I want to begin by celebrating our choice last week.

Last week, you had three large decisions, two of which were significant, and those were on the inclusive church covenant and on the sanctuary remodel project. You overwhelmingly chose to live, and that, my friends, is good news. You said that this “keeping the status quo” is not enough, that it matters that we welcome people. That it matters, even if we don’t understand. We can still love others. We can accept them as they are. We can listen to the things that they need and make accommodations, because they matter.

That is not a message shared in all churches. For a lot of people, their faith is literally the difference between whether they live another day or not. I can’t say that that is how my faith works. I’ve always had faith. I was raised in faith, and so I’m not sure that I’m at that point, but my faith is important to me, and I recognize that some feel like God is not for them. I guess that’s the point. I was always told that God loved me. There was never a time when I was told God didn’t love me, and that makes a big difference in who we are.

The Ephesians text for today, Ephesians 1:11-23, is about this love that God has for us.

The writer is taking this love that we call the blessing of the Jews. You know, the Jews had been the chosen ones, that’s said throughout the older Hebrew testament, in Jesus. This was opened up to those who were not Jewish, and that means us. We didn’t have to become Jewish and follow all the Jewish laws to become Christian. That in Christ we are.

In Roman law, “adopted” meant that you were entitled to everything. The same as one who is physically born, a family heir. An adopted person has all of the privileges and obligations of the family of origin, and so we are given the blessing to be called children of God. That is who we are. We get to claim that, and I hope you can feel that in your bodies. Because that’s an important message. It’s important to know that you belong.

That’s a part of belonging. Again, it’s a part of the love that is available to all without exception. Our problem is that for time and eternity humanity has tried to put restrictions on that and say everybody but these people or everybody but these people, we’ve always tried to make an other that for whom that does not apply.

That’s not the way God looks at it, I don’t think. Not that I know exactly what God thinks, but God and Jesus were very much about sharing God’s love with all people, and many of the religious authorities thought they were not part of or were outside of God’s love. Whether they had a physical ailment or a deformity or some kind of challenge, the religious authorities in Jesus’ day said, “not you. You are not welcome.” And Jesus said, “Yes, yes, you are.”

The good news about this is that we didn’t earn it. We don’t deserve this adoption, and we didn’t earn it. There’s nothing that would make us good enough to earn this. It is a gift freely given because of who God is, not because of who we are. The good news is that we will mess up, but that doesn’t mean that we are then outside of the family of God. God keeps us in that family no matter what, and maybe our greatest sin of all is that we think that who we are and what we have is because of us rather than God. We forget, or we lack gratitude. We forget to be grateful. We forget to come back to God as the source of all that is and will be.

We get into our minds that, “but look what all we have. Look what we’ve done.” No, it’s not about what we’ve done. It’s about what God is doing through us. Just to clarify, I just said about the fact that we chose life. I think we chose life because God was moving in your hearts to choose life. I don’t think it’s that all of a sudden we had this great, well, maybe it is because we had a great epiphany, but that epiphany was put there by God. Our responsibility, our choice is to then become our best selves because of God’s love, and this being part of God’s family, so that we can work to be grateful, generous, and kind to everyone.

The reality is that these woes in Luke 6:25-35 come to us all. None of us will escape life without some type of heartache or suffering.

This verse gives you the blessings first. But when I read it, I started with the woes. You’re probably thinking that was a really odd place to start, you’re right. It was a choice I made, but I made it because I think the “love our enemies” sounds different when we start with the woes.

The other thing I learned as I sat with this scripture is that it matters how we perceive God. How do we see God? Do we see God as this loving, encouraging, and comforting presence? Or do we see Him as the God of wrath?

After David and I were married if I would stub my toe or hurt myself somehow, because I am a little clumsy, I would be like, I’m sorry, God, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. I felt like God was getting me for stepping out of line. The hellfire and damnation God that was just waiting for me to step out of line and zap me. That’s the God I grew up with, and I’ve been working really hard for a long time to let go of that God, and I’ve done pretty well on some fronts. But when I read that woes text, I wanna read it with the hellfire and damnation voice.

But why does that matter? I think two truths come into play in this. Hurting people hurt others, and tone matters. I think David told me that all the time we’ve been married, tone matters, and it changes the scripture, doesn’t it? It’s very different if it’s God coming at you or if it is God saying with empathy and compassion, you might be full now, but you will be hungry. Life might be going well now, but there is pain in life. People die, our hearts break, and we have to be prepared for that. That’s very different.

I say all of that because it’s Thanksgiving week, and I don’t know what kind of Thanksgiving gatherings you might be going to, but you might be going to a gathering where there’s someone who’s hard to love.

I hear about how with everything that’s happening in our country, there are a lot of families that are divided and are struggling to sit together at a table. I want you to focus on this scripture, so even if a person that you’re gonna be with this week has a very different position from you, one that even is the opposite or worst case scenario, threatens who you are, then you have some choices of how to love that person. If we can be with that person, then let’s love them. By listening to them, let’s love them by asking, and by being curious and compassionate. Trying to understand what the fear is that they have, because that’s what drives that kind of behavior. Where is their fear?

If you can, do not argue, but if you can say something, make a heartfelt statement about what you see in the world, in our country, and in our community, just name it. “What I see is this … and it breaks my heart.” That kind of statement lands differently. It’s one of the reasons I’ve backed off from some of the groups that I’m in because there is anger and militaristic opposition, and I don’t think that’s it.

I think we are called to be different. I think that’s why the church grew from the beginning, because the disciples and the new Faithful Acts they lived differently. They lived in ways that they could love each other, and those with whom they disagreed, they could love when it made no sense to love; that’s a high calling. That’s not easy. I know that.

I certainly couldn’t have loved, still don’t, but I’m at peace with the person who was the oppressor and abuser in my life. I’ve made peace with them, but they’re dead, so I’m safe. I understand that that’s also part of this. This is not asking for any kind of submission to any abuse; some people make that argument, and I do not believe that. I do not believe that God or Jesus would call us into that. It is about the non-violent non-retaliatory methods and approach, like that which Bayard Rustin did with the Civil Rights movement.

I didn’t even know about Bayard Ruston until Declan introduced me. Everything was going against Bayard. He was African American and he was gay, so even the civil rights movement didn’t know what to do with him, which is why there’s not much written about him. It’s harder to find him among those who are the people we lift up.

As we move into Thanksgiving, I hope that you can look at your life and be grateful.

Make a list of the things for which you are grateful. Share them. Share that at your dinner tables. Help people get in that mindset of gratitude, realizing that it’s not us who accomplished it.

The leading causes of life really boil down to hope, gratitude, belonging, and choice. Those things are not always accessible or reasonable for people who are suffering from poverty, sorrow, hunger, or marginalization, but we are called to help them find that. We are called to help them see how they can have hope because of Jesus. That’s who we are called to be.

My Thanksgiving wish for you is that you can fully embody love and that you can perceive others through love or see them through the lens of love as Jesus sees them.

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

 I want to begin today by thanking you, because I’m going to be starting a class in September through June in Gestalt Pastoral Care.

I’m thanking you because the Rader-Schellenberger Endowment for Theological Education is paying for it. I believe you will find that it will be mixed into my sermons as well as the pastoral care that I give to all of you and to anyone who comes to the door.

Gestalt Pastoral Care, what does that mean? Well, the Gestalt model is a holistic model. Gestalt Pastoral Care is about realizing that our emotions, our spirit, our mind, and our body are all connected. We can’t just talk about what’s going on in our minds. We have to look at our bodies, our souls, and our emotions. We have to look at all of that.

What I love about this approach to pastoral care is that it does not seek to prescribe anything. It’s not about giving advice or setting goals for anyone. It is merely about asking questions, listening, and helping the person find their truth because we believe God is already at work in all of us. It is learning to listen to God and learning to listen to the Holy Spirit, to recognize how the Holy Spirit is working in each of us, continually stretching us towards healing and wholeness.

I’ve been looking at it for about a year, and I’ve gone to a couple of workshops on it, and I have seen amazing things happen with it. So, I’m starting this course and I want you to know about it. In this coming year, I’m gonna be focusing more on pastoral care. We’ve been in this shift of job descriptions and figuring out what’s Melissa’s and what’s mine, and how do we work together? Now I’m at a point where I feel like I have more time and energy to put into the care of our members and to those outside.

I will also note that there’s just an interesting thing that’s going on, and that is that I’m getting emails from people outside of the church who wanna be baptized or who want their children baptized. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’ve got two Preschool families that I’m talking to. Then we have our babies who are gonna get baptized. Breanne and Carlos’ baby, Bella, and Adam and Sarah’s baby, Lucy, are both going to be baptized at the end of September. The spirit’s moving and I don’t know what that’s all about yet, but we’ll see.

We have this scripture today, Ephesians 4:1-6. This makes my top 10 of scriptures.

We have our favorite scriptures, and this is definitely in mine, particularly the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians. We’re not sure if Paul wrote it or not, but that doesn’t matter. There is a lot of truth in it and there’s a lot of wisdom in it that we can still take.

It’s not really clear what the issue was. You know, usually there’s a specific issue that a letter is written for. It’s not clear what it is in this book, but there is, especially in this chapter, and in the first three chapters, this sense that the writer wants this church to come together. That they were separated between Jews and Greeks, and they wanted them to come together and recognize that they were better together. In the course of this book, it does say about them being tossed and blown about with every wind of doctrine.

There’s some other information that is coming to this congregation, and whoever wrote the book didn’t like what was coming. There are several references to the devil. There’s a reference to cosmic principalities and powers, and there’s a reference to deceitful teachers. I’m not sure what they were saying, but this author was trying to bring them back to the wisdom of Paul because Paul started the church. He founded the church in Ephesus, and this is still the church in Ephesus.

What is clear is that it’s saying that we need to come together with our differences because we are one humanity. Then this part is near the end of what I was reading, and it’s interesting, the author lists seven things that are one, one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. Now that’s important because the number seven is the number of completion in the Bible.

That’s just like one of those things you need to learn about the Bible that scholars have figured out over the years. There’s nowhere in the Bible that says if it’s seven things, that is complete, but that’s wholeness. So the world is complete and all is well and perfect when seven things happen. This is the wish of the seven things, or the author is trying to convince the church in Ephesus that these seven things are present, that even though they might have disagreements in the church, that’s okay.

In fact, I was listening to a podcast this week where they talked about the need for antagonism. We need to have some tension between us. We need to have differences of opinion so that we wrestle with where, we should be. What’s the best answer in this?

This is where it gets interesting because I want to say that I think we are in a moral moment.

Because there are a lot of truths being said right now, or claiming to be truths, and we are at a time when we need to determine whether we opt out or whether we opt to participate. What happens in the future, what the future’s gonna look like for our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.

We can be about faith, hope, love, and peace, and the ways of Jesus. That’s who we say we follow, or we can be a different thing. I hear Christians, they call themselves Christians, they say they follow Jesus, but they follow someone who is all about power over others and being militant. They say, “We don’t agree with you, so you are the enemy”, and they’ll squash us, arrest us, detain us, and do all kinds of things.

There’s a lot of dehumanizing language in our society right now, and we need to hear that. If we’re able, we need to say, “That’s not what I want us to be.” That’s not who I think we are, and I don’t think that’s who we want to be in the future, because Jesus was not about that. Jesus never belittled somebody else. Jesus was never demeaning to people. Maybe to the Pharisees a little bit, he tried to teach them about humility, but he never put himself above everybody else. He had power with people, not power over.

There are tensions between our liberties and everybody getting to do what they want. But that’s when our liberties step on someone else’s rights. We have to figure out where the right point is between those. You don’t get to just take away someone else’s rights because you don’t like it. How do we figure this out? I don’t think we have that. We’re at a really important moment in time, and I think that there’s wisdom that we can rely on.

So what are we gonna be about?

I don’t know how many of you know who Archbishop Oscar Romero was, but he was an archbishop in El Salvador. He spoke against the militarization and authoritarian regime that was there, and this is one of his quotes. “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed, it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”

He took a strong stand at his time, and he was gunned down in the middle of a mass by a member of the military who didn’t appreciate what he had to say, but he stood for what he believed in. I think that’s part of this moral moment. We need to figure out who we are and what we stand for, and we need to stand for it. Because, by being silent, we allow the other.

Now that I’ve taken you to a dark place. Let me give you some light, because remember, Christ is the light that comes into the world. Well, I also found some light in a quote from a bluegrass band called The Jet Rows. I’ve never heard of them, but I found their quote.

“When people in power try to remove our humanity and our dignity. Art and music provide a reason for being. The simple act of making music in difficult times becomes an act of defiance and self-determination. Creation of art and music is cathartic and reinvigorating. It can inspire action, collaboration, and resistance. Music eases our minds during difficult times in our lives. It reminds us that we are a community. We are all in this mess together. Music reminds us that even when life is difficult or when the odds are stacked against us. Life itself is beautiful and worth celebrating.”

We are not called to be perfect, but God does call us to be our best selves. So let’s do that by listening more and speaking less, but speaking when we need to. Let’s listen to the pain of others, because I think that’s where a lot of this is coming from. It’s coming from a place of pain.

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

If you came today for a feel good sermon, you picked the wrong day.

If you came hoping that there would be a lot of images, because I usually use a lot of images, there’s only one. This is a very different sermon. It almost looks like it’s very black and white. Because there’s a lot of words, white words on black backgrounds. I don’t mean it to be quite that black and white, because I believe in a lot of grey in this world.

I want to start by defining some terms.

One of the things that we need to know is definitions on what is sin or trespasses.

In the Ephesians text, the word trespasses is used. So sin and trespasses are essentially the same thing, both of which are in opposition to God’s benevolent purposes for the world.

It’s something that opposes God. Not trespasses as in our contemporary, meaning you stepped on my property and I didn’t want you to. Trespasses as in something that is going in against what God wants, or in opposition to God, or even away from God.

Salvation, or being saved, means being reconciled with God again.

That’s the whole journey of the Bible, is that we started with God, somehow we broke off from God, we stopped following God, we tend to follow with our free will, we tend to go our own ways, and we forget about God, and we need to be reconciled with God. That is being saved or that is what salvation is.

Grace is God’s favor that is given to us.

Mercy is also used and mercy means compassion or the word also can mean pity. So God can have compassion on us or grant us favor when we don’t deserve it.

We’ve done nothing to deserve it. Those are important points that you just need to remember when you look at these scriptures.

I’m going to focus on John 3:16-17. Then, a couple verses out of the Ephesians text.

This is probably, at least by John 3:16, the most recognized scripture of all. I don’t know that everybody knows what it says, but we paint it on our barns and we make signs and take them to ball games.

John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

But there’s a piece of that that I think we forget or we gloss over. That is that word “Whoever” or the old language was “Whosoever”. Some of the more contemporary ones use everyone, but that everyone believes in him.

I lift that because that’s not what we’ve practiced. That’s what it says, but then we said, “You don’t look like us, you don’t talk like us and you don’t act like us. So, sorry, that doesn’t apply to you.” How dare we? Who do we think we are?

That’s not me saying that to just you. That is the church, Big C. We’ve been doing this for years. Saying who’s in and who’s out. Who’s really saved and who’s not. Because they don’t follow or believe the way we do or think the way we do or look like us.

Whoever believes in him means we don’t get to choose.

I found a beautiful quote by Mary McLeod Bethune. She was a black woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South. She has been described by Alan Dwight Callahan as an educator, activist, and presidential advisor. She was born in 1875 and died in 1955. Here’s her whole quote:

“….Did you hear that word, ‘whosoever’? That whosoever means you. Not just white people. Not just rich people. You! This is where your human dignity comes from- from God, our creator and savior.” – Mary McLeod Bethune

There are no qualifications. Whosoever. That means inclusiveness that we have been talking about. That everyone is invited in. Everyone is invited to the table. Everyone.

Now, I want to look at John 3:17 because I think we often forget this one too. We stop at 3:16 and we forget to read the rest of it. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

It’s not about judgment and condemnation.

In fact, we are the ones who by our choices create consequences. God’s not condemning us. We’ve lived with that for a long time.

The church, Big C. has made a lot of money, gained a lot of power and influence over making people feel guilty, feel ashamed, and by scaring them. That’s not what John 3:17 says. What this says is that God loves us first and foremost, and that because of God’s love, we’re not condemned, but saved.

But that didn’t suit us. So we’ve manipulated this. That’s where we’ve been wrong.

Christ is our experience of God. Emmanuel, God with us.

We have had an experience of God in Jesus Christ, and we have been reconciled. That’s the story of the cross.

Our sinfulness, it exists, but it does not define who we are. We are broken and whole at the same time. We hold that. We do not understand it. That is the mystery. We don’t know how we can be broken and whole at the same time. But those are the words. That’s what’s there.

We are created not to be perfect, but to be whole and to have an abundant life. Created to be saved, to be reconciled, in spite of ourselves.

That’s where the Ephesians text comes in.

“But God who is rich in mercy…” Let’s say rich in compassion “…he loved us, that even when we were dead through our trespasses, sins, and transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” – Ephesians 2:4-6

I want you to read this and I want you to think about it. When we read these passages, what do we learn? Did you catch anything that was the same out of both John 3:16-17 and Ephesians 2:4-6?

Here are some of the things that I saw. I see that both of those passages lead with God’s love. God’s love is where it starts and ends. That’s the most important thing. We are saved by love. The love that we have, that we did nothing to earn, except that we are God’s creatures. We are part of God’s creation. And we are loved just as we are. We don’t have to prove our worthiness. We all fall short, but God loves us anyway. It’s not about having to be worthy. We are good just as we are, with our brokenness, with our frailties, our sins, our trespasses. We are loved.

Everyone is loved, regardless. Christ came to help us understand that we’ve had this reconciliation.

That was Christ’s message. If you look at the stories over and over, Jesus goes out and meets people where they are, and reminds them that they are loved and forgiven. Their faith is what drives it. Their sins are forgiven. “Your faith has made you well.” – Luke 18:42

Someone asked me, after a sermon the other week, if I believe that everybody’s saved. And I do. Because of these verses. It’s right there. I do believe that everyone’s saved, except that we still have a choice from the very beginning. We have a choice to say, “No thanks, God. I’m doing it on my own.”

Right now the church is frustrated and struggling because so many people are out on their own or asking God, “Where were you? I needed you. You told me I was out. You told me you didn’t have love for me. You’ve already lied to me once, I don’t know if I can trust you again. Even if the world’s falling apart.”

That’s where we are today. That the world is falling apart.

People are looking for where they can find answers. Where are they loved and safe? And the question is, is that us?

Our vision and mission says yes! Our vision and mission that we discerned says that God expects us to love everyone, to welcome everyone, and to help everyone know that they are okay.

That doesn’t mean that everything works out beautifully.

For those who say, “No thanks, don’t need you, God”, there are consequences when we do that. Just as I think that there’s consequences when we look at, look at God and say “You told us that we’re supposed to love everybody, but we’re not.”

When we choose to do that, I think there are consequences.

We have had three people who identified as trans commit suicide in the last three to six months. I think some of that was in the fall of 2023, so I don’t think it was just in 2024. We just had another suicide, Ash Clatterbuck.

In my work in the community, I’ve had several people talk to me about it. Different people in different places that just brought up the subject. What are we doing? Who are we as a community?

Ash was loved and supported fully by their family, was loved and supported fully by the church, and yet they couldn’t handle the pressure of the community.

What does that say about us as a community? That’s bigger, right? That’s Lancaster. Lancaster City and County. What does that say about who we are?

We need to look at who we are, because it matters. It matters a lot.

Like this Sermon? Click Here for the next Sermon in our Lenten Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast