It is my intent every Sunday morning to give you the best information I have. And last Sunday morning, I talked about the historical markers, and today I have more information.

Or we’ll say better information. I found out that the Stephen Smith marker is that it was erected as part of the Civil War Trails, where markers were installed specifically for the150th anniversary of the Civil War. That’s when the Stephen Smith marker was put on the building beside Mount Zion, since then, that marker had been vandalized and was worn. What I learned from one of our members who contacted the Pennsylvania Historical Marker Program, is that they are in the process of refurbishing markers for our 250th anniversary of the country. They have also taken some down that have to do with race and black history because there was some racist language on some of them. So, some of the language needed to be updated, and they are working on all of that.

It is not my intent to create any ill will with the Pennsylvania Historical Marker program, and I wanna make sure that you have accurate information. So I wanted to start with that.

But in preparing this sermon, I ran across that phrase with malice towards none, and learned that that was the beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which I wanna read to you.

He wrote this in March of 1865, and the Battle of Appomattox was in April of 1865. So, this was written before that battle and before Lee surrendered. He wrote “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the rights, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. That sounds profound right now. So at a time when the battle was still raging, when the war was still raging. Lincoln asked specifically the people of the North who were listening to him to have charity, and that charity is based on the Latin form of the verb, which is caritas, which is a concern for others.

Not charity as in just give them something. It’s not about a handout. It is about having love for neighbor. It is caring about the other. That’s what Lincoln was calling us to be about, and I think it’s who we need to call ourselves to be. It’s not easy right now.

Our scripture today is Matthew’s Gospel, and it was written to a Jewish audience.

As far as chronological order in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has come into Jerusalem for his final stand. He knows that he has come to Jerusalem and he will not leave alive, and he’s running into the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians. Because they’re all looking for something they can use as a reason to arrest him.

The lawyer says to him, what is the greatest commandment? It’s a trap. Jesus knows it’s a trap. It sets up the same piece that, in Luke’s gospel, leads us into the Parable of the Good Samaritan. But this is Matthew’s piece, and if you read the next chapter, you’ll find out that Jesus is not in a particularly charitable mood with the Pharisees and Sadducees. He’s about to put them in their place.

But for this moment in time, Jesus gives them the right answer. It’s simple, “Love God with all of your being and love your neighbor as yourself” – Mark 12:30-31.

I think we tend to think about the Pharisees and assume they’re always saying inappropriate things and are always challenging Jesus. We never would’ve done that, but I really wonder if we aren’t closer to the Pharisees than we realize. Because if Jesus were here, we might also say, “But Jesus, what is the one thing that I need to do? What’s the one thing that I need to do to be faithful? What’s the one thing that I need to do to secure eternal life?”

And Jesus’s answer is simple: love God and love your neighbor. If you can’t love God with all of your being, then love your neighbor.

The Pharisee was probably saying the same thing because Pharisees are Jewish. It was like, what is the one thing that I need to do to be a good Jew? How can I be a good Jew? Love God. If you can’t do that, then love your neighbor because in Matthew 25, we’re gonna get the parable of the sheep and the goats.

That one always takes us because we so wanna be sheep. If everybody’s gonna get divided into sheep and goats, we wanna be sheep, because it doesn’t go well for the goats, and we don’t wanna be on that side. So what do we have to do to be sheep? In that parable, the king says, “When you do it to the least of these, you have done it to me” -Matthew 25:40.

By loving your neighbor, you are loving God.

It’s that simple, and it’s that hard because we don’t always love our neighbor. We don’t know how to love God. With all of our being, we struggle. We can’t love God with all our being, and God knows that. We can’t love our neighbor as ourselves, because God’s watched us do that. I don’t think we trust in God’s mercy.

I think that’s a problem. If we can’t make all of our lives about loving God, then God wants us to try and love our neighbor, and if we still fail at that, then the Apostle Paul reminds us that Christ said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” – 2 Corinthians 12:9. We have a hard time with that power being perfect in weakness. That is not the way our society is set up. That is not what we’ve been taught. That’s not how we function. That turns us around

Power in weakness. How much do we trust God to be God?

I said this was a hard week, and I’ve been talking about the fact that I’ve been asking what the world is that we are trying to create.

It matters; our energy that we put out into the world makes a difference. I believe that. I think that’s part of prayer. I was really struck by two people. I don’t know what all you heard around the shooting, but I heard the mayor say, I don’t want your thoughts and prayers. I want something to change. Then, I heard Fletcher’s father. If you didn’t hear his piece, that will take you down. It took me down because he said, I don’t want you to remember my son as a victim of a mass shooting. I want you to remember him for who he was.

What kind of world do we want? What kind of country do we want to raise our children in? Because we have a chance to make a difference. Right now we are living in a time where everything, all the systems are being broken, and we have a chance to build it better. We have a chance to make it just, where every kid has the right and the ability to achieve and become who God created them to be.

I also wrote down in my notes, Jeremiah 31:15, maybe this is a good time, while I might not make it to the end of this sermon. The prophet Jeremiah reminded the people in exile, “This is what the Lord says: A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” – Jeremiah 31:15.

As of Friday, it was day 241 in 2025. There had been 286 mass shootings, 1,180 injured.

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned? They’re allowed to be free. Yes. And how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? Yes. And how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry? How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?” – Blowin’ in the Wind, Bob Dylan.

That song is one year younger than me, written in 1963, and the sentiment hasn’t changed. How Long, oh Lord, How Long?

May it be so. Amen.

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Last week, I said that we were in a moral moment, and I’m going further with that because I think that we are living in a time when people are looking to see how far they can go until we raise a fuss.

I just need to remind you that the crisis in Palestine needs to be on our minds. That’s one of those places where there is a moral issue. But I’m gonna talk about the injustice in our country.

There is a detention center on an unused airstrip in Florida. It is made of tents. I lived for four years in South Carolina. I’m gonna tell you that the alligators are the least of their problems. Because when you put a tent on asphalt in Florida with no air conditioning and no running water, that is called an oven, and no one, regardless of what they did or did not do, belongs there.

This is a picture from NPR of Washington. It triggers me because I remember when I went to Lebanon, and the road in and out of the Beirut airport had manned machine guns on it. As we walked around Beirut, soldiers were walking around with a K-47’s and when you pulled into a parking lot, your vehicle was scanned for bombs. I thought to myself, I never want to live like this.

I heard yesterday that the National Guard has now been given permission to carry weapons too. The other problem is that, in DC, they’re not in the areas where the crime is. They’re in the areas where the white people are, and the black and brown people are the ones being arrested. In Texas this week, they changed the districts, and by doing that, the districts with a higher number of people of color were reduced from 13 to 8.

We are creating the world that our grandchildren are going to occupy. My grandson’s in the room, and that’s not the world I want for him. That’s not where I want him to grow up.

I also look at that picture and think, do we not know? Remember Kent State? Bad things happen when somebody gets anxious. If there’s any people in the room who are young enough not to know what Kent State is, please Google it. You need to know.

Paul, in the scripture today, was talking to the church in Corinth, and the church in Corinth was a mess.

Paul uses both of his letters to try and help. But what always shocks me is that so many weddings want 1 Corinthians 13 read, and they don’t realize that it was written for a bunch of people who couldn’t get along. It is a beautiful passage about what love is, but in context.

What he’s trying to do in that very long diatribe is my issue with Paul. For those of you who’ve been here long enough, you know that I hate it when Paul goes on and on and on trying to prove his point. But they had forgotten that they were called by God to come together and be one body. They were called to come together and work together for the common good. And the common good has to mean that it’s good for everyone, and that’s part of the problem.

One of the issues, if you read Corinthians, is that the wealthier people decided that they should have more rights. One of the big things was the table. They would come early when communion was being offered because they had all the time, they weren’t working. They didn’t need to be anywhere. They had all day. They could sit and feast at the Lord’s table. The poor people, the people who were working hard, didn’t get in until much later. There’s a whole section where Paul says, You all rich people, you’re just going to have to wait. You don’t get to come in and eat up all the food so that the poor people don’t have anything.

We’re all created equal. We are all created good, and then we make choices, and choices are made for us. That’s another sermon we’ll not go into today, or we’ll be here all day. We make choices and our country makes choices together. We make choices about who has rights and who doesn’t, and we need to pay attention, because stuff’s happening. We are called to respect each other. And I’ve been sitting with that, and I want you to sit with this.

I want you to think about how Jesus calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

What part of that love has to do with respect, because where I’m landing is that I have a really hard time loving someone whom I do not respect. That’s hard for me. I can try and love them as a child of God.

There’s a line out of my favorite movie, which is the American President, where Michael Douglas says, “Democracy is about me protecting the rights of the person who says something that makes my blood boil.” But, in a democracy, he has the right to say it; that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. We live in that tension between what is right, the right thing to do, and what our rights allow us to do.

The thought that just came to my head is that thing you say to kids, “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Maybe we need to remember that. I looked up respect, and this was the definition that I liked. It is due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others.

The Stephen Smith Community Development Program Project is coming to Columbia, and I’m gonna tell you more about it.

But when I got this information, I thought, there’s a backstory to this. I wanna know the backstory, who was Steven Smith? And so I asked my friend who sent me the information. I think this is worth you hearing.

Reverend Steven Smith came to Columbia at five years of age. She didn’t tell me what year it was. I’m guessing it was in the 1700’s, but I could be wrong. He was brought to Columbia as a 5-year-old enslaved child. He was the first pastor of Mount Zion in Columbia. When he grew up, he started a lumber business, which was extremely successful, and he became the wealthiest African American in Columbia. He owned the most stock in the bank in Columbia, but he was not allowed to be president because he was black. And so, in his wrath, he built the Wrightsville Bridge. I didn’t know that he paid to have the Wrightsville Bridge built, which was part of the Underground Railroad eventually. But, when the riots broke out in Columbia, his office was destroyed and he was run out of town.

There was a marker at the Mount Zion Church. The Pennsylvania Historical Society had put markers around the state to designate African American history. And it has recently disappeared. The church asked the Columbia Historical Society what happened, and they didn’t know. So, they went to the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and what they learned was that all the historical markers in Pennsylvania regarding African American history and the contributions of African Americans have been removed in our state. I haven’t seen that in the news; it wasn’t reported on, but it’s happened.

Mount Zion Church is taking a building that they had and converting it into the Stephen Smith community development project. It is named that to honor Steven Smith, who was a prominent African American in Columbia. Their purpose is, or what they believe is, that youth thrive when their basic needs are met and educational resources are provided. The programs that they offer will be tailored to their individual needs. The programs will be specifically designed to help empower and equip them. We believe as they are prepared educationally and fundamentally, the result will be productive citizenship. The center is long overdue as a safe space for academic support, STEM projects, peer interaction, as well as the reinforcement of core values.

They are dedicated to empowering youth in Columbia and surrounding areas, providing a safe and inclusive space for them and their families through education, support, and connection. Their goal is to rebuild, restore, and inspire a stronger, brighter future for our youth. If you would like to donate to that project, visit https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/the-stephen-smith-community-development-project

We need to decide where we’re at and how we’re gonna speak and live in this moment.

We do live in tension, but we have to decide what world we want our children and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren to grow up in.

May it be so. Amen.

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As I was thinking about our theme that love accepts, I thought about 1 Corinthians 13.

So, I started reading that in different versions of the Bible. The one I particularly liked, the version out of the Amplified Bible, I’d like to talk about it. 1 Corinthians 13 is often a scripture that we read at weddings because it defines love.

But you know, it was written for the church in Corinth, that couldn’t get along. It was written for a church that picked fights with itself and blamed each other for issues. Paul wrote this to remind them of who they were meant to be.

Love bears all things [regardless of what comes], believes all things [looking for the best in each one], hopes all things [remaining steadfast during difficult times], endures all things [without weakening]. 

– 1 Corinthians 13 (Amplified Bible)

What I liked about the amplified version is what it put in the parentheses, or brackets, it added text in brackets. I think that’s powerful. I think this leads us to important questions.

What happens if we accept all things as they are rather than judging them for what they are not?

Accepting all things doesn’t mean approving all things. You can accept, but is doesn’t mean you need to like it. It doesn’t mean you need to approve or condone it, but you can accept it and let it be what it is. Respect what it is, even if you don’t understand it. It does mean giving ourselves and others grace and accepting our own limitations because we may need to accept what is true about us.

Today’s scripture from Luke could be called a tale of two sisters.

First we have Martha. It just tells us that they’re sisters, but everybody has a perception that Martha is older. It’s very interesting. It sort of makes sense based on how the story plays out. Older sisters or firstborn have a tendency to be rule followers. They have a tendency to be very dutiful. They’re people pleasers. They understand the cultural expectations on them. Martha being a female in this culture understood that when 13 people show up at her house, without invitation, then she needs to provide hospitality.

Hospitality looks like having some kind of food and beverages, so somebody needs making start making pitas and somebody better grind up some hummus because we got 13 extra people at the table. That, I think, was Martha’s mindset.

Then there’s Mary. Mary is generally perceived as being younger, something about younger children or the baby of the family, they tend to be more playful. They tend to be a little bit more self involved or self interested. They’re going to make sure their needs are met. It’s not always true, I’m talking in generalizations, but the baby tends to behave differently in a situation.

So, here are these two sisters. Martha goes to work in the kitchen. She’s about feeding everybody. Mary sits down in the living room and decides to listen. Actually, what happens in this is perfect example of triangulation. Martha is mad at Mary, but instead of talking to Mary, she talks to Jesus.

But in this version by Vermeer, what I love is you can’t tell the differences in age. Vermeer has Jesus look at Martha and gesture to Mary as if he is trying to connect them. He hears Martha, but he acknowledges Mary. Like there’s not, there’s not a, a right and wrong. Somebody needs to make dinner, but somebody needs to listen to what Jesus has to say.

Both roles are important. There’s not a good versus bad. There’s not a victim perpetrator. They’re both appropriate. Jesus kind of tries to smooth that through. That’s what Vermeer is trying to show.

I also really like this picture because that is not what I think we expect Jesus to look like. First of all, he looks very Jewish, but he doesn’t look like a savior. He doesn’t look like the superstar. This isn’t a Jesus that you’re going to say, Oh, wow. I want to see that guy. I think that just challenges us a little bit about Jesus.

But I thought about this story in the larger context of Luke, and I thought it’d be very interesting, and I think it’s a good short study for us to compare this story with the parable of the Good Samaritan because this comes immediately after the parable.

When writers put things like that together, it’s good to step back and say, are we supposed to learn something from this? Is there a deeper meaning in the fact that these are put together?

I’m not going to read the Good Samaritan story to us, but think back to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Does anybody remember what the problem was? What was the issue that needed to be addressed in the Good Samaritan? There was an injured man laying by the side of the road who needed help. What do the Levite and the priest do? Does anybody remember what they do? They walk away. They choose not to engage. Their attention is somewhere else. They say they crossed to the other side of the road and kept going.

It sounds like they saw it. There’s good reasons for a priest not to touch an injured body, especially if there’s blood obvious, because if he touches blood, then he is unclean. It’s like having COVID for a week, he has to seclude himself and do all of this ritual cleansing thing till he can go back to work. So it’s easier if he doesn’t get involved.

What does the Samaritan do? He takes him to a hotel. He takes care of the mans wounds and pays someone to continue to care for him for two days. He gives him two days wages to take care of them and says, if it costs you more than that, I’ll even pay that. So he provides all the care.

Now let’s go back to today’s story.

Where was Martha’s attention? Martha’s attention was in the kitchen. There was stuff to be done. I do know what I would do if 13 people showed up. That used to happen when the kids were little, right? Suddenly my yard is full of kids and guess what? Somebody’s hungry, which if somebody’s hungry, everybody’s hungry and everybody needs snack. That’s just what you do. You just start pulling out snacks and you bought them at BJ’s in bulk and here they are. Today’s snack is cheese doodles.

What’s Mary doing? Where’s Mary’s focus? Jesus. Mary’s focus is on the guest, right? Mary is also doing hospitality, but she is doing hospitality for the person. She’s not involved in all of the other things. She’s involved in listening. She knows that there is something to be learned here. It’s not really clear whether Mary and Martha knew Jesus and the disciples before they walked in, except that the way Martha talks to him, I don’t think you would get involved in that kind of a conversation unless you already knew the person. Mary may even be taking care of her own spiritual needs.

But for me, it’s the issues are Where Is Their Attention?

In the good Samaritan the Levite and the priest, their attention is on themselves. I feel like that’s Martha. Martha knows there’s food to be made. She’s gotta be in the kitchen taking care of stuff.

Whereas I put the Samaritan and Mary together because the Samaritan wants to care for the person and Mary. Is giving her attention to the guest, specifically Jesus. The attention is to the guest to listening to the guests, to making sure the guest feels welcomed in that respect. Probably knowing that she’s going to learn something there.

What about perceptions? What about the perception of the Levite and the priest? The perception of Martha? Does anybody see any ties there? How those could be similar in my mind? I’ll give you my logic again. They’re tied up with what has to be done with the doing. Whereas the Samaritan and Mary are about being. The Samaritan does do also, right? The Samaritan, because he helps, he bandages the wounds and he takes the guys. So there’s some doing in there. But I think there’s a difference in perception.

I think that it reminds us that we’re to look at how we can be accepting and maybe even let go of some of the perceptions that we have of other people.

The Levite and the priest may have had a perception of the person at the side of the road. They were beyond help or maybe that’s something they see all the time. It’s almost like another dead guy to walk around. Isn’t that sad? We don’t want to get to that point. We don’t want to get to the point where we look at something and go, “there they go again. That’s just them acting out again.”

We want to be able to actually look at people and care about them, see their need, see them for who they are, not for our perception of who they are.

Because our perceptions are all based on the stories we write in our minds. Our stories always agree with the judgments we have made. That’s why there are rationalizations. We can rationalize anything. All we need is a good story and our brain, our ego will supply it. But here’s the thing to remember about perceptions. Perceptions are usually or often wrong.

Mic drop. Our perceptions are usually wrong. They may be based on old wisdom. They may be based on bad information, inaccurate information that we have gotten along the way. So we need to pay attention and we need to recognize that we can choose to let go of those perceptions. That is a choice. That is a choice that is ours.

I hope that you can take some wisdom today from Simon and Garfunkel. Slow down. You move too fast. You got to make the morning last.

We have to slow ourselves down to see what’s around us. We have to stop to listen to the stories of others. Because then we might even learn something. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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