it is a three-point sermon as well for those who have ears to hear.

Every family. Every family in heaven and on earth. Every family. This prayer from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians ought to be a prayer for every family, every day. As memorized as deep within as the Lord’s Prayer. As routine as the nighttime prayers offered at a child’s bedside. As common as a table grace passed on from generation to generation. That, according to the lavishness of God’s glory, God would once again give you, give me, give all, a sense of strength and comfort and peace and purpose deep within. A kind of assurance deep inside that only comes from the power of the Holy Spirit. That Christ may continue to fill our hearts, to live in our hearts, to make a home within our hearts through the faith God gives. So that you and I, that all would be, would still be, would continue to be rooted and grounded in love. The very love of Jesus. The very love of God.

It really should be a once-a-day kind of prayer. At least once a day. A prayer we offer for our family, our extended family, the families that surround us, and yes, for all God’s people. That we might have the power, the means, the bandwidth to comprehend with all the children of God what is the breadth and length and height and depth, that we might have some inkling of what reaches from the east to the west, from the north to the south, that we might have some glimpse of that which is invisible, that we might have some sense of the weight that is beyond measure…that somehow we might see that the Lord is good. Every day.

And to know the love of Christ. To know the love of Christ. One can’t just know. You can’t just know love. You have to feel it. You have to live it. It’s not something to just figure out. The love of Christ surpasses all knowledge. Yes, it surpasses all knowledge but for goodness sake, for God’s sake, the love of Christ better have everything to do with what we think, what we conclude, what we decide, what we teach our children, how we live, how we act, how we treat our neighbor, how we respond to the stranger, how we see the world. Knowing the love of Christ and seeing the same world Jesus does. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” Jesus says in Matthew. There is no “either/or there. To know something that surpasses all knowledge. To know….love. It’s not an oxymoron. It’s a prayer. To know the love of Christ so that you, you and I, so that all might be filled with all the fullness of God. Which is to be filled with the love of Christ himself, which is to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge. Every day.

It’s everyday prayer and everyday praise. To God be the glory. To God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. To God be the glory in every generation, in every family in heaven and on earth. To God be the glory. All day long. All day long. This oh, so glorious God has a power at work within us to accomplish so much more, so abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine. God can do more in us than we can even dream about. The fullness of God so fills us. The love of Christ so overwhelms us. The piercing light of Christ so shines on us. The matchless grace of God so washes over us that God can use us, work with us, and transform us in ways beyond what we can see. It’s not just prayer. It’s not just praise. It’s a promise. God’s promise. Not just a promise but an expectation that, according to the riches of God’s glory, God is at work with us to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine. Prayer. Praise. Promise. Everyday.

Some may remember me sharing what I learned about the Lord’s Prayer from leading worship in the Church of Scotland. The first few Sundays, I kept stumbling over the Lord’s Prayer. It took me a few weeks to realize why. My cadence of leading the prayer was out of sync with the congregation. It was the petition “thy will be done…on earth as it is in heaven.” When I say the Lord’s Prayer, the comma, the pause, and the breath come after “they will be done”. “Thy will be done…..on earth as it is in heaven. Folks in the Church of Scotland place the comma, the pause, the breath in a different spot. “Thy will be done on earth….as it is in heaven.” Not thy will be done…..on earth as it is in heaven.” But “Thy will be done on earth…as it is in heaven.” One Sunday morning, I just stayed silent. That’s when I heard the difference. The change in cadence bears some urgency, some expectation, some immediacy. A sense of right now. A timeliness that God has the power to work with us, through us, beyond us, despite us, to accomplish far more than we can even ask or imagine. Now.

Every day. Right now. No family, no lineage, no people, no one is beyond the reach of the love of God. You and I are called to live that now. God’s immutable glory, so distant, so awesome, manifests in hearts full of love. Now. The breadth and length and height and depth of the presence of God stretches to the world’s farthest corner and illumine life’s darkest places and breaks down death’s door. Now. The love Christ offers comes with such fullness that hearts and souls and minds can be inspired and sparked and changed and guided and protected and calmed and comforted now. Prayer. Praise. Promise. Every day. Every day.

All in service to making the world more like what God intends. Now, even as the mind numbing, soul sucking, powers and principalities of this present darkness rage. Now, even this morning, as nations rise against nations and kingdom against kingdom. Seeking a world more like what God intends. A world where the children of God dare to believe in, pray for, and work toward what the prophet dreamed. Swords transformed into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, and war being learned no more. A land where every family would dare to believe in, yearn for what the psalmist proclaimed. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet. Righteousness and peace kiss each other as faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky. A world where the people of God dare to believe in, pray for, and work toward what Jesus prayed. God’s will being done on earth… as it is in heaven. Daring to believe in, praying for, and working toward, because… because… because, God is able to accomplish more abundantly than we can ask or imagine. Now.

My preaching professor, Tom Long (who used to teach six grade church school at Nassau church along with Old Testament professor Pat Miller and their spouses) was once asked in a Q and A session whether he believed preaching could really be taught or was it more of a skill, a gift some had and some didn’t. “Believe it?’ he responded, “I don’t just believe. I’ve seen it.” Among all of the graduation celebrations in our congregation these last weeks, Len Scales sent me pictures of Asma Hashimi graduating from Princeton High School.  A family fleeing for their lives after the airport in Afghanistan fell to a few years later, joyfully celebrating a high school graduation. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it.  Time and time again, far more than I would wish, this congregation has surrounded a grieving family with love. Being for them the presence of the Risen Christ. Living resurrection hope now. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it. Not long from now, more than fifty folks, a mix of youth and adults from our congregation, will travel to sleep on a gym floor and rebuild homes for families whose lives have been crushed by the power of poverty. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it. Every week, from the lower level of our building at 61 Nassau Street, 250 to 300 families, mostly working families and seniors, receive food assistance in person or by delivery. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it.

God’s power at work among us through the everyday prayer, the everyday promise, and the everyday praise of the “nowness” of the God we know in and through Jesus Christ. “Now to the One who by the power at work within us can accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Every day. Every day. Every day.

Grace and Good Works

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Ephesians 2:1-10
June 15
David A. Davis
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It must have happened somewhere, sometime, one day last week, about Wednesday. A group of kindergartners is working on a special arts and crafts project for Father’s Day. The entire classroom has a bit of a buzz as the school’s roaming art teacher, along with the classroom teacher and another parent helper, come alongside the children to make something very special. Of course, the children don’t know that what they make will be saved in a special box long after they are all grown up. The kids don’t write yet, so their helpers take the time one by one to write “Happy Father’s Day” on their painted, glittered, colored frame that surrounds the picture of themselves, stealthily sent from home. “Remember, Father’s Day isn’t until Sunday, so make sure to keep the surprise until then!” one of the adults says. At the end of the day, at dismissal, as the handcrafted Father’s Day gifts are carefully put into backpacks, the instruction is offered again. “Not until Sunday. Make it special. Keep it a secret!” The cars are lined up, and the kids are escorted out to the one that has their name on the placard on the dashboard. Jasmond’s backpack is pretty much bigger than she is as she bounds toward the car. On Wednesdays, her dad picks her up from school. The car door is opened, “Daddy, I made you something special for Father’s Day!” she blurts out. She pulls out the picture to proudly show him without waiting to get into the car seat. Father’s Day for Jasmond and her dad was on Wednesday. Some things are so important you just have to blurt them out.

“God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. It is an awkward, clunky sentence to read aloud. The sentence continues into the next verse; ““God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come God might show the immeasurable riches of God’s glory in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”  “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. Some things are so important you just have to blurt it out. “By grace you have been saved.”

That’s certainly how it sounds here from the Apostle Paul. Like a child who can’t keep the excitement of a sacred gift a secret. It is as if Paul found the words all of a sudden. Like intending to say something in your head, but saying it out loud too. He found the words all of a sudden. “By grace you have been saved.” Paul drops it here in the middle of that thought, that long sentence about the great love with which God loved us. Like he just thought about it, just came up with it. So he repeats it. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.”

You remember that the Apostle Paul is the one who crafts the most complex and coherent of theological arguments in Romans. The Apostle Paul is the one who creates the beautiful ode to love within the Body of Christ in I Corinthians. Paul offers those lists of spiritual gifts and the sins of the flesh, and the fruit of the spirit. Paul so artfully describes his own struggle, his own faith, his own conversion along the Damascus Road. But here this morning, in the beautiful, if not complex rhetoric of the Book of Ephesians, Paul on “the great love with which God loves us”, it is the awkward, clunky, dropped-in, blurted out line that leaps off the page. “By grace you have been saved….For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

It is not some parenthetical, passing, oh by way, footnote, kind of thought. Rather, it is as if Paul can’t help from blurting it out here at the end of verse 5. Almost like he could have blurted it out throughout the paragraph. God, who is rich in mercy, by grace you have been saved…out of the great love with which God loved us, by grace you have been saved….the immeasurable riches of God’s grace, by grace you have been saved….this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, by grace you have been saved….we are what God has made us, by grace you have been saved.

A former student of mine and an intern here at Nassau Church is now in the second call to a position as a head of staff. They began ministry as an associate pastor who started weeks before the pandemic in March of 2020, when in-person worship ceased. The position of head of staff began last Advent, right after the election. We were having a conversation about the challenges of preaching these days, and the younger colleague said to me, “I would just like to be a pastor in precented times.” Trying to offer a word of encouragement, I shared what an older pastor said to me decades ago. “Remember who you are and to whom you belong. You are a beloved child of God.” It occurs to me that, once in a while, that is something to blurt out and shout. “I am a beloved child of God! Woo!” More often, it is something to say in your head. To remind yourself on a tough day. To whisper in prayer. Sometimes maybe a guttural groan, deep down in the bones. Almost like the groan, the sigh of the Holy Spirit interceding is far deeper than words. That sigh Paul describes in Romans. The assurance deep, deep, down that God is at work in you, in me. Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God.

I wonder if that is closer to how to read Ephesians chapter 2 this morning. You see the same world, I see. You try to take in the same headlines I do. You must be asking, wondering, fretting just like me. Maybe some of you are doing a lot more crossword puzzles, like I am. So I wonder if these days, Paul’s awkward, clunky prose that ignores any rules of grammar ought to be read, ought to be heard as coming from a deeper place. Rather than blurting it out, or sneaking it in, or dropping the mic, what if it is more like a surprising groan, a kind of guttural affirmation about God’s love and mercy that comes from deep within. Like a sigh/grunt as you fall into your favorite chair at the end of a very long and hard day. It’s part weariness and part relief. One of those expressions that leaves the lips and someone says “You know I can hear you, right? Like the grandmother who passed on her faith to you and it wasn’t until you were long grown that you realized her half-whispering “my, my, my” was actually a faith statement for her. “By grace you have been saved, by grace you have been saved, by grace you have been saved.”

“For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life”. Our way of life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer begins his book The Cost of Discipleship this way: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.” Cheap grace is in contrast to costly grace, which, for Bonhoeffer, is understood as the giving of your life in discipleship in the following of Jesus Christ. Or as Paul put it: “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life”. Cheap grace, for Bonhoeffer, is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Of course, the whole of Bonhoeffer’s seminal work is about cheap grace and costly grace. But right in the beginning, he defines cheap grace as a “doctrine, a principle, a system… forgiveness proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian conception of God.” Cheap grace for Bonhoeffer begins as nothing other than a concept to talk about. Such grace flourishes when it is little more than an intellectual assent to a nice idea. A conversation starter instead of a guttural affirmation that comes from your very bones. Cheap grace suggests, in Bonhoeffer’s words, that “my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace is the bitterest foe of discipleship.”

Or said another way, cheap grace is going out into the world after an hour in church and forgetting who you are and to whom you belong. For the beloved child of God yearning to live beneath the cross of Jesus, seeking to be a faithful disciple of the Incarnate, Risen Christ, wanting in the deepest part of the soul to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God”, if we’re honest, when it comes to a life in Christ out in a fallen world, has there ever been a precedented time?

The next time I have a conversation with one of you, with someone sharing with me the heaviness of heart and pondering what to do because of, because of…..because!! I will at least know a place to start. It starts with a deep sigh/groan/prayer deep within your bones, “by grace you have been saved”. And that sigh/groan/prayer doesn’t stop until “For we are what God made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

In unprecedented times, beloved child of God, our way of life doesn’t change.

The Eyes of Your Heart

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Ephesians 1:15-23
June 8
David A. Davis
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As I mentioned with the children, on the first Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was at work in the act of speaking and hearing. According to the Book of Acts, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem…. the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” The first work of the Holy Spirit was to allow and enable people from every nation under heaven to hear in their own language. To hear, as we say just before we join the Lord’s Prayer, in the language closest to their hearts. To hear with their heart. To hear with the ears of their heart.

In Ephesians, Paul also describes the work of the Holy Spirit. “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you” The eyes of your heart. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit to have the eyes to see with your heart.

Ephesians 1:18 is the only time the expression appears in scripture: the eyes of your heart. For some, the notion of a heart with eyes, that wisdom and revelation and enlightenment would be a matter of the heart rather than the mind, just doesn’t make sense. Some translations push against it. The King James translates it “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened”. Another contemporary translation puts it like this: “May God enlighten the eyes of your mind”.  One New Testament scholar offers his own translation in his commentary: “May your spiritual eyesight be enlightened.” In his paraphrase, The Message, Eugene Peterson also offers a swing and a miss. “I ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory, to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear…” You don’t have to know Greek to read opthalmous and cardias in the passage. It is the eyes of your heart. Eyes and heart. Perhaps Professor Clifton Black puts it best: “so that the eyes of your heart may light up.”

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, as the eyes of your heart light up, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe, according to the working of God’s great power. That you may know with the eyes of your heart, God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power. God put this power to work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

It is as if Paul is just singing now. Just like Colossians, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Just like Philippians: therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name. In the middle of the Apostle’s prayer for the faithful at Ephesus, in the middle of his pastoral prayer, as he prays for their hearts to have eyes, Paul starts to sing the doxology. Over lunch this week, Professor Nancy Lammers Gross shared with me that Ephesians is the only one of the Apostle’s letters that doesn’t start with the problems of the congregation. Paul starts with worship and praise. “He can’t help himself,” Nancy says, “three full chapters of worship”. It’s a hymn here in Ephesians chapter 1.

God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made Christ the head over all things for the church, which is Christ’s body, the fullness of Christ, who fills all in all.  That last line in the hymn of praise. Christ’s feet, Christ’s head, Christ’s body. As one commentator puts it, Christ, who is over the church, is also in it and fills it. The fullness of God resides in him, and from him the Body of Christ is constantly supplied with and by Christ’s presence. As Professor Black puts it, “Christians [as the body of Christ] are conduits of Christ’s immeasurably redemptive power: the church is the very body of his fullness that fills all things with loving goodness.”

“Conduits of Christ’s immeasurably redemptive power” filling all things with loving goodness. This afternoon, we are gathering to give thanks for Bill Wakefield’s life and offer him forever into the heart of God. As I discussed the service with Bill, he told me that what he cared about most was telling everyone how important Matthew 25 was to him. “Bill, you don’t think I would talk about Matthew 25 when you were part of the group that recommended it for the center panel in the new chancel texts? I know how important it is to you.” Bill chuckled and said, “I figured, but since I won’t be there, I didn’t want to take any chances. Jesus said, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”  Bearing the fullness of Christ into the world with loving goodness.

The church is Christ’s body bearing the fullness of his love to the world. Even as Paul breaks into song, his prayer for the body of Christ continues. Yes, it’s doxology, but it’s also discipleship. His song, his prayer, is praise and it is praxis. Singing, praying, and promising that the body of Christ would carry his fullness into the world. When the eyes of your heart light up with God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, according to Paul, as a follower of Christ so transformed by his fullness, how can you not turn and baptize the world with his grace, mercy, and love?

Baptize the world. When the eyes of your heart light up, how can you sow seeds of hatred, division, and bigotry? When the eyes of your heart light up, how can you demand that only Christians should speak in the highest halls of the land, as the Statue of Liberty still proclaims, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” When the eyes of your heart light up, how can you work to not feed the hungry, work to demonize the stranger, work to make it more difficult for the sick to be cared for? There is a danger of going numb, and understandably, trying one’s best to ignore all the nasty chaos being intentionally spun. But Christ alone is head of the church, and the fullness of him fills all in all. Fills us.  With the eyes of your heart enlightened, you can still give a witness to the wonders of his love, you can still pass forward the selflessness of his compassion, you can still bear his light every day in your corner of life. It’s the discipleship in doxology; knowing that when it comes to God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, and the very fullness of Christ, you and I actually have a part to play.

One Sunday after worship in one of the congregations, the summer of 2016 in Scotland, a big burly man came up to me. He had a wonderful flow of white hair, a beard, and this weather-worn red face. He had to be either a ferry captain or maybe Santa Claus. He took both my hands in his and as he thanked me for the service, for the sermon, he said, “Now could you please just talk slower and use fewer words. You’re American, you know.” Then he got teary and with his voice breaking, he said, “There’s just so much there, you have to give us time to take it all in.” He wasn’t just talking about the sermon, of course. He was talking about the gospel. He was talking about God’s grace. He was talking about the fullness of Christ. God’s hope. God’s glory. God’s power. And one man’s yearning for the eyes of his heart to light up again and again and again. “There is just so much there.”

“There’s just so much there.” There’s so much more. The river of Christ’s love runs deep. The expanse of the grace of Jesus is vast. The strength of God’s foundation shall not be shaken. Bearing the fullness of Christ into the world with loving goodness. Remembering, clinging to, and claiming that there is always more where that comes from. A threat perhaps to the power, the spirit, the force that works against all that God intends in the here and now. But for you and me, struggling to be faithful both in our doxology and our discipleship, it’s a promise. There’s always more where that comes from.

Yesterday I participated in the installation of the Rev. Maureen Fitzgerald as the 12th pastor and second female pastor of the First Baptist Church of Princeton. One of the historic African American Churches in town is celebrating its 140th year. The service was 3.5 hours. I experienced firsthand the saying that I have always heard when it comes to worship in the Black church. When come to worship to offer your praise and adoration, to hear a Word from the Lord, to offer the prayers of the people, and to get yourself ready to go out into the broken world again, well, an hour just isn’t enough.

I have been listening to a gospel playlist on my daily walks. It feeds my soul and picks up my pace. One song is titled “The presence of the Lord is here. I feel it in the atmosphere. The presence of the Lord is here.” The presence of the Lord is here. Then the spirit of the Lord is here. Then the power of the Lord is here. Pretty simple text. In the live recording, at one point, the musicians keep going up a half-step while they repeat. The presence of the Lord is here. The Spirit of the Lord is here. The power of the Lord is here. Over and over again. It occurs to me that it is a musical way, a choral way of affirming, proclaiming that when it comes to the presence, the spirit, the power of the Lord. Yes, there is always more where that comes from. There is just so much there. Or in the Apostle Paul’s words, “the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

As you turn to face, see, and live in the world today, join me in this prayer…Holy God, give of all mercy, light up the eyes of my heart today so that I can bear even a crumb of the fullness of Christ into the world with loving goodness.

God’s Good Pleasure

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Ephesians 1:1-14
June 1
David A. Davis
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Our granddaughter Franny celebrated her fourth birthday in April. Her mother broke the rule of inviting the same number of children to the party as the age of the one celebrating. But there is a rule in Franny’s pre-k class that if you invite one, you understandably have to invite all. Cathy and I went to the Bronx a day early on a stunningly beautiful spring Friday to help set the backyard for a party of 15 four-year-olds and their families. Saturday, the day of the party, was, of course, cold and rainy. So we spent the morning moving furniture around the house and getting the toy room formerly known as a home office ready for the afternoon guests.

As the children started to arrive, they represented all the diversity of a NYC pre-school one can imagine. Otto had brown skin and came with her two abuelas, who spoke little English. Rachel came with both parents after Shabbat services. Malachi, with black skin, came with both his Puerto Rican moms. Dillan, who looked a bit like me when I was his age, was stocky, and his blond hair was sticking out pretty much in every direction. At one point during the exhausting afternoon, I stuck my head into the toy room. I think all fifteen four-year-olds were in there. Most of the parents were just in the next room getting to know each other. The toy room, though, was strangely quiet. There was no arguing about toys. No tiffs about space. Then I realized that the children were all playing by themselves. Surrounded by Franny and her little sister’s toys, which were all new to the classmates. It was like being in a toy store. But they weren’t playing with each other. It was like speed dating with toys as they moved around the room. Each child is playing with a toy of some sort. They all seemed to rotate to the next toy like gymnasts rotating around the various pieces of equipment. They were together, but they weren’t. They were playing but not collaborating. They were all in the same room while being in their own four-year-old world.

My observation must have still been hanging around in my head as I read the first chapter of Ephesians over and over this week in my office. “…blessed us in Christ…God chose us in Christ…God destined us for adoption as God’s children…the glorious grace that God freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption…the riches of his grace that he lavished on us…God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will…In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance…we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ…as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory.”  Us. Us. Us. We. We. We. God’s children through Jesus Christ, “according to the good pleasure of God’s will”. God’s good pleasure made known in and through Jesus Christ to us. Us. Us. Us. It’s not the royal we but it is the “holy we”.

Another observation hanging around in my head for a few weeks was the morning of Confirmation two Sundays ago. The incredible morning of worship and affirming faith in Jesus Christ included the baptisms of Sterling, Isaac, and Nico. Like Mark Edwards in his sermon, I was focused on getting through the baptisms without too many of my own tears. A choir member told me afterward how meaningful it was to be up here in the chancel and able to see the faces of the parents and siblings. I had to try not to look and focus solely on the young men standing before me. I joked with the families about having to reach up for the baptisms. You probably have observed that our common practice at Nassau Church for infant baptism is one family, one child, one baptism per service. But that trinity of baptisms underscored the “holy we” to which God calls us. As the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) puts it, “No one comes to Baptism alone; we are encouraged by family or friends and surrounded by the community of faith.”

The community of faith, together, standing along the river bank of God’s grace, affirming over and over again the reach of God’s mercy, the first touch of God’s love, and the endless nature of God’s compassion. Here at the fount, basking in what one liturgical theologian describes as “the kiss of God.” Hearing not once, not twice, but three times, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  Celebrating our adoption as God’s children in triple forte. Marking with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, “the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory.” The “holy we”, experiencing in sacramental form what the Apostle Paul tries to express in words in the first chapter of Ephesians. The inexpressible giftedness of our life in Christ. The seal of God’s love. Marked forever as children of God. We are God’s own forever etched with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s mark given in the very fullness of God’s time, in all the mystery of God’s will, far beyond our comprehension, affirming deep within that we know far more than we can ever say about our life in God. About belonging to God now and forever. That you and I, we, us, are indeed God’s good pleasure.

Yes, of course, God’s good pleasure, this “holy we”, is much, much more than Nassau Presbyterian Church. The embrace of God’s everlasting arms reaches far and wide. Every time we gather at the fount, every time we come to the Table, it is a splash, a taste of the kingdom God intends for the world. One of the reasons the we, we, we, and the us, us, us leap off the scripture’s page this week is the gospel teaching that “we” and “us” in the eyes and heart of Jesus is always bigger, broader, greater than you and I can comprehend. God’s promise and God’s mercy stretch far beyond what you and I can imagine.  The we, we, we, and the us, us, us leap off the page this week because the powers and principalities are in the business right now of demonizing, dismissing, dehumanizing, threatening, harming, getting rid of “THEM”.  Hundreds of thousands of “them” near and whose lives and families and children are at risk with mass layoffs in the blink of an eye, benefits being crushed buried deep within budgets, decisions released unsigned by courts late on a Friday afternoon, and orders callously signed and celebrated by the wealthiest and most powerful in the world.  You and I know in the deepest parts of our soul, way down in our bones, you and I know and dare to believe and so live, that “THEM” is and will always be “US”, we, the children of God. They, too, are God’s good pleasure. All of humankind. All is God’s good pleasure. All within the embrace of the everlasting arms.

A couple in my first congregation had a farm in Maine where they would spend the summers. The husband once described to me the small country church they attended each Sunday. It was a Methodist Church that could seat maybe 100 people, and it was about a third full, he said. “I still sit in the back, though,” he told me, knowing that I knew exactly where he sat when they were in New Jersey. “But up there, I don’t sit on the right, I sit on the left. That way, I can see the cows in the pasture next to the church.” The son of a Methodist preacher, he went on to say that when the preacher was going on too long, he enjoyed looking out the window. “With all due respect”, he said with a chuckle, “the beauty of creation proclaims the gospel promise of God better than the preacher.” I can’t disagree. As Norman Maclean put it in his description of the beauty of creation in his book “A River Runs Through it”: “Every afternoon I was set free, untouched and untutored to learn on my own the natural side of God’s order. And there can be no better place to learn than the Montana of my youth. It was a world with dew still on it, more touched by wonder and possibility than any I have since known.” The world with dew still on it.

Have you noticed that most, if not all, the Sundays we have been worshipping here at the Seminary Chapel have been stunningly beautiful? Like that Methodist Church in Maine, here in the Chapel, we can look out at the world. There are no cows to look at, but there is creation in full bloom. This morning, with a sky so blue that it points to “a world with dew still on it, touched by wonder and possibility.” A sky that whispers of the world God intends.  Creation can proclaim the gospel promise of God.

No one comes to the fount of baptism alone. No one comes to the table of the Lord’s Supper alone. Coming forward for communion this morning puts an exclamation point on that. Our Savior invites each one of us to this table prepared for us. The table of his promise. The meal of his grace, mercy, and love. A foretaste not just of glory divine but a foretaste of the kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven. Jesus invites us here to remind us that we are indeed God’s good pleasure. Jesus invites us here, for when the earth shakes and the nations totter, we still feast on his love, crave his mercy, and are nourished by his grace. For as Jesus says in the of times like this in gospel of Luke, “This will be a time for you to bear testimony”.

Come to the Table this morning. And before and after you receive the bread and cup, look around and give thanks for the “holy we” to which we have been called. Don’t taste and see that God is good by yourself. And when you turn from the table, toward the outer aisles, make sure to look out the window.  Look out at the world God created. For it is by the wonder and mystery of God, still a world with dew still on it touched by the wonder and possibility. A world of God’s promise. A new heaven and a new earth. Take a look out the window and remember that in Jesus Christ, our best days are always yet to come.

The Healing of the Nations

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Revelation 22:1-5
May 25
Len Scales
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For those of us who were journeying through the season of Lent with Nassau, we will remember that we started with the beginning of Genesis and found our way through the Garden of Eden. In the garden, there was a tree of life.

Now near the end of the Easter season, we are in the last chapter of Revelation. We’ve gone from the starting point of the Bible to its conclusion and we are in a beautiful city, radiating because of God’s light, the Lamb of God sits on the throne and living water of crystal flows through the city. Here, the tree of life reappears, and this time it’s not one tree eventually cordoned off from humanity, but an arcade with the tree of life on either side of the river, and it bears fruit continually, the abundance is new in every month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Brian Blount in his commentary on Revelation, points out “John’s new Jerusalem out-Edens Eden!”[1]

God’s proclamation of all of creation as “very good” in Genesis is bookended here with healing of the nations. God’s healing is not for 1 individual, nor is it for 1 group of people, it is inclusive and sufficient for all.

It can be hard to imagine the healing of the nations when we know there is such grave suffering being inflicted across the world. Children are cut off from humanitarian aid, hospitals attacked, corruption and violence seem to take the day all too often.

Revelation was written when Rome was teetering on the edge of self-destruction due to its injustices.[2]

While the new Jerusalem with perpetual light, life-giving water, and leaves of healing may seem far off from our imagination, perhaps that wider context doesn’t. There are injustices in every age that are moral wounds in society. So much so that it can be hard to metabolize all the horror in our news cycle, lack of care for the neighbor in our country, and personal losses we each experience.

The tree of life along with the crystal river flowing from the throne of God is a relief and a promise. When the wild world seems to be spinning apart, we are led back to the refreshing waters provided by God. This image, this promise is not made so that we can hang back and say God’s got it and not do anything in response. It gives us a reassurance of what will be and a model of what we can work toward.

One of the greatest gifts of working with the campus ministry Princeton Presbyterians is seeing the diversity of how students and alums follow God’s call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.” There isn’t one profession or one region of the world that is the center of what God is doing. Rather, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God can be at work anywhere. We have the privilege of seeing the goodness of God everywhere the fruits of the Spirit are present—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.[3]

We can test what is of God and what is not by whether healing is a part of the impact. So where people’s access to healthcare and food and housing are cut off, that is not where God is leading us. Where creation is abused, that is not of God. God is present in the support of community, the flourishing of creation, a vision for life-giving future.

John is caught up in a dream in Revelation, he is angry at the injustices tearing his people and community apart. In the midst of the rubble, he is taken up and shown an apocalyptic story. It is not polite, nor the maintenance of the status quo. It is a complete turning over of all that is against God and a prophetic call for repentance. In the end, John is shown the vision we read today—a city of God, the Lamb that laid his life down for us all is sitting on the throne. There is no need to have gates that protect or fear of running out of water or fruit. There is abundance with a promise of healing what is broken and hurting and raw.

Revelation comes to John when it seems like life is falling apart. It is then the angel shows up and reveals a promise that imagines a new world.

In her book, Imagination: A Manifesto, Ruha Benjamin calls on the power of collective imagination to bring about a life-giving world. The stories we tell and the dreams we fan matter. Benjamin says, “So, one of the things we can all do starting yesterday is to actively work to topple the steel curtains and bulldoze the wire fences lurking in our own imaginations—confronting the treacherous ‘aliens’ and dangerous boogeymen distorting how we see others and warping how we understand ourselves. … We must populate our imaginations with images and stories of our shared humanity, of our interconnectedness, of our solidarity as people—a poetics of welcome, not walls.”[4]

So where are those positive avenues for your imagination to run? Is it through reading or enjoying art or playing with a three-year-old or listening to a young person share their vision for the world? Where might God be catching us up into a vision that is beyond the horizon of what we can see on earth? Who are the conversation partners that help you envision a world that is in line with the love and justice of God?

I invite you to take moment, stare out the windows and daydream.

A worship space like this is built with clear windows so that the world can see the church at worship, AND it also allows the church to look out at creation.

The leaves of these trees on either side of the chapel help change the color scape in each season. Whether it is buds in the spring, steady green in the summer, the turning of leaves in the fall, or the bare branches in the winter, these trees stand as testament to God’s good creation.

See God’s goodness and hear God’s vision:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life,
bright as crystal,
flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb
through the middle of the street of the city.
On either side of the river is the tree of life
with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month,
and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

May it be so.

[1] Brian Blount, The New Testament Library: Revelation, (Westminster John Knox, 2009) 397.

[2] Christianity and White Supremacy: Heresy and Hope Conference at Princeton University, opening panel in the University Chapel, March 20, 2019.

[3] Galatians 5:22-23

[4] Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024) 102.

The Tears God Wipes

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Revelation 7:9-17
May 11
David A. Davis
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I have admitted it before in a sermon. Some may remember it. I own up to it. I am not ashamed to admit it. I embrace it without bragging about it. It is part of who I am. I come by it honestly. It comes from my father, and I passed it on to one of our two children. Cathy no longer rolls her eyes at me. She has rather come to expect it. I am a crier. I cry at commercials. I cry at standing ovations. I cry at ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries. Not a sobbing sort of thing, but enough for a tear or two to run down my cheek. I cry at sappy sports movies like “Rudy”. I cry at acceptance speeches. I cried Wednesday night at the Farminary listening to Nate Stucky share his testimony. And I have heard Nate share it on multiple occasions.

So I took great comfort, great encouragement, this week as I did my homework in preparing for this sermon this morning. I discovered what I already knew, but I discovered it as if for the very first time. There are a whole lot of tears in the bible. More often than not, when I share some of my homework, like the study of a particular word and where it shows up on the scriptures’ page, more often than not, I am pointing out how rare or unique the use of the word may be. On Easter morning just a few weeks ago, I argued that the use of the word “Greetings”, as in the Risen Christ saying “greetings” to the women outside the empty tomb, only occurs three times in the gospel. But this morning, I rise before you to tell you what I think you already know as well, there are a whole lot of tears in the bible.

“Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears. (Ps 39)…My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”  (Psa 42)…Again, I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed– with no one to comfort them! (Ecc). “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (Mat 2). “Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to warn everyone with tears.” Paul in the Book of Acts. “Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.” (II Tim)

In the Book of Genesis, at one point in the dramatic reconciliation with his brothers, Joseph wept so loudly that the Egyptians could hear him. Hannah wept so hard in the first Samuel that Eli the priest thought she was drunk. There was the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears. The weeping that filled the house when Jesus arrived to heal the daughter of Jairus. You remember that when Peter heard the cock crow the second time, he “broke down and wept.”  In John’s gospel, after Mary Magdalene had told the disciples about the empty tomb, after they ran to look in and then returned to their homes, Mary stayed at the tomb. “Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.”

And, of course, when Mary confronted Jesus about the death of her brother Lazarus, and Jesus saw her and everyone else weeping, “Jesus wept.”  When Jesus  came near to the city of Jerusalem in the Palm Sunday procession, “he wept over it.” The verb used to describe Jesus’ last words in the gospels is “cried”. “He cried out in a loud voice.”  The preacher in the Book of Hebrews proclaims, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.” (Heb 5).  

Yes, there are a whole lot of tears in the bible. There is a whole lot of weeping on the scripture’s page. That’s because the bible says as much about God’s people as it says about God. Though in the tears of Jesus we see the very tears of God. As Nicholas Wolterstorff writes in his moving memoir Lament for a Son, a memoir dripping with his own tears: “How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity’s song–all without lifting a finger that we could see…. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself. We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer, we catch sight of God [In Christ himself] scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God.”

In a similar way, William Sloan Coffin points to the tears of God in the first sermon he preached after coming back to the pulpit after the death of son. “For some reason, nothing so infuriates me,” Coffin preached, “as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around with God’s fingers on triggers, God’s first around knives, God’s hands on steering wheels….My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die…that [on that night] God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

We had around a hundred people at the Seminary’s Farminary for the tour and worship, and potluck dinner. Once again, I heard Nate say a version of what I have heard him say multiple times: “Farmers and pastors have a lot in common. They both have to learn a lot about life and death.” You won’t be surprised that I have had a multitude of conversations that no one can number about dying, death, and eternity. The older I get, as the conversations keep coming, I find myself willing to say less when the topic turns to what heaven will be like. As Dan Migliore writes in his seminal work “Faith Seeking Understanding”, “We should not pretend to have precise language and detailed information about the future.” He argues that we can only speak in images, metaphors, and parables. Here, Professor Migliore quotes Martin Luther: “As little children know in their mother’s womb about their birth, so little do we know about life everlasting.”

Saying less for me about is not a reflection of a lack of faith or rising doubt in a grizzled old pastor. I cling ever more and more to the resurrection promise of God for you and me and this broken world. I will admit that some of the biblical imagery regarding heaven is less compelling to my own hopes and longings. Or maybe better said, the imagery surrounding eternal life with God has shifted for me. Life forever nestled into the beauty of the very heart of God. Well, I find myself praying that with people, proclaiming that more and more. But there is one biblical image about heaven that I won’t let go of. “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

When the bible is so full of tears, is there a more compelling resurrection promise? The Word of God is so full of tears. The tears of humankind. The tears of creation. The tears of Jesus. The tears of God. So many tears. So many tears. Yes, the tears of the sacred page. But yes, the tears that define humanity then and now and every time in between, so full of tears. You can’t miss, you ought not miss, you better not miss this eternal promise of God in and through the Risen Lamb upon the throne. That by grace and his righteousness, and the everlasting mercy of God, one day. One day. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. God will wipe away every tear but the tears of joy. For weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.

Cathy and I fell in love on this campus forty years ago this spring semester. Part of our romance was sneaking into this chapel later at night. Believe it or not, it wasn’t locked. The piano was locked, but I knew where the key was hanging. I would sit at the piano and play, and we would sing.  One of the few songs I knew how to play was a song by Andre Crouch. Noel Werner has chosen it for our final hymn. Noel didn’t know this part of our story when he planned the hymns for this morning. “No more crying there, we are going to see the King.”. Here is another one: “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. O, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood. This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long”.

Stick with me here, church. If our life in Christ is a foretaste of glory divine, if God in God’s infinite love and mercy offers just a glimpse of the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, if Jesus with a grace that greets us fresh every day, invites us to taste and see now the love he has for us, if the Holy Spirit is on the loose in our lives planting a seed deep within us of the knowledge of God’s dwelling place, the Wonderful Counselor reminding us today and tomorrow and the next day that the Savior has gone to prepare a place for us, if this life we live together as the body of Christ is somehow a foretaste of glory divine, than that means God is wipe your tears and mine this side of glory.

The wordless comfort of the Holy Spirit at work when really, no words should be said. The Savior’s love tends to a broken heart and allows just a bit of light to shine in the darkness. The resurrection promise of God that even in the chaos and turmoil of this blasted, broken world still points to an open door that no one can shut. Luther seems right when he writes about “how little do we know about eternal life”. But when it comes to this foretaste that I am trying to describe, when it comes to God wiping away, receiving, sharing, joining the tears of God’s children in this life? Maybe I can’t describe it. Maybe I can’t give you a great sermon illustration. But that’s because too many of you would be in it. Because when it comes to God and your tears and my tears now, I believe, I know it, because I’ve seen it.

A whole multitude of times that no one can count. The tears God wipes.

“God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”