Author: John Langenstein

Sermon 12/24/2023 (Advent 4,) – The Start of Justice

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Luke 2:1-14

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name; indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Sermon Text

Across this Advent, we have looked at what Christ coming into the world means. The death of the broken things in this world and the start of a world built upon grace and redemption. The work of God in this world and the next is transformative, leaving no stone unturned. Last week we was that there was redemption in this new world for all people – for the righteous and the unrighteous, for Jew and Gentile, for literally all people willing to gather together at God’s table.

The eventual reclamation by God is not something that sits fallow, waiting for the day Christ returns in final victory. It is something that actively is worked at in the here and now. The work we embark upon every time we show mercy, every time we forgive, and indeed every time we participate in something God begins, we see the Kingdom of God enter into this world – one small act of love at a time. Like a drop of dye into a sea of water, it may seem to disappear at first, but overtime the color of the sea will change as more and more dye enters into it. The Kingdom of God expands further and further with ever act of goodness we participate in.

The Kingdom breaks out on the margins, in places it is least expected to be found. When Christ was born, it was not in riches and splendor, but to a poor family who came to rest in a home for animals. When Christ ministered to the world, it was not among the well-to-do in the Temple, but to sex workers, to the poor, and to those who had been written off by the wider society. Even in the Hebrew Bible, we are told that God chose a small nation, not any great empire, but a small people in a backwater part of the continent. Even among that small group, God chose the poorest among them and decreed that they were the closest to God’s heart. The Kingdom of God is not something that breaks out in palaces and the halls of government, it breaks out in the alleyways and the bars, in mission houses and factory floors.

Before Christ was even born, we had a glimpse of what his time on Earth and his eventual reign would look like. Mary, after hearing from her relative Elizabeth that the child in her womb is really as amazing as the Angel who had foretold their birth said they would be, begins to sing. The song she sings is a promise to all generations that God is abundantly good, that God is always reaching out to restore those in need, and that God prioritizes the hungry over the full. The work of the Church flows from the promise and mission which begins in Christ’s incarnation – God is with us, and God is always asking us to turn away from the heights of beautiful, worldly abundance, and to look directly into the eyes of want and brokenness.

For Mary, her Child was themselves a sign of God’s favor. For her to become a vessel of God’s redemption was something that she saw as a sign of God’s care for those in need. Though she was born into a poor family, scarcely able to offer anything at the Temple when times of sacrifice came, she was going to be the one who brought God physically into the world. She, an unmarried, poor, pregnant woman was going to be the beginning of a universal shift, the rewriting of the history of the world to be centered on grace, mercy, love, and compassion.

Mary’s Song is uncompromising in its approach to God’s glorious work. God topples the powerful from their thrones, removing empires that threaten the good of all people. God feeds the needy and turns away the ones that stole food from them in the first place. God scatters the proud and ends their works, all so that the meek can inherit the world that was always meant for them. When Mary praises God, she praises a God who is willing to get into the messy parts of life and work to change the systems and circumstances that keep people suffering. God is inherently political in God’s work on earth, the politics are just not what we are used to. God is not a partisan player, but a principled ruler, one that promotes the good of all over the desires of the rich and the few.

God’s Justice does not have a definite start date. From the moment the consequence entered the world, when Cain killed Abel, God was working justice. His expulsion of Cain, and even his protection of the world’s first murderer, were both acts of justice. We often discuss Justice and Mercy as opposing forces, but one naturally births the other. There is a unity of the virtues that cannot be undone. In tending to the Children of Abraham, in welcoming Ruth and protecting Esther, in all places and all times, God maintained a justice that always kept the scales even through the promotion of those that the world had so long pushed to the bottom of the pile.

Yet, as Christians, we see in Christ the culmination of God’s work. Everything that happened in creation up to Christ’s birth was prelude. When Christ entered the world, the entirety of Creation had reached its vertex, and now it was ready to expand out infinitely once again. Our duty, in Christmas and in everything, is to proclaim the goodness of our God, and to reflect that goodness in what we do. Across Advent, in each proclamation of Hope and Peace, Joy and Love, we have come back again and again to that truth. Perhaps it seems redundant, but I would say that more than that we are forgetful. It is easy to lose track in the hustle and bustle of life of this singular truth – our life belongs to God, and God asks us to live our life for other people.

The first person to embody this, in our modern Christological age, was Mary. She who received Christ within herself, who carried Christ into the world, and offered Christ up to a life and death that redeemed the world. We too are bearers of Christ, we too carry redemption into the world. God is the savior, God does the work, but we are asked to step up or step aside as we are called to. We, the people of God, must embrace an attitude like Mary’s. We must proclaim a world that is topsy turvy to the expectations of the status quo. We must be bearers of Christ, that Justice may reign in our kingdom of peace.  – Amen.

Sermon 12/17/2023 – The Start of the Kingdom

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 1:6-8,19-28

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ” as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Sermon Text

As we have made our way through Advent, we have looked at the endings that Advent points to. There is an end to Pain in this world, even an end to the World as we know. However, Advent would not mean much if it was just a season of negation. We do not look forward to the End of all Things, but to the Rebirth of Creation. Advent is a season of looking forward to a new beginning, not a meditation on endings.

The Gospels all attest to the ministry of Jesus beginning with someone else baptizing on the banks of the Jordan. John the Baptist, a cousin of Jesus through Mary’s relative Elizabeth, took on a prophetic ministry on the banks of the Jordan. There he proclaimed that God’s Kingdom was coming soon, and that another would rise up to lead God’s people into this new world. To mark this coming kingdom, John began to use the muddy water of the Jordan. In being washed in that water, people received as special kind of grace – they made a statement of their faith, but more than that God met them on the banks of that river and affirmed their choice.

Baptism is a complicated ritual to trace to its beginning. Many faiths throughout history have included ritual washings in their practices. At some point, a form of baptism entered Judaism as a way for converts to join the faith, but this developed at some point in the first century.[1] Greek mystery religions also developed a practice of ritual washing to show a person being born into a new life in the protection of their patron deity.[2] Yet, on the whole, these rituals are seen as being contemporaneous with the Christian ritual of Baptism. More than that, the person who first preached about being washed in water as a singular statement of one’s intention to be born again, is almost always said to be John the Baptist.[3]

Baptism comes from the Greek word βαπτιζω (baptizo,) meaning “to dip,” “to immerse,” or “to drown.” From the beginning of the Church it was practiced primarily by two means – the first was full immersion in water, the second by the pouring of water over a person’s head or “affusion.” A final method, sprinkling, is not attested to in early documents of the Church, but carries equal validity in the development of the ritual throughout history. All methods of Baptism are equally valid, and all methods work to the same goal – initiating people into the new work that God is doing. It is a powerful sacrament, given to a person only once in their life, as a testament to God’s grace that brought them to faith.

When John began to baptize on the Jordan, he was changing how the world understood God’s grace forever. The call of Isaiah we discussed last week, to make a way in the wilderness for God was fulfilled in this ministry of repentance. The people called out to the banks of the Jordan were as different from one another as could be. Sinners and Saints both came to the water and asked to be washed clean. When Pharisees and Sadducees, enemies of one another and critics of John, came to the waters – even they were allowed to take part in this new movement of the Spirit. This was not a new start for only one kind of person, it was opened up for all people to take part in and to see God’s grace at work.

The Kingdom of God has always been expanding in its scope. What began only as a thing shared by two people, Adam and Eve in the beginning of time, became a covenant to all flesh under Noah. God’s redemptive mission to the broken creation was then focused in on Abraham and his descendants, and then through prophet after prophet, expanded to reclaim the diverse people who had been born from the expansion of humanity across the Earth. God’s Kingdom, it seems, was shaped like an hourglass. It became its most restrictive in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and has since then been growing outward with great speed, reaching out into infinity.

The Start of the Kingdom of God could have been restricted to just a few people, the best of the best, but it was not. God opened the Kingdom to all people and was sure to make it clear again and again. Among the first to proclaim Jesus’s divinity were Priests from a distant land. The first person we are told was baptized by the Apostle’s was a native Judean, but an Ethiopian. Peter was told again and again that all things were being reconciled to God, and Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles proved this once and for all.

The start of earthly Kingdoms are almost always born out of violence and exclusion. An army forms and pushes the existing power structures out of the way for another to take their place. The Kingdom of God, in opposition to this pattern of the world, began with something far more powerful. God, seeking to redeem all things, called for all people to willingly join into the work God was beginning. Rather than excluding, God’s work asked even the most wicked people to change their ways and take part in the coming salvation of the world. Baptism, a gift of God, marked the moment that a person jumped into this new life – a life focused on God, on the good of others, and on the Kingdom that has no end.

Today, may all of us remember our Baptisms, and may those of us who have not been washed in the waters of baptism consider seriously taking that step. It is not a thing to be taken lightly, but it is a gift that begins a whole new world within our souls. Praise God for the gift of a new start, and for the waters that freely allows grace to pour over us all. – Amen.

[1] The Mishnah ‛Eduyyoth describes the disagreement between bet Hillel and bet Shammai about how to handle proselytes; how long one is to fast before immersion and circumcision, how much water to be used, etc.

[2] Ferguson. “Washings for Purification in Greco-Roman Paganism” in Baptism in the Early Church. Location 1045

[3] Kaufmann Kohler & Samuel Krauss“Baptism” in The Jewish Encyclopedia ed. Isidore Singer. (London: Funk & Wagnalls 1916) accessed by: http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2456-baptism

Sermon 12/10/2023 – The End of Pain

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

There are few things in human life more universal than pain. From our birthing cry to our final breath, we are surrounded by things that are painful. We pray every week for all those in our lives who are in trouble. That wouldn’t be necessary if we were not surrounded by pain. The Psalms are constantly crying out in pain to God, because they trust that God is listening and ready to act. In a world that is broken, in a world that is harmful to seemingly everything within them, how do we survive?

Jesus put forward an interesting solution to the despair we feel at life’s pain. Jesus looks out into the world around us and asks us to counter despair with simplicity. Why be afraid of where food will come from? God feeds the sparrows and they don’t work for their food. Why worry about where your clothing will come from? Flowers are better dressed than any person, and yet they never have to work to make their clothing. Place any part of natural into this equation and the same answer comes out – God provides, and that is often sufficient.

The response that many people have to this teaching is simple. What do birds have to do with my problems? How is it remotely helpful for me to look at flowers when I’m cold at night? In the midst of all our problems, just looking at something else thriving does not magically make us feel better about our circumstances. In fact, the seeming protection and care that God shows every part of creation can make it seem like our own struggles are even more of an aberration. God has cared for everything, and yet I am here in the midst of trouble and pain! Rather than taking these words and finding peace in them, we instead build up a case against ourselves. The darkness of the world that we sit in bleeds into a positive image like this, and poisons it – creating a new way for us to criticize our own hearts.

This is not something unique to this one teaching, or any other aspect of our faith. Paul speaks about how God’s good gift of Torah on Sinai are turned into a curse by our own understanding. When we know what we should not do, we are sometimes more likely to do it. Unless the lesson imparted by a rule or teaching is internalized inside us, we will find loopholes and ways to violate the spirit of a thing even if we do not violate the words of the text themselves. Negativity births negativity. No matter how nice a thing is, putting it in the midst of something bad seldom makes the bad thing seem better, just the nice thing seem worse. I do not enjoy okra anymore because it is breaded and fried.

For someone in the midst of trouble, platitudes, even divinely inspired ones, are not what are needed. This is why scripture so often gives multiple answers to the same question. For the person who is fretting about what might be, the simple things of life can be a way to remember that God’s goodness is not just for one season. However, for the person in the valley of death, that same lesson will probably not accomplish the same thing. There is a rightness of speech to every situation, and the same cure is not meant for every disease. Not every teaching will land in fertile soil in our hearts and produce fruit given the place we are in.

Our scripture we have read together this morning, where Isaiah promises that God is coming to bring peace to God’s people, is written for people in the midst of troubles. Rather than calling for the people to take up songs of praise and to cheer despite pain, the Prophet establishes a pattern.

The Prophet proclaims that the people have suffered, before The Prophet proclaims their deliverance. When we acknowledge the pain that we have faced and hear that acknowledgment reflected in the people who care for us – a lot more healing can happen than would come from denial. God calls out, “Comfort, O Comfort, my people!” Because that is the first thing that the people need, is comfort.

God then moves quickly into a promise of what is to come, a restoration but more than that a setting aside of what was for something new. The call of the Prophet begins, asking us to make a pathway in the wilderness, to clear a way through the uncertainty and danger of the world and see a highway to deliverance for all people. The Prophet’s hymn about God’s control over life and death in the midst of this passage may seem a departure from the theme, but it carries something heartening within it. God, the God who brings life and death, is the God who loves us and cares for us. The hope of our redemption is present in God’s ability to overcome obstacles we find impossible – even obstacles as large as death are nothing to God.

The proclamation of the Prophet, “Here is your God!” Flows into God’s taking up of the title of Shepherd. Throughout scripture God’s care is described in pastoral terms, as an attendant to those in need and as a protector from the troubles of the world around. The acknowledgement of our pain naturally has matured into a promise of our deliverance and the realization of that deliverance in God’s hands.

Advent is a season that celebrates Christ’s coming into the world long ago to set this world on the course it needed to be, a moment when the work began to make a way in the wilderness. Advent is also an acknowledgement that we wait for the day when Christ returns and, as a shepherd, puts an End to all Pain that we might face. For the Church that waits for Christ, we are caught in a space where pain and the end of pain are smashed together in strange juxtaposition. We know from where our deliverance comes, but we do not know when it might be here.

For some of us, the words of hope and promise may seem bitter, our broken hearts, breaking even joy into something lesser. To those of us in this place, let the first part of Isaiah’s prophecy rest in your heart. “Comfort, O Comfort, my people,” is God’s word to all who struggle, to rest in the care of God and of God’s people. For others, the words of God’s promise should fill us with an excitement we’re not used to feeling.

There is an end to trouble, Glory to God that we will get to see it! Faith sustains us in the midst of brokenness, because we know that we have a good shepherd, and that shepherd is actively working in this world and the next to make things right. For all of us, the words of the Prophet make our job in the meantime clear, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Clear the wilderness of all obstacles to the people who are seeking rest, and God bless the work as we embark upon it. – Amen.

Sermon 12/03/2023 – The End of Time

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after [the destruction of the Temple], the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven,  and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

Sermon Text

Prophecy is weird. I have no hesitation in saying that. When you look at the ancient words uttered to criticize the powerful or project what will happen in the future, you will inevitably run into some strange details. The ability to look ahead, to sometimes discern the signs that were present in the world around you, and to cast a vision for what was going to happen was not something unique to one or two persons in an era, but it was something that only a few really succeeded in. The prophets that we still discuss are the ones that said something that did actually come to pass. Moses, after all, gave his clearest instruction regarding prophets when he said, “If it comes true, that’s a good sign they’re the real deal.”

The prophet is not just a person who can predict the future though, they are someone who has to be acutely aware of the present. Abraham Joshua Heschel, philosopher of religion and general genius, wrote a huge two volume book on what it means to be a prophet. He captures, I think, something that we can see as the heart of religion itself and especially the work of the prophet. A prophet, he says, is a person who loses the concept of God as someone who interacts with the world, but the world as something that orbits, interacts with, and depends upon God.[1] The difference sounds small when we say it like that, but it is pretty revolutionary.

The prophet has to understand the event of God as much as the person of God. They understand that meeting God is always around, always active, and that we choose to cloud our vision of that reality. The Prophet does not think about God, but hears God’s thoughts, they do not “know,” except in attaining knowledge of God. Someone who fully becomes a prophetic voice is someone who is completely turned over into God’s reality that surpasses our own.

That is a bit complex of an idea though. I think that our usual language fails to capture what it means to be a prophet. Many people I know have reduced the role of prophet to someone who offers social critique and points toward an alternative possibility for their society. A prophet does this, absolutely, but they cannot be a mere political analyst. There must be a divine spark, something that hears God’s anger at injustice and captures God’s joy in goodness and righteousness. The work of a prophet is in transforming the world, through the speaking of the Spirit into it.

Christ, our Lord and Savior, is very intentionally called God’s “Word,” or in the Greek “Λογος” (Logos.) Christ was the ultimate prophet because he was God. He was the most real a person could be because he was fully invested with God’s divinity. On Earth, Christ only displayed the fullness of divinity after his resurrection, but it was always latent within him. Every action, every word, every thought of Christ was a thought of the eternal God of creation, injected into the human experience in his incarnation. The prophecy of Christ was not just in words, but in action and deed. Every movement of Jesus was a movement of the Spirit and of the Father, a perfectly coordinated dance between the person of the Trinity.

Christ came to the Mount of Olives, having come to Jerusalem to face his crucifixion and death, and he stood there as Zechariah said he would. He looked at the Temple, standing tall on a raised platform in the city, and he spoke against it. He said that it would be destroyed, that in the aftermath of its destruction his followers would be persecuted, and that when the stones of the Temple fell it meant that the countdown had really begun to the end of all things and the start of a creation made into what it was always meant to be. Christ went into that city, he died and rose again, and he ascended into Heaven. His disciples waited for the day his prophecy was fulfilled, and saw it come to pass… And then they waited.

We recently talked about the way that we all get excited at times at the prospect of Christ’s return. We eagerly await the restitution of our broken world. We look forward to the incredible signs Christ forecast, of sun and moon disappearing into sackcloth and blood, and the extinguishing of the great cosmic lanterns above us. We await this because we believe in prophecy, we believe in what Christ gave us to hope in. We know what it means to be saved, to feel Christ within us and proclaim that truth out loud. We know the Spirit’s movement deep in our hearts, the opening of a door into something new. We know so much, but we always have more to learn.

We proclaim a faith that necessitates that, someday, time will meet its end. Our proclamation is not that the world is building up toward an entropic destruction – where energy grows tired and settles into a cold cosmic soup. Instead, we proclaim a revivification of this broken world, a birth into something new. We are not like those without hope, who see the world only as the inert matter it is made of. We see beyond the dark materials of creation into the brilliant light of God’s work, of God’s beauty. We stay alive, awake, and alert as people who know our Master will be home any minute, and we do so in the joyful knowledge that what is to come is much better than what presently is.

As we enter into Advent, as we drink from the cup and eat of the bread of remembrance we call Holy Communion, let the grace of God take hold of you. Surrender completely to a world in which we do not have to be the focal point, but where we are just one thing in orbit of something far greater and more wonderful. Remember that the infinite God of all time and space, in order to bring all of time and space into harmony once again, came to live among us. As we prepare for Christ’s advent in the world today, we prepare to celebrate the time long ago he was born as a human that lived around us. Drink deep the grace of God, and find your voice. – Amen.

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel. “Conclusions.” in The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Peabody: Mass. : Hendrickson Publishers.) 2021

Sermon 11/19/2023 – Concerning Times and Seasons

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.”

“So, then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober, for those who sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober and put on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

Sermon Text

We are in another season of apocalyptic expectations. Whenever there are major world events, natural disasters, or astronomical happenings the amount of people worrying about the end of days increases dramatically. In the United States, we first fell in love with apocalyptic speculation after a series of happenstance events. The Great Awakenings produced a generation set on “fleeing the wrath to come,” and then a national disaster seemed to spell out that God’s great wrath had finally been poured down on the Earth. The Civil War, a moment where Christ’s words that “Brother will turn against brother,” seemed to be fulfilled in striking and terrible detail, meant that as America entered its adolescence, it did so with existential angst. The “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” takes most of its words from Revelation for a reason after all.

So far the twentieth century has been an era of constant turmoil. In the United States we began the century with a large scale terrorist event in the form of the 9/11 attacks. The resulting conflict added to existing struggles in the Middle East. Add to this global economic downturns, an ongoing acceleration of climate change and ecological disasters, and ever complicating political dances between nations and the proxy wars they fight between each other… Is it any surprise that every other week someone, somewhere is telling us that the signs of the end times are upon us and we just have to wait for some date on the calendar, some star in the sky, or some cow in a barn to see Jesus triumphantly return to set things right?

The Church is always waiting for Christ’s return, there is a reason it features so prominently in our Communion Liturgy. “… That we may be the body and blood of Christ until Christ returns in final victory,” is the hope of the Church in all seasons. We are always called to be God’s presence on Earth until such a time that God appears and sets the world to right. This has and will always be the call of the Church.

We’ve talked before in this room, and in Bible Study as well, about the idea that we are always in the End Times. It is my firm belief that the Church has not existed in a time period that is not on the knife’s edge of eternity. We are like a gas stove, the knob turned to light the propane pouring out of the hob. One spark will bring about the conflagration that defines our new era, but which spark will be the one to catch the flame is a mystery to everyone but God. We as the people of God have become jumpy around the various sparks that seem to pop up all around us, and that has hurt us greatly in our witness to those outside our walls.

I grew up in a Church culture, not unique to my home congregation, that the end was imminent and the signs obvious. Those signs were so obvious, in fact, that many people were sure that Christ would return within the very year they were talking to one another… And when that year was over their prediction rolled over again, and again, and again. The “definite signs,” of the end were always based on something on TV, or in the news, or in a movie they saw. When the president was Bush everything he did was a sign of the end, when the president was Obama the same, and with Trump and Biden in the last few year people continue to see every act of our national government as God’s signature on the order to bring about Armageddon.

Now, imagine that you are an outside observer. You see people constantly jumping at every headline. People claiming that the people they like are placed by God to get us through the coming tribulations and the people they dislike are the anti-Christ or worst. People who are spending so much time trying to align symbols in Daniel and Revelation to the modern day, that they forget that they have influence over the happenings in this world and could work to prevent the conflicts that spring up, time and time again. People who, when proven wrong about solar eclipses, hurricanes, and earthquakes being the trumpet blast of an angel creating a new world, just point somewhere else with the same claim. How trustworthy do you think we appear to the world, when we so quickly jump to conclusions that time immediately proves wrong?

The witness of scripture, in matters of the End (Eschatology if you want the $0.50 word,) is that the Church is to be a non-anxious presence in the midst of disaster. We are called to help people in trouble at all times, to face a world that is at war with itself with the calm assurance that God will one day set things right. Paul, Jesus, the epistles and Revelation all openly talk about the fact this world is going toward an End Point where it will be reborn into something new, but they only ever do it to tell us two things. “Be not afraid,” and “Stay awake!” This alertness is not asking us to be glued to speculation, calculating numbers based on gematria or esoteric prophecies, but to be active in pursuing holiness.

If we believe, truly, that the Church is the body of Christ for all the world, and that it has been an End-Times witness for all two thousand years of its existence, should we not take more seriously the responsibility we have been handed. Should we not be testifying that God is good, to a world that no longer hears that truth regularly? Should we not be trying to be holy, not just in appearance of in social standing, but in genuine acts of love and support for one another? Should we not be trying to advocate for the rights of all people, in solidarity with our Christian siblings still persecuted across the world?

We are Children of Light, not of the Darkness. We do not need to look to anything esoteric to understand what God is doing, God reveals these things plainly to us. When we open scripture, it should not be to eke out a way to read the newspaper more spiritually. We should be reading scripture so that our hearts our changed, and that we should go out and do as God has asked of us.

There has been, and always will be, an interest in the End of this Age in the Church – we are founded on the premise that Christ is coming to do just that. Sometimes that interest explodes into fervor centered on figuring out the secret signs all around us. That fervor always dies down, the fruit it produces always a transient thing. Whether it dies out in the deserts of ancient Syria, the battlefields of Crusading armies, or in an America that is tired of being pulled to-and-fro with every news cycle it does not matter. The enduring fruits of the Church, of the Spirit living within us, are not founded in popular tides of speculation – but a deep and abiding understanding that God is with us and the Church has work to do.

We are told to “test every Spirit,” and to be unafraid of questioning a prophet, especially if they ask for money as they prophecy. We must reawaken a Spirit of discernment within ourselves. Just because someone quotes scripture, does not make them correct or holy. Just because a meme says that something in the news or on TV is foretold of in scripture, does not make it so.

I provide you now with a simple guide to avoid supporting Apocalyptic Grifters:

  1. If they cite scripture look it up! Read the whole chapter and not just the verse they point to, you’ll often find it says something a lot different than what they suggest it does.
  2. If their prediction ties into a book deal, or other promotion, don’t believe it! If it was really so important, they’d make it freely available and not behind a paywall.
  3. If its about how “The Devil doesn’t even have to hide,” or some vague appeal to the culture then read it as you would people who complained about “rock and roll.”
  4. If the prediction absolves them (and us,) of a need to help others.
  5. If the prediction is rooted in exclusion, hatred, or violence that is counter to God’s vision of a diverse and Spirit-filled Body of Christ.
  6. If any of their teachings or rhetoric are counter to the example and teachings of Christ.

I could probably write more, but six bullet points is probably more than enough. Beyond these action items, I do actually encourage Christians to think of the nearness of Christ’s return. We do not do this, however, as people afraid of some great and terrible storm on the horizon. If we believe that God is working to bring Heaven to Earth, then the only thing for us to do in the meantime is to pave the way ahead of God. We should be working to build a stronger, more loving, more grace filled Church. A place where all God’s people can grow in holiness together. We do this, not through chasing rabbit holes of esoterica, but in open and honest work together in pursuing God’s will.

For our closing Amen, I ask us to take seriously the mystery of faith we proclaim every time we take Communion together, the same mystery we will proclaim at our Parish meeting this evening. “Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will Come Again.” Join me as we, in remembrance of these God’s mighty acts in Jesus Christs, offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ’s offering for us, as we proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died; Christ is Risen; Christ will Come Again. – Amen.

Sermon 11/12/2023 – More than Enough Contempt

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Psalm 123

To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.

Sermon Text

Today’s Psalm is a word of extreme comfort and of dire warning. Oftentimes, those two things come hand in hand. For God to have control over all the Earth means that those who are suffering trouble now can trust that God has the power to set things right. For those who are comfortable now, and do nothing to help those who are in trouble, the pendulum slides the other way. The words of scripture commonly group people into two categories – the righteous and the wicked. What I find most interesting in how scripture orients itself in matters of justice is that what makes a person wicked is not usually what they do, but what they do not do.

I think it is easiest to see this in Jesus’s words in Matthew 25. Looking to the end of history, Jesus separates all of humanity into two groups. On his right there are sheep ready for eternal rest and on the left goats that are fit only for destruction. What separates the two? Is it a denomination or affiliation? Doctrinal purity and contribution to Church treasuries? No! It is in one simple capacity – mercy. When you saw someone hungry did you feed them? Someone naked did you clothe them? Someone in trouble and you helped out any way you could? These alone are the qualifications put forward in the great judgment set forward by Jesus.

Salvation is a free gift of God, but it naturally bears fruit. That fruit is something that we should constantly be cultivating and growing. I am famously bad at gardening and one of the reasons for that is that I am forgetful – shocking to many of you as that might be. I forget to move the plant from the sun or to add nutrients to the soil. When the frost comes, the cover it needed to survive sits unused by the door… No plant ever crosses my threshold without being given a death sentence. Yet, for many of us, our salvation faces a similar problem. We are content with having said the right words, and being splashed with water in just the right way, and we do not care at all to develop the amazing gift we have been given.

In the history of God’s people, the Psalms became a book used in worship during the Babylonian exile. The people were scattered across the Babylonian empire. The rich were placed in positions in government in the new world, not free but not put to hard labor either. The poor were put to that labor that the rich were not fit for. Those who remained in Judah became serfs to regional authorities, those in diaspora to other people in power. For this scattered people, the poetry and songs of their people became essential for survival. While the Psalms we have today are those primarily used among the people in Babylon, many more are likely lost to time that gave them strength.

Throughout scripture, God is presented in terms that are used to describe worldly leaders. God is King, or Emperor, or Feudal Lord, all based on the language of the people who are writing that scripture. The reason for this verbiage is not to make God another ruler among many, but to establish that God is different from worldly rulers. Early Christians, for example, would describe Jesus as Δεσποτης (Despotes,) the word from which we get “Despot.” This was not to say that Jesus was just another ruler like the Caesars that abused them, but to say that there was only one person who could claim to rule their lives – that Caesar was not their Despot, instead Christ was.

In our Psalm, we see the Psalmist doing this exact same kind of linguistic dance. The Lord is enthroned in Heaven. They look up from the ground to the open hand of their God. The enslaved People of God say that they look up to God like a slave looks to their Master, again taking the language of oppression and applying it to God to take away its sting. They look to God who is in Heaven, and they beg for mercy, because the world has not given it. They have been mocked by those who are at peace because they are not. They have been cast aside by the wealthy because they have nothing.

The Psalm carries an implication with it. For those who are mocked, there is hope of redemption. For those who are cast aside, there is a place of welcome. The God we worship is a God who prioritizes the Losers over the Winners. Whether it is the second born son of a patriarch in Genesis, or the nations of Israel and Judah against Assyria and Babylon, God does not side with the powerful, but with the powerless. For those of us who face hardship – economic, health related, or social – God is on the side of the downtrodden and promises to raise up all who suffer unjustly in this world. Looking back a few weeks, this should echo what we spoke of previously in Leviticus.

The Blessing of God’s care for the downtrodden is that we can never be too low to know God’s goodness. There is, however, a stern warning that is implied in this passage. What happens when we take the spot of the person who put us down all that time? When we make enough money to be secure, where previously we were troubled, what do we do with our prosperity? When the hard times pass into moments of ease, are we willing to reach out and lift others up, or are we comfortable pulling the ladder up after ourselves?

I have become more sure of the goodness of God each year of my life. I see in the Gospel a promise that there is always a home I can come to, always a place for me in God’s heart. I also am sure, more and more, that that means there is a place in God’s heart for everyone else too. No one is beyond the Grace of God, no one is unclean in the eyes of a God who is making all things new. Am I, the person God has chased down across the ages and brought out of death, willing to accept that as true. Can I devote my life to loving all people, because God was willing to do everything possible to love me? To paraphrase Paul, “It’s one thing to die for someone you know and like, but dying for someone wicked you haven’t met… That takes a love like Jesus’s.” Yet, as large and powerful a love that is, it is the love we are called to take part in.

Our Psalmist cries out that they have had more than enough contempt. They were chased away by the well off and mocked by those with their life put together. Maybe we are in a season where we feel cast off or like the only words we ever hear are said to mock us. If so, we can trust that God is there to take hold of us and see us through those troubles. For those of us at ease, the burden is shifted onto us. If God is on the side of rejects, then maybe we should be too. There are obvious ways we take the side of people in need – supporting programs that feed and give resources – but is there more we can do?

Prayer is the starting point for any work of God’s people. If you need direction, prayer can give you a path forward. If you need to decide whether it’s your place to do something, God will help in discernment. If you know what you need to do, and just do not want to, prayer is always a good place to start. From that jumping off point of prayer, there is usually an action that will present itself. Sometimes that action is to defer to someone else to do something, but there will often be some way in any given moment to show love to someone. The true essence of our work is always that we are seeking to reiterate God’s love in this world. Beyond action in the moment, we should support people who support the downtrodden – with more prayer, with funds, and yes sometimes our votes.

It is often said that the opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. Our scripture supports that. God’s mercy is put in contrast with the scorn and “contempt,” of the people of this earth. “Contempt,” here is used elsewhere to mean something that is set aside and forgotten. Most notably to describe a lamp that someone leaves by their table as they sleep, but that they quickly grab a hold of when they are afraid they might fall down the stairs. If nothing else, we should be a people who make sure no one is forgotten. While we may forget the faces and names of those in need, God does not. May we never let apathy overcome our love for one another. – Amen.

Sermon 11/05/2023 – A Glimpse of Heaven

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The light of Heaven bursts out all around us. Hard as it can be to see it, there are remnants of it in every drop of atmosphere and every word which we utter in love to one another. It might seem quaint, even trite, to say that the everyday things around us carry such divine revelations, but I don’t mind being either of those things if it means I am telling the truth. We began this morning with one of my favorite songs, “Morning has Broken,” and while that hymn is most famous for Yusuf Islam’s version, I know it from a little show called Pushing Daisies. In that show, the aunt of one of the characters sings the song when something changes within them, the long pent up fears about life melt away, and in the light of a new day that are reborn to go out and pursue what they have long written off as impossible.

Heaven, the realm in which God resides, is something we have talked about a lot this year. Visions of Heaven and what Heaven is actually like and the universal desire of people to know about Heaven… These topics keep coming up to me and out from this pulpit. We are people who are always wondering, always seeking, and so it is no great wonder that our eventual place of residence is a major concern to us. Yet, even our understanding of Heaven as it is is incomplete, because we are not yet in a place where Heaven has taken its final form.

Our scripture asserts that someday we will all be gathered together with a great crowd of people, too numerous to count. There we will join together in praising God before the Heavenly throne. The people there will speak all languages, worship in all styles, have a lifetime’s worth of customs and ideas that all coalesce before that majestic throne. The great enormity of the people of God becomes clear, the distinctions we make between ourselves fall apart, and all at once there is a great display of God’s grace made manifest – the body of Christ, gathered together once and for all.

Yet, this vision is not of the final home for the blessed. No, this is still before the world has been reborn later in the text of Revelation. We are still in the current heaven and the current earth. There is something better still in the works. God will take a great wrecking ball to the metaphysical walls of existence. Heaven will come crashing into Earth and Earth will come crashing into Heaven. There will be a great rushing of reality, like when a dam is suddenly opened and water spills through it. There will no longer be rails and screen keeping what is sacred from what is holy, not in any part of this world, for all will be sacred once again.

The celebration of All Saints’ Day is an ancient feature of the Church. It has not always sat on November 1st, nor has it universally been practiced for one day alone. Yet, from the moment that the people of God saw those around them passing from this life into death, from eternity into eternity, they began to take intentional time to remember their legacy. In South America this merged with local customs to become Dia de los Muertos, a celebration of the deceased through memorial offerings. In the United Kingdom, various traditions came together to form what we now call Halloween, again an acknowledgement of the veil between life and death thinning, and intention moments were set aside to remember those we dearly miss.

This year, we gather to celebrate during a time of great unrest in the world. Ongoing conflicts continue to take lives of innocent people. The Israel-Hamas war has claimed the lives of over 8,000 Palestinians and nearly 2,000 Israelis. The Ukraine War has seen an estimated 10,000 civilians killed in the conflict. In our own nation, the innocent suffer from shooting and from poverty, from preventable diseases and so many other terrible truths of this world. We are in a world that is far from Heaven, and yet we as people of faith assert that Heaven is reaching out to us. There are footholds in this world where God has made the mundane Divine, and we must enhance their efficacy whenever we can.

We are all, as people of faith, Temples to God. The Holy Spirit rests within you, testifying to God and to your own Soul the truth of the Gospel. That truth is a comfort in times of trouble, not because we are promised any of it will suddenly disappear, but because we are told it has its end. This present world, the order of things that always ends in tragedy and pain, it will not stand forever. God is at work, God is pushing back against the overwhelming darkness, and it will someday be conquered. We are a people who trust that Christ is not done with the world, as often and as easy as it is to write it off as long gone. There is still hope, a light still burns in the darkness and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.

Today is a day of remembrance. We will name the people we know and who we miss. Let us also turn our hearts to those who are in mourning that we do not know. There are people across this world who are hurting today. Some the pain is new, others long and drawn out. Yet, for all of us there is hope. There is a God who brings about resurrection and redemption. Death is not the end for those who believe, nor is the world to come something to be afraid of. There is, in this life, a dim feeling of hope that permeates all things – that in the hereafter becomes a blazing light that no one can deny.

Today when we take communion, drink deeply from your cup, because it is a reminder of what Christ has done to make this hope possible. When you take the bread in your hand, remember that you hold a piece of the Body of Christ – not just in that mouthful but in your entire being. When we take the two together, we will do so with all who believe, across space and time, and we will assert proudly that there is hope in this dim and dismal world. Let us love, let us hope, let us pray, so that everyone who sees us gets a glimpse of Heaven. More than that, let the someone who needs to be reminded, be you. Let God renew your heart, that you may be made secure against all the torrents of sadness that define our world. – Amen.

Sermon 10/29/2023 – Practice What You Preach

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 23:1-12

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them rabbi.

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Sermon Text

It is easy to have high expectations. Despite the constant thrum of disappointment that characterizes our mortal lives, there are still ideals that we strive towards at all times. These ideals naturally produce an expectation of how the world should be, and when someone or something fails to meet them, we react accordingly. Last week we looked at how attempts to make the world fairer are thwarted by our acceptance of the status quo. On the other side of our pursuit of ideals is the equally dangerous establishment impossible expectations. The Church falls short when it throws up its hands and says that something is impossible, but it also fails when it sets up impossible expectations for those it meets.

The impossible standards we set are often built off of no writ of scripture or proclamation of God, but standards of our own creation. Jesus describes this sort of standard as The Tradition of the Elders, a collection of teachings – perhaps formal or perhaps colloquial – that were made to help people live out a Godly life. Jesus, and the Church following him, has never been opposed to traditions or standards outside of scripture. In fact, you will never find a Church or a denomination that does not have them. For we Methodists we have the General Rules, often summarized by their three subheadings – Do Good, Do No Evil, and Attend to the Ordinances of God. Beyond that we have the Book of Discipline which accounts for our broader perspectives.

Whether it is the Catholic Catechism or the Book of Discipline that guides a Christian through their life, these traditions are common, and most of the time they serve a person well. The Book of Discipline has many well thought out stances on a variety of issues and our general rules offer insight into how we can live a Godly life in every imaginable way. The danger of any standard, however, is that we can quickly replace the high calling that God has given us with a far lower and more precarious one that we have written for ourselves.

The contradiction of Jesus’s call to all people is that we should be, “Perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect,” but that this call is such that, “[his] yoke is easy and [his] burden is light.” That contradiction is quickly fixed when we realize what makes the difference between the expectations Jesus sets forth and the one’s that we put on others. Jesus, without fail, helps the people that he calls to action. When someone takes on the yoke of faith, when they bear the burden of the cross, they find that Jesus is strengthening them in their pursuit of what is right. Jesus lived a human life and died a human death so that every step of the way we would have a God who knew what we were dealing with and how to help us.

The problem with the expectations set forward by people and organizations is that they are sometimes made with an outcome in mind without any consideration for process. I think of those who look at those struggling with addiction and say they just need to, “Get their act together.” Easy to say, the destination is clear, but how in the world are they going to get there? Only by people walking alongside them, only by a community working with them through it all, will most individuals make it through recovery. We can apply this dichotomy to many aspects of our life, essentially anytime we say “Why don’t they just…” We can usually turn the conversation back on ourselves. “What have I done to support them in…”

Jesus describes the leaders of his day as being worth listening to when they teach. The specific image of them, “Sitting in the seat of Moses,” connects them as teachers of God’s word. Pharisees especially were the closest thing that the ancient world had to a local pastor, teaching the town or neighborhood they lived in how to live as God calls them to. Despite Jesus’s criticism of these leaders, they were not trouble by default. Like any minister, they had taken on a huge amount of responsibility, and with that responsibility comes a need to strive toward excellence. As ministers, when you fall short… Well, you are gonna get some flak.

The teaching which Jesus gives his disciples is focused mainly on the status of people in leadership, but I think any lesson from leaders is a lesson for all people. Jesus here asks that we never hold an expectation for someone that we are not willing to contribute toward. If we want someone to treat us well, we better treat them well too! If we want someone to act a certain way then we better meet our own standards of conduct! If the Church was given a quarter for every time that someone said they wanted something to change in the world and then turned around and did the thing they claim to hate, then there would never be a ministry that wasn’t funded in full.

The digital age has given a wonderful window into the innate hypocrisy of our expectations. So many people talking about how the world is full of people who are disrespectful and do not know how to conduct themselves, and then comment every chance they can to trash talk their supposed enemies. They talk about how those people are so divisive and causing so much trouble and then do nothing with their free time but talk about all those people and how the world would be better if they would just disappear. The simple fact is that high expectations have to be met with equally high willingness to help people succeed – and genuine help, not just snide comments!

I once preached a sermon, in the aftermath of the El Paso shooting of August 2019, in which I said that there was a need for all people to actively work against the racism that motivated the shooting. That in a world where hate is so common, we cannot be neutral in the face of it. A man from my congregation came to the parsonage to meet with me and told me how he was not at all racist, but… That was the loudest “But,” ever spoken. He told me how he thought everyone should know English if they lived here, that blacks in the city were the real problem in this world, and so many other things that he firmly believed were ideas about what was right and wrong.

I listened intently and then asked him a question. “How are you going to help them?” He was confused, because he thought I was going to start a fight with him or something, but I was earnestly interested. You want people to learn English, so how are you going to help programs that teach immigrants English? You think that blacks in the intercity have problems unique to their context, so how are you going to help programs in those cities that work to strengthen neighborhoods and alleviate poverty? Point by point, I took each expectation he held up about those people and asked him to apply it to himself. You want all this to happen, how are you going to do anything to make it possible?

In our day to day it is not usually anything so dramatic. We want our spouse to listen more attentively to us, but do we listen to them? We want our children and young people to respect us, but do we treat them like people or objects? Our coworkers who can be difficult or the neighbor who always seems to be doing everything they can to annoy us, how are we working to love them even in the midst of their difficult personalities? The list can go on and on, but at the end of it all we are people striving to do the right thing, no matter when and how that presents itself.

The high call of the Christian life necessitates that we work our hardest to walk the walk as much as we talk the talk. That can be hard, but it is infinitely preferable to a life lived half-way between virtue and vice. When we say we care about a person or a cause, we need to follow that up with action of some kind. Sometimes we cannot donate money, but we probably have a bit of time. If we do not have time or ability, then we can at least offer our prayers. The thing that should be true of us all is that with every passing day we grow more compassionate, more grace-filled, and more like Christ. We do that through practice, and the best thing to start practicing are the things we preach everyday. Let us walk the narrow path of goodness together. – Amen.

Sermon 10/22/2023 – Balanced Scales

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Leviticus 19:15-18

“You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake: I am the Lord.

“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.


Sermon Text

Fairness is a word that gets thrown around a lot. We simultaneously strive to be people who are fair, while acknowledging that life is often unfair in its application of good things and bad. When we strive to do what is right, to be even-handed in all that we do, we are often fighting what seems to be a losing battle. In striving to do what is right, we feel like Sisyphus rolling his boulder – every step seems to be toward something that will eventually be washed away all at once. The work of the Church, of every Christian, for a fairer world, is never ending.

I do, all the same, have a fundamental problem with people who claim that life is unfair. Life is currently unfair, that much I am willing to agree with, but it does not have to be unfair. If you think of the way that “unfairness,” manifests, only some things come about because of intrinsic aspects of life. We cannot account for droughts or storms, for an illness that strikes when we would never expect it, nor can we know what specific things will come about in the days, weeks, or years ahead of us. However, these are ultimately aspects of natural life, they are neither fair nor unfair, they simply are. Though they complicate our life, they cannot be given the same weight of “fairness,” that we inject into other aspects of life.

The real source of any unfairness in our world requires us to look no further than the mirror. Human beings are the only thing capable of being unfair in all of creation. We are the ones who set up the systems of this world and we are the ones who tirelessly work to weigh the scales in our favor. In our modern democracy, it is easier than ever to work and bend the world to our will, casting a ballot that allows us to elect people who will make sure that what we want for ourselves becomes the law of the land, oftentimes without a second thought for what impact is made on other people. When we all have a hand in who rules, we all become little rulers ourselves.

The mechanics of electoral politics are, however, set up unfairly as well. The funding that is permitted for candidates allows those with the most money to skew public perception of their platform and personal character. It would be very hard, pretty much impossible, for even a moderately wealthy person with perfect morals and platforms to take office anywhere in government when their opposition is funded by personal and political accounts with billions to leverage against them. The wider system then becomes a horrendously unbalanced leviathan – the powerful hold the very keys to their accountability on a golden chain that leads straight into their bank accounts.

No society has existed on earth that was free of this kind of trouble, this prolific corruption rooted in human sin and greed. We often like to imagine that the era we live in is the worst of all time, but we can find the same sorts of issues stretching back to the creation of hierarchical societies ten thousand years ago. We are the inheritors of problems, some of them as old as human civilization, some specific to our own nation, and some to the past fifty years or so of global capitalism and American democracy. We are stuck in a system where the scales are weighed by many powerful hands, pushing down always toward their own interests, employing social media and advertising to maintain their power and promote their wishes.

In the past year, there has been an uptick in advertisements from one group in particular that I find fascinating. I will refrain from mentioning their name specifically but “let the one with ears to hear,” understand. Their advertisements proclaim that the American people are tired of political theatre that fails to get work done. They say that they are a coalition of people pushing for real change and that by working with regular everyday people they have come up with a list of things that will fix this country. Sounds good, right? Until you look at their founders and where they get their funding, and find that it is rich businessmen and politicians that set their agenda – the everyday needs of the people is just a smokescreen to cover AstroTurfed advocacy.

In a world that is stacked against authenticity, where it seems impossible to make real change when the people working against the good of all people are so well-equipped and so well-funded, what is the average person to do? The answer is seemingly antithetical to the idea of fairness. In a world where so much is stacked against people in need, the only way to establish fairness is to work tirelessly to elevate the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. Liberation Theology calls this, “God’s preferential option for the poor,” and it is foundational to our work in our communities and our world.

Our scripture tells us to be impartial toward the rich and the poor, and to judge with justice. This is the foundation of a fair society, and we cannot abandon that. However, when the rich have lawyers to argue them out of anything, and the homeless who are arrested for living in an inconvenient place must hope they have a good public defender, then we must see that this imbalance requires more attention to one than the other. When we are trying to help people get into housing, we have to acknowledge that we will pour infinitely more time and energy into equipping the poor to live in a world that wants to crush them in the wheels of industry, than we ever would to help a wealthy person.

For too long, the Church had enough money and influence that it could pretend it was part of the world around it. For fifteen hundred of our two thousand years, we were seated alongside the powerful and bringing in money and selling our influence. Church was where well-dressed people, put together as much as they could be, came and showed the world that they were model citizens just like everyone else. We pushed those who were not like us away, whether we acknowledged it or not, we made our sanctuaries into private rooms, for us alone.

Now as the Church has experienced a decline, now as the cry of the needy that has been building up outside our doors is leaking in through the cracks in the perfect persona of American Christianity, we cannot help but come to an inflection point. Will we stand for the plight of the needy, for the people who are pushed out again and again and again, or will we side with the powerful people telling us that they are our enemies? Those who would have us question people of other races, who were born in other countries, of other sexualities and gender expression than us – do you not think that they are benefiting by making us fear one another? People on both sides of the political aisle will accept such a truth, but only if it confirms their own beliefs. We doubt the pain others feel if we may have had a part in it, and we support anyone who absolves us of culpability for the many problems that face our neighbors.

The call of our scripture is clear – love your neighbor, rich or poor, gay or straight, trans or cis-gendered, immigrant or national. Our unfairness adds another layer, sometimes that means fighting hard for the people who are unlike you, against a world that would gladly see them erased from the surface of the earth. Yet, we are not to lose our compassion even for those who have proven themselves to be enemies of the downtrodden. Our command goes on to not hold a grudge and to not seek vengeance. More than that, we are to correct our neighbors when they fall into the world’s trap, the cycle of fear and loathing that only can lead to death. We who are so intent on bringing others to faith and to the foot of the cross, can we accept that we all must repent of power and pride and this world’s unfairness if we are to find ourselves truly at home there?

I leave us today with more of a heavy task than I usually try to pack into a Sunday. We have all the world against people being treated fairly, we have talking heads constantly trying to pull us to a mutual mistrust of each other. How can we ever overcome the immensity of it all?! Together, people of God, together we can do it. We have God with us, why would we not be able to do it? We have the Church, the people in this room and in our charge, in this parish and this conference. We may only be able to make a difference locally, maybe only in the life of a single person, but sometimes that is all it takes to change the world. Can we, through our work here, make one person look out and see, “The World is unfair, but God is not.” I hope we can because Heaven is an abundantly fair place, and if we are going to do God’s will here on Earth, then we need a whole lot more people to see with their own eyes and feel with their own hands, just how good God is to the people of this Earth. – Amen.

Sermon 10/15/2023 – The Back of Glory

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Exodus 33:12-23

Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.” He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”

The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord,’ and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

Sermon Text

Have you ever seen something so amazing, you just cannot find words to describe it? There was a particular sunset I saw once, when I was taking a trip to Maine, that I have never been able to find words for. Seated on an island near Bar Harbor, looking out as the sun dipped into the ocean, it was as if nothing existed but the burning globe ahead me, and the sea around me. Theoretically, I had seen all those pieces before, the sun and the water and the sandstone beneath me – together they had become something new though, something I can only begin to grasp in my memory.

All around us are reasons to be in awe. God has invested majesty in all of creation. The leaves that have started to color the ground and the forests, the rivers that carve their way through the earth, and the stars that shine above us – all are part of the wonders we see every day. I want to highlight the moon for a minute, because it has its own special glory. Besides just being beautiful, our moon is one of the largest in our solar system. When you look up at it, you see a unique gift of God – allowing for tides, lighting the night, reflecting sunlight upon our earthly bodies. Our moon is unlike any other, and chief among its many gifts is just how beautiful it is.

Beauty, majesty, and awe as a whole are approximations of what scripture describes as “glory.” Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish Philosopher of Religion and generally amazing writer, described God’s Glory as a unique physical presence of God. Specifically, “glory reflects abundance of good and truth, the power that acts in nature and history.”[1] In other words, when meet God and see God’s glory, you encounter something specific about God being with you. Glory is that feeling that comes from seeing God and knowing that God is capable of changing the world we live in, and that the changes made are for good.

What does that look like? It can take many forms. For some of us it will sometimes be something really transcendent. A moment when we feel, hot as a fire or heavy as the sea, something overwhelming surround us. We call on the name of God and we find an answer, but more than that we find something beyond explanation. Other times it may be something far softer that speaks to God’s glory, a moment of peace in the midst of trouble, a quiet falling over a person as they come close to death. As broad and as many as God’s gifts are, so does God’s glory appear to us. Sometimes that glory is like a fire that burns brightly, and sometimes like the silence that comes through cessation.

The most common way that we open ourself up to experiencing God’s glory is in prayer. Whether it is the prayer we offer in this sanctuary, at the altar, or in our homes, God comes to us and hears what we offer up. The words are not nearly as important as the simple act of opening our hearts to what God will do. We’ve have just finished our group reading, “Dynamite Prayer,” and the focus of that book was on understanding how God’s power is manifested in our decision to pray. When we pray, when we open ourselves up to God and we find that there is more to God than we could ever imagine. Fears, trouble, all obstacles, seem to melt away in the presence of God. Not as though life is suddenly without its struggles, but as if they fade away in comparison to God’s overwhelming light.

When Moses went to Sinai, and he went up that mountain more thana few times, he did so to speak with God. The relationship that Moses and God had was something that had not been seen since Abraham before him. Like Abraham, Moses sat and talked to God, speaking as friends do. Moses ate in God’s presence multiple times, sharing in the kind of talk only meals allow.

Despite all this closeness, our scripture shows that Moses had not seen God’s face. The divine presence was always obscured in some way. Moses wanted more of God, wanted to be closer than even their present relationship has allowed. God warns Moses that direct exposure to his face would kill him, but that Moses would be allowed to see God’s glory indirectly. All the presence of God that earth could contain was concentrated on Sinai, and Moses’s eyes were covered as it passed. Only once the fullness of God had passed by could Moses look at God’s “back.” The result was a blessing of light upon Moses, a reflection, like the moon of the sun, of God’s goodness.

A teaching I come back to often is from Saint Irenaeus, “The Glory of God is a living person, and the life of a person is in beholding God.” As Moses found God’s glory on the mountain we too can find God’s glory in our own life. We begin to resemble God, to shine out with God’s goodness, when we spend our time looking at God. This we do in prayer, in study of scripture, in the sacraments, and in living a Christian life together. When we gather here, when we love one another, we all look at God’s glory in action. God’s glory is the promise that God is good, God is true, and God has the power to affect change in this world, we must be a testimony to all these things.

Take time this week, however you do it best, to connect with God. If you do that while you work on something, then work intently and pray fervently. If you prefer silence, then find a quiet place and focus on God’s presence in that silence with you. If it is in service that you hear God the most loudly, take some time to serve your siblings in our community. We all can see the grace of God, and even the slightest glimpse can change us for the better. Open your eyes, open your heart, and let God’s presence lead you to a better tomorrow. – Amen.

[1] Abraham Heschel. “The Glory is the Presence of God,” in God Seeking Man. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1976) 82