John Chapter 3: 7 and 8 “The wind[e] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So, it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

Come close to Miracles

Let us pray, God of miracles, large and small, help us to trust that you will bring us the miracle we need even if it is not the one we desire. And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you our rock and our redeemer. Amen

               When I was in college the first time, I was in a special class honors class taught by a philosophy professor and an English professor. The philosophy professor entered the classroom dressed in a very nice suit. His hair was neatly styled, and one could tell he was freshly groomed. The English professor rolled into class carrying a tiny tea pot with hair jutting out in all directions. He wore wrinkled shirts with his dress pants. He spent his life studying East Texas place names and Bob Dylan.

               Every time I read this passage from our mystic gospel writer John, I hear Bob Dylan singing “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.”

               John tells us about an encounter that Jesus was with a pharisee named Nicodemus. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Visiting someone at night could be a sign of fear of being caught by others. In Nicodemus’ case, being caught with Jesus might cause him trouble. He was one of the elders of the pharisees. The pharisees in general had decided that Jesus was a heretic. After all, who can forgive sins but God and here this man, Jesus, was going around healing people and forgiving sins.

               But there is also another way to see visiting someone at night. Night is a time of intimacy. Nighttime visits are reserved for those who are close. Families gather at night to watch tv together. We invite people we trust over in the evening. It could be a dinner party with a few friends or a cocktail party with many friends.

               I love watching old movies in part because they show cocktail parties with women in beautiful dresses with their hair all done up. Those parties look like fun.

               The evening is a time of quiet, of long talks and of private visits.

               Perhaps Nicodemus joined Jesus for a longer talk than they could have in the daytime when crowds were pressing in to be healed. It would be a time to have serious conversation. To rest in one another’s presence. Maybe Nicodemus was not afraid to visit Jesus. Maybe Nicodemus believed that Jesus was someone special and wanted to know more, more about who this man was and what he was teaching.

               Jesus does a very Jesus thing here. He hears Nicodemus’ question and answers with a statement that is confusing. How can one be born again? Nicodemus asks. We would ask the same thing if we were sitting with Jesus late one evening, trying to learn something more, trying to delve into mysteries we do not understand.

               Our walk with Jesus is not a walk of total understanding. Our walk with Jesus is a mystical experience. We know God through Jesus but each day we learn more about Jesus. More about what it means to follow Jesus. If we are a humble, we see Jesus more and more clearly. We begin to understand the miracle of salvation. We do not claim and once and for all change. We claim a slow process of deeper relationship. We come to know that we must be born again. WE must exchange our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. A heart easily broken by the world. A heart that sees injustice and wants to find ways to right the wrong. A heart that, like Jesus’ cares for the widows and the orphans. A heart that works to heal the broken places in our lives and the lives of our neighbors, all our neighbors.

               And to be born is not a quick process. We spend months in the womb. We are knit together day after day in a miracle of creation. It is a process. The birth event is the result of all those days of creation. To be born again then is also a process. A gradual growing in wisdom and grace. Like any relationship, a growing understanding of who this person is and who this person is in relation to us.

               To be born again is a miracle. A miracle more than the miracle of our first birth. It is a miracle of change and change is difficult, often painful and frightening.

               It is logic Jesus is calling Nicodemus to let go of. Drop the idea that wisdom is an earthly thing invented and understood by people. Nicodemus, a teacher of the Israelites, does not understand even though he has studied scripture most of his life. He does not understand because this is not logical. It does not fit into the law. This being born again is pure mystery.

               There is another miracle hidden in this text. It is a miracle we splashed across all sorts of décor and signs in football stadiums. It is an often-memorized verse. It is the foundation of many people’s faith.

               For God so loved the world that he sent his only beloved Son that whosever shall believe in him, shall have eternal life.

               This is a mystery. To remember that Jesus said this is to remember that Nicodemus’ visit was not just for him. Nicodemus’ visit is a call for everyone to believe because to believe is to have this life abundant and life in the world to come.

               How are we to understand all of this? We are not as wise as Nicodemus. We are two thousand years removed from sitting with Jesus. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.

               Dylan asks “Yes, and how many times must a man look up before he can see the sky? Yes and how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry? Yes, and how many deaths will it takes til he knows that too many people have died.”

               How do we hear the cries of those who are hurting? How long do we have to wait to see the Divine mystery? Jesus says we must be born again. Jesus says he has come to love the world and not to judge it.

               When will we believe and repent and truly hear the good news?

               Like Nicodemus do we approach Jesus to understand what it means to be healed or do we approach to show our wisdom, our perfection, our abilities that do not require intervention.

               It is time to turn away from our wisdom and seek the wisdom of Jesus. It is time to lay down our presuppositions and turn to Jesus. Turn to the miracle. Turn to the wind of the Holy Spirit that blows in the wind. The Spirit we do not understand but the Spirit that challenges us and comforts us. We know there are questions in life, but we also know that the answer is found in Jesus

               And it is for this we can say, thanks be to God. Amen.Matthew 4:11

Come Close to Glory

11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him

          In the year 1970 researchers at Stanford tried an experiment. They sat a child in a room with a marshmallow. The children were told if they did not eat the marshmallow that they would receive a double reward. The tester then left the children alone for 15 minutes. The point of the test was to see what self-control and desire for reward said about the chances of a child for a better outcome in life. Better SAT scores, better job, etc. The first version of the test did indeed support this hypothesis, but later versions of the test revealed that the economic status of the child was a better predictor of the child choosing the short term reward of the marshmallow. Those who were hungry ate the food that was available despite the promise of a future reward. For many who are poor and marginalized, access to adequate food is insecure at best.

          Jesus was a marginalized person. Jesus was a Judean born under the oppression not only of the Roman Empire but also of the Kings of Judea who were more concerned with appeasing the Romans and increasing their wealth than caring for the people. Even many of the religious elite were more interested in their status than the law of God. It was a crazy mixed-up world and Jesus walked into it, right in the middle of the mess and said, repent God’s kingdom is at hand.

          John the Baptist was even more marginalized than Jesus. God had called him out to the desert to live a life so radically different from the elite folks that it is easy to forget he was a child of the priestly class. He was not born in a stable. He was born to an older couple who had prayed for many, many years to have a child. John was wanted without any qualifications.

          Jesus did not have that advantage. Mary agreed to carry God’s child, but I can only imagine how the people in the village talked about her and Joseph. Jesus was born in a stable and his first bed was a manger. His family fled to Egypt and back to Nazareth. They were carpenters and while carpentry was a respected job, it did not come with any sort of privilege.

          Jesus went to John to be baptized. His was not a baptism for forgiveness of sins. Jesus was baptized to fulfill all righteousness, to obedient, to receive a blessing from God before the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness to be tempted. God said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

          I imagine those words sustained Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus stayed and fasted in the wilderness for 40 days. That is a very long time to remain in isolation. It is a very long time to be hungry. It is a very long time to wrestle with a calling, a calling he knows will upset the powers that be, a calling that will inevitably lead to his death because you cannot upset the political powers and the norms of society and the righteousness of the religious without experiencing their wrath. And at that time in history, everything was punishable by death, not only death but death on the cross.

          So Jesus went out into the desert, and he meets the Satan, the accuser, the one who tried to lead him from the work God had set before him. The Satan who had lured Jonah away from Ninevah. The Satan who had caused Adam and Eve to want to be like God. The Satan who so afflicted Job that God had to step in and reveal God’s power in a whirlwind. The accuser who dwells in our minds tempting us to believe we are not good enough, that we have sinned too much, that we are so fundamentally flawed that God cannot love us. The same God who sent Jesus to give us eternal life will never leave us or forsake us. There is nothing in heaven or in earth or under the earth or principalities or satans or even great joy that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Beloved, let that fear and sadness go. You are already loved and it is through love that you will grow to be more like Jesus and Jesus knew that he was loved and that his relationship with his father is what would save the world, regardless of the cost.

          The Satan shows up first and addresses Jesus’ immediate need. Jesus was hungry and Jesus knew he could just say the word and the stones around him would become bread. I pray the only hunger you have ever known was that hunger you feel before mealtime. But many, many people know a hunger that gnaws at their belly. A hunger that is never satisfied but learns to live on what is available. Hunger that drives them to look in the dumpsters behind restaurants for anything to eat. The kind of hunger that accepts a carton of eggs and says thank you. I didn’t know what I would eat tonight and it didn’t mean they had a choice. It was simply either those eggs or nothing. Jesus was there. He had not eaten in many days. His body was screaming for food. And the Satan says, you know you can make these stones into bread. Save yourself all this pain and turn them into bread.

          And Jesus said no, I will feast on God’s word. I will choose to follow God regardless of where God sends me, regardless of the growling of my stomach and the pain of hunger because God has said, I am his son who he loves. That is the food on which I will live.

          There is a timeline in the scripture but I will make my own to illustrate. If Satan first came to Jesus at day twenty, perhaps he returned at day thirty. The Satan took him to the highest point in Jerusalem and said “if you really are the son of God, jump. You know God will catch you because you still have work to do.” The way Satan uses this scripture is not how it was intended to be used. It is a twisting of the words to fit the situation. People do that today to excuse behavior God does not call righteous. And Jesus says no. God has not told me to do this, and I will follow God in all that I think say and do. I have such faith in God that I feel no need to challenge God. I can rest in God’s love knowing that everything God wants will be fulfilled.

          Finally, maybe at day 40, the Satan takes Jesus to the top of the mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. He sees Rome and all the power of the Emperors. Satan tells him: I run all the empires of the world. Each of them serves me. Each are persecuting the helpless. Each is starving the poor to benefit the rich. Each is sending their young people to fight and die in a desire for more and more power. Each empire is corrupt and not following God. If they were following God, they would not be an empire because in the kingdom of God the first will be last and the last will be first.

          And Jesus, knowing that to worship Satan is to admit the power of the world is greater than the power of God. To be like all the others. To choose power over righteousness. To choose money over wealth. To choose fear over faith. And this is not what Jesus is here to do. Jesus is here to be with us to walk as one of us to show that power is not power over others. To remind us that there is something greater than this world with all of its troubles and pain and fear and loss. There is the kindom of God just over the horizon. The night is long, but God’s mercies are new every morning. That temptation if refused can lead to the undeniable glory of knowing Christ.

          Jesus told Satan to go away, and the angels came and ministered to him. The angels brought him bread. The angels bound the wounds on his hands and feet from the days spent in the unrelenting sun and the thorns and biting sand. The angel gave him the riches of God. And the glory of the Lord shone around them. Jesus had passed the tests. Jesus had chosen God’s will over and over again despite all the temptations and all the pain and all the isolation. It will serve him well as practice. The days are coming when there will be even greater temptation.

          He will be tempted to call 10,000 angels to save him from the cross, but he will not. Jesus is in perfect obedience to God. Jesus is the new Adam through whom we too may know what it means to approach glory. Jesus is our hope and the author of our faith. Jesus is ours. What a friend we have in Jesus all our griefs and pain to bear what a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

          And it for this we can say, thanks be to God Amen.

 Matthew 17 2 “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. “

The Promise of Freedom

God of light, open our eyes to see the world as you would have us see it. Hold us in your gaze so that we may feel the warmth of love. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you our rock and our redeemer. Amen

            It was Halloween in 1985. I was a new kid in a new school in eighth grade. We had moved a few weeks before Halloween. I remember applying for a spot on the school newspaper team but I was too new and the teacher didn’t want to take a chance on me. As bad as 8th grade is being new and disappointed was worse. I decided to make it even worse by dressing like Cyndi Lauper for Halloween. Cyndi Lauper was the coolest of the new wave rock stars. She had asymmetrical hair died in all kinds of colors. She wore a million different color bracelets and necklaces. She was my favorite because she looked like she was free. Of course, I didn’t have all the pieces for a real costume. It was more of a nod to Cyndi than a copy. Which meant that no one could tell I was in costume. It was a miserable day. I had wanted to communicate that I was as free as Cyndi and I looked like I didn’t have any fashion sense at all. I still cringe when I think about it.

            Jesus was not in costume as a human, but he was revealed as his complete self in the transfiguration.

            Matthew tells this story like a police officer taking a report. It was six days later. Jesus took Peter, James and James’ brother John up on the mountain top. God seems to love meeting people on the mountain tops. Moses went up the mountain to visit God. Elijah saw God on a mountain. We find God when we struggle up the mountains of our lives struggling to find a handhold in the rock until we reach the top and find God in resplendent glory reminding us that it was worth it all because we caught a glimpse of heaven. Mountains are big and high and awesome. God is awesome. Mountains and God go together.

               Matthew then says, Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes were dazzling white. I am thinking Matthew could have elaborated on this. I mean hear is your Jesus, the man you have traveled with for miles. Maybe a little more amazement would be appropriate. Imagine that you are one of the disciples. Jesus tells you to follow him up the mountain and boom he starts shining. That is stranger than when he healed the blind and cured the sick and raised the dead. This was a direct sign that Jesus wasn’t just a miracle worker. Jesus was the miracle.

And Matthew just keeps telling the story. He may have been jealous that Jesus didn’t choose him to go up the mountain with him. I can understand that. I would have been insulted if I had followed Jesus around and didn’t get to see that. Maybe the disciples were better people than I am or maybe they were ok with it because they didn’t want to climb another mountain.

               Matthew continues. Suddenly Moses and Elijah appear and talk with Jesus. I have questions. One how did Peter James and John know it was Moses and Elijah? I think it must have been revealed to them in a supernatural way. Moses represented the law that Jesus came to fulfill. Elijah was the representative of the prophets speaking truth to power. Jesus was the fulfillment the law and the prophets. Jesus was the culmination of all the things of God on earth. Jesus brought God’s kingdom to earth. A bit of God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. A bit of a prophet protesting unjust laws and the starvation of the marginalized and the profiting of the priests through the cost of the poor. A bit of soothing the aches and pains of living. God with us revealing the freedom God has given us. The freedom to be who we are and do what we are called to do. The freedom to see the law and the prophets and to talk with them.

               Matthew tells us that Moses and Elijah were talking with Jesus. Perhaps they were consoling him before the torture he was about to experience. They may have been encouraging him to stand fast in the knowledge that God is God. Jesus will be resurrected but it will be after the execution. Moses and Elijah were no strangers to pain and grief. They had faced both and remained faithful. Jesus too would remain faithful.

               And Peter goes let’s build a booth here for each of you, a monument to what has happened here. A place to remember that Jesus was glowing and his divinity was obvious. I can’t imagine interrupting a conversation between people who are shining and two of whom have been dead a very long time. I think I would have stood there with my mouth hanging open listening to what was being said. That way I could explain to people like you and me what they were talking about. Sometimes the scene is pictured with Jesus and the others floating in the air. The more I think about it, the more I think that they were standing on the ground shining in their wholeness. Their physical bodies, their resurrected bodies, their true selves revealed.

               Then, just as they think things can’t get any weirder, a cloud from heaven drifts down and they hear the words “This is my Son, the beloved with him I am well pleased: Listen to him”.

               There is much speculation about why all of this happened. There are different explanations, different ideas and I will leave you to decide how you want to interpret all of this. My interpretation is that Peter, James and John would become leaders of the new movement of Jesus followers. They would need to remember this vision when things became difficult. Leading people is always difficult. It is hard to be a human and even harder to be a fully realized human.

               We want to hide who we are in a costume. We think if we look and act like everyone else we will not have to experience the ridicule of others. But, Jesus sets us free. We too can drop the disguise. We can be like Jesus and fully reveal ourselves because God has promised us freedom.

               The advertisers want us to want to be different. They want us to follow trends and feel like we do not have enough of whatever they have to sell. They want us to feel like something is missing in our lives, something vital. The only vital thing we are missing is our relationship with Jesus and God. We are created with a God shaped hole that needs to be filled by our choosing to follow Jesus over and over again. Daily hourly even every second some days we must choose Jesus. Jesus always chooses us.

               And the gospel, the good news that we are free to live and be and love is not only a gospel for us as individuals. The good news is good news for all the world. Freedom is a right all people are born with. We in the United States speak of the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness was meant to emphasize that each person has the right to personal safety, personal freedom. While these rights may be infringed upon by the world, they speak to the freedom we strive for in our earthly lives. The freedom we see in Christ. We can remove our costumes that don’t fit anyway and be who we are because Jesus loves us and God’s love shines on us. And it is for this we can say, thanks be to God

Matthew 5:8 The Promise of Blessing

9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

God of hope in times of trouble, grant us the blessing of your peace so that we too may be called children of God. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you our rock and our redeemer. Amen

            This passage is one of the favorites of Christ followers, right up there with the 23rd Psalm. He leadeth me beside still waters. God leads us to calm places in the midst of storms. Jesus gets in the boat with us when the waves of chaos threaten to toss into the sea. Jesus takes a couple of fish and prays and 5000 men and so many more women and children are fed.

            Those of us raised in the church might have memorized this as part of a Sunday school class.  There have been a million sermons written that detail each of these blessings. They explain the meaning of things like “poor in spirit” and they even try to explain away that part about the meek. Very few people want to be meek. To be meek is to be weak and we are a people so attached to our own strength the concept of weakness is horrific. To allow oneself to be cared for is to surrender a part of you and leaves you vulnerable to being seen as human. It is a terrible thing to be a human. So many ways we can wander into pride. So many ways we can stray from God’s good path. The road is wide but the path to life is narrow. Eternal life is not just handed to us. There is work that must be done. We all have growing edges where Jesus and the Holy Spirit work with us to become ever more meek and ever more Christ like.

            There is one verse in this sermon of Jesus’ that seems particularly relevant in this time and place.  The verse that says blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.

            That could be the mic drop. Boom The promise of blessing is the promise that those who make peace will be called children of God. That is all that needs to be said really, you can go on your way after communion and ponder that for the rest of the week. There is so much to unpack in that verse in our world.

            Jesus says you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Jesus says blessed are the meek and we say blessed are those with the biggest guns. I know nothing about guns by the way. If biggest isn’t the right description, I will let you fill in the right one. Jesus says blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and we say might makes right. Jesus says you will be blessed when you work for peace. You will be blessed when you stand in the middle of a battlefield and find a way forward that is just.

            The just part is super important. There can be no peace until all people know peace. There can be no resolution until the weak are seen as important as the strong. There can be no plan for justice that stands a chance of being a plan if it leaves those who are not “normal” out of the group. We are all human. The weak and the strong ones, the old and the young.

            God has promised good to me but not the kind of good we can display like a trophy on a mantlepiece. God will bless us with opportunity after opportunity to do the right thing, the Godly thing, the radical Jesus following thing time after time. And I wish to God, I could tell you exactly what that radical Jesus following thing is in this time and this place but I don’t think I can. A famous theologian said we should preach with the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. (We used to get our news in a daily paper. Today he would probably say preach with the bible in one hand and your phone in the other.

            Today, I am putting the newspaper, the TikTok, the 24 hour news cycle, the rage bait, the horrors down. I am placing it on the pulpit so I can lift the Bible with both hands. There is no greater love than this -that a person would lay down their lives for their friend how few of them there are and how many of us would even think to do that for a stranger. Jesus was asked who is my neighbor and he told a story. He told a story about righteous people walking by a man who had been beaten and left for dead. It was a despised person who stopped and cared for the man.

               Jesus was talking with his disciples one day when a Syrophoenician woman came to him and asked him to save her daughter. He said no and she begged again. And he smiled and blessed her. He demonstrated to his disciples that the person’s ethnicity or race or whatever does not disqualify them from grace. Jesus went to the pool where the lame man went every day to try to be healed in the waters. Jesus went to him because he could not come to Jesus. Jesus healed him. Jesus went to Samaria and spoke with a woman, a Samaritan woman even and offered her the living water.

               God promises us blessings. Blessings are not tidy little packages wrapped up in bows. Blessings are not winning the lottery. Blessings are so much more. Blessings are knowing that when you mourn, and beloved you will mourn every one of us has or will lose more than we can bare, knowing in the depths of that despair that God will comfort you. God will hold you when you can walk no further. When the night is so long, God will hold you.

               Blessings are hungering and thirsting to have justice done. Wanting so badly for things to be made right in a world where things are not right. Wanting to know the exact right way and the exact right thing to say to bring a little more hope. Blessings are never easy.

               Blessings are mercy in the midst of hate. Blessings are not handed to us on a platter. Blessings are given to us in the craziness of life. Right in the middle of the chaos of living and fearing and bearing witness and helping each other carry our crosses. Blessings are not light weight frivolous good things. Blessings are not the universe giving us what we need.

               Blessings are foolishness to the world. Blessings are living in ways that are not the ways things are normally done. Blessings are wrestling with the events of life and choosing to work toward a just peace. Justice is the foundation of peace. Not complacency. Not resigning oneself to evil for the sake of a calmer life.

               If we are to be peacemakers, we must reach toward justice. We must read the bible day after day after day until we know what God would have us do and then we must read it again because every day brings a new challenge. Let tomorrow worry about itself because we have enough trouble for today and even harder. Let yesterday go because we have enough pain today. Live now and always in the blessing of the present.

               Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God. Amen

God’s Promis of Ministry

Matthew 4:19-20

19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 

Let us pray:

          God give us the courage to follow where you send us. Empower us to do your will in the world bringing the wisdom we have gained in our lives to shape our ministry. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you our rock and our redeemer. Amen

          Our scriptures have many stories of people being called to ministry. In the Hebrew Bible we have the story of Jonah. Jonah was living his life, doing his thing. Then God called. God said Jonah I need you to go to Ninevah and tell those people to repent or I will destroy their town. Ninevah was not a good place. Imagine being told by God to go to Las Vegas and tell them to repent. Jonah decided that was a really bad idea. He jumped on a boat going as far away from Ninevah as he could. He thought he could escape God’s call on his life. If you are familiar with the story, you know what comes next. A big storm threatens to destroy the boat he is on. All the sailors are trying to guess which God they had offended. Jonah comes up on deck and says “Its me. I’m the problem, its me. Toss me overboard and everything will be ok.”

          That seems like a bit of an overly dramatic solution but that’s how Jonah rolls. He deals in over the top reactions. The sailors dump him into the ocean. He thinks he will get out of going to Ninevah by drowning. Just then a really big enormous fish swallows him. I can just imagine him sitting there in the belly of a fish pondering his life choices. Finally, he prays and tells God he will go to Nineveh and do what God told him to do. The fish spits him out near Nineveh. Jonah goes to the town preaching that they need to repent and the crazy thing is, they do. And Jonah gets really angry. He says, the reason I did not want to come here is because I knew you would forgive them and not destroy them. He sits down to pout and a vine grows up to give him shade. He likes that. He begins to think that maybe all this trouble was worth it if God was going to reward him with this beautiful plant giving him shelter from the sun. Then, the plant dies. And Jonah the overly dramatic throws a fit. Telling God all about how God was ridiculous for sending him on this journey and for giving him this ministry. God simply responds with all those people and animals I spared in the city do not matter to you, but a vine does?

          Then there is Gideon. He was just there working in the threshing floor, not really thinking about much when an angel drops in and tells him to rescue Isreal. Gideon’s clan was the weakest of all the clans. And Gideon was no warrior much less a general. I love the next part. He doesn’t run from God but he puts a fleece outside his door and says “God if there is dew on the fleece in the morning, I will do what you called me to do.” He woke up and the fleece was wet. Gideon still wasn’t sure. It would be pretty easy for a fleece to be wet from the dew and Gideon was weak and didn’t have an army and couldn’t even save his sheep. How on earth did God expect him to lead Israel in a war? So he put the fleece back out and told God if the ground is wet and the fleece is dry I will know you have truly called me to this ministry of leadership. God did not send a fish to convince him. God kept the fleece dry. Gideon reluctantly agreed to lead the people of Isreal. God used him and a tiny army of 300 to surprise their enemies the Midianites at night with a bunch of trumpets and torches and clay jars. And Gideon was made judge and leader of the Israelites for many years. Not exactly our idea of a military leader but God doesn’t always call the strong. God seems to delight in calling ordinary people to work for the benefit of the world God so loves.

          The people in Capernaum in the region of Galilee full of Gentiles knew that John the Baptist had been arrested. The news would have traveled fast. Those who had received that baptism were probably worried they would be next. It was a time of suspicion and fear. The Romans were very much against uprising. They had a habit of crucifying people who caused trouble. And if they didn’t kill them immediately, they sent them to prison where they would spend their days in awful conditions.

          Jesus knew this when he began to proclaim that everyone needed to repent. He also said the kingdom of heaven was near. The Romans would have heard that as a threat of insurrection and still Jesus proclaimed it. Then one day as Simon Peter and Andrew were out doing their thing, Jesus comes up and tells them to leave their nets and come follow him. Jesus had a ministry for them. They were to become fishers of men. And they did. They just put down their nets and walked off with Jesus. No trying to escape. No testing God. Just obedience to the call of God on their lives. Then, Jesus sees John and James the sons of Zebedee and calls them. They up and leave their father Zebedee in the boat. They didn’t ask for time to help their dad sort out what to do now that they were gone. They just left him standing there open mouthed in shock watching as this man led his sons away.

          God gives each of us a ministry. God calls us to be and do things we often think are way beyond our capabilities, but we do not know what God knows.  Our job is to answer like Isaiah and like Mary Jesus’ mother. Let it happen just like you said it would. I am here to serve.

          Are we here ready to serve God? Are we ready to walk away from our plans and follow where God tells us to go?

          Trusting God with our day to day lives is difficult enough. Walking with Jesus and praying and concentrating on his way of being is hard. Our brains are wired to be anxiously monitoring everything around us. Our society has placed expectations on us. We strive to pray routinely. We strive to read scripture and to love our neighbors and to walk humbly. We strive and sometimes we hit the mark but most often we miss.

          Sometimes we feel that God has not called us to a specific ministry. But there is no job in the church or in the world that is devoid of ministry opportunity. If you are a deacon preparing communion in the sacristy, you are living your ministry. If you are calling friends, you are living your ministry. If you are praying you are living your ministry. Listen for God’s call and do what God calls you to do so you don’t end up in the belly of a big fish. Be brave enough to leave the safety of routine to answer God’s call. Know that each of us has been given a ministry, a way to usher in the reign of God in a world that is steeped in fear and hate. We are called to be Jesus’ hands, feet and voices in this world that is often cruel, often divided, and often just evil. But, God is God and God will do what God will do. The opportunity to work with God in the ministry to which we are called is a blessing. A blessing for which we can say, thanks be to God. AmenJohn 1:42

Jan 18, 2026

God Is Faithful

          John the Baptist lived on the edge of town. Some people who came to him for his baptism of repentance believed he was the messiah. It must have been tempting for him. He could have told everyone that he was the messiah. That his baptism was the only one they needed. But, John was faithful. John did what God called him to do. John told everyone that another would come who would baptize with the Holy Spirit not just with water. I tend to imagine John alone out in the desert. Like a lone mad prophet hurling truth at the elite of society, reminding them of God’s expectations for proper living. That isn’t a correct image of John. John had disciples, people who followed him and learned from him. And he must have taught them very well because when John identified Jesus as the Messiah, they left John to follow Jesus.

          It was a gutsy move. They had already left everything to follow John. I’m sure they had been ridiculed by their friends and family. Taunted by people saying, “why are you following this crazy man?” “Why don’t you have some lamb instead of those locusts?” and “When are you coming home son? Your mother needs your help.” They heard all these taunts and stood up under the incredulous looks. They did it all because God had called them to be disciples of John. They were faithful disciples of John. And, having built their lives around John’s ministry, when John identified Jesus as the promised one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit, they stood up, shook the dust off their robes and followed Jesus.

          I guess Jesus didn’t have any followers yet. John’s baptism is the beginning of his ministry. I wonder though what Jesus was doing before his ministry began. I cannot begin to hazard a guess. The gospels were not written as a diary. The gospels are written in the style of a certain kind of biography which shows how the subject of the biography is a great man. There were origin stories about many famous people. It was a genre that would have been well known in Jesus’ time. The gospel according to John was the story of Jesus, the very son of God. Which means not every detail was recorded and the story was told in a way that supported John’s understanding of Jesus and his ministry.

          So, we don’t know if Jesus had any disciples before these two, but we do know these two men, left the man they had been following and started following Jesus. The gospel tells us that the two men started following Jesus before seeing any miracle, before hearing him speak, before knowing where he was going. But they did inquire about that quickly, Jesus turned around and asked, “what do you want?” They answered, “We want to know where you are staying.” I might have asked where are you going. If I am going to follow someone it would be good to know where we are going. One cannot pack properly without knowing where one is going. But these two men did not care. Wherever Jesus was going they would follow. What they wanted to know was where Jesus was staying. Jesus answered come and see. So, they did. They spent the day with Jesus. They talked and asked questions and decided that Jesus truly was the Messiah. Then, they went and told others.

          We know that one of the men was Andrew. Andrew was so excited after this conversation that he went and told his brother, Simon Peter. Peter’s name might be familiar to you. It was Peter who would follow Jesus to the trial and then prove very unfaithful. Peter would deny his association with Jesus. Peter would be the first to be brave enough to admit that Jesus was the Messiah of God. Peter would be the rock on which the church was built. Peter would argue with Paul about gentiles even after having the vision that told him all food was clean. Peter, who was introduced by Andrew would become the leader of the disciples.  And even though Peter was unfaithful to Jesus, Jesus was faithful to him. Jesus appeared to Peter on the lakeshore after the resurrection and gave him the chance to proclaim his love of Jesus. God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. God is faithful even when we are not.

          Faithfulness is difficult for us. We want to be true to ourselves and our loved ones, but we are frequently not honest enough with ourselves to be faithful to others. We lie to ourselves about our motives. We lie to ourselves about who we are and how we love. We lie to ourselves and we lie to God.

          Faithfulness is a spiritual fruit. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus our relationships with other people become better. The same spirit that convicts us to follow Jesus builds in us the ability to become more faithful. Some of the time that faithfulness is born from knowing what we can and cannot do. We realize that we will not be faithful to a resolution, so we do not make that resolution. We learn that there are only so many activities we can do so we say no to another one. We grow in our understanding of ourselves enough to know that if we do commit to something and it is too much for us, we can quit without it being unfaithful. We learn to weigh the outcomes to know what is faithful and what is detrimental to our hearts, minds, bodies and souls.

          Fruits of the spirit can be tricky. The same spirit that calls us to fellowship also calls us to solitude. The same spirit that leads us to the desert also leads us to still waters. The spirit is our comforter and our challenger. And despite everything we do and do not do, everything we think is right that isn’t’ despite all of our flaws, God is faithful. God kept God’s promise to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob even as they messed up time and time again.  Jesus walked with his disciples, shared meals with them, shared his life with them. He loved Judas Iscariot knowing Judas had betrayed him. He loved John Mark who ran away when Jesus was arrested. He loved all the disciples who abandoned him at the crucifixion. And though we are followers of Christ so many years later, Jesus loves us. Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells me so. Jesus loves me this I know because he walks with me and he talks with me along life’s narrow way. Jesus loves us in the midst of all the messiness of life holding our hand when the night is too deep and the sunrise waits too long to show us the new day. Jesus carries us when we are too weary to stand on our own. Jesus helps us to mend the broken places in our bodies, minds and souls. There is no part of us that Jesus despises. Jesus knows our every weakness, every growing edge, every secret held closely, everything and Jesus loves us. Jesus is faithful to us. Jesus, our rock and our redeemer has promised to be faithful and God fulfills promises.

          God is love and love never fails. We can go out into the world knowing that the king of all things, the creator and sustainer of the cosmos, the one on whom we rely is and always will be faithful, even when we are not. God is faithful and we need not worry because the one who made us will sustain us. And it is for this we can say, thanks be to God Amen.