Preaching on:
Luke 12:32–40

The last two weeks I've been preaching to you about prayer and about change. And I think that the opening of our scripture reading this morning is a perfect encapsulation of the messages that have been in the preaching over the last two weeks. The first being, you don't know what you're going to get in this life. Even if you pray, you don't always know what you're going to get. And the second being that nothing in this world lasts forever and that none of the things that make us feel comfortable and safe in this world—our possessions, our money, our prestige, our home, even our relationships—can keep us safe and comfortable forever.
 
But Jesus says there is something that can keep us happy, meaningful, safe forever. So let's read this, "Do not be afraid, little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, sell your possessions and give alms, make purses for yourselves that do not wear out and unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." When you come to the realization that nothing in this world is going to last for you forever, except for God, except for faith and hope and love, and that the things and the possessions of this world are all going to go up and down and they're all going to change, when you come to that realization and you stop praying to God to say, "I expect my every prayer to be answered exactly the way that I prayed it. I want to get exactly what I want, because what I want is good and just and fair and necessary. And if I don't get it, I'm going to suffer, and I'm not going to be happy. And I'm going to be in pain," and you start to say to God, "I am willing to accept whatever it is that you are giving, because that is life, and this life is good," it begins to free you. It frees you. And what it frees you to do is to be generous. It frees you not to constantly be grasping at the things of this world and trying to hold onto them as tight as you can because you think that the things of this world are somehow going to save you, that God can give you things that will save you.
 
But that's not the way that God works. God doesn't give you things to save you. God gives us something else to save us. And so when you realize that the things of this world are not the final answer to the troubles that we live through, to the questions that we have, to the pain that we feel, you become free to live like a disciple of Jesus: to be generous even if you only have a little bit, because you don't need to hold onto it. It frees you to love everybody even if you don't like everybody, because there is enough love to go around. It frees you to act in the service of your neighbors. Why? Because you don't have to be afraid of what it means to lose that time. You don't have to be afraid of what happens if I get in trouble for going on that March? Or what if people don't like me when I speak up about that issue? That's not the stuff that matters. What matters is your relationship to God. That's the foundation. That's everything. So we can be generous and loving and kind.
 
But still we struggle a little bit. We struggle with God who we believe to be powerful and good, who doesn't seem to answer every prayer in exactly the way that we would hope that every prayer would be answered. And we see this, right? We see that some people pray for very good things, to be healed, and yet they're not healed. To be lifted up out of poverty, and yet they're not lifted up out of poverty. For their children to be safe, and yet, in some cases, their children are not safe the way they want them to be safe, their loved ones are not safe. And this always makes us wonder, what is the character of the God that we love and worship? What is the character of the God we love and worship, who doesn't always seem to give us the fair, or the just, or the right, or the kind thing, even when we pray, even when we ask?
 
There are a couple of ways that we have answered this question throughout our history, right? One of them is that when things go wrong in your life and you're not getting exactly what you think you deserve, or what's fair, it's because you are being punished for something, right? If you think back long enough, you'll remember some awful thing you did or said, or didn't do that you should have done, some thought you had, some deed you did. And the reason that you are suffering now, even though you're praying for something else in your life is because you're being punished for that thing that you did. It's your own fault. That's the way it works. And this has been a very popular reasoning for suffering throughout all of history. There's one problem with it. And there's a lot of Christians and I think there's a little bit of all of us who kind of believes this, right? We always kind of say to ourselves, when something goes completely wrong, "What did I do to deserve this?" It's sort of just built right into the culture, built right into the psychology. But the problem is Jesus seems to totally reject this idea. When the disciples and Jesus come across a man who has been blind from birth (And the popular opinion at the time was that if you had anything that was wrong with you, it was because you had committed some sort of sin), and the disciples couldn't quite figure out if he had been born blind, what could he have done to deserve it? And so they were arguing amongst one another, "Well, he must have done something even when he was very, very small." And then some of the other disciples must have been saying, "No, I think it was his parents who must have done something to make him blind. That's why he's blind." So they went to Jesus and they said, "Hey, answer this debate for us. Who was the sinner? Was it him or his parents that he was born blind?" And Jesus says, "Ah, forget that. The whole thing is wrong. Nobody had sinned. That's not what this is about." Jesus seems to just step away from the idea that you are being punished and that's why you're suffering.
 
So then there comes another idea about God that’s very popular, and I'm sure that we all hold this in our hearts as well. And this is the idea that there is some sort of great plan at play in the world. And everything that happens to you and everything that happens in the world, God has ordained that it's going to happen or is allowing it to happen because it is a part of this great master plan. And in the end, everything's going to turn out okay. Even though the world might be burning right now, even though you might be suffering right now, in the end, it's all going to turn out okay. There's a couple of problems with this. One is the issue of free will. We know that we have free will so if God has ordained that something should happen, do I really have free will? But I think the bigger issue is what kind of a God who has the power to step in and stop a tragedy from happening—and that God is all good, we believe that God is good—then why doesn't God step in to stop the tragedy from happening?
 
What does that mean about God? And a popular answer to this is that, well, God's goodness is different than our human conception of what goodness is, right? And in fact, God is just. And so the fact that there is suffering and pain and tragedy and disaster and injustice in this world, and that God isn't fixing it all for us when we pray for it to be fixed is just because God is just, and in the great picture of justice, it is right for all of us to be suffering through all of these things and it's going to get us to God's justice in the end in some way. But again, that sort of comes back to this idea that we are all suffering because of something that we've done wrong, right? This idea that we are being punished in some sense, or not being healed because of some kind of injustice in our past, or some kind of imperfection within us that we can't do anything about. And that seems to be something that Jesus rejected when he said, "Nobody is being punished for a sin," in this particular instance of the blind man who is born blind.
 
So what kind of God do we have? What does God ask of us? What does God want from us? Well, in the second part of our scripture reading, I think that Jesus gives us the answer, be dressed for action and have your lamps lit, be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet. If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” Our God is a God who is putting the impetus on us, yeah? God is putting the impetus on us. He is saying to me, and to you, "This is the way the world works. I need you to be ready. I need you to be paying attention. I can't have you giving up. I can't have you losing hope. You need to be as ready as if you are expecting me to rush back into your life at any moment, because even in the midst of disaster, and even in the midst of suffering, I am right at the edges and my kingdom is right there already waiting to respond. And if you are not ready for that, if you have given up because of the hardship and the trials and the suffering and the pain, what will you see?" Well, you won't see anything.
 
It's our readiness that enables us to see God's action in the world. And it is our readiness that enables us to be God's hands in this world. Be ready, be ready. Watch. God is already at work in this world. And in all the trials and all the difficulties of our lives, none of which are... Not all of them are ever going to be perfectly solved, right? If everything could be perfectly solved, then everything would be perfectly solved by just praying for it and wanting it. And just by it being the right thing. But that is not the way it works. You and I need to be involved. That is the world that God has given us.
 
And so it's not that prayer isn't answered. I believe that prayer is answered. It's just not answered in the way that we always expect for it to be answered. Because if we are asking for God to give us the things and the comforts in this world, even health and relationships and love or possessions and money, if we are looking for things in this world that will make us more comfortable in this world, that is not how prayer works. But if we are coming to God in prayer to say to God, "I am ready for you to enter into my life, to enter into this struggle, to enter into this difficulty, into these blessings, into these strengths and weaknesses so that I can act for you and for my neighbors" that is when prayer is always answered. That is the prayer that God always responds to exactly the way we hope.
 
"I will be with you until the end of the age, and you don't know what you're going to get. And the blessings that you have, they might not always be there. And the hardships that you hope will never come in your life may come, but whatever may come, I will be there with you if you are ready for me to be there with you." Now beloved what I'm not saying is I'm not saying that money doesn't matter. I'm not saying that health doesn't matter. I'm not saying that your relationships and your family don't matter. I'm not saying that the things of this world don't matter. I am saying that our faith tells us that there is something that matters more. And in prayer, we connect to that One who matters more. And we say to God, "I am ready. Whatever may come, whatever may come, I am ready."

Preaching on:
Luke 12:13–21

Well, if you are going to live a good life... and I think most of you want to live a good life. I could tell... look out there, see those faces, I know you want to live a good life. If you want to live a good life, one of the things that you're going to have to struggle with and figure out is: What is my relationship going to be to money and to stuff, to possessions? And this is something that I know that many of you are struggling with in your lives, right now. It is something that we work through our entire life. What is my relationship going to be to this stuff that I want, but that also stresses me out... to this money that I need, but that also causes me all this anxiety. How am I going to relate to that? And Jesus has, I think some very interesting things to say to us about this... very difficult, but very interesting.
 
Now, one of them of course, is “Don't be greedy.” And that's part of the lesson from our scripture reading this morning, but it's not the whole lesson at all, I don't think. And I'm not going to get too much into “don't be greedy,” because I think for the most part, even though we might struggle a little bit with greed here and there, and even though the world can often struggle mightily with greed, we know that greed is ugly. When we see greed, even when we see it in ourselves, we generally know that it is ugly. We have heard in our culture and in our scripture, and we have been taught since we were children, “do not be greedy.” Share, be fair with other people. We know that greed not only hurts the world around us and people around us, we know that it hurts us.
 
But Jesus doesn't just say, “Don't be greedy.” Jesus goes further. Jesus says to his closest disciples, when he calls his disciples, he says, if you want to follow me, you have to leave everything behind. Nothing. You have to leave your job behind. You're going to have to leave your family behind. You're going to have to leave all your responsibilities and your hometown behind. You're going to have nothing. And then you are going to come and follow me. And then Jesus took those disciples and he sent them out into the community to preach and to teach the gospel and to heal the sick. And when they were going on this journey, how did he prepare them? He said, you're not going to take anything with you. You will have no staff. You will have no bag. You will have no purse. You will have no money. You're not going to even have a little bit of food or water. You're going to go with the clothes on your back and the sandals on your feet. And that is it.
 
And we sometimes hear Jesus offering people advice like the rich young man famously in scripture. The rich young man comes to Jesus. He says, Hey, I've lived a good life. I've done everything I'm supposed to do according to the scripture. I still feel like there's something missing though. And Jesus says, oh yeah, you have one more thing that you need to do. Take everything that you have sell it, give all the money away to the poor and then come and follow me.
 
This sounds like pretty shocking advice to us. And part of the reason it sounds so shocking is because I, and most likely you, do not live this way. We have some things... we've got a staff, we've got a bag, we've got a purse, we've got more than one pair of shoes, we don't exactly live this way. And so it's shocking to us to hear Jesus recommending it so forcefully throughout scripture. And I want to say, I don't think that Jesus expects us to live this way. This is called voluntary poverty. And I think it's a very special calling for very special people. It was a special calling for those disciples and certain followers and for certain people who really want to excel and meet spiritual challenges and grow spiritually in their life. But it is not what everybody in this life is supposed to do. We cannot all live in voluntary poverty, just like we can't all live in celibacy. And we can't all live in constant prayer, continuous prayer. These are very special vows for people who have a special calling and are on a special path in life.
 
However, I do think that even though this is not a universal calling and it may not be the calling for you or for me, there is a lesson in Jesus constantly reminding us to give things away and to leave things behind. There is a universal message in that teaching that is meant for all of us (even if we don't live in voluntary poverty) that we often miss. And it is a lesson that is deeper, more fundamental, and more important than just, “Don't be greedy.”
 
Now I want you to take as an example this morning, the landowner in Jesus' parable, the rich landowner. Is this the story of an out of control greed maniac? Does this sound like somebody who's just monstrously greedy and is just the poster child for a greed out of control. This guy's a business owner. He has a bumper crop. He doesn't have any place to store it. So it decides he is going to have bigger barns. And then he's going to be able to live off the proceeds.
 
Is that greed? I don't know if it is. It sounds a little bit like you or me, right? I mean, if you're a business owner, when the time comes and you have the opportunity, maybe you want to expand your business a little bit. Is that greediness or is that just business? Is that the way the world works? Is wanting to have your golden years be well funded so that you are not suffering, and during that time, when you don't have income coming in, because you're not running your business anymore, is that greedy just to want to have a nest egg that you can rely upon? I don't think that it is.
 
Can we really say that this landowner is acting immorally by what he is doing? Greed is immoral. This isn't immoral. It's not unethical. We don't even know that this landowner is being uncaring towards other people. Is he so obsessed with his business that he is not loving to his wife or to his children or to his neighbors? Does he not give to charity? Is he somebody who's totally self-obsessed? We don't see that in Jesus's story. That's not the story that Jesus is telling us here. This guy, he's not Ebeneezer Scrooge. He's not some miserable old miser. That's not what we're hearing about here. He's somebody just like you or like me. So yes, of course, don't be greedy, but Jesus is telling us something about ourselves as well. What is he trying to tell us?
 
Unfortunately, what we sometimes hear that Jesus is trying to tell us in this story, and it makes us quite nervous, is we say this guy, who's not all that different from you or me, the bad man, is super, super greedy. And so God kills him for being greedy, right? If you want bigger barns, God's going to kill you. So don't. Don't tear down your barns and build bigger ones, because that is going to get you the bolt of lightning from heaven. Now, I don't think that's actually the message here. Here's what I think the real message is. And I think you'll hear it in the words.
 
This is a perfectly average rich man who is making perfectly normal business decisions, but he is relying on his money and his possessions totally and completely to the exclusion of God. And he believes that his wealth and his power and his possessions are going to be able to save him in this life. And just at the moment when he believes that he has made it, and that he is going to be able to savor all of the fruit of his hard labors over the year and becoming someone who is rich and secure, he dies... not because God kills him for building bigger barns, but because everybody dies. Everybody has to leave it all behind at some point.
 
And then (I love this line) God says to the man, all that stuff that you thought was going to hold you up and protect you, who does it belong to now? Who does it belong to now? I think the lesson here from this parable is that none of us, no matter whether you're rich by luck and accident, or you're poor on purpose, none of us really owns anything at all. And none of us can rely in this life, on our possessions, on our wealth, on our money, however much we may have or not have to keep us going forever. Who owns everything that we have? God does. We are just intermediaries. It's entrusted to us for a short amount of time. And we cannot put our faith in it. Everything is always changing. And there's only one thing that we can rely on.
 
We think often in this life that, well, if I just had a little bit more, just a little bit more than I have now, then I would be truly happy. And how many times have you thought that in your life? Well, you think it about two weeks after you get whatever you thought was going to make you happy the last time. It always fades. We think if I just had a little bit more money, a little bit more security, well then I would be truly happy. And that happiness always fades. Why? It's because it's the psychology of our human desire. We always want more. And there's always more to want. Whatever level we get to, we always believe that there's something more and we're always disappointed in the end.
 
And yes, it may be true that having a little more money in this world might make you a little more secure in this world. That is the way that the world works. But you're not always going to be in this world. And at some point, everything that you built up around you in this world to keep you safe, isn't going to be able to keep you safe. That is the nature of our existence. And so who do we rely on?
 
Jesus has tried to teach us a universal truth in his voluntary poverty that he practices and that he recommends. He's trying to remind us of that universal truth in this parable. And that is that your true happiness can only be found outside of money and possessions. It can only be found outside of this world. It is somewhere in heaven, which as I told the kids this morning is somewhere in here and somewhere out there, a little bit of both. Your true security in this world has to come from beyond this world, your happiness and your meaning must come from beyond because this world is impermanent. It is always changing. It is always going up and down.
 
As I’m coming back from my paternity leave over the last two weeks, I have been catching up with a lot of you. And I always put some of our older members first, because I feel like they need me most. And frankly, I'll tell you the other reason I do it, is because the older members, the 65+ crowd, is the crowd I feel like that has the most change going on in their lives. If I don't talk to somebody for two weeks, I don't know what situation they're going to be in two weeks later... constant change.
 
And as I've spoken to many of our older members over the last two weeks, a lot of you are suffering. Some of you have good news, but many of you are dealing with this change... change in life. What about my finances? Who's going to take care of me? Where am I going to live? Now I have to move. I have to go somewhere else. Can I be independent or not? My friends are dying. My friends are moving away. Who's going to be there to take care of me. How am I going to be able to do it? My health is failing. What is wrong with me? Am I going to get better? Or is this it? There's so much change. I want you to know that I see that change. And I see what you all are going through. And as you know, because you're older and wiser than me, I can't fix it. All I can do is sit with you and love you. And remind you of the One who is with you through all of it.
 
This world is always changing. Our fortunes are always going up and down. Nothing stays the same. Everything we depend on, sooner or later, is going to disappear. And so in this life, we must realize and learn that no matter what, we must found our happiness and our security in God. Everything else in this world is like a little extra bonus to keep us safe and happy and warm and well fed. But the truth, the fundamental truth, is that it has to start with God. But many of us live our lives as if it starts with a paycheck in the bank. And it starts with food on the table and it starts with clothes on my back and it starts with a great career. And then God is the extra thing that I add on at the end of the week, but that doesn't work and that will eventually run out.
 
We have to found ourselves, our happiness, and our security, on the thing that is greater than any change, greater than any misfortune, greater than anything in this world. We can found our lives on faith, hope, and love. And so when Jesus recommends voluntary poverty to us, the lesson that I think he is offering us, is to live in this life without too much attachment, to work in this life without being attached to that work, to love in this life, to love everybody as if they were our own selves, but not to get attached too much to who we think we are, or who we think that they should be. Live, work, love, lead a good life, but found it all on the One who is greater than all of these things.

Preaching on:
​Luke 11:1–13

Well, it sure is good to be back, and I really mean it. It is wonderful to be back. And I have to just thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity to have eight weeks off to help my family adjust to being a family of four with two kids now. And that is a big, big adjustment to make. It's not just a spiritual adjustment becoming a parent for the first time or the second time. It is a logistical adjustment. As many of you know. It is hard work, it is sleepless nights, it is a lot of demands on your time and your attention, but there's also a spiritual adjustment that I think needs to be made every time you welcome a new life into this world.
 
And for me, that is about understanding and accepting that this little life that you now hold in your hands—that you have fallen totally, madly, wildly in love with—you don't really know what you are going to get. You don't know what you are holding in your hands as you hold that little life in your hands and you bless it. And you scream from the bottom of your heart up into the heavens, "Protect this child. May this child be happy. May this child be healthy. May this child be successful. May this child be kind. May the shadow of pain never cross the door of this child."
 
And of course you do, because if you didn't, you'd be a lousy parent, but being a mature parent means that you also say, "And I know I don't know what I've got. I don't know what this life will be. I don't know how it will all work itself out. I don't know what's coming. I don't know." Oh, boy. And that's a hard place to be as someone who loves their child and who wants their life to be perfect because we want our kids to have a perfect life, right? We want them to be serious, but funny. Smart, but not full of themselves. We want them to be successful, but also humble. Strong, but also gentle. Spirited, but also respectful and obedient.
 
We want them to be perfect. We have all these visions in our head of how they're just going to be... They could be a perfect child, but we don't know what we're going to get. And sitting there in my period of adjustment, holding this new little life in my hands, just I don't know, 2, 3, 4 days after the baby was born, the events in Uvalde unfolded—the terrible tragic shooting and massacre of children. And then you really have to remember, I don't know what I am holding. I don't know what the future will bring. I am asking for safety. I am asking you, God, for health. I am asking you for a perfectly unblighted life for this child, but I don't know what's coming.
 
And none of us do. And then I run into this piece of scripture here that says, "Well," Jesus says, "if you ask, it will be given to you. Ask," this is what it says, "and it shall be given to you." I struggle with that because I actually think that attitude may be just the perfect way to ruin your life. I think it's probably the perfect way to ruin your kids' life as parents. Mature parenting is about realizing you don't know what you are holding in your hands. And all of your dreams and hopes for this child are your dreams and your hopes, but it's not about you. It's about her. It's about him. It's about who God created them to be.
 
Why should it be about what I want for this child? It's about what God wants for this child. It's about what this child wants for themselves. And so mature parenting is about not asking and getting what you want, but being there to create an environment where this child can discover who she or who he is on their own terms, without your judgment, or you trying to nudge them this way or that way, or to say, "But you are supposed to be this. You're supposed to be this way. You're supposed to be that way. You're supposed to be like me. You're not supposed to be like that." And then support them in the journey of discovering who they are and support them through all the trials and tribulations that may come in this life.
 
And knowing as a parent that you have to prepare them for trials and tribulations, you cannot say to them, "Well, don't worry. I'm praying to God that everything go perfectly in your life. So you have nothing to worry about. Why don't you just pray that too? And everything will just be peachy keen?" Not many parents would say that to their children because we just know that's not exactly the way the world works. And so when we run into this piece of scripture that says, "Ask and it will be given to you," what does that mean? If I don't get what I want, is there something wrong with me, or if I'm praying for something for my child to be a certain way, or to have certain blessings and they don't get it, is it because there's something wrong with them?
 
So I want this morning to just push us in a new direction with this piece of scripture. And it does sound like Jesus is saying, "Ask and it will be given to you. You'll get whatever you want." That's what it sounds like. But I want to remind you that Jesus was a preacher and preachers preach the truth. They try to, but they always preach it in context. So I want to give you two different contexts for this parable and this sermon that you hear Jesus preaching.
 
Now, if you were to hear somebody came up to Jesus and said, "Jesus, look, I'm having some trouble in my life. I really want to win the power ball. That's my goal. It's what I want. I really think it would be what's best for everybody. Like a couple hundred million. I play every week and I haven't won yet. So I really need you to give me some spiritual advice on how to win the lottery." And Jesus said, "Well, ask and it shall be given to you. Everybody who asks, receives." "Oh, thank you, Jesus. So I just need to pray for it and I'll get it?" "Absolutely. That's the lesson you should be taking from this sermon," and off he goes, right? Contextually that would seem to be what Jesus was saying.
 
But I want you to imagine another context for this sermon. I want you to imagine that Jesus is preaching to a new father who is holding that new life in his hands, and sitting there on the couch and turning on the TV, and the news of Uvalde comes over the airwaves. Or that Jesus is preaching a sermon to someone who has hit rock bottom, who has given up, who has suffered and suffered and suffered, and doesn't know how to ask anymore, doesn't believe that there's any reason to ask for anything good, because all they get are snakes and scorpions, and maybe it's God who's giving me those snakes and scorpions, or maybe because I'm getting snakes and scorpions, it means that God isn't there, that nobody cares, that there is no father or mother watching over my life. The downtrodden, the poor in spirit—when you imagine Jesus preaching that sermon to those folks, to people like me and you who have suffered real hurt in our lives, who have seen real tragedy, who are terrified about a world that seems to be totally out of control and who do not know what to do next (I think we can say that about ourselves and about our culture right now. We do not know what to do next. We do not know exactly how to make things better for our children), then Jesus' sermon is saying, "Don't you dare give up. If you've hit rock bottom, continue to ask, right? If you're terrified and afraid, don't be too afraid to keep seeking, right? If you feel like you're locked out of this life, don't be afraid to keep knocking, because if you ask, it shall be given to you." You don't know what it is. You don't know what you're going to get, but beloved, don't give up. Don't give up.
 
Pray, seek, ask, move forward, act, do the next right thing with the courage of someone who believes that something good is going to come.

Preaching on:
John 21:1–19

Ah, love, love, love, love. Anybody here ever been in love? You know what it's like. I want to read you a little bit, a famous piece of scripture this morning, to start out with. "If I could speak in the tongues of mortals and angels but do not have love. I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes, all things, endures all things. And now faith, hope, and love abide these three, and the greatest of these is love."
 
The Bible teaches us that love is the greatest spiritual attribute that we can achieve within ourselves. The greatest attribute that we can pursue in this world. But I saw a lot of hands go up when you all said that you had been in love. When you were in love, did it all sound like that stuff that Paul was talking about? Just the greatest thing ever? Patient and kind and oh, just smooth sailing all the way? No, absolutely not.
 
We all know that love is complicated and it can be extraordinarily painful at times. It could cause us to do some crazy things. It can lead to some of the worst examples of bad behavior that you have ever read about in the tabloid pages or the Hollywood gossip rags. I mean, love can really do a number on you. The Bible, as it commends love to us, it's not naive. The Bible knows that love can be difficult. That is exactly why Paul says, "Well, let me give you this long laundry list of the things that do describe love." Love is patient and kind. It is not envious. It is not boastful. Because Paul understands that love is hard and that we don't always get it right?
 
And so, in the resurrection of Easter, that first Easter, is a wonderful moment. Jesus pops into the disciples. They've gone out fishing and Jesus shows up on the shore. He's telling him, "Hey, fish, over there," and they get a bunch of fish. He says, "Hey, come on in." They all come in and Jesus has a fire going. They sit down and they roast their fish together and they do just the most mundane thing you could ever imagine. This is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What do they do? They have breakfast together. Isn't that a wonderful thing?
 
After they're done with breakfast, Jesus starts asking about love. It's a little bit confusing exactly what's going on here. He asks him three times. In the first time Jesus asks Peter, he phrases it like this, "Do you love me more than all these? Do you love me more than all these other people? Do you love me more than these disciples? Am I number one in your life? You got to love me the most. Do you love me the most? Peter says, "Yeah, I do. I love you. You know I love you. I love you that much."
 
How would you answer that question? I'm not sure that Jesus just is fully satisfied with Peter's answer. Are you? If He was satisfied with his answer, I think He would've just asked him one time and Jesus would've said, "Yo, I love you the most. I love you more than all these other suckers. Forget about all of them. They're nothing to me. You are everything to me. Don't even think about them. I can be done with them in a minute. I'll give up everything. I'm all for you. You, you are number one. You're my number one passion. You're the only one for me." Well, Jesus would've said, "Well, okay. That sounds pretty good." But that is kind of what Peter says. He says, "Yeah, I love you more than all of them." But Jesus keeps asking him.
 
There was a time where I was exploring Zen Buddhism and it was a conversation partner to me, well, with my Christian faith. I wanted to learn more about another faith tradition radically different from the Abrahamic tradition. And so, I began to learn and to practice and to meet with Zen Buddhists. One of the things that you do in Zen Buddhism is after you meditate, you might go in and speak with the spiritual master. I would go in and I would sit down. One of the first questions that the spiritual master, the monk or the nun, would ask me is they would point to a bell and they would say, "What is this?" I would say, "Oh good, I got an easy one." I would say, "It's a bell." They would say, "What is this?" I would say, "It's a bell."
 
They would say, "What is this?" I would say, "It's a bell." And they would say, "I think that's enough for today. Why don't you go back out and meditate tomorrow?" I had not gotten the right answer. It took many months of meditation and listening to talks and participating in the community before eventually I started answering all kinds of things. I was thinking, "Geez, it's a piece of metal that rings. And they would ask me again, "What is it?" I was just coming up with all kinds of philosophical answers and wild answers. They would ask me again and again, "What is it? What is it?"
 
Finally, one day they asked me, "What is it?" I picked up the little ringer and I rang the bell, and they didn't ask me the question again. Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me more than everybody?" Peter says, "Yes, I love you more than anybody." Jesus, I don't think is happy with that answer. I don't think it's the right answer. I also don't think that the answer, "No, I love everybody more than you," is the right answer. Neither one of them are good answers. Jesus is pointing us to a higher calling and Jesus doesn't want to say to Peter ... He's resurrected Jesus. He's gentle. He doesn't want to say, "No, you got it wrong, you bonehead. You constantly get it wrong." He just gently redirects him. He says, "Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep."
 
You got to understand poor Peter's perspective here. When the crucifixion happened, Peter denied Jesus three times. Jesus was arrested and tried and crucified. All during that night, Peter said, "I don't know him. I don't know him. I'm not associated with him. I'm not one of his followers. I never saw the guy before in my life." He realizes that he has betrayed Jesus. He's not there for Him. And so now, Jesus is giving him this opportunity for redemption, and Peter is not going to miss out on this opportunity. So when Jesus asks, "Do you love me?" Peter says, "Yes, I love you more than anything. More than anything. You are number one. You're my everything. I love you. I love you passionately." He's ready to defend Jesus. He's ready to hold on to Jesus and never let go.
 
But you know, the interesting thing about Jesus is Jesus never asks us to defend him. Frankly, I don't think that Jesus needs us to defend him. Now, Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Incarnate One, the Logos who was there before the beginning, through whom everything was created. Jesus doesn't need me or you to defend him to the world. The kind of love that Jesus asks us for is not to defend Him or to stand up for Him, but to imitate Him. That's what Jesus asked us for.
 
It's understandable that Peter gets it wrong. He thinks, "I ran away from Jesus, and at that crucial moment in His life, I didn't defend Him." But what was really wrong is that he didn't imitate him. When he denied Jesus, he wasn't showing his love. Jesus doesn't ask for defenders. He needs people who can imitate him. And so, when Peter says, "I'm going to love you more than I love anybody else," Jesus says, "Feed my sheep. Imitate me. Put the love that you have for me into action. Put it into action. That's how you love me. And that's what love is. Don't beat people up with me. Imitate me. The love that I have given to you, give it to the world and then you will be my follower." 

Preaching on:
John 20:19–31

I had a wonderful relationship with my mother, Roberta Sabella Mansfield, who died about a year and a half ago, a little bit more, but I was lucky to have a mom like her, but you know, moms, we didn't always get along. It wasn't always easy. Especially growing up in the middle years, like once I hit puberty and became even more stubborn and wanted my independence and I found my mom to be at times a little bit controlling and smothering, and she seemed to want to stop me to try doing the things that I felt it was normal for a kid to do as he was growing up and trying to figure himself out. She wanted to protect me. She wanted to keep me close.
 
And I think just genetically, I am an independent person, and especially at that stage in life where those hormones are kicking, and you're trying to figure out who you are as a young man, I began to really sort of resent this and it became the deeply troubled time of our relationship where I wanted to be free and she wanted to hold on as tight as she could. And I didn't try to understand it. And she didn't try to explain it. It just seemed like this was the natural dynamic in our house between mothers and sons. And it caused a lot of pain for both of us.
 
I was about, I think I was 20 years old, I came home for Christmas break from college and my sister was still in high school. She was home. And we were just kind of chilling in the living room. I remember we were watching TV and my mom came into the room and she said, "Kids I have something I need to tell you." And we said, yeah, like anything your mom ever tells you is worth listening to. And she said, "Well, it's really important." And we just kind of, I think we maybe turned the volume down on the TV. I don't think we turned it off all the way, but we said, go ahead.
 
And she said, "Well, when I was 20 years old, I became pregnant. And the father of my child took off and I was on my own. And my father was embarrassed by the fact that I was pregnant because of the values of our family, and so he sent me off to a home that was run by the Catholic church, by nuns, for young women who become pregnant. And I went into that home. And the deal in that home was, is that I would stay there and hide out the entire time that I was pregnant. And when it came time for me to give birth, my child would be taken away and given up for adoption. And I tried everything I could figure out as a young woman about how I could keep my baby, but the social workers and the nuns there, they just told me, there's no way that it can happen. You can't do this as a single mother.
 
And my family wasn't supporting me and the father ran away and I didn't have a job. And I just eventually realized that I had to go along with it. And so I gave birth and I held the baby, it was a boy, and I held him for a few minutes and then they came and took him away."
 
And as my mom told me this story and opened up this pain to me, it was like my entire life and my entire relationship with her was a giant jigsaw puzzle. Right. And in the middle of that puzzle was one missing piece. Now you could tell by looking at the rest of the puzzle, exactly what that centerpiece was going to be, right. It was a pain, it was a wound. It was something that she couldn't get away from. Something that had grabbed a hold of her and was influencing our relationship. But I just never really looked at it. I just kept glancing over it.
 
And now I just felt in that moment, like that middle piece was pushed into place and I understood everything. And it was like, my mom was not just this pathological crazy person who wanted to smother me to death. She was a human being who had been through struggle and pain in her life and was doing the best that she could.
 
And I sat there just sort of in stunned silence as time kind of slowed down as I was realizing what she was telling me. And she said, "So recently I've been thinking about this and I wanted to find my son. So I reached out to the adoption agency that handled his adoption, and I spoke with them and he actually released his information to me if I ever came looking for him. So they gave me his phone number and I called him up and I spoke with him and I met him for the first time last week. And he's coming over here to meet you in a little bit less than an hour, you should probably know that his name is Josh and by the way, you should probably know that he's black. And like I said, he'll be here in less than an hour." And then she left the room.
 
Wow. Suddenly my entire relationship with my mom's side of the family made more sense about why she seemed so estranged from people and why there was so much stress and strain in her relationship with her father and why she had the relationship that she had with me.
 
It reminds me of this moment in our gospel story, where Jesus comes forward into the room with the disciples, especially to Thomas that second time, and he shows Thomas his wounds.
 
Jesus is resurrected, he's alive, but the holes in his hands and his feet, the spear wound in his side, they are still there. And Thomas says, I don't know that I can really believe it's Jesus, unless I put my finger in those wounds, put my hand in the wounds." And Jesus comes and says, "Thomas, let me show you something. I'm not ashamed. I know what you need. These are my wounds. And why should I be embarrassed? In fact, I will use these wounds to heal our relationship, to bring us closer. This is not the day of my crucifixion. I have been resurrected and healing has occurred. I am ready to let you touch these wounds and have it draw us closer together."
 
I felt like that was what happened with my mom that day. She said, "Kids, I'm going to show you the wound that has defined almost every day of my emotional life since it happened. And I'm going to ask you to be a part of this healing with me." We live in this culture that is just so obsessed with image, right? And so much of this image is about being strong and powerful and beautiful. And everything on the social media is about how great your life is about how activated and motivated and successful you are. And we all know, we all know as we look at these social media feeds, and we know it in our own lives, it is all baloney. It's garbage, it's meaningless. And as social scientists and psychologists are actually studying the effects of social media upon us. They're telling us that it's garbage. It's not doing anything for any of us pretending to be whole. It's not as healthy as admitting to people that we are broken, that we all carry wounds.
 
And it is those wounds that enable us to be whole people. Not pretending that we've never been hurt, not hiding it away, not the shame and the embarrassment, the ability to show the wound. That's what Jesus is asking us to do.
 
Don't be afraid of the pain that you carry with you. Don't be afraid of what's been done to you, about what you've been through. Respect it, you're carrying it with you. Respect that, but don't be afraid to let it help you get closer to people. Don't be afraid to help you heal others.
 
When my mother finally admitted her wounds to us and broke that secret open the healing cascaded through our family. It was healing to me, it was healing to my sister, it changed the course of my relationship with my mom, it changed my mom's relationship with my dad, with our wider family. Nobody knew about this. It changed Josh's life, my brother, it changed his adopted family's life. It changed Josh's wife's life and his children's lives that they had a grandmother and that they are connected to us. It was just a cascade of resurrection healing because my mom finally said, "They told me I should be embarrassed and ashamed about this wound, but I refuse to do it anymore. I'm going to show it to everyone."
 
Beloved, we all carry wounds. And the question is not how to hide them, but when is the right to time to show them. Not right away, but in time when it comes, when they have healed enough that you can show them to others and to heal others and to draw yourself into intimacy with others, not by being perfect, not by being undented, but by being wounded.

Preaching on:
Luke 24:1–12

When I handed out little red Easter eggs to all the kids during the children's sermon, Luke said, "Wait a minute, is there anything inside this egg?" And I said, "No, it's empty." How did that make you feel, Luke?
 
It's a little bit disappointing when you think that something is going to be there, and you open it up and it's empty. I've always sort of felt the same way about the Easter morning story and that empty tomb. In fact, if you gave me just a little bit of information about Christianity, and I wasn't a minister and I'd never heard the story before, and you say "Well, someone comes to Earth named Jesus. He's the Messiah. Son of God. God incarnate. He does all sorts of wonderful things, but then his people reject him and he goes on trial. It's a sham trial, and they convict him and they crucify him and he dies. But then he comes back to life." And I was going to rewrite that story.
 
I don't think I'd put an empty tomb in it anywhere. I think it would be something like this: Jesus is up there on the cross, and he dies, and the Roman centurion looks out at the crowd and says, "He's dead." And then Jesus's head rises up, and the sun breaks out of the clouds, and the earth begins to tremble. And the nails go shooting out of his arms and feet, and he levitates off the cross and says "I was dead. But now I am resurrected." And the angels pop out of the sky and everybody sees what Easter is really all about out.
 
Or maybe if you wanted to give it a little more time, you could have Jesus go in the tomb so everybody knows that he's really good and dead, but then when the women go to the tomb, instead of just finding an empty, open tomb, maybe the stone is still in front of the tomb, and when they get to it, they say, "How will we ever roll the stone away to get to his body?" And at that moment, boom, the stone explodes in a giant fireball. And as the smoke disappears, Jesus walks through the smoke and says, "I am risen." And he flies up into the sky. Well, that would really show people, wouldn't it?
 
I don't think if I were going to rewrite this story, that I would put an empty tomb anywhere near it, but that's what God does. God chooses an empty tomb, with all the fear and confusion and downright ambiguity that you find in there. God could have proven resurrection to the world, but instead God chooses the empty tomb, and I wonder why. Why? I think that maybe the empty tomb... More than any other scenario that we could possibly imagine, the empty tomb is the crucible where real faith, true faith, is formed.
 
Now it makes sense, doesn't it? It makes sense that God would choose, or prefer, faith over certainty. Of course God prefers faith over certainty, but you and me, we'd prefer a little... We'd appreciate it, just a little bit of certainty some of the time, something that we can just cling to and know, yes, this is the way it works. This is the promise. And there's not a doubt in the sky, not anywhere. But God chooses faith.
 
I think that there's something essentially human about faith and that's why God chooses it for us. There's something about who we are as creatures, created creatures. We need faith. There is so much that we could do as human beings when we get together, right? There's almost nothing that we can't achieve. We can send people to the moon, and to Mars, and beyond. We can come up with vaccines in just a few months that save millions and millions of lives. We can found universities and think tanks that come up with all kinds of amazing ideas. We have the Hubble telescope, and now the James Webb telescope, peering to the very beginning of creation. What is there that we can't achieve? If there is a limit to what we, as human beings can know or can accomplish, we haven't come anywhere close to that limit yet.
 
But you and me, as individual people, as individual beings in our own little slices of experience, we don't know it all. We don't always know which way to go when it comes to our lives, the purpose of our lives, the meaning of our lives, what we're doing, the relationships that we're in, are we supposed to go left or right, should I go forward or back? What's the right thing to do? What's the thing that's going to make me happy? What's the thing that's going to save my marriage? What's the thing that's going to make my name? We don't know all the answers. We never know all the answers. And somehow we have to get through that.
 
Without the opportunity to act and to work on faith, and to hope beyond hope, and to persevere, we cease to be psychologically and spiritually healthy human beings. We need faith, in some ways more than we need certainty. We cease to be human without it. We've all met someone who knows everything. My wife, Bonnie, can attest to that. She's definitely met somebody who thinks he knows everything. But we've all met somebody who thinks that they know everything. And in fact, as we've all been glued to the news cycle lately, we've been hearing all of these analysts and policy experts talking about Putin, about how he is a person who has surrounded himself only with certainty. And if you're going to succeed in his circle and in his service, you can only affirm his worldview and you have to hide all of the bad news from him so that this war in Ukraine is really a war about Putin's false sense of certainty, the certainty that he has amassed around himself without any doubt.
 
But the people of Ukraine, are they living by certainty right now, or for the last six or seven weeks? Have they been sure that they were going to be victorious? Have they been absolutely sure that they were going to survive? No, the people of Ukraine are fighting and surviving, if they are fighting and surviving, by faith alone. We've all met somebody who thinks that they know and everything. And we've all seen people who a long time ago should have laid down and just given up. And yet they continue to stand up and fight, despite the odds, despite the circumstances, and despite the evidence stacked against them.
 
Now God forbid that you and I should ever be without a little bit of that kind of faith. We need it. And we need the doubt, don't we? We need the doubt that by definition must come alongside that kind of faith. Doubt is the waiting room of faith, just like the empty tomb is the entryway into Easter. God chooses as the very first experience of the Easter faith, not proof and not certainty, not some public televised event, but an empty tomb, and all the fear, and all the doubt, and all the loss and confusion and disbelief and idle talk. And the possibility in the empty tomb, the possibility of something so new, and so amazing, something so wonderful that it cannot be contained by certainty. It can only be pointed to by faith.
 
You cannot be a psychologically and spiritually healthy human being if you only believe in and work for the sure thing, because not everything in life is the sure thing, and if you convince yourself that it is, you're going to head down the wrong path. For the biggest questions in life, for the greatest challenges of life, we must learn how to let the possibility of hope glimmer to us, shine out, sparkle, just a little bit, amidst the loss and the chaos of this world. We must let the empty tomb speak to us. We have to know how to sit inside the empty tomb. It's not an accident. It's not just bad timing that Jesus slipped away before the women arrived at that tomb. We need the empty tomb.
 
Life is not a journey from one certainty, to another certainty, to another certainty, to another certainty, is it? Life is a series of complicated and often painful transitions, even when it's a transition into good news. Progress in our lives requires that we don't run away from transition. Faith, not certainty, is what gives us the strength to persevere through transition. Beloved, Christ is risen, and isn't the sight of him standing there amongst us again, alive and well, a little worse for the wear, but beautiful and resurrected, just a wonderful sight? It is. Hallelujah. Yes. But do not forget the empty tomb. Don't skip early Easter morning. The empty tomb is where a faith stronger than certainty is born again and again and again.

Preaching on:
Luke 19:28–40

I've been to a lot of parades in my life. I'm sure you all have too, but I think the moment that I realized just how powerful a parade could be was when I led a march of about 100 people through Midtown Manhattan to protest the working conditions inside of one of celebrity chef Mario Batali's restaurants in the Meatpacking District.

Well, you have to know a little backstory is that I wasn't always a minister in a church. There was a time where I was a minister out on the streets. And I was a laborer organizer. I worked for a worker's center called the Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York. And we were organizing workers in one of Mario Batali's restaurants called Del Posto. And if you know anything about Mario Batali, you know he's had a tremendous fall from grace in the intervening years since the Me Too movement came along. But at the time we had heard all kinds of stories from the workers inside the restaurant about racial discrimination on the job, wage theft, the stealing of tips and sexual harassment on the job. And the workers were beginning to get organized so that they could fight the conditions at their workplace. And part of that was that I, as the organizer, was leading this grand march of about 100 people from Midtown Manhattan. And all of them, because of my religious connection, were church connected people. So it was churchy people and seminary people and we were going to support the workers.

And we were marching sort of two by two through Midtown Manhattan and everybody was kind of clapping and chanting and they were singing songs. And as people were watching us march through the Meatpacking district, they started, they were turning their heads, like, "What are you guys doing? Where are you going?" And this is a true story, I did not expect this to happen, but people joined the parade. They joined the march. They came with us.

When we got to Del Posto, we started with like 100 people. Now we had, I don't know, 125 or more people. And we were spread out in front of the restaurant and we had signs and people were singing and chanting and making all kinds of noise and diners were walking up to the restaurant and asking us what's going on. And we were telling them about why we were there and they were leaving or they were going inside and they were complaining to the managers and the managers were coming out. They came out with money. They said, "I'll pay you to go away. Just go away. This isn't the right night." It was like a Friday night.

And it just became this scene out there of people just chanting and singing and expressing what they felt in their hearts for what was going on for the workers inside. And there were a few workers who were out there with us who weren't on the job that night. And you could just kind of see it in their faces, this sense of pride and power that, "Yes, we are going to overcome. We are going to make a difference." And as I watched this scene, I just realized, my God, how powerful a parade can really be in the life of a movement or in the life of an individual person.

I was kind of high off that all weekend and just feeling really great about what we had accomplished. And I knew it had just made a big impact at the restaurant, that they were going to have a conversation with us about this. This was an attempt to get them to the table. And I walked into the office, I think it was Monday. And there was some paperwork that was waiting there for me at the office. And I opened it up and it was from Mario Batali's lawyers and it said, "We are suing you for $6 million for inciting a riot, destruction of property, intimidation of employees, slander, libel, and defamation. And in that moment, I realized even more just how powerful a parade could be, but I also realized how risky a parade can feel. Because when I looked at that number and it said, "Jeffrey Mansfield, $6 million," and the blood kind of drained out of my face and I realized the commitment that I had made for myself for what I believed in.

And you can feel that tension between power and risk in the Palm Sunday story that we just read. Jesus and His disciples, they're kind of on the down low to begin with. They're up on the top of the Mount of Olives. They're not making a big deal about this thing. They know that they're going to have a procession into the city, but they haven't even gotten a horse yet. So they send some of the disciples off to find a donkey, which is kind of Jesus' sly way of making of the sort of snubbing his nose at kings. He's not going to be a horse riding conqueror. He's going to be a donkey riding servant. And He says, and the disciples say, "Well, what if we're taking somebody's donkey? And they ask us what to do with it."

He says, "Just give them the secret password. The Lord has need of it and they'll let you take it." And they go and they find this donkey and they bring it in. And Jesus starts riding this little donkey into the city. And the people begin to come out and they begin to shout and they begin to sing and they begin to demonstrate and lay down their cloaks and lay down the palm branches. And the crowd is growing and surging and the Pharisees run up to Jesus with their hearts in their throats.

It's not that they don't believe it's just that they're terrified. And they say, "Jesus, tell them to be quiet. Don't you know the risk that you're running?" And the risks were very real. This was exactly the kind of thing that the Romans loved to crucify people for. I mean, this was insurrection. This was a Messiah riding into one of their cities to say, "I am the true king of these people." That's exactly the kind of thing that got you crucified by the Romans and they had all sorts of experience with this kind of thing happening. This was Passover and Pontius Pilate came into the city with the Roman garrisons for Passover to keep the peace.

Well, keeping the peace didn't mean anything except making sure that these insurrectionists didn't get any ideas and try to rabble rouse during Passover when everybody's blood is up. "We don't want anybody saying anything that would undermine our authority here." And they knew that this could be the kind of thing where a Roman garrison could come into this parade and just lay everybody down, cut them down, kill them all. So they say to Jesus, "Jesus, be careful, make them be quiet. Don't you know the risk that you're running?"

And Jesus said, "If they were silent, then the very stones would shout. If they were silent, the very stones would shout." That's an incredible response to a very real risk. I want you to think about that. I want you to think about how you think about risk and putting yourself out there in a public way and taking risks, real risks, with your position with, with your family, with your life, with your reputation. Because there are times that we are called to really put it on the line, to put it on the line for our faith, to put it on the line for God or for our neighbor. We're called to stand up and step out and say, "No. Enough is enough." Or to step out for something that we truly believe in and to hold our head up high for the rights of others, for their humanity.

And sometimes there's a real risk with that. There's a real risk to going out and marching on the streets. I've gone out and marched on the streets and I've been arrested. I've known people who have gone out and marched on the streets and they came home with a concussion. There are people in other parts of the world who have gone out to march on the streets, it's even happened in this country, and they've died. They've been killed. And how does Jesus respond to the risk? Jesus simply says, "If they were silent, the stones would shout."

Have you ever felt that way in your life? That God was calling you to take a risk? And the only thing that you were leaving out of that calculation was the power of the truth of the message that had been given to you. Jesus is saying the most important variable, the most important factor, when you calculate that risk, is the truth. Because sometimes the truth has to come out and if it doesn't come out of you, what's going to happen? The very stones themselves are going to shout.

I wonder what that sounds like when the stones begin to shout? What would that sound like in your life? Jesus, when we think about Palm Sunday, we think that Palm Sunday is all about Jesus' divinity. He is marching into the city a kingly God, and all of the people are recognizing Him. It's, Jesus' sort of most heroic movement, moment, in all of the gospels where he really looks like a traditional hero, somebody riding high and being recognized by everyone and the whole city coming out to support Him.

But it's not just about Jesus' divinity. There is something that Jesus is doing here that is so unique to His humanity. And you're have to remember that Jesus is fully God, but Jesus is also fully human. And I don't think that Palm Sunday is just about the God part. It is also about Jesus' human part. And this is something that is unique to us as human beings. As human beings each and every one of us has something within us. It's inside of you. It's a truth. It's a power. It's an identity. It's a calling of vocation. There is something inside of you, by definition of you being a human being, that you are being called to bring out and show to the world and give to the world. It is a gift, a power, a meaning, a reason for being. Each and every one of you has that inside of you.

And in fact, if you're a human being, as you travel through the journey of your life, you discover things about your identity, about who you are, about what it is that's inside of you that you're being called to do. And in one moment, it may be this, and three decades from now it may be that. But because you are human, it is inside of you and you are expected to bring it out.

How do you bring it out? How do you get it out when it's hard, when it's risky, when you don't know the way? Jesus says you get on your donkey and you just keep riding forward. You just keep riding forward. Palm Sunday isn't about being the Messiah, the King, the Son of God. It is a demonstration to all of us of this fundamentally human condition. Each of us has something within us that must come out all the time. In every stage of our life, there is something that we are meant to give. And if we don't give it what will happen in our lives? The sound of the stones shouting will follow us everywhere. We will feel it, that there is something in us that is trying to be born and we are not giving it an exit. We are not giving it an opportunity.

And the reason that Palm Sunday is so powerful and so beautiful is because it is Jesus accepting who He is, His deepest identity and purpose on display for the whole world and all the risks be damned. He is who He is. He is called to do what He does. And nothing is going to stand in the way.

It's easy for us to think about the perspective of the people on the streets following Jesus. We can put ourselves in their mindset, waving their palms, and bowing down to Jesus and giving Jesus worship and honor. We can get into the perspective of the Pharisees, the doubters, who say, "Shut up, be quiet. It's too risky. Don't do it." We've all heard that voice in our heads. We can even get into the perspective of that donkey, walking along with Jesus on his back, looking at this crowd and trying to imagine what is going on here?

But very rarely do we put ourselves in the perspective of Jesus, the one that we are called to follow, who was bringing His identity out of Him in demonstration to all of us that we have a gift and an identity that needs to be brought out at all costs. And the question for us is how do we throw ourselves a parade? How do we experience that power despite the risks in our lives? And that's what I hope that you can go out into Holy Week and the Easter season with that question on your hearts. This gift that I have been given, and you know that you've been given one, this identity that I am being called to birth, this truth that I must speak. How do I throw it a parade despite all the risks?

Preaching on:
John 12:1–8

Can you imagine this scene with me for a minute, just let it really run through your imagination, and let go of all your preconceived notions that if it's printed in the Bible it must be a scene of piety. Because when I hear about this scene, I do not see in my mind a traditional scene of piety, and I don't think that people living in Jesus' time or the people sitting in that room, would've thought, "Yeah, this is the kind of thing we do all the time." Sure. There were two sisters living in that house, one was named Martha and one was named Mary.

Martha was doing exactly what a woman of her day and age was expected to do. She was serving and she was a marvel servant, and we respect that. As church goers, as people who want to make a difference, as Christians, we admire those who know how to serve. Didn't Jesus come to serve? And didn't he call himself a servant? And so, there is Martha serving and doing exactly what she's supposed to do. And then her sister Mary, steps out from beside her, leaves the serving plates and all that work, and she does something very unexpected.

She walks into a room full of men, a sort of a public place, a place where she is not supposed to be necessarily moving freely, and she takes down her hair. That's the first thing. She takes down her hair. We have a phrase now, "Letting your hair down" while it comes from the times when wearing your hair up and braided was the only way you were allowed to wear it and taking your hair down was not the way that you were supposed to be seen in public, especially if you were a woman. In fact, if you were to go out onto the street, the women on the street who wore their hair down in public, they would've been identifying themselves as prostitutes. It was a strange thing to take your hair down in public, an intimate thing, an awkward thing. And she walks in with a pound of perfume.

Have you ever been on a plane or something or you're on a train or you go out to a restaurant and there's somebody sitting nearby you who is just wearing like a touch too much perfume or cologne? You've been in that situation, you've smelled it, right? And you thought, "Man, you just went, a little dab'll do ya." That's the rule, a little dab'll do ya and you did maybe three dabs and it's just a little bit too much. And here comes Mary, into, what I assume is, a small enclosed place where people are trying to eat, with a pound of perfume. One pound. Can you imagine that? How extravagant that is? How ridiculous that is? It's absurd. It's almost obscene and it costs $300, 300 denarii to have this much perfume in her possession. And if you look into it, 300 denarii, that was about a year's salary for an average worker at that time.

A year's salary on a pound of perfume, with her hair down. And from there, it just gets a little more awkward because she gets down on the ground, where Jesus' feet are. His dirty, disgusting feet. This man walked around all over Palestine, and Israel, and Jerusalem, and Galilee, in sandals and bare feet. Can you imagine how dirty this man's feet were? How calloused? How rough? And she gets down there in the dirt, with his smirky, dirty feet. How many of you would be comfortable taking your feet out in public? Just putting them up here, maybe plopping them right up on the pews, taking your shoes and your socks off, and just let somebody just start massaging them.

How many of you would feel comfortable if Dorothy did it, and you all just had to sit there and watch? It's weird. It's over the top. It's wild and extravagant. And down there on the ground, rubbing that pound of perfume into his feet, the fragrance filling the whole room, she takes that hair which was supposed to be up and she starts to rub her hair on his feet. And we have now crossed the boundary from awkward into, wow, that's not piety, that's intimacy, that is something special, that is something that I have to turn my head away a little bit, because it's so intense. And then Judas asks, a question that I think that all of us would ask.

The author of the gospel of John, really tries to make us doubt that Judas, that this question is one that we should even think about, before the question starts he says, "It's Judas, remember the guy who's about to betray Jesus. Remember, don't forget that. So don't listen to this question too carefully." And then after the question comes, the author reminds us, "And remember Judas doesn't care about poor people, he's just a thief. He wanted the money for himself. So she must, he wanted that money to go into his purse so he could steal it." But the question is a perfectly practical question. "My God, this is too much. I mean, we're all thinking it, this is too much a year's salary. This big show, all of this perfume. What is the point? Tell me. What is the point when we could have taken that money and we could have done what we know we're supposed to do with it, which is to give it to the poor." Jesus has been telling us to do that all along. And don't we want to ask that question?

We who do so much to raise money at antique sales, and rummage sales, and with our mission and justice work, raising money and giving it to where it really needs to go, when we have our kids drop their coins and their dollar bills into a giant bottle to go to Ukraine, how could this be acceptable? Is this what Christian service is? Why does Jesus not just accept this extravagance, but almost seem to prefer it? He defends her. He says, "Yes, this is okay." I think, the answer has to be, that this is more than an act of service, that it is an act of love. And sometimes, and I think, all the time when Jesus is talking about love and the gospel. Love has to break the rules. Love sometimes has to go a little bit too far. Love has to show itself so big that it grabs our attention, because at that time, and in our world today, we live in a world where there is so much that is shocking, and obscene, and heartbreaking, and raw that grabs our attention, and breaks our hearts.

How do we respond? Is it just by sending a check over to the tragedy? Or do we need to create a world, a vision, an opportunity for the opposite, to express love and as big a way as tragedy expresses itself? I think that's what Mary was doing. She knew that Jesus was going to the cross, Jesus knew it, that tragedy, that every holy week, seizes our entire imagination. And she said, "I'm going to produce something beautiful, that can stand in front of that cross and hold its head high. I am going to love, and I am going to do it so extravagantly, so beautifully that it is going to shock you. It is going to draw your attention. You're going to want to look away, but you're not going to be able to, you're going to be stuck there, looking at that expression of love, extravagant love, not practical love."

In our lives, in the work that we do, in your passions, in your ministry, are you doing the practical thing all the time? The practical thing is the right thing to do most of the time. But we have to remember that there have to be moments of extravagance, of wildness, where magic fills the air, where we grab people's attention, we shock them, maybe beloved, we even offend them a little bit with this good news that we have. Because the good news that we have is a good news that flips the entire world on its head. And so there should be moments, when we express that good news, that it flips people's expectations out and they say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't know, should that be happening? I don't know about that. It seems like too much. It seems too big. It seems too wild. Settle down, settle down. What's the point?" And then we can tell them what the point is. The point is love.

This is how we're supposed to love. Like Mary loves. As a church, I think that we are a well respected institution. We do things the right way. There is nothing in this church, and there are many wonderful things about this church, and there is nothing amongst those many wonderful things that I think would cause anybody any offense, wouldn't shock them. I don't even think it would surprise them very much. We are a place where you can expect good things. I wonder if we could add to that one little bit here and there of wild extravagance, where we grab people's attention with the force, and the power, and the expression of our love. I wonder if you can do that in your life.

Don't just send the check out. Love. We are called to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And if that just looks like practical ministry, just doing the best little bit that you can. There is nothing wrong with that, but there should be always something a little more, that big, powerful, bold expression of God's love. That's how God came to us, in the flesh, in Jesus, on the cross. How do we express that good news? How do we show that extravagance?

Let us pray. Holy God, thank you for all of the practical ways that you have given us to serve. Fill us with your spirit and help our love to shine out to this world in a way that will fill it with a fragrance of love and joy so powerful, that no one will be able to look away. Amen.

Preaching on:
Luke 13:1–9

I have some questions for God. And, oh boy, I just saw about 50 people go like this in unison. I have some questions for God. I was at my office hours on Wednesday at Cafe Agora and Janet Dobbs was there. And she was telling me about a relative of hers. Someone who had suffered just so much loss in their life, had seen so much suffering from the people they loved, and had lost so many. And when somebody asked this relative about their faith, Janet remembered they had one sentence. I have some questions for God. And don't we all have some questions for God.

The images and the news coming from Ukraine have shaken us, many of us, right down to the very core. What we have seen. What we have heard. How can God let that happen to people? How can a maternity ward be shelled? And how can pregnant woman, so, so pregnant be taken. And we look at that image and we see God, are you seeing what we see? And to hear that she lost that baby. And to hear that after she lost that baby, she said to the doctors, let me die. And to hear that she died. Oh, I have some questions for God.

I think Linda Woodbury summed it up very well in the E-news this week. She was writing about our response to Ukraine and then came this line. Our faith is challenged by these events. And isn't that true? And what kind of a faith would we have? What kind of hearts would we have if we were not challenged by events like this in our world, by news like this, by images like this? We've always been asking God this question. I mean, always. This is the great historical question that people yell up to God. Why? What is wrong with you? Why is this world the way that it is? Why didn't you step in? And we keep on asking it.

And none of the answers that we receive are very satisfactory, are they? We hear well, God wants to give us freedom. And so freedom means a lot of terrible things. And we say, well, what about an earthquake? We didn't do anything to cause an earthquake. And what about that maternity ward in Ukraine? God couldn't have just blown up that one shell about 30 seconds earlier. So it blew up in the sky instead of landing in the middle of that hospital. That wouldn't have stopped anybody from being free from shooting it. God would've just stepped in and taken care of it so that no one was hurt. If God is all powerful and God is all good. How could God not do that? I'm not all good. I'm lousy a lot of the time. I'm certainly not all powerful. But I could tell you if I could have stopped that shell from hitting that hospital, I would've done it. Wouldn't you have done it. Wouldn't you have stopped it from hitting that hospital. Then why didn't God?
This is an age old question. And we're not satisfied by the answers because we keep asking the question?

The Galileans in Jesus' day, they were also asking this question. They asked it of Jesus in our scripture reading this morning. They were asking him about those Galileans, whose blood Pilot mingled in their sacrifices. We're not entirely sure about the historical event here, but from the context and from the history, we can imagine what happened. There were a group of some number of Galileans who were down in Jerusalem to offer religious sacrifices. They were basically in church at prayer. And we've seen this happen in our modern world, somebody came into the place of worship. In this case, it was the state, the Roman Empire, Pilot. And while they were at sacrifice, while they were kneeling down in prayer, he slaughtered them and their blood ran into the blood of their sacrifices. And everyone wanted to know how can God let something like that be done to people at prayer. And what is Jesus' response? It's very interesting response. Repent. Or you will perish the like they did. I don't know about that answer. Is that satisfying to you? Let's try and think about that answer a little bit.

One of the things that Jesus says here, before he tells us all to repent, is he asks them. He says, do you think that they were somehow worse than everybody else? And that's why this happened to them. This was a big worldview in ancient times. That people to whom terrible things had happened, the way you could explain it is those people must have done something to deserve it. Blame the victim. Now I wish I could tell you all that we had evolved out of blame the victim, but if you look at any shooting of an unarmed black man in recent history, we all know that we continue to do this. Well maybe if he had just spoken more respectfully or maybe if he had just gotten in the car like they were asking to do. Maybe if just this, maybe if just that. Maybe if just this, maybe if just that. Maybe. We still blame the victim and Jesus is telling them don't blame the victim. They weren't any worse than you. They didn't do anything more to deserve it. Stop it. That's interesting.

Jesus is turning this back on us a little bit, as we try to turn it towards God. Now we continue to do this, even in more subtle ways. I had a friend recently who lost her sister to COVID-19 And she posted on Facebook about her sister's death, announcing her sister's death and just letting everybody know she died because of COVID. And she had to take the post down. And I bet you can imagine why. I bet you can imagine what that Facebook post became obsessed with. People asking one particular question. Can you imagine what that question was? Was she vaccinated? So sorry to hear this? Oh my gosh, was she vaccinated? Was she vaccinated? And what's it matter? She has died. Why do we need to know at this point, whether she was vaccinated or not. I'll tell you why we want to know, because we want to believe that she did something or didn't do something that got her killed, and that God doesn't let people who do all the right things die of COVID-19. Right?

When we hear about a family who loses somebody unexpectedly, maybe they're a little bit young and they don't say what happened. We all want to know why. Do you know what happened? Do you know what happened? Now in part that's because we're loving and faithful. But in part it is because we want some sort of information that we can latch onto and say, oh, that's why they died. They were addicted. He died of liver failure. Well, how did that happen? We want to know that he was an alcoholic. So then we can say, But I'm not an alcoholic. And therefore tragedy like this, God won't let it happen to me. God won't let that happen to me. It was a tragic car accident. Was he drinking? Yes, he was drinking. Oh, then I know why God let that happen to him. And I know why God won't let it happen to me. And what does Jesus say? Stop it. Stop it. You're not any different. You're not any different from them.

Jesus is asking us to stop blaming people for their suffering, and to stop imagining that we are somehow special or chosen or doing all the right things that we can escape that suffering. We even see this when tragedy strikes and it's a near miss. When the tower falls and there's a hundred people in the tower and one comes out alive. And we all rush to that person after they've been dug out out of the rubble, and we ask them, how did you survive? How did you survive? What does the faithful person say? God saved me. What about the 99? There's an implication there, when we say God saved me. About all the people whose prayer wasn't answered in the same way. It's a way of separating ourselves.

And it's a way of saying that God's salvation, which we should all be talking about and which we should all be thankful for applies to the one who is blessed and healthy, more than it applies to the one who's had a bomb dropped on their maternity hospital. And that's not true. Jesus says, stop looking to God For the answer of why things are bad and turn to yourselves. Repent. Don't separate your selves from that suffering. Don't try to put a wall between you and the people who are getting hurt. And the people who are having towers dropped on them, and the people who are being oppressed, and the people who are being slaughtered at prayer. There is no difference between you and you need to repent to remove that wall. All to stand shoulder to shoulder with them in that pain.

One of the problems here is that we don't understand the word repent anymore. Repent for us is synonymous with feeling really lousy about just how absolutely lousy we are. And there's a reason for that. In the ancient world, I've preached to you about this before, language was different. It was a little bit simpler. There wasn't a big division between the idea of regret and repentance in ancient languages. But in the Greek, when Jesus says repent, the word is metanoia. And that literally means, not feel bad, but change your mind. Change your mind not in some superficial way, but change your mind fundamentally. Change the way you think. Change the way you operate in this world. Change the way you think about that person on the other side of suffering. Change the way you think about yourself when you have escaped suffering. Bring yourselves closer together, turn yourself around, come closer together. Repent.

In the Hebrew, which Jesus would've understood, the word for repent, it means to feel sorry. It means to repent. And it also means to offer comfort to someone. There's no difference here. When Jesus says, repent. He's not saying feel bad because you're lousy. He's saying stop the separation. Don't let that come between you. There is a wall, tear it down, come to them, comfort them. Be with them. In faith, we want to turn the blame on God. And let me be very clear with you. I have some questions for God. I am not saying you're wrong to have questions for God. And one day I'm going to stand before God and I am going to let God know that I have questions, that this isn't easy for me. Just like it's not easy for you.

But here's what I think Jesus is saying to us when Jesus comes to us. Jesus is saying, and it's hard for me to say this, because when you're mourning and when you're hurting and when you're suffering, this is very difficult news to hear. And it should never be separated from the fact that God loves you. That God is with you. That your church is with you. That your church is responding to you. And that the world should be responding to your suffering and your pain, and that we are with you. But what Jesus is saying to us is that your desire to live in a world where God fixes everything, and everything is just nice and hunky dory all the time is infantile. Grow up, Repent.

You see somebody suffering and you turn to God and you say, why isn't the world perfect? It's literally psychologically infantile. And Jesus came to us to say, I do not need spiritual infants. I need spiritually mature people to respond to the suffering in the world. Yes, you have questions. Don't get stuck there. Get back into that world, respond to those people. And remember that you are no different, no more blessed than them. You are your brothers, your sisters, your siblings, you are with them. Repent.

And then Jesus tells us a parable, and parables are wonderful things. And I hope as we close here that you keep this parable in mind this week.

There is a landowner who has a fig tree that he is not happy with. There's no fruit on it. And there is a gardener who says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't cut it down. Let me do some more work. Give me a little more time. Let me dig around the roots. Let me pour the manure down there. And then there's this tree. And I'm not going to tell you that God is the landowner, and Jesus is the gardener, and you're the tree. That is for you to struggle with and to figure out. Are you the gardener? Are you the landowner? In what ways are you the tree? What is your manure? That's for you to work out. But I am going to talk to you about one way of thinking about this parable.
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Jesus is asking us to find our fruit. In the face of tragedy, Jesus wants us to produce that fruit. And yes, it's hard. And yes, we have questions. But God Has given us a little more time, a little bit of amazing grace. A little more time to tear down that wall, to turn ourselves around, to be no different than the people who suffer.

I know you have been thinking up real conundrums for me, head scratchers. So this is how it's going to work. If you have a question you'd like to ask, just raise your hand and I will point to you. I'd say you could just pull your mask down so everybody can hear you say your name please so that we all can hear your name and then ask your question. It's ask me anything. Any question is acceptable. There are no boring questions, only boring answers. So hopefully we'll see how I do. And I'm looking at the time because I have to pay attention. Yes, You don't have to stand, say your name.

Thank you, Catherine. So where are some places to turn for comfort in scripture in times of global strife and war? So there are two places that I consistently, this is for me, turn for comfort. And it's totally illogical one of them, because one of the places that I turn for comfort is I turn again and again to the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures. And that is not a place we usually think of as turning for comfort. That's usually the place you think of to turn. When you want somebody to cut you down to size and give you a challenge and say, "Whoa! You are going in the wrong direction. You have to get back on course." But I find incredible comfort in knowing that our God is a God who does not just offer a little bit of peace while the bombs are blowing up all around you.

Our God is a God who sees the whole world and calls all people to justice, to correction, and to holding themselves accountable. And that for me is a source of comfort. Yes, God does offer us comfort when times are hard. And when there's strife, God is that shepherd who lays us down in the valley. And strokes the hair on your head and reminds you that you are a child of God. And there are many places to turn for that in scripture. But I turn to those prophets who say, God is a God who holds the whole world accountable to justice, to mercy, to peace. That for me is where the comfort is. The second place I turn, I turn again and again to the gospels and to Jesus' message, especially the message that is so encapsulated in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed it are the peacemakers, blessed it are the meek.

Again, it doesn't seem to make sense. Why are they blessed? Why are the poor blessed? Why are the meek blessed? And it is because Jesus' vision of the kingdom of God is a total reversal of the world that we live in. It's a world of justice and it's a world where the last shall be first. And knowing that is Jesus' vision, and that is God's vision for us, brings me comfort to know that we can work towards that vision and that what we pass through along the way is momentary. And there is suffering and it is hard, but God has a vision for something better. And I find great comfort in that. Thank you, Catherine. Yes. Your name please?

Oh, okay. Five names. Do you know what the five names are? Did you write them down? No. Okay. So Audrey says that and I think I know the question here. She says there are, she has, and going through reading some of our readings, she has found five different names for the large freshwater lake in Israel. And so you're wanting to know why are there so many names or which is the proper name or something like that?

Yeah. So there are a lot of different names. So one of the things we've heard it called is the Sea of Galilee, which is confusing because we think of a sea as a salt water body, but it's actually a fresh water body, but in the ancient world, a sea was any large body of water. So it's called a sea because it is such a large body of water, even though it is a fresh botany water. So we call that a lake.

It's also known as Sea of Galilee, Lake of Gennesaret. Today, it is actually called, I don't even remember what it's called today. It's called something completely different. And the issue was just different people in different places, referred to it in different ways. The interesting thing about Israel is that it is a place all throughout its history where different conquering empires were passing through it. It's an extraordinarily strategic piece of land, right on the Mediterranean, a gateway into the whole middle east. And so from the north, from the south, from the east and from the west, Israel was always being fought over and there were always conquering armies at the border or coming through. And as different people were naming things and carving things up, they called things by different names. And that is why there are so many different names. And there were so many different languages and in every different language people had a different name for it. So that's why that is sometimes recorded in the Greek. And even in the Greek, you read that people are calling it by different names. Yes. Your name please? 

Okay. Great question, Jan. So Jan's question is there's all of these different Christian religions and she wants to know specifically about the Eastern Orthodox religion. Where do the Eastern Orthodox churches come in? Where do they fit in? And I think she's especially thinking about the church in Ukraine, as we've been hearing about Ukraine a lot. We're learning that there are some Protestants of some Catholics there, but there's also this Ukrainian church. And what is that? So a long time ago, 1051, oh, somebody will Google me, who's watching online at home. There was something there was used to be just one church, one universal church that spread over the whole world. And in 1051, there was a split called the Great Schism. And the Eastern church broke away from the Western church. Now we live in the west.

So we typically think there are Catholics and there are Protestants. And we forget entirely about everybody from Constantinople east, who did not become Catholic. They broke away from the Roman church and the Roman church broke away from the church of Constantinople. And those churches are known as the Orthodox churches, the Eastern Orthodox churches. And there is an Eastern Orthodox church in Greece, in Russia, in Ukraine, in Egypt, in Ethiopia, in India, all over Eastern Europe, the middle east, the far east and north Africa, you will find the Eastern Orthodox churches. And the Great Schism, it was a power dynamic when Rome fell that sort of created, there was a cultural difference between the two churches and there was a power difference, but there were also some differences in theology.

The Eastern church had different theologies than the Western church. The Western church was all focused on the Pope in Rome and they were sort of wanted to be independent. Today, the Eastern churches are very interesting for us to learn about as Western Christians, because the Eastern vision of Christianity and theology is so different than ours. Now, as a sort of liberal leaning, even if sort of Protestant denomination, sort of theologically liberal, it's very interesting to encounter the Eastern Orthodox tradition because we encounter a tradition that in some ways is more traditional and conservative than our tradition. And in other ways is more liberal in the sense that they have not followed all the traditions of the west and they have their own traditions. For instance, one of the great Eastern Orthodox theologians of our time has written a wonderful book called that all may be saved, which is all about a sort of a Christian vision of universalism that hell is not eternal.

And that in their vision of Christianity, all Christians, all people will eventually be saved. And so there's ways in which the Eastern traditions can really inform us as Western Christians show us a totally different side of Christianity. But sometimes we see these things and we think, well, that's not the way it is. That's not traditional. That's not Orthodox. In fact, these are traditions that date way back that predate us and that predate is some of the ways that we think, and they're beautiful to engage. And I will say this about the Eastern Orthodox churches. They have one of the differences between the Western church and the Eastern church is in the Eastern church, they venerate icons. And so you've probably seen these Eastern Orthodox icons. It is one of the most beautiful art forms in the world, the iconography, and one of the most beautiful spiritual practices in the world for the Orthodox churches these icons are more than art. They're sort of art. Plus it is a direct encounter with God or with a Saint to commune with the image in an icon.

And when you go to an Eastern Orthodox church, you'll see these icons everywhere. And it is an incredibly different way. When you look at this would look like very spare, if you were in an Orthodox church, you walk in and it is a completely different way of engaging with the spirit of God in a visual way. I want to give a chance to see if there is anything since I've hit the 12 minute mark, I believe. And I want to see if there is anything online. If anybody has a question, let's see.

Marsha W. wants us to know that there is an Eastern Orthodox church in Armenia. That's true. I'm not seeing any questions online. Does anybody else have a closer, a real kicker? A stumper? Oh, I know this man will have one. Will you tell us your name, sir?

So wonderful question. John is saying we've got four gospels in our Bible. I have heard according to a rumor of a book on my bedside table, there's a whole bunch of other gospels out there that didn't make it into the Bible. Can you tell me what those are about? And he understands, those are frequently called Gnostic Gospels.

So the first thing to understand is that there are a whole bunch of other gospels that didn't make it into the Bible. When Christianity was young, there was not yet a cannon. There wasn't a set of books of the Bible that everybody agreed on and read. And you remember, I just told you about the Eastern Orthodox churches. There were churches all over the place and the world was a lot bigger then. It took a lot more time to get from Alexandria to Rome, to Constantinople, right?

And so different Christian communities in different places had different books that they were reading. So Matthew was a gospel over here, and John was a gospel over here and Thomas was being used over here. So there were these different gospels. Now, at a certain point in the time of the Roman empire, when Rome became Christian and the emperor became Christian, and there was this sort of desire to create order because there was a lot of division and disagreement. They decided that they were going to determine which gospels were in and which were out. But before that time, there were lots of different books. And then not just gospels, there were hymns, there are Psalms all kinds of writing that were early Christian writing that didn't make it in. Now, the term Gnostic is actually a modern scholarly term. So there wasn't some movement at the time called Gnosticism.

And what happened is that some of the books that didn't make it in, modern scholars wanted to dismiss those books as not sort of worthy of study and modern Christians wanted to dismiss them as not worthy of spiritual engagement and the way they did that was just to put the label Gnostic on all of them and not translate them very well. And just say, these are interesting little tidbits that we don't necessarily need to read. And that's kind of where the term agnostic came from. Some of these gospels have what we would think of as Gnostic tendencies and Gnosticism was this idea in early Christianity. It was one of the ideas in early Christianity that didn't make it into the modern era is not Orthodox that, the God who created the universe was actually a Demi-God and a Fallen God.

And there's actually a higher God. It was a very sort of platonic idea that this world is totally and completely sinful. And there's nothing good about it. This is one of the big Gnostic ideas. And so Jesus himself was not a part of this world. Jesus was not incarnated. He was purely spiritual. And so some of the gospels have this Gnostic tendency. They usually have Gnostic means wisdom. And there's some sort of hidden or secret way in the gospel that you learn the real truth. It's sort of like a conspiracy theory thing, but not all of the gospels are gnostic. And even the ones that do have gnostic tendencies in them, not all Gnosticism is the same. And you could sometimes find little Gnostic hints in the gospels that we read. I think it's incredibly important to read the early gospels that didn't make it into scripture because you learn a lot more about what early Christians were thinking, how diverse they were.

And you learn a lot about how we developed the core theological principles that we hold to as Orthodox Christians. So I have one question for all of you to wrap this up. Did you enjoy hearing me speak off the cuff to your questions? Did I do okay. I did. Okay. Okay, good. So we'll do this every once in a while. It is really nice to have a break from preaching and just to get to directly respond to all of you. So thank you for doing this with me. Amen.