As I was considering our theme of “Cultivating a Life of Delight”, I was curious about the difference between delight and joy.

I Googled it and AI says that delight is a more intense, often short-lived, feeling of pleasure. Where joy is a deeper, more intent, sustained state of happiness or contentment. Joy is knowing this is as good as it gets.

That’s a picture of both of my dogs. Tina made an appearance during COVID and I did a sermon with Tina. Tina stayed home today. Tina is not all about love. Tina has different ideas, but Molly is.

I was wondering when have you experienced delight? If you think about your life when did you last experience delight?

Was it seeing fireworks? Or maybe just sunrise or sunset, something very simple. Or the geese that have been moving through in the past month?

I know I get a sense of delight when either Carl runs up to me and gives me a hug, or Frankie, who’s our granddaughter, who somehow is 10 months old already. I can hardly believe that, but when I walk into the room, she gets so excited because I need to take her. She needs me to hold her. That gives me delight. Molly gives me delight because Molly wakes me up every morning. When she is ready to go for a walk, when she thinks it’s light enough for us to get up, she puts her paws on the bed. There are friends out there waiting for us. We need to go see friends.

I toyed with the idea of bringing Molly today, and then I was listening to one of the podcasts I listen to called “The One You Feed”. They had a guest by the name of Mark Rolands who wrote a book called The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us about Living a Good Life. His theory is that dogs do not reflect on their lives. Molly had a stick this morning, so he argues that Molly didn’t pick up that stick and think “yesterday’s stick was better than this one. I’ll put this down and go look for another one.” Molly instead would think, “I got a stick!” She was loving it and she was in her glory. Then she found a friend, and she just had a walk which is why she’s calm now. I made sure we went to the field and saw as many friends as we could find this morning.

Then, she got to run and chase the ball with her friends, so she could come and be mellow now because she got all that energy out of her system. Now she’s ready for her morning nap. But what is it about a dog? I mean, I’ve had cats too. I was told that my cat acted like a dog, so maybe I’m not a good cat owner, because she came when I called. But with Molly, it doesn’t matter if I go away for seven hours or 15 minutes. When I walk in the house, I get the same greeting and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her for that moment.

She lives in the moment, so I kind of want to push back on his idea that they don’t reflect. No, I don’t think that they reflect, but even more. I don’t think that they judge. Like when I’m gone seven hours and I open the door, she doesn’t think, “Do you see what time it is? Where have you been?” She’s just excited that I am home. She doesn’t judge me or anyone else. I’ve never even heard her growl. She just doesn’t have it in her. Even when her friends are chewing on her, she just lays down. That’s not her nature, but I think she has a lot to teach us about how to live in the moment and just be so happy for what is.

I think that is the point of the Lord’s Prayer. ’cause this does all tie together. In case you thought I was like way down that rabbit hole.

I think that the point of the Lord’s Prayer is to remind us about how simple life can be. You know this scripture started with, don’t be like those people that have these long run on prayers that fill them with words. The point is just to say what you need to say, because God knows what you need to say anyway.

I think it’s also important or worth mentioning that the fact that Jesus said, this is how you pray in Matthew. Jesus says this is how I want you to pray in Luke because this also appears in Luke. The disciples ask Jesus, how are we to pray? And he gives them this. I think that’s a little different. That’s worth thinking about.

Did we need the prayer because we felt like we didn’t know how to pray, or did Jesus think that we needed the prayer because we weren’t doing it right? There are all these people, and Jesus wants to make it very simple and there’s more than three lines, but it comes down to three things.

The first part, our Father in Heaven is the contemporary English version because I wanted you to hear it a little differently. Help us honor your name. So it’s about acknowledging that God is God and we are not. We need to acknowledge where we are in this relationship. We are in a relationship with God, but we are not God. God can do things and will give us things that we may not have the ability to give each other. Let’s lift up God first. Personally, I always try to start every prayer with a thank you. Thank you God. Remembering that God is God and I am not.

Then “thy come and set up your kingdom. So that everyone on earth will obey you as you are obeyed in heaven.” That would be the perfect world. If everyone was able to operate as God operates, we would be in utopia. We would be giving each other good gifts. We would be caring for each other. There would be justice for the poor and the oppressed. The prisoner would be released and this blind would see. It would be all for everyone. I’m going to remind you that I don’t like the kingdom language because it’s being used for a different purpose now that has nothing to do with justice and peace. I’m instead trying to use the language of God’s beloved community. So we pray that God set up God’s beloved community. That’s also who we are trying to be together as a congregation, we are trying to be God’s beloved community with each other and with the greater community. Loving each other is challenging because we have a lot of fundamental differences, but trying to bridge that with love.

Lastly, we’re able to ask for what we need. “Give us our food for today”, we’re used to saying, give us our daily bread. Give us our food for today. Do you notice that? That doesn’t say, give us a fridge full. Make sure my pantry’s full. It gives us what we need to eat today. My guess is most of us don’t live that way. I know I don’t live that way. I’ve got enough food in my house for more than today, but I think this is reminding us that all we need is food for today because we are to trust God will also give us food tomorrow. Tomorrow we will ask for food for that day and God will make sure that we have the food that we need. So it’s a reliance on God. I think it also reminds us of the Israelites in the wilderness who were given Naan every day to sustain them. But if they collected more than they needed for one day. Do you remember what happened? It spoiled. God had a plan because he wanted to make sure that they were relying on God. So there’s something to that, we live our lives relying on God’s gifts.

The English contemporary version says, “Forgive us for doing wrong as we forgive others.” Before Covid, we had a conversation where we looked at this and we said debt means financial. Trespasses are something when somebody walks on my property. We don’t use those ancient understandings of those words. We took both of those out and we simplified the version it to “forgive us as we forgive others.” It doesn’t matter what the issue was. It doesn’t matter what the hurt or the pain was. We know that we have hurt someone else and we have been hurt. We need forgiveness for the pain and the hurt that we have caused. We are willing to extend forgiveness to those who hurt us, and that’s not easy. It is our challenge.

Then “to keep us from being tempted and protect us from evil”, it used to say, “lead us not into temptation.” We changed it to be,” Let us not fall into temptation again, looking for God’s protection.” Which I think is closer to this version than the older version.

Our Lord’s Prayer lacks the ending and the blessing, the glory, and the power. It’s not there because it wasn’t there initially. That was the early church that added it. It should be a mirror for me. I like circular things, so for me it takes me back around to the beginning. “Blessing and honor, glory and power be unto you, oh God, like holy is your name, you are God and I am not.” It’s just that reminder.

But in the scripture that I read today, after this, Jesus uses two more verses to make sure that we understand that the forgiveness verse is really important. That’s where he says if you don’t forgive others, you will not be forgiven.

That’s hard. Some people are hard to forgive depending on how badly they’ve hurt us. That’s the challenge of being a Christian, is to forgive.

So where does this leave us? Well, I think this leaves us in a place that reminds us that we need to pray. We need to pray and we need to pray every day. Jesus expects that we pray every day,

I’m going to give you the challenge to pray the Lord’s prayer, every time, whether you use the version that you’ve always known. Or whether you go to the Matthew Scripture and look it up, or you look up other versions. Try out some different ones. See how it changes it for you. Pray it for the rest of Lent and see what happens. See how your life changes.

What does it do by saying that every day that you pray, you’re praying for the world. For justice to prevail in the world, for you to have enough food for the day and that you will be forgiven as you are willing to forgive. It puts God in charge, not us. It reminds us. To look for the gifts of God.

Now, I said that I was going to end every sermon this season with these words that remind us that it matters how we are living right now because the children are watching.

We can experience delight every day if we are looking to be delighted by God, if we are looking for the spirit to show up, we will see it. But if you’re not looking for it. You’re gonna pass it by and miss it.

So each day I hope that you ask, how may I delight in you? Oh, God. We can add that to the prayer. How may I delight in you?

Now the words from Steven Sondheim’s Into the Woods. “Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn. Be careful before you say, listen to me, children will listen.”

May it be so. Amen.

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Our theme today is “Cultivating a Life of Curiosity.“

As much as I thought about that, I could not get myself past the show, Ted Lasso on Apple TV. I will play a clip so you have a better idea of what I’m talking about. To set up the clip, Ted was a soccer coach in America who was hired to coach an English football team. In this scene there are two of the main characters, Rupert, who used to own the team, and his ex-wife. Rupert has just acquired significant ownership of the team and he has just announced that his new wife will be joining him and his ex-wife in the owner’s box every game. He bought enough stock in the team that he could set the line up if he wanted to, because he doesn’t like the way Ted’s coaching the team. They ended up making this wager that if Rupert wins, he gets to set the lineup for the rest of the season. But if Ted wins, Rupert doesn’t go near the owner’s box and he lets his ex-wife alone.

Are we curious? Do we ask the questions?

The point that Ted was making is that too quickly we become judgmental just as Rupert was, but unless we ask the questions, we will never truly understand one another. It is far easier to judge, to make snide remarks, and to write people off than it is to get to know them and try to understand them,

That’s not how Jesus lived. Jesus went to people and he asked questions. He asks Zacchaeus, why are you in the tree? He asked the Samaritan woman at the well, why are you at the well at this time of the day? He asked the questions of people because he wanted to get to know those people. He wanted to hear their story because when we hear each other’s stories we understand each other so much more and can have more grace for one another. That’s where our empathy comes from, our compassion.

We have these Proverbs, these wisdom teachings of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-14. Remember I said context matters. This is what Jesus was saying to those who believed in him, who followed him, and for them this was his expectation. They were to do unto others as they would want to be treated. We have to remember that.

Jesus is Jewish, he’s talking to a Jewish audience, and it’s about how they are different from the rest of the community. That’s a huge part of Judaism. What makes them distinct? That may be harder for us to know in this context. If you don’t know a lot of people who are Jewish, we might be able to answer the question of how Amish people make themselves different in our community. That might be an easier question for us to answer because they do the same thing. They have ways about them that make them distinct.

Christ was calling us to be distinct. In our world, we should live differently. We shouldn’t blend with society. Here are some things that we are to do.

Ask, Seek, and Knock. We have to be looking for God, asking for God’s help. But this scripture gets taken advantage of. I think it’s because of the descriptions that he gave because it sounds like we should just ask for material things. I don’t believe that God is some type of ultimate Santa Claus. That if we ask for a beautiful house, somebody’s just gonna call us up and give us a beautiful house. I don’t think it works that way.

This is where people sometimes lose their faith when there’s a diagnosis and they ask for healing, but they don’t get a cure. I wanna say that we don’t know what healing looks like and sometimes maybe being whole is joining eternity. That’s a hard one and I know that.

But I do think if we ask for the gifts of God, think back to our last season with “The Economy of Jesus.” The gifts of God, are love, grace, compassion, empathy, self-control, and patience. Those gifts, if we ask for them, God will help us find them. If we look for a way forward, if we ask God, to help us to figure out where we are to go or what we are to do, the path will become clear to us. It may not be where we wanna go or it may not be what we wanna do because God doesn’t work like that.

I think that leads us down to the narrow gate. So the easy road is the wide gate. Do you remember where it said? it leads to destruction. It’s the narrow gate and the hard road that leads to life. That’s not what we wanna hear. We wanna hear that we can just ask God for a nice, easy life and it will all be roses and sunshine, and everything’s going to work the way we want it to. We’re always gonna be happy and we’re never gonna experience sorrow or pain, but that isn’t it. That’s not the story of Jesus. Jesus was the one who was willing to die on the cross for us because of his love. That is not an easy road.

But in order to do all of this, I think that there is a level of humility that Jesus is also calling us to.

It didn’t say that in the scriptures. It did not say, you must be humble. But, I think that there’s a humility and a vulnerability that is also needed. We don’t like either of those words. Our society says when people are vulnerable, then they’re weak, or they’re losers.

I disagree and I think that Jesus modeled for us letting go, and being vulnerable to meet people where they are. I think that we are called to meet each other, to get to know each other, and to ask questions.

We have to be willing to acknowledge that we don’t know everything. We don’t know everything that we think we know. We have to own that. We don’t know everything and we don’t have everything that we need. Not really. You may have the physical comforts that you need, but if you look within yourself, do you have all of the love, grace, compassion, patience, and peace that you need? My guess is if we’re honest, none of us do.

That’s where we can be more curious. We can be curious within ourselves, what is that within me that drives me to act like that? What is it within me that makes me think that I’m not loved? Maybe that’s an old story you need to reexamine.

Meister Eckhart’s quote invites us to approach life as a child because they haven’t lost their curiosity yet, and we can work on building our curiosity muscle. We can work on being more curious and asking more questions.

That’s actually how we’re going to bring ourselves together because none of us holds the real truth. But the truth is in the midst of our stories. With humility and a sense of curiosity, we can seek to understand and have more empathy.

This past week on Thursday night, we had the Clatterbucks here for Mocktails & Meaning.

The Clatterbucks lost their transgender son to suicide almost a year ago. They named the pain and sorrow that they still carry around. He was surrounded by people who loved and affirmed him for being who he was. But the rhetoric in our county, state, and country was so hard. It told him that he was not welcome. It wanted to erase him, and so he did.

How we treat others matters.

What we are called to do is to love. What are the two commandments? Love God with all of our being and love our neighbor as ourselves. There’s a third because that means you have to love yourself.

The next thing to do in every moment is the most loving. What is the most loving thing I can do in this moment? That’s what God wants us to do. And I told you I was going to end every sermon with these words because I think we need to be thinking about this right now. We need to be thinking about what we are telling the children by our actions and our words. What are we teaching them that they are learning for when they are adults? The wisdom of Stephen Sondheim.

“Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn. Be careful before you say, listen to me, children will listen.”

May it be so. Amen.

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Today is the first Sunday of Lent, the first Sunday where we are “Cultivating a Sense of Awe and Wonder.”

Lent is always a time of reflection where we are to go deeper in our faith in God. We are to work intentionally, not that we wouldn’t at other times, but always to work intentionally during Lent on our relationship with God. This year, I know that we are finding it difficult to find awe and wonder. We are overwhelmed, we feel like every day is spinning us in different ways, and we don’t have stability. We have a lot of uncertainty, and we’re looking for something to hold on to.

What I’m suggesting is that God is what we hold on to.

Research has found that if you spend two hours in nature every day, it will change your whole life. It’s particularly helpful to be by water. That does not mean you have to be at the ocean, a small stream, brook, lake, river, pond, or any body of water. The energies of nature are things which we are called to. There’s a piece in our bodies. I talked on Ash Wednesday about the fact that the matter of our bodies is the same matter of creation. It all started as the same matter with this divine sense that it craves each other. So, give our bodies what it’s craving as best as you can.

Now that the weather’s warming up, it should be a easier this week to be out in it. Be out in the sunshine, be out even if it’s not sunny, just be around the trees, the grass, and as everything starts greening, it helps us in our moods.

One of the things that I have learned about myself is that in the dark of winter, where everything is resting. I know it’s not dead; it’s resting. We are to be resting, too.

But sometimes, all the gray gets the best of me. I know that what I need is color. Color changes things for me, and I need to smell the soil.

So, I went to Espenshades. Yes. That’s a picture of my trip to Espenshades where I bought myself a new blooming plant. I took this vibrant fuchsia color home with me because we need that. It awakens things within us that we don’t always see or that we don’t always notice.

I invite you to think about what is it that your soul longs for? Do you need to hear the water? Take a walk down to Brubaker Run and listen to our babbling brook. Maybe you need to be in a different space. Go out to Doorwork Park or another local park and be around other things. Because the point of getting to awe and wonder is that we have to be curious.

We have to Wonder about what we’re going to find.

I want to open up another wonderment for you. When we read today’s scripture (Matthew 8:5-13), I want you to think about what questions you have. That might be radical for you because many of you were not taught to question scripture, but it’s a questioning of, I wonder why, what, or how else? Does this story make you want to know? Know what this calls you to do?

My question for this scripture was the idea that this centurion called Jesus, Lord. That’s where my wondering was about because Jesus was just a Jewish peasant. He was like all the other Jewish peasants. A centurion is a Roman military officer, and centurion, think about century, means he has an army of a hundred men that he leads. What is the implication of him calling another person Lord? That would be a term to show his superiority by the centurion saying to Jesus, “You are more powerful and have more authority than I do.”

I want you to imagine. I put this in the frame of a social hierarchy, the Jews are at the bottom. They are the peasants. They are the poor. As a Roman centurion, he’s even above the Roman citizens, the military men, he’s up a notch. For him to say, Lord, was a big deal. It was important and shocking, and I think we glaze over it, but to the first hearers that he said to Jesus, I am unworthy for you to come under my roof. That was huge. A Roman centurion can walk anywhere he wants to go. He can tell his army to go where he’s directed, but he has full autonomy. To think that Jesus was too good to come to his house. I hope I’m helping you see this power dynamic that’s in this scripture that we often just glaze by, we don’t think about it.

The centurion in Greek calls Jesus curious, which means not only about power, but it also evokes Jesus’s divinity, which was only for Caesar. Now do you feel that power dynamic? If only Caesar is divine, and this centurion who follows Caesar looks at Jesus and says, Lord, I’m unworthy. One might say that the centurion has misunderstood the dynamics under which he works and lives. But that idea that it means Jesus’s divinity fits Matthew’s gospel to a T.

We were in Luke for a couple of weeks. This Lent, we’re going back to Matthew, where Matthew’s goal is to prove to us Jesus’s divinity, that Jesus is the Messiah.

Do you remember how Matthew’s Christmas stories are all about Jesus being the Emmanuel, the Messiah, God with us? Matthew loves this word so much that he used it 82 times in his gospel. He only has 24 chapters. It’s important to Matthew.

This story of the Centurion also exists in three of the Gospels, Matthew, John, and Luke. It’s slightly different in Luke because the centurion sends someone to ask for Jesus. That seems more like the role of the centurion. You don’t have that “I’m unworthy” piece in Matthew’s version.

In John, it’s an official of Capernaum who sends word to Jesus to have this healer. There were a lot of traveling healers at the time, whom we would call snake oil salesmen, going around, and it was easy to find one of them. But that’s not who the centurion wanted. He wanted Jesus because he knew Jesus.

I’m going to invite us this season to take time to be in wonder, or as Walt Whitman says, “be curious, not judgmental.“

Put our judgment to the side this season. Let’s be curious about ourselves and about one another. About the people God puts into our lives. What I want you to do is think about what you believe and why you believe it. We couldn’t tell from this scripture exactly why the centurion believed what he did. But why do you believe what you do?

I want you to think about that, and I want you to pray about who does God want you to share that with. God always wants us to tell someone what we’re thinking and why we think that. Pray about who that should be. Because God will put someone into your life for that conversation.

It’s probably the person that surprises you the most because that’s how God works. God is full of surprises. Then, start the conversation by asking them what they believe. This is not about you attacking their beliefs, I’m not suggesting that. But inviting a conversation about belief. Helping others to see the awe and wonder. Because there are a lot of people who need to see awe and wonder right now.

Last week, I said we need to think about what we’re teaching our children, because our children are watching us.

A friend reminded me that there is a song; it’s the finale in Steven Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”. These are the words, “Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be, careful before you say “listen to me”, children will listen.“

May it be so. Amen.

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We needed to begin by defining what we mean by Forgiveness, Mercy and Grace.

We may not all understand these concepts in the same way.

Forgiveness is the act of releasing and dismissing something, such as sins or grudges, it is a choice. Forgiveness is a choice. It’s a choice about letting go of the resentment and the anger so that we know and no longer hold a grudge against someone who has hurt us. That is what I mean when I say forgive or forgiveness.

Mercy and Grace are God’s work and God expects us to also extend those. Mercy is God’s compassionate response to human suffering. It’s a combination of kindness, forgiveness, love, and grace. God’s favor kindness and mercy are freely given to all people regardless of their sins. That is a fundamental concept of Christianity. We extend grace.

This past week I was in a conversation where someone said, “but forgiveness doesn’t hold people accountable.”

I disagree with that. I disagree with that comment. But, there is within our culture a saying that goes, forgive and forget. I think that is bad theology. It’s a harmful saying. That’s like saying God doesn’t give you anything more than you can handle. That’s bad theology.

People say it thinking they’re being kind, and it’s cruel. There’s bad theology that goes with our scripture today too. But, forgiveness means that we can let go of our anger while we still hold people accountable. We still believe in consequences for cruelty and hateful actions.

So what is Jesus trying to say to us today?

Last week we had the passage right before Luke 6:27-28 which introduced the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, last week was Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. We like Matthew’s better, but it was Luke’s version. We have a few more pieces of that, but we have Luke’s version now.

Let’s look at Matthew and Luke’s version of love your enemies.

“Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” – Luke 6:27-28

“But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” – Matthew 5:44

They pretty much say the same thing. It’s still very clear. We are supposed to love the people who we perceive as enemies. It’s not what we want to hear. What that says to me is that revenge is not part of this equation. We’re not supposed to take revenge on people who hurt us. We are called to love and that’s hard work and the only way I can get there is by extending grace. That’s why I wanted you to know what grace is. Grace is loving people who don’t deserve to be loved.

It is not trying to tell us we need to be doormats. It is not saying that the abuser is correct. It is saying that we love them and we hold them accountable for their actions. Because I believe that God believes in justice too. God always stands up for the poor, the orphan, the widow, the oppressed, and the marginalized. God is not looking for us to take revenge or to be hurtful. Instead, we have to forgive, let go of the anger. But don’t forget that’s where I am. Maybe that’s because of my past, but I believe that God is merciful.

So these verses in Matthew and Luke also line up, but with a little bit of difference.

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” – Luke 6:36

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” – Matthew 5:48

Where Matthew says we are to be perfect, Luke says Merciful. The actual Greek word for Merciful is oiktirmón, which also means compassionate. Compassion as I look at this is that Luke is encouraging us to remember the goodness of even the person who is being cruel and hateful.

What we say is that we are all created in the image of God. We say every person is a child of God. So then, we’re not going to dehumanize anyone.

No one becomes an object that we can inflict cruelty, pain, or injustice upon. That’s not the way of God. It is about compassion. It is about recognizing our shared humanity.

“Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” – Luke 6:37-38

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” – Matthew 6:14-15

For Matthew, the forgiveness part, he puts that right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer. Whereas Luke’s Lord’s Prayer comes later. It’s actually in chapter 11, verses 1 to 4. Luke says, forgive and you will be forgiven. This is the reason our version of the Lord’s Prayer is a little different. Matthew uses trespasses in his Lord’s prayer. Luke uses debts in his, and we have simplified that to just say, forgive, so that we forgive.

We will forgive as you have forgiven.

It doesn’t matter if it’s sin or debt, because when we hear debts, we think money. We don’t think sins or cruelties are other things. Where culture is very much about debts being money.

So what does this have to do with the economy of Jesus?

Well, in the economy of Jesus, remember, it’s a gifting economy. It’s not a transactional economy like we have. It’s not the quid pro quo. We don’t give so that we receive. We give because we are called to give. God wants us to give because God has given to us.

We have all this love, compassion, mercy, and grace that we can then share and we are called to share it. Now I say that if you think back at what I had just said a few minutes ago, that doesn’t mean that we allow injustice to continue.

Think of Martin Luther when he hung the 95 Theses on the door. It was a non-violent action. He held up to the Catholic Church the things they were doing wrong. Non-violent, direct action that says the truth, speaks truth to power. I think about Rosa Parks, whose non-violent direct action was sitting down on the bus. Not in the seat she was supposed to sit, but in the open seat. She spoke truth to power. In 1965, John Lewis and 600 other people walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as a non-violent action to speak the truth. The rest of the country saw the racism when they were attacked and they realized why we needed the Civil Rights Act.

This picture is from yesterday, where some of us gathered on Penn Square to tell Lloyd Schmucker that we are not happy with his actions. When people are doing things that are cruel and hateful, we have the responsibility to stand up and tell them so.

This season, I’ve been telling you to be the light. We need to be the light in the world.

I hear a lot of people talk about the darkness that they feel like we are in. But God calls us to be the light. By being loving, forgiving, merciful, and full of grace by extending that grace.

This week I read a piece by a colleague, Cameron Trimble. I wanted to share it with you. Because I think it’s profound. She wrote, that we are all called to be mystics and prophets. The mystic in us is the lover who says yes to life, goodness, and what is sacred. The prophet is the guardian, the one who says no, no to what threatens love and justice. A life of faith requires both prophet and mystic. Without love, our resistance turns brittle. Without resistance, our love becomes shallow.

The world will always make courage costly. It will reward silence and punish truth telling. It will tempt us with the false security of compliance. But Thomas Aquinas reminds us that some things are worth the risk. Justice, the common good, and the secret.

So how will we be light in this world? Will we be mystics? Will we be prophets? Will we be both?

May it be so. Amen.

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When I think about Humility, this verse always comes to my mind, “To act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:8

They’re the words of the prophet Micah. When I was thinking about the story of Christmas, I thought, where was humility involved? I decided to start talking about Charles Dicken’s character, Ebenezer Scrooge. Because I think Ebenezer needed to learn a bit about humility. He was one who thought that the be all for him was his money. He put all his faith in his ability to live the way he wanted to live, albeit tightly so that he had more money. Money was going to be his salvation. Think about that.

I think there are some other people who look at money as their salvation. Certainly it helps, but money does not save us. And that was the lesson he learned, that although he could control many things, he could not control in life.

Actually, I think being humble is one of those pieces of our faith journey that is very difficult for us.

Because if we’re honest we’re a bit like Ebenezer and we want to do our own lives. We love being independent. We don’t want to have to rely on anyone. We want to do it our way. We have our own agendas, time frames, and lists to be checked. It’s Christmas and I found myself obsessing about the food needing to be made and the gifts needing to be wrapped. It’s part of the season and our culture certainly encourages that feeling, but none of that is about God.

God is asking for a very different reaction from us. I often use the 23rd Psalm in funerals to remind us that our God is the one who wants to run our lives. Who will take us to those gentle streams and those, those fields, but will also sit us down at a table with our enemies. It was not meant to be an easy life, but God is looking for our attention.

As I was thinking about this, I thought about the second and third steps of the 12-step program of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), which, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, created not as a religious organization, but they recognize that part of what we have to do is know that we are not the be all and end all that we think we are. It is not all about us, and there is a higher power to whom we answer. We call that Jesus Christ, God, or the Holy Spirit. Other people might just say the divine, the creator, but there’s someone who is organizing the world and trying to influence the world. It is more than any of us. We have to look at that in our lives and we have to make the decision.

It’s a choice every day. Every moment of every day to stop focusing on ourselves and turn our attention to what God would want for us, what Christ wants for our lives.

What is Christ calling us to do? The wording I’ve been using is, what’s the next most loving thing to do? Because I think that’s what Jesus calls us to. What is the loving decision, the loving choice in each of the moments?

Today we are looking at the character of Joseph.

Our scripture today is Matthew 1:18-25 and it’s Matthew’s version of the Christmas story. Remember, Matthew had a very definite goal. Matthew wants to make sure that we know that Jesus is Jewish and is in the line of David.

When you start Matthew 1, the first 17 verses is all of his genealogy, which goes all the way back to Genesis, but connects Jesus to David. Interestingly, through Joseph, but connects the dots for us and then gives us this image of this earthly father. Stepfather is the language we would use today, who will come into Jesus’s life and guide him in a loving way.

It wasn’t the decision he had to make. Divorce was an option. We think of divorce as after people are married and that may not be a good translation either because they weren’t married. She was promised to him. There was a contract. Because that’s how marriage worked at that time. So, he could have said this pregnancy makes it null and void and that would be our language of a contract, right? The contract’s null and void. I don’t need to marry her, I can break this contract and walk away. I don’t need to be part of this.

But had he done that, he would have left Mary in a very desperate position, because at that time you needed to have a male to have any kind of power or money. She would have been destitute and very likely she could have been stoned because they would have thought that she had an affair with a married man, so it could have cost her her life.

But that wasn’t the decision he made. He made the decision for love. He chose life instead of death. And that’s at the heart of this story. I think that God wants us to choose love and to choose life.

Unfortunately, I have to name that this feels very political right now. So, I also need to say that as I affirm choosing love and choosing life, that is not necessarily at someone else’s expense.

The abortion conversation has become politicized and it’s a health decision and they are all individual cases. We don’t know what is going on in the lives of people, but we can still advocate for love and for life. I think we can hold both of those pieces because advocating for life means you advocate for the entire life of the child. Not just it’s birth.

So as we approach the end of the year, I want you to consider what challenges you met this year with God’s strength. How did God help you get through this year?

Where did God help you adapt, pivot, or show resilience as you may have met some struggle in your life? What small or big milestone can you honor without ranking or judging? Where did you act with love? Where did you show humility, instead of insisting that it be your way?

Those are big questions for us to sit with. So, I hope that between now and the end of the year, you take some time to consider that. It really does come down to that old Deuteronomy, where Moses looks at the people and he says, “life is laid out before you choose life or choose death.”

The decision is yours. We can’t avoid death. But we can avoid some of the heartache, struggle and the pain. Because we cause a lot of our own issues. We can avoid that by choosing love, choosing humility, and choosing life.

May it be so. Amen.

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As I said our theme for Advent will be “Through the Eyes of a Child”, where we’ll focus on the awe and the wonder.

Because as I listen, I hear a lot of people who are still really struggling in life. We have a lot of grief, whether from a multitude of losses, even just the changes within the church, there’s still this grieving. The way to work with the grief is not to ignore it, but to also focus our minds and our hearts on awe and wonder.

So I wanted to start by getting you to think about the beauty of children. It might be a little easier today since our children’s choir got up for the first time in a long time and sang for us. But before you go to any kind of sentimental thoughts about the children, I want to emphasize a child’s ability to stay in that place of expectation, especially the younger ones, they wake up expecting to have a good day. For the most part, they’re expecting good things to happen, surprises, because they may learn something new that they didn’t know before. They may have an experience they’ve never done before. They live in this perpetual awe and wonder.

But I think as we get older, we lose track of that. And in the NRSV, more than in Peterson’s, what wasn’t there was this word, worry.

The NRSV focuses on our worry and letting go of our worry because that worry gets in the way of seeing the things that God is doing around us. It stops us from being amazed at the wildflowers, as Peterson puts it. Or at the traditional language that you might be used to is “consider the lilies and how they grow” – Luke 12:27

When we’re worrying about whatever, then we miss all the rest. We miss that other part. It gets in the way of our ability to be grateful, to give thanks. So trying to turn our minds maybe a bit towards gratitude, towards what we already have.

So like this person, sitting at their computer and they can’t figure out their password. Sitting with that aggravation. Whereas we should just be grateful that there are such things as computers. Or maybe we should be grateful for ways to communicate other than computers, right? The computer doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all of our lives.

I read a story this week about a man who came into church and during the songs he got up and started dancing and clapping and singing.

Then during the sermon he continued and during the prayers. People were looking at him because that’s not the way we behave in church. The ushers tried to escort him kindly out of the room. And after church, they did like all good church people do. They had a meeting, a committee. A committee got together and said, “What do we need to do about this man who was dancing and singing during worship?” They decided they would go out and visit him and help him to understand.

When they got there, he was plowing his field. They said to him, “you know, that thing you did on Sunday?” And he said, “Absolutely!” He said, “Look at this land. God gave me all this land to work and provide food for my family and income to help provide for us. I am so grateful. I have so much to be grateful for. Look at my family. God gave me this family and they are wonderful. I am so proud of them. They share so much love with me and I’m able to share with them. I’m just bursting with thanks for God. Where else should I go with that? But to church on Sunday.”

I wonder how we would react if someone started dancing and singing through worship. I’m afraid we might act more like the ushers and elders in the story, more like the Pharisees, maybe of the stories of Jesus saying, “You don’t do that on Sunday.” We want you to be grateful, but not that grateful.

Do we stop people in there having some awe and wonder at the grace, love, and provision of God?

Something to think about, because this scripture (Matthew 6:25-34) was meant to be a blueprint. It was meant to say enjoy life.

This particular little piece is about relaxing and appreciating what you have. Notice it. Maybe even have some fun with it. When was the last time you played dress-up? I don’t do that anymore, except maybe with my grandkids. They’ll get me to act goofy. But we have to remember how to have fun, to relax, and to give thanks.

I learned this week that there is this whole thing called FOMO. I didn’t know that was a thing. That shows my age. So FOMO is the fear of missing out. People have a fear that they’re missing something in life. That might be who we are. We just didn’t know it. We didn’t know it was called FOMO.

But when Jesus was talking to these people, he knew that they lived under the oppression of Rome. He knew that they didn’t have a lot of clothing or food, but they also probably weren’t starving. They knew how to be a community. They knew how to come together and share. So that everyone would have what they needed. That’s what Acts tells us they did in the beginning. So they came together and they shared as every one had needs.

Today, I want to invite you to become like children. And there are two verses that stuck out for me.

In this one from Matthew 5:44, Jesus says, “But I say to you, love your enemies.” This is a really hard one. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So that you may be children of your father in heaven.”

God wants us to be like children. In Matthew 18:3, Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom.”

So an invitation as we get ready to start the advent season, I know. 30 days till Christmas. Today’s the 24th. It did dawn on me that we are a month ahead in planning because we already are planning the music for Christmas Eve this week because we try to stay a month ahead with the bulletins. It is a month from today that will be here for Christmas Eve and that month will go very quickly. This is that time of year when we start focusing on all of the other things, the clothing, the packages, and the food.

I’m going to invite you to stop at least once a day and be grateful. Just stop and take time to breathe and be grateful. All that you already have, all that you already are, and all that we can do together.

This is how I learned about FOMO. This came in my calm app. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss in this present moment. And it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have.

So know that here, no one is bad, no matter what. That’s the things that we tell ourselves, or that we tell each other. We have differences of opinions, but All Are Welcome. All are part of us, and we will work through the differences. That’s life. Life never goes the way everybody wants it to. Joys and sorrows are part of life, but we are here so that we can do this together. This thing called life to support one another, to encourage one another, and to remind one another of the love and the grace that we have through Jesus Christ. Our savior. Amen.

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Let me begin by saying that this was one of the hardest sermons I have given in a very long time because it does not support my theology.

When I think about God and who God is, I believe in a God of compassion and grace. While there is compassion in our verse today (Matthew 25:31-46), there is no grace—none. And so it challenges us to consider that possibility.

But I want to start with compassion. When I look at the life of Jesus, I see one who was compassionate. Compassion is used four times to describe Jesus, how Jesus felt, and it’s when he’s looking at a crowd of people and he has great compassion for their needs. The word in Greek actually means a lot of feelings inside stirred internally because that’s where they thought that feelings resided, they were internal things. Our definition of compassion is a feeling of sorrow or deep tenderness for one who is suffering or experiencing misfortune. It comes from the Latin calm being with or together pate to suffer. So it’s a suffering with.

When I look at Jesus life, that’s what I saw. I saw one who went with the people, who suffered with the people.

He wasn’t looking for privilege. He wasn’t looking to be in a place that had luxuries or he wasn’t even looking for power. When people started to come in mass, he left. He traveled with the people and went to the people that were hurting, he sat and ate with them. That’s how I see Jesus. That’s the part of God that I think Jesus was showing us.

So what do I do with Matthew 25:31-46? Well, I’ve got to look at the Gospel of Matthew first.

I wanted to talk about compassion, so where’s the compassion in this text? I think that’s the part that makes us love this text We love to hear, you should feed the hungry and you should give drink to those who are thirsty. You should welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned. We want to do that. Yes, that’s our rallying cry.

I associate this with the Outreach Commission. That’s what we want to be.

But the larger context of this is that it’s an apocalyptic scene about the end time and how things are going to end. So let’s look at Matthew’s gospel. To look at Matthew’s total gospel, we have to pay attention to who is the intended audience. Matthew is writing to people who are Jewish but believe in Jesus. They’re trying to figure out how they live that out. There aren’t Christian churches at this time for them to just go over to the Christian church. That didn’t exist. They had been in synagogues. And they were probably either asked to leave or told to leave. They were no longer welcome because they believed, because this is Matthew’s gospel, that Jesus was the Messiah.

So the Messiah had come. Think of the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel. The Messiah in the Jewish faith needs to come, be a human being, and come from the lineage of David. Do you remember how Matthew starts his gospel with that gray lineage and how he is connected to David? He goes back to Adam and Eve. But, he’s connected to, so he’s of the lineage of David. He’s mortal and divine. But he is a human being. In that first scene with Joseph, the angel tells Joseph, this is Emmanuel God with us, this is the one, this is the Messiah.

The whole gospel of Matthew is about Jesus as the Messiah. So Jesus knows the Jewish scriptures well. These people know the Jewish scriptures. They know the traditions and they’re trying to figure out how we continue to observe our Jewish traditions when we’re not allowed in the synagogue.

One of the things that comes with the Messiah is the end times.

When the Messiah comes, so there will be a third temple built in Jerusalem. This is hard because Matthew reads as if the second temple is still there. But it was written after the second temple was destroyed. So, there’s going to be a new temple in Jerusalem. And all the Jews from all over the world are going to be called together. And all people are going to be judged. And those who are evil and sinful will be sent, and Matthew loves the phrase, “to wailing and gnashing of teeth” or you’re going to be with God and you’re in eternity with God. You’re in heaven and everything’s wonderful.

This comes from a church and in the center, it shows Christ the king. So first of all, and our worship commission talked about this. What’s the difference between the son of man and the king?

On Jesus’ right, all are happy and everything’s good. They’ve got crosses and halos around their heads and life is good. Then on his left, which is where the goats go, there’s this beast that’s going to eat them and they look like they’re just in misery. So that’s the wailing and the gnashing of teeth for Matthew.

Matthew puts this as Jesus’s last teaching before his passion. Before Jesus leaves the teaching, he’s got to talk about the end. And because Matthew is probably Jewish and, and he’s talking to a Jewish audience, he lives out this messianic vision of what is going to happen. He’s not going to give up on that.

So, we have three parables that start at the end of the 24th chapter.

The first one is about the bridesmaids. Do you remember the parable of the ten bridesmaids? Where five remember to get oil and five do not. And the five who remember their oil when the bridegroom shows up. They’ve got oil and they go off into eternity. They go off to the wedding feast with the bridegroom. But for the five who do not, the doors are shut and you are not welcome.

Then it’s the parable of the slave owner, the master, and the slaves with talents. A talent is a weight that is worth money. They are given, we talk about talents as gifts, but they are money. It is about money. And the slaves are given different amounts of money. The ones who took the money and did things with the money are congratulated and the one slave who’s afraid takes the talent. He only gets one. He gets his talent and he buries it in the ground and he gets punished because he has done nothing with the money he was given. He hoarded it and did nothing with it.

Again, this idea of the good receives a reward. Those who do wrong receive a punishment. And now, we have this scene where all the people come and Jesus divides them. Christ the King divides them into the sheep and the goats. The sheep are rewarded and the goats receive eternal punishment.

The compassion in this story, because I like compassion and I’m using compassion more than love because I think love has so much we don’t understand what it means to love another person.

But what do we need? We need to be looking out because if we don’t, if we don’t look out, we never see the need of the other. I think we need to take the justice element seriously.

So anytime we have a parable, there is always a surprise. And you might think that the surprise is the fact that the goats are punished. But I’m going to argue that’s not where the surprise is.

And I had a list of them. I mean, I started with children at the border. I went to the border patrol website, the official government border patrol website, cause I don’t trust anybody else’s numbers. I wanted to know how many children came to the border because, to me, those are who we need to be concerned about.

But I also started thinking about the LGBTQ community. Especially how transgender and non-binary people are being picked on. Particularly transgender. And how about women and reproductive health? I could have gone there.

But the reality is, it’s not for me to pick. The surprise in this parable is that neither the ones who did it right or the ones who did it wrong knew that they were right or wrong. That my friends should give us a reason to pause on all of the things that we think we know and all of the people that we are being told need to be controlled.

We need to remember that Christ calls us to compassion. So if there is someone who is suffering, we need to suffer with them. I do think we still look for those who are being picked on, for those who are being denied rights, for those rights that are being taken away, or we’re being told they need to be taken away. We need to be careful.

God is the one who will judge.

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