Author: John Langenstein

What happened to the disciples? – 02/20/22

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Luke 6: 12-16

Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

Sermon Text

I am prone to history heavy sermons, but today is going to be mainly a matter of history. When the question was posed to me, “What happened to the disciples?” I wanted to take the time to look at what their life looked like once the book of Acts ended. There will, of course, be plenty to learn for our own life as we dig through the legends and records of their life. However, in terms of reading scripture, reflecting, and drawing meaning from it, this sermon will not follow my usual patterns. Today we look at the lives of the Saints, as we have been handed their story, and try to understand what that tells us about our own life as disciples of Christ.

The disciples came from several walks of life in ancient Judea. The first to be called to follow Jesus were fishermen from his hometown of Nazareth or nearby Bethsaida. In fact, only a handful of disciples can be traced to a location outside these two towns, and all of them still are from the Galilean shoreside. This area was at the Northern extreme of the Judean province, far removed from the historic center of Jewish life in Judah proper. Jesus and his disciples were in an area that was once part of the kingdom of Israel. Between Galilee and Judah was Samaria, a province and a culture that was as similar to the Judean people as it was different. Jesus and his disciples, despite what our initial reading of the gospels may suggest, were outsiders among their own people. They were rural hicks launching a ministry in the urban centers to the south.

 The life of the apostles as recorded in Acts and the Gospels shows us only a glimpse of what they were like. We know the personality of Simon Peter, the bold, if not misguided, head of the disciples. We know John was devoted to Jesus like no other, that Thomas – though questioning of Jesus at times – was the first to say he would die for his savior. Judas is perhaps the most developed of all the disciples outside of these, a thief and a betrayer and, perhaps, even a violent revolutionary.

The first disciple to die was Judas. After his betrayal of Jesus, Judas was overwhelmed with grief and guilt and returned the payment for his betrayal to those religious leaders who had paid him. There are two accounts for his death in scripture, the first and most commonly referenced description comes from Matthew 27:1–10, in which Judas hangs himself and the location of his hanging becomes a potter’s field for burial of the poor. This is contrasted by Acts 1:18 which says that Judas became bloated and fell in a field, exploding on the land that eventually became a potter’s field. The difference in these stories is sometimes reconciled as Judas completing suicide and then the body bursting after being cut down. Acts is probably just reporting a separate tradition that builds off of its wider themes of divine control.[1]

Judas is worthy of his own entire study at some time, a tragedy on every conceivable front. However, the disciples closest to Jesus continued on in their ministry. The Church was born on Pentecost and the Kingdom of God spread across Judea and the Mediterranean world. Initially the disciples stayed in Judea, though some movement is recorded, as when Philip baptizes the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8. This seems to have been a rarity of the early Church as the disciples worked as a central leadership body in those early days. However, a variety of conditions eventually led to the disciples moving out from Judea and into the wider world.

Firstly, Paul had begun his gentile ministry and was making major headway in expanding the Church. This put a fire under the disciples to go out and do their part in spreading the Gospel. Secondly, persecution in Jerusalem was rising as tensions between Judea and Rome were reaching a high point. James the son of Zebedee is killed, traditionally by beheading. Finally, those tensions mentioned a moment ago eventually culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem which ended the Judean church and began the full diaspora of Jews and Jewish Christians.

The records of the disciples’ lives now leaves solid documentation in scripture at this point. Hagiographies and Martyrologies – the stories of saints and of martyrs – are the primary way we know what became of the other disciples. Philip, Bartholomew, and Thomas went to India and preached. Thomas has a legacy in India that extends into today, where Thomistic Orthodox communities still exist that trace their spiritual ancestry to Thomas’s congregations. Philip and Bartholomew traveled west after their work in India to preach elsewhere. While in what is now Turkey, Philip was crucified upside down for his ministry. His preaching led to Bartholomew being spared, and he was allowed to continue his ministry into Europe where he was killed by being skinned alive.

Thomas would be murdered by spearmen, Jude killed by an axe, and Simon the Zealot sawed in half. The only disciples that do not have well documented deaths are James son of Alphaeus and Matthew. The final names to be lifted up are Peter, crucified in Rome on an inverted cross. Paul, apostle to the Gentiles who was beheaded in Rome. John, son of Zebedee, the only disciple to die of old age while in prison on Patmos. All these deaths are recorded in various sources and the details are not always identical across them, so take each description above with a grain of salt.

The lives of the disciples were not easy. They all met horrible ends in the pursuit of spreading the Kingdom of God. These deaths in themselves are tragic, but they are not pointless. Every person who gave their lives in those early years of the Church achieved something greater than themselves – they spread the good news far and wide and they allowed the world to know God in a way they never had before.

In our modern world, in our specific context, we do not experience persecution. While there are certainly people who are against the Church and people who may treat Christians poorly, there are no systemic ways that the Church is oppressed in the United States, at least not for existing. Some people point to certain social media bans toward specific figures or certain social trends and provide these as evidence of Christian persecution, but these are seldom anything more than disputes that happen to occur to Christians or around Christian groups. I can confidently say that I am not aware of any widespread, systemic persecution of Christians in the United States.

This lack of systemic oppression is not a given for Christians in many places. There are many places where Christians are persecuted today. These persecutions are often regional, lacking the approval of the state but nonetheless having widespread repercussions. The Voice of the Martyrs is an organization that lifts up the stories of these oppressed Christian groups around the world. For these people, faith is a matter of life or death, they choose to accept the cross of Christ everyday they get up, and they do not know if or when they will be asked to die for their faith.

We honor these modern day martyrs, those who live into the legacy of the apostles in several ways. First, we advocate for them. I go further to say that our solidarity with the martyrs of our faith should lead to us advocating for all victims of religious oppression. The Uighurs of China are a Muslim minority currently suffering extreme persecution, they must be on our hearts alongside the persecuted Church. Though we do not share the same faith, we share the image of God, and we must advocate for one another. We must stand against the oppression of religious minorities, and we must pray daily for the martyrs of our own faith, finding ways to help them however we can. Again, Voice of the Martyrs is a helpful resource for this.

Secondly, we honor the martyrs of the past and present by being honest about our own privileged position. I personally am exhausted of persecution narratives often used by American Christians. The idea that there is some grand conspiracy against us in the United States does not stand up to scrutiny. While our world has become more secular, we are not being punished for remaining spiritual. The reality is that our present friction with a changing world is a natural consequence of the change in itself. Our response must not be to reflexively cry out that this change is an attack, but thoughtfully consider how our ministry must change to reach the culture that currently surrounds us. As long as we are free, to call ourselves persecuted is an insult to those who are truly suffering persecution.

Finally, I would say that looking at the martyrs of yesterday and today, we are given insight into the truth of our life in Christ. Jesus said that those who hate their life will save it, and those who protect their life will lose it. This seems contradictory, but Jesus is being quite literal in what he means. To believe in the Kingdom of God is to believe that Christ is going to make all things new, even our own bodies and souls. This means that death, a necessary end, is nothing for us to fear. Yet, we who suffer no fear of death, bend the knee to social pressure and convenience without ever being forced to do anything. How many have we failed to love because someone told us it was wrong to help them? How many have gone without hearing the word because we caved to the expectations of those around us?

The disciples all died for their faith, but that does not mean we necessarily will need to. We will likely live out our lives free of persecution, even if we do face conflicts between our faith and our circumstances. We must honor the martyrs then through our support of those that yet live, our admiration of those gone into glory, our honesty about our own privilege, and in a willingness to do all we can to serve God. Give your life to Christ, and even death loses its power. Let us serve God, even when the going gets tough. The twelve disciples all attest to the reality that there is more to life than living, and when we face no threat of life, then God calls us to even greater adherence to all goodness. Let us meet that calling. – Amen

[1] Contrast with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 or Herod Agrippa’s death in Acts 12

What’s in a Mark? – 02/13/2022

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Revelation 13: 11-18

Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; and by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast, it deceives the inhabitants of earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived; and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.

Sermon Text

We talked a few months ago about how we love to talk about the end of time, not just as Christians but as human beings. Perhaps this prompt gives us a great deal of room to work with, and so we just have more ability to build up end times discussion than we do other matters of the faith. Revelation, Daniel, and the other apocalyptic literature in the ancient world all use vivid imagery to describe their messages. There are monsters and signs and miracles and terrors of every shape, size, and color. If you want to make a compelling narrative using any of them, it does not take much. Beasts, literal and figurative, can be found in any person, place, or thing as long as we are creative enough to tie the right aspects of each together.

Very few images from Revelation have gripped the Church more than the idea of a “Mark of the Beast.” Though only being mentioned once in scripture, this concept overwhelmingly captures our imagination about what the end of history might look life. Since Revelation was first put on parchment, we have tried to figure out what its enigmatic description of this Mark could possibly refer to. The nature of the Mark has changed based upon the culture and time of those writing it and the perspective they have on Revelation. These perspectives fall into several broad categories.

There are those who read the book of Revelation as a step-by-step guide to the end of history. To these interpreters, every part of this book will happen as is written. The beasts that emerge from the sea are literal, the marks on the forehead and wrist are exactly as they are described – somehow conferring three sixes upon the flesh of their recipient. This literalist reading tends to be the most concerned with natural phenomena as a sign of Christ’s eminent return to the Earth. Whenever you hear people talking about blood moons and eclipses they likely fall into this category of speculation or sit adjacent to it.

The second category see a future reality in the words of Revelation but interpret it more broadly. Beasts are not literal creatures coming out of the ocean, but are world powers and important political figures. The signs in the heavens and the sudden shifting of natural features of the world are not necessarily 1:1 with what will transpire, but point to definite events. This group also interprets things like the Mark of the Beast more broadly – rather than being a number written on a person the Mark is allowed to take any form, so long as it bars commerce. People who see the Mark of the Beast as a microchip or some other piece of documentation tend to fall into this camp. I would also define this as one of the most common of these three broad perspectives.

The next most, or perhaps equally, common perspective on Revelation sees the book as a historical account of timeless ideas. Rather than seeing the book as a prophecy of exact events to come, the images of Revelation are interpreted as reflecting the present reality of the author and the future reality of their readers. This view is the least tied to specific events or features of the end of history. The beasts of Revelation are not specific world powers, but any power that works counter to the Church. The Mark of the Beast is not a singular thing which people take on to be able to buy or sell – but anything that makes people prioritize wealth and comfort over devotion to God. This perspective is, in my opinion, the closest to a proper reading of Revelation we can achieve.

Prophecy throughout the Bible is a complicated thing. We tend to think of it in terms of a word being uttered by a prophet and then immediately coming to pass. Sometimes this is definitely the case – such as Elijah bringing down fire. Other times it is far less clear. Jeremiah spoke of a day when God’s word would be written on the heart of all people and there would be no potential for evil in our hearts – something that has yet to come to pass. (Jer. 31)

Revelation is not a traditionally prophetic book. It does not cast a moral vision of what we should do as God’s people, although the opening letter to the seven churches effectively fills this role. Much like the latter half of Daniel or those many apocalyptic stories written between the Testaments, Revelation projects a message to the Church that – no matter what is going on in the world, we can depend on the truth of the Gospel to see us through. No matter what forces come against us, Rome or Babylon or any other earthly power, we are citizens of the New Jerusalem. No matter what beasts we face, plagues and wars or famines and vermin, God is in control.

To the original readers of Revelation there were probably very specific real-world analogues to the images within the book. The seven-headed beast mentioned just before the passage we read today, for example, is generally understood to be a reference to Rome and more specifically the Caesars that rule the city. A specific reference to one of the heads of the beast having been hit with a fatal blow, yet somehow surviving, conjures up the image of the Emperor Nero – the first great persecutor of the Church. Nero had arranged his own death through a slave killing him with a sword. There were those who believed that Domitian, the second emperor to actively persecute the Church, was one way or another a reborn Nero, a parody of the resurrected Christ.[1]

This produces the first interpretation of the Mark of the Beast which seems to have some validity. The number as it appears in the Greek scripture is written as three letters χις, although later texts spell out the number as separate words. Some scholars notice that when Nero Caesar is spelled using Hebrew letters and then translated into numerical values based on those letters, the result is none other than 666.[2] This triangulation is compelling in many respects, and a major component of historical readings of the Book of Revelation, but it is also one I find unsatisfying.

While this is a popular reading of the Mark of the Beast, it works better backward than forward. If I was given this number, with no reference to Nero as a Caesar and the specific spelling used by the person who encoded this message, I would never find its hidden truth. Likewise, and though I did not take the time to come up with any specific examples, there are endless numbers of letters in endless orders that would produce the same numerical value. Still more complicated, other manuscripts say the Number of the Beast is 616 not 666, further muddying the waters. If the Mark of the Beast is just a winking reference to Nero and his feared return from the dead, then it is not a very effective one. It should also be noted that Irenaeus, a first-generation Christian warned against trying to tie the Mark of the Beast to any specific person, seeing the practice as pointless at best.[3]

This lesson from Irenaeus removes a great deal of the speculation people apply to the Mark of the Beast. Outside of the Mark being tied to the head and hand, the only working information we are given is this threefold number. Knowing that it is “the number of a person,” does not help us understand what it is in itself, precisely because any name can be converted into six hundred and sixty-six with enough manipulation. My last name, Langenstein, for example, can have a number assigned to each letter of it based on its placement in the Alphabet. Adding these together, you get 120. Multiply that by (95/19) for the year I was born, 1995. Then add the abbreviation of where I was born, Waynesboro, PA, and you get 642. But where’s that missing 24? Well just add the time I was born multiplied hour by minute. 2:12; two times twelve. As you can see, number games don’t get us anywhere. We might as well be claiming Monster Energy is somehow satanic.[4]

This ambiguity means that this verse is ripe for abuse. John Wesley claimed that the Mark of the Beast was the acceptance of the Pope as a legitimate leader of the Church, something I think is grossly unfair and which remains a blemish on his legacy.[5] A ministry in Martinsburg, WV linked the Mark of the Beast to UPC codes, the little barcodes on all modern products.[6] Others link it to credit cards, others to crypto currency, and some people – God help us – tie it to vaccination or some microscopic product thereof. Like any obscure teaching of the Bible, we are able to make it expansive to the point of consuming much of our life and attention, even though the point of Revelation has little to do with this three number sequence.

As I have already stated, I see much of Revelation as a commentary on how to live as a Christian at all times – not just at one particular moment at the end of the age. Like our previous discussion of end times speculation focused on, we are always in the end of days, no closer to it than Paul and no further from it either. We live on a knife’s edge that is always moving closer and further from the moment that Christ returns in final victory. This means that, from my reading of the text, I have to be able to explain what is timeless about the Mark of the Beast if I am to sustain a compelling argument for my overall reading of the book. Will I succeed? That’s up to you all once I finish this next page or so of writing.

To me, the Mark of the Beast is not a microchip or a tattoo to be placed on the forehead or the wrist, but is instead a way of being in which we give up our identity as Christian for the sake of worldly goods – money, power, or even just social capital. Previously in Revelation 7, 144,000 of the tribes of Israel, and presumedly the untold multitude of Gentiles, were sealed by God on their forehead to protect them from the trouble to come. With this in mind, it seems to me that the Mark of the Beast, on the wrist or the forehead, is in direct opposition to this first seal. If I was feeling especially bold in my interpretation, I might point out that someone with the seal of the Lamb on their head could easily get the Mark of the Beast on their hand if they decided it wasn’t worth it to deal with all this other trouble.

In my mind we accept the Mark of the Beast whenever we accept an imperfect substitute for God. Returning to a more reasonably applied numerology, 7 traditionally represents perfection, and 8 often represents rebirth or baptism. Christ is sometimes rendered numerically as 888, the source of our new life, God is often associated with 7. What is more common to evil than an attempt to become like God through manipulation or violence, an imperfect attempt at perfection, like someone counting to seven and only ever reaching 6.[7] This reading is more consistent, I believe, with the history of Christian interpretation than most of our attempts today are.

So, do I think the Mark of the Beast is a specific thing Christians will one day be forced to take on or else face starvation? No, personally I don’t. When I read news stories of some people opting for RFID chip implants, I do not see a sign of the end times but a sign of a passing trend that is unlikely to go mainstream. Nor do I worry about vaccines or cashless societies or any other hot topic prediction of what those three digits could mean. To me, anytime we choose power or money or social standing over God and doing God’s work in the world, we trade the Seal of the Lamb for the Mark of the Beast. I don’t expect this answer to be pleasing to everyone, or even fully convincing, but it is the most honest one I can give, and if it gets us talking about scripture a bit more deeply, we all can count that as a win. We’ll pick up our discussion of the end times and readiness on the 27th, when we conclude this month of questions. – Amen.

[1] Mitchell G. Reddish. “The Two Beasts,” in Revelation (Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Hellwys. 2005) 251

[2] “Revelation.” In The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon. 2003)

[3] Irenaeus. Against Heresies V.30

[4] A popular meme and video was released alleging this based on a faulty understanding of Hebrew Numbering, the alleged “666” on the can would, if this argument had any validity, actually be “18.”

[5] John Wesley. “Revelation.” Explanatory Notes on the New Testament. Available at: http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/john-wesleys-notes-on-the-bible/notes-on-the-revelation-of-jesus-christ/

[6] A complete recording of their VHS pitch of this idea is available at: https://youtu.be/iST5Ip8a9nk

[7] “Revelation.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Vol. 12. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon. 1994)

Works or Grace? – 02/06/2022

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Romans 4: 1-12

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.”

Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.” How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.

James 2:14-26

            What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.

Sermon Text

 We begin our month of questions by looking at one of the most complicated concepts within the Christian faith. Where does the responsibility of our good works end and the abundant grace of God’s goodness begin? If we are saved by the Grace of God which is given freely in our life, then what is the purpose of God transforming us into better people? Where does our reliance on God’s grace become and excuse for us to do whatever we want without feeling bad about it? More specific to our life here in Clarksburg, how can we balance the active nature of North View United Methodist and the spiritual faith of North View?

This question is so natural to Christianity that it predates the Bible, I would argue that it predates the arrival of Christ in this world. It exists in the meditations of Rabbis and prophets throughout Israel’s history. The culmination of this tradition comes to us in the life we live after Christ has touched our lives. When the Spirit of God begins to transform us to resemble its own divinity. That is when Faith and Works really begin to mean something to us. Not as a theory we assent or dissent to, but as something we live and breathe.

To talk about how salvation comes to be, we have to begin with a darker truth. We are all of us sinners and we are all of us bound for physical death. No one makes it out of this life alive and no one makes it to the grave without some measure of guilt upon their soul. Sin, that ancient enemy of human life, corrupts the divine image within us and renders what was once glorified and good into something that is base and selfish. We, like Adam and Eve long ago, find ourselves cast out of God’s presence through our rejection of life and our rejection of righteousness. We put on the corruptible nature of convenience and selfish desire, and we refuse to put on the eternal nature of sacrifice and selflessness.

Or, in less theological terms. We all screw up and we are all on some level screwed up in ourselves. I don’t mean this in a pejorative way, I mean it in an equalizing way. While there are pinnacles of virtue and vice that appear from time to time, your average person is a pretty even balance of both good and bad. We are average in the worst way, average in terms of morality. We are not motivated enough to do good and not brave enough to avoid evil. We simply do what is convenient or feels nice and cleave closely to the status quo except in extremis.

A person can realize that they are stuck in these doldrums and make changes in their life. Regardless of tradition or philosophic backgrounds a person can work hard and be better. They can remove the selfish inclinations from their heart and begin to live a life oriented toward others. The goodness that such a person develops is genuine, it is real in every way it ever could be. Those who deny themselves, who selflessly give to those in need and who love those around them serve God whether they know it or not through their kindness and generosity. In the same way that there is only one truth, the light of God shining out into the world, there is only one good, and that good finds its source in that selfsame God.

All people who realize the importance of goodness in their life glorify God through their actions, but the question necessarily arises over whether or not it is enough to do what is right. To put it in terms that Jesus’s contemporaries would have used, “Is a righteous Gentile more worthy than an impious Jew?” The question is not an easy one to answer. Add into it the many different understandings a person might have regarding ritual purity and the morality of certain specific actions, and the question of whether works have any impact on our status before God becomes very important. If works are what save us, then suddenly there is a lot more room for subjectivity in salvation. If works have nothing to do with salvation, then suddenly there is a lot more loopholes for an interested party to do whatever they want.

It is often at this point in a sermon that a minister might say something about our righteousness being rags to God, and to say something about all the “good,” people who are bound for Hell. However, having grown up with that framing of the issue, I think that is an awful way to present our loving God’s gift of salvation. The question of whether you need to be good to get into Heaven, to do the right things, or if it is enough to believe the right things, is something so much bigger than we ever let it be – and more than anything it is meant to liberate us, not to push down others! There is something crass about saying it is better for someone to never do a good thing in their life and have faith in Christ than for someone to do every good thing and never know that holy name.

The question as scripture puts it is oriented completely differently than we ever let it be voiced today. In scripture the questions of works and faith was oriented between people who were trying to limit the scope of God’s kingdom and those who wanted to include as many people as possible. Some among the Jewish Christians thought that Gentiles should have to convert, as much as was possible, to Judean or Hellenistic Jewish practices upon their acceptance of Christ. The “works,” were not necessary moral initiatives to feed people or care for the sick or any other objectively moral action, but was instead oriented toward questions of what a person should wear, how they should worship, or what they should eat. These matters are not essential to a person’s inner being, only the outward manifestations of that inner state.

Does that mean that there is a bifurcation between purity laws and moral laws? Yes, but not in so simple a binary as we usually cast the issue. As we have said before in our Sunday discussions of scripture, even seemingly superfluous laws in scripture can reveal moral truths. However, we need to be able to see that the way a person does what is right is secondary to the right thing they do in themselves. Do you have faith in Christ? Do you serve God in all you do? Do you admit when you fail at this and work to change for the better? Those questions are what matter in the life of a Christian, not whether or not you say “debt,” or “trespasses,” in the Lord’s prayer.

This is the kind of debate that happened in the early days of the Church regarding works and faith. Paul wrote Romans, Galatians, and several letters encouraging people to see faith in Christ as the way to identify a Christian, and not to get wrapped up in the details of how they lived out that faith – so long as their faith was authentic and proven through the fruits of the Spirit it yielded in their life. Paul argued then that a person who was faithful would live a good life as a consequence of that faith – not being perfect, but slowly getting closer and closer toward that perfection. We, like Abraham, had to have faith if we wanted to be considered righteous, because it was Abraham’s faith alone that made God consider him right before the Divine.

This teaching made its way across the Mediterranean and landed, by word of mouth, at the feet of James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem and brother of Jesus. Upon hearing this teaching, James seems to have seen Paul’s teachings as going further than what they actually were. James pulls from language similar enough to Paul’s to suggest that he wrote his letter in part to correct what he saw as a misunderstanding of the facts. James also uses Abraham as the foundation of his own argument. James argues that, while Abraham did have faith in God – that faith was not realized until Abraham took up the knife to kill Isaac. Faith was not enough, if that faith only resulted in passive moralizing. Faith had to be lived out, it had to be seen, not just heard.

I have to admit that I may have shown my cards a bit early with my argument here, but to me James and Paul are arguing the same thing in different directions. James begins with works and sees in work the fulfillment of faith while Paul starts with faith and sees works as an outpouring of faith into our life. More than that, both see in the same story the proof of their points. If you sat the two together they would probably argue that the other person was focusing on the wrong part of the equation, but taken together it is hard to see them as arguing anything significantly different from one another.

            That makes up a lot of our modern discussion of faith and works. We are so adamant that faith alone saves us that we forget to remind people that real faith manifests in obvious signs of commitment to God and one another. We are so adamant in our commitment to works that we forget to develop spiritually, we see the how and the what of our faith but don’t delve into the why and who. On one side of the equation is theologizing moralism and the other practicality at the expense of relationship. Faith and works become two sides of a rope being pulled back and forth, rather than the two sides of a single coin which we call “sanctification.”

            We in the Methodist Church are born out of Pietist Protestantism. As Pietists we believe in works of mercy and scripture study in community being the foundation of our daily faith life. As Protestants we emphasize the Lutheran tendency toward radical faith which removes all our sin. The two seeming contradictions manifest in a tradition that often goes to extremes. Sometimes we claim God’s grace such that we become useless toward those in need, trying to save their souls while actively ignoring or increasing their bodily needs. Other times we become so practical that the Church becomes a political action group or a public works project without any care of bringing people into the community of God, to let them know the salvation which Christ brings.

            I’ll be honest in my own limitations. I am a very works oriented Christian. I’m type A, and so it is in my nature to look for ways I can take action in a situation. I cannot easily see God’s gift of free grace in my life, and so I feel the need to be useful. I strive to feed all the people I can, to pray for all the people I can, to serve in definite ways whenever and however I can. Part of that is a passion God has placed on my heart, but part of it is also an insecurity deep within me.

I relate to John Wesley, who despite all the faith he had demonstrated throughout his life and all the good he did, still wrote in desperation to his brother Charles, “In one of my last [letters] I was saying that I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery), I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed, in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore I am only an honest heathen…”[1] John had let the works God had placed on his heart to perform become an impossible standard, and so he needed frequently to drink from the fountain of God’s grace which Paul offered – of salvation regardless of works.

            Others may find a different problem. Unmotivated to do good, we might need to visit James more often and be reminded that if we are not becoming better people through our faith in God then we must question if we are really taking our faith seriously. If we believe Christ lived and died to free us from sin, why are we still clinging to it? If we claim to love our neighbor, why are we calling the cops on them for hanging around on the street rather than helping them to find food and shelter?

            In North View, we are a Church that can grow in regard to faith and works. We must devote ourselves more to accepting that God is the source of our salvation. We must proclaim that truth to all who will hear it, not because it makes us a lick better than anyone outside these walls, but precisely because we are on equal footing with them. Likewise, we must not be satisfied with our existing aid ministries. Food Pantry is great, Community Supper is fantastic, but more people need to get involved with them and if not with them then with other ministries. They do not even have to be explicitly tied to this building, so long as they accomplish the mission of God’s kingdom!

            Works and Faith, salvation is found not in one or the other, but in the meeting of the two. Faith is, at the end of all things, the one thing needful, but a faith that does not produce works is not possible. Thus, we are called by scripture to look to the example of people like Abraham and see, not a proof for our particular argument, but a challenge to push us from one extreme of one or another toward a more authentic and Christ-like way of life. Jesus lived a life that was begun and ended because of faith, but that faith was manifested in obedience and service and love and all manner of other actions that were proven through his resurrection.

            Today when we take the bread and juice we have gathered up, we receive God’s grace – if we have faith. Christ invites all people who are willing to repent of their sin, to live in peace with one another, and who love God. If you are willing to take on those charges, if you do love God in your heart, if you have faith in the saving work of Christ, then this meal is fuel for the road ahead. It is a foretaste of Heaven, a reminder we are not alone in the road ahead. It is something we do not need to work for, it is free to all of us gathered here, a sign of the salvation freely given to us by God through faith. Let it sustain your body for the work that that faith frees us to partake in, the joyful obedience we can enjoy because of God’s work in our life.

            If today you doubt you have done enough for God to love you, cast that thought aside. Christ died for you before you even knew any alternative. If today you feel that you have aimlessly sat at the same place in your faith for far too long, come to God and find the work prepared for you to take up from before the creation of the earth. God has given us James and Paul, Works and Faith, so that all may enjoy the Kingdom and all may know what it is to become like Christ in the here and now. Seize what God is offering and find in it a more excellent way of living. – Amen.

[1] Admittedly this letter is hard to find outside of other people referencing it (the best available online copy no longer being at a live-link.) However, this quote can be found with a reliable commentary upon it in Fred Sanders “Shorthand Despair, Shorthand Hope.” In Scriptorium Daily. Available at: https://scriptoriumdaily.com/shorthand-despair-hope/

Money Matter – 01/30/2022

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Corinthians 9

Now it is not necessary for me to write you about the ministry to the saints, for I know your eagerness, which is the subject of my boasting about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year; and your zeal has stirred up most of them. But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you may not prove to have been empty in this case, so that you may be ready, as I said you would be; otherwise, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated—to say nothing of you—in this undertaking. So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you, and arrange in advance for this bountiful gift that you have promised, so that it may be ready as a voluntary gift and not as an extortion.

The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written,

“He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.”

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Sermon Text

            So, how about money? I know that there is no topic more beloved in all the Church. Money is the sort of thing that we all get very touchy about. Ecclesiastes tells us that “money meets every need,” and I struggle to argue against that. At least in terms of our survival, we are able to eat and drink and find shelter because of the money which we have. That money may come from work, it may come from social security, it may come from a retirement fund that we have set aside. No matter the source, it is money that sustains our physical well-being in life. We all need it, we all use it, and to a certain extent most of us wouldn’t mind a little bit more of it.

There are people in this room of course who remember a time when money was not the end all and be all for subsistence. Doctors used to take payment in produce as often as they would take it in cash. I know ministers who can remember getting chickens as an honorarium for doing a person’s wedding. For some of us, life was not always about dollars and cents. There have always been a need to have money of some kind, but it seems at least anecdotally that our current total dependence upon income for survival is a product of modernity – a natural consequence of labor being tied so specifically to capital. The money we make is the food we eat and it can be hard to scare up either.

We live in a partial food desert here in Clarksburg. While Price Cutters and a few dollar stores remain open in parts of downtown, the larger grocery stores are in Nutter Fort and on Emily Drive. This means that, if you do not have a car, you cannot reliably get food from the store. Access to food is one of the primary ways a person can find any security in life, and it is access to security that allows a person to move on and flourish beyond mere survival. For many in our community, it is impossible to imagine finding consistent housing or jobs that allow for upward mobility because day to day you have to struggle even to get somewhere to buy food for your family.

Jobs are another difficult thing to track down right now. All of us have seen signs all over advertising positions available, so it might be strange to hear me say that work is hard to find. Firstly, we return to the problem that without consistent transportation, it can be hard to keep a job. No car? Then you cannot work anywhere but downtown. No clothes appropriate for the work? Better hope a clothing closet has the right clothes in the right size. Even if you can find a way to work and the uniform or outfit you need to work at that job, not every sign is truthful in the wages and conditions they are offering. Many people have applied in recent months only to find that the offers of full benefits and a living wage are contingent on a contract of several years, and that they will only be given it if they struggle through a prohibitively lower wage,

In a time where costs are going up constantly – largely from a refusal by companies to hire workers for anything other than decades old wages, from international oil cabals refusing to release from their reserves, and from a boom of post-2020 consumption where demand is higher than ever even as supply stagnates – money is more precious than ever. Everyone eyeballs each other with suspicion these days. Every action is seen as an attack on livelihood or on the supply chain. In the midst of an abundant life, we all find ourselves tightening the hold on our purse strings. We are all of us worried about being able to afford what we need, but also, I think, concerned of losing a standard of living which we are accustomed to.

With rare exception, I think most of us in this room have more than we need to survive. We are blessed with the ability to have comforts, to have opportunities for leisure, for hobbies, for entertainment for its own sake. We are blessed with more than we could ever need and cursed with a desire for more than we could ever truly possess. We plan out our lives based on our consumption. We are always looking at out accounts to see when things go in and go out, saving for big expenditures and trips and purchases – some of the more exhaustively detailed of us doing so on spreadsheets. Yet, for many of us the various costs of life do not actually infringe on those core and necessary expenses – we do not have to worry about food on the table, clothes on our back, or heat in our houses.

The money that we have is only ours insomuch as it provides for our essential needs. Every dollar beyond what we need to survive becomes increasingly dangerous for us to hold onto. Scripture is clear that attachment to money ultimately destroys a person. Christ went so far to say that money was one of the chief “Gods” that competed for people’s attention. (Matt. 6:24) You can serve God, or money, but never both. While I do not think that it is wrong for people to make money, or for people to set aside money to be comfortable or to invest in things they enjoy, I do think that we need to think of our money in terms of what it can be best used for, and not simply what we would like it to go to.

When we receive our money, the first person to have any hand in it is usually the tax man. Some money is withheld before it crosses our hands, thrown into the pot to be paid out to current social security recipients and to other government programs. Then once a year, or quarterly depending on how you pay, we send still more money off to the IRS. With all that money gone, we must subtract from our income our food, our utilities, our clothing, and all other necessary expenditures. Then with what is left, any number of things can happen. What we must always be intentional about is giving our money to those who need it and prioritizing helping people even above and beyond prioritizing our own pet comforts and entertainment.

If you think that here is where I’m going to pitch giving to the Church, think again! Obviously, we need contributions from our members to keep moving forward as a congregation. We do not receive money from anyone but the members of this church and the occasional grant to fund our operations. The return of our egg fundraiser this year will fill a gap or two, but the expenses of this church are paid primarily through the generosity of this congregation. I will speak more to that before our time together is done.

No, outside of funding the operations of the Church, I encourage people to discern how they give their money based on their own individual calling. I stive to give about 15% of my income to charity in a normal year. I confess that this past year, due to one of my previous appointments bungling my tax documents, I have been unable to do that as I paid two and a half years of taxes in a single year (I do not recommend this.) However, that is something that I am very intentional about normally. Every month I choose a charity I would like to give to, or if I know someone with a Go-fund-me I might give to that. I lift this up, not to say that I am some saint for having this model of giving, but just to say that giving works best when we are intentional about doing it. We need to plan to give, not just waiting for a whim to lead us to it.

I’ve seen the generosity of this congregation in action. We have given Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners to people in need, we have provided breakfast to the warming shelter, we have raised money from love offerings to help people in need – we are a people who are unafraid to give to a cause when it presents itself. The charge laid upon us then is not that we should become givers, no one here is not already giving to worthy causes, but that we grow better at giving through intentional steps to give more regularly and more liberally. Open Heart Ministries, the United Way of Harrison County, Homes for Harrison, and many more are in need of financial help to keep their work going and to expand it further than it has ever been. Our community dinner, funded by the congregation but also often by generosity of its organizer, would benefit I think from regular contributions, and I know our pantry would.

I am equally, if not more concerned with giving beyond the walls of this church as I am with anyone’s tithe. We need support, as I said it is what keeps the lights on, it is what pays me, and it is what allows us to fix our building up and expand our ministries above and beyond what they have been, even in the past. We passed out our budget with our Newsletter last month, and anyone who read that will know that we are not doing anything reckless or extravagant with the funds we receive. With the egg sale later this year, we hope to get a little more income than we might otherwise. However, I believe in planning our budget based on giving, and planning fundraisers as things that allow us to expand our ministries beyond our current projections,

For us to meet our budget, something we have not done since the pandemic began, we need to increase giving. Let me be perfectly frank about that. We’ve managed to keep the lights on the past two years, but beyond that we cannot expect any growth in programs as long as we are only able to survive. Add into that the need to put a new roof on this building, to repoint the outside bricks, to finish all our interior work. It is going to be an expensive year. Last year we would have required $3,098.36 a week to meet our budget, this year with the cuts we were able to make that number drops to $2,792.42.

Thirty people giving one hundred dollars a week, would cover our budget completely. Is it realistic to imagine that is possible? Maybe. What I encourage us all to do is to take a moment as we begin compiling our documents for taxes and calculate out what a tithe would look like for your household, do it before or after taxes I do not feel strongly either way. Then calculate what that looks like weekly or monthly. That is the aspiration we all should have, to give that money. Some months it might not work, because life happens and unexpected expenses creep in. However, those of us who are able to give more, by giving that full amount, will make up for those who are unable to. If only we commit to that regular act of giving.

I am someone who usually says, “We,” in preaching because if I have something to say to you all I probably need to hear it myself. My salary is public knowledge to you all, and so the math I’m about to do is something you could do yourself, but I want to be perfectly transparent as I do it. My salary is $40,000, when you subtract the amount that goes to pension and that goes to health insurance that leaves me with $35,568.84 of income that physically crosses my hand. Move the decimal one place to get my tithe amount and that would be $3,556.88, divide that by twelve and my monthly contribution to this congregation becomes $296.41, but we’ll round that up to an even $300.

Today I have that amount here but going forward I am going to do this giving through our online platform. By using tithe.ly, I can give a monthly amount that will be taken out automatically from my bank account – that will make sure that I don’t forget, something I’m liable to do. I recommend that those who want to be more consistent with their giving think about using tithe.ly, it makes life a lot easier. I’ll help anyone set up their giving through it that wants to. We are in this together, and now that I am square with Mr. Tax-man, I’m going to be giving alongside you all to make sure that we make our goals to fund this church’s operations and its ministries.

The goal, as Paul lays out in his letter to the Corinthians, is not that we force people to give, but that we all are willing to invest in one another. We invest in our community, the people in need all around us. We invest in our Church, the place we organize our ministries and recharge the faithful to go out and work. We invest in all aspects of our life, cutting away the fat from our life to make sure that those in need can live in the same comfort we have accepted as the default for our own life. Maybe it means we have one less trip, or that I buy one less new release for the Switch, but if it means this church keeps running and the hungry are fed, I think that might just be worth it. – Amen.

The Household of God – 01/23/22

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Acts 2: 43-47

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Sermon Text

This week and next week we resolve to do something that is essential, but extremely difficult. That is, we are going to talk about what the Church could be and how we can help to take that potential and make it a reality. In the modern parlance of organizational planning and leadership this first step that we are taking this week is called “Casting Vision,” and it is integral to any initiative that wants to exist beyond the immediate present into the future. When we fail to project what we would like to be, we sometimes fail to meet even our present expectations for ourself, and so we must keep the banner high in front of us of what we could become.

In my mind, few images of the Church are more powerful than the one given in the scripture we read a moment ago. The apostles, full of the Holy Spirit, are at work among the people – healing, preaching, and bringing people out of all manner of oppression. The people gather together and meet one another’s needs, selling their possessions in order to make sure no one goes hungry within their community. The people go beyond providing food and shelter for one another, they meet together in the Temple, in their private homes, they sit at the table and talk and pray and learn. They add more people to the community of the faith with every passing day, they make the Kingdom of God visible to anyone who is willing to look for it.

The Church can see its duty on the earth in those general categories which are expressed in this scripture. We are people who speak to and demonstrate God’s glory. We do this in testimony, we do this in prayer ministries, and we do this through attending to the sacraments. We are people who care for one another – we do this through feeding ministries, through clothing those in need, through caring for the material needs of anyone and everyone who we meet. We are people who meet together and who share our lives. We are people who grow the community of the faith beyond those presently with us to include all we possibly can.

There was a movement in the United Methodist Church to define these ministries in the general terms of Nurture, Outreach, and Witness. N.O.W. While we often joke about the many committees which we as Methodists form, there is some sense to appointing people who spend all their time envisioning and reviewing how we meet expectations, or fail to meet expectations, in these fields. We need to reflect on our conduct frequently, not just as individuals, but as a corporate body. The individual Christian must work toward perfection and alongside them the community of the faithful must strive to be more perfect together. We can only truly flourish as a congregation when we work with one accord, so that even when we fuss and fight, we do so in service of the same goal – the glory and mission of Jesus Christ.

Even beyond individual congregations, the wider Church is beholden to coming together to achieve its vision for the world. Just this past year we have seen ourselves reaching out to the Methodist Parish, one of our members serves as the president of that group. I am a member of the Homeless Collaborative. Our congregation is connected to many others through formal and informal means. Saint James, Emmanuel Baptist, Duff Street and Stealey, St Mark’s, and all others who gather under the banner of Christ’s salvific work are all part of the same body we are. We gather in this building, we cast a vision for what God is calling us to do. We then gather with the wider bodies of the Church, in the UMC or otherwise, to see how God is calling us all to come together in service to the Gospel.

In our own Wesleyan circles we call this, “Connectionalism,” but I prefer to think of it in Biblical terms. We are all of us striving for κοινωνια (Koinonia,) or “Communion.” It means a gathering of people on one level and it also means to share on another. Specifically, it is often used in the context of the Church to describe the complete unity of God’s people. The people of God held all things in common, giving to each according to their need, they lived as one body with many members.

The unity of the Church is a precious thing, and it has been at risk since those first 120 disciples gathered in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem. There have always been those who want to put themselves first or those who get tangled up with one idea over and above the general call which is on us all. For many reasons, legitimate and illegitimate, the Church can find itself faced with fracture and schism. However, one of the best ways to maintain a sense of community to be frank in our conversation with one another, and to be constantly taking stock of where we are and where we are going. Transparency and clarity allow us to keep moving without misunderstandings causing unnecessary friction.

When I came here in July of last year, I saw immediately that this was a Church that was determined to do work. The ministries that already existed were vibrant and there was a steady undercurrent from those I spoke to that desired to keep expanding the work we were doing in new directions. There were and are substantial obstacles, there is much to build back up and much to build from the ground, but there is a desire to do, and where there is such a desire the Spirit can and will lead us to the actions we have to undertake to see them done. This Church is alive and well, and while I have heard stories of a golden age in the past that outshone our present reality, I personally see much more potential in what is to come than in what was.

You see, the general pattern of the Church right now is in contraction. Congregations are shrinking as people move to larger cities and as older generations go on to glory. There are less young people staying in the Church and fewer still being raised in the Church. The Church as the default social structure a person is part of is a thing of the past. The Church therefore must seek to chase after that essential spark it had in its earliest days – when it was an innovative and welcoming place, born out of nothing but the Spirit working among people who wanted to see God’s will done in the world.

We are at an advantage too. We have the entire history of the Church behind us to learn from even as we pave the way into the future. We can see the dangers that came from getting too buddy buddy with power. We can see the way that schism begets schism, one denomination splintering again and again until it is a small sliver of people with overly-specific doctrine and prohibitively stringent membership criterion. We have seen the rise and fall of ministries and movements and stand with that entire heritage at our disposal. We have all the past to learn from and all of eternity to look forward to when we plan out the ministries of the Church.

I want to share with you now what I see this Church doing in the next few years. I see us becoming more connected to one another, more intentional about the way we relate information and conduct business. We will have committee meetings at minimum once a quarter. Those committees will draft minutes and reports which will be published for the larger church to see the ways that the ministries of this church are being conducted. We will join closer to our neighboring churches and their ministries. Regardless of denomination or locality, we will see each other as siblings and co-laborers seeking the same good – the salvation in physical and spiritual terms of all people in Clarksburg.

We as a congregation will expand the ways we care for one another. We will be more intentional in offering times to gather to pray and study scripture. We will celebrate the highs of our lives and mourn the lows. We will welcome children into our pews and we will find ways to engage people of all ages in meaningful ways. We will become a community that attests to the glory of God, that serves the needs of all who pass through our doors, and that makes people feel like they have found a true family in the people of this congregation. We will become a community, a Koinonia, led by the Spirit wherever we need to go.

Now, none of what I have said is going to be simple. We are going to have to take my pastoral vision and see how it builds off of existing vision here in the congregation. The reality of our Methodist system is that I could disappear at any time, moved to another congregation as the Spirit guides the cabinet to decide. The initiatives and the vision of this Church cannot just be the things that I see or want, it must begin and end with the vision of you all gathered here. You will be in these pews long after I am gone, and you will carry on the work of the Spirit for generations to come here in North View.

We are going to be spending the next few months digging in deep, we will be devoting ourselves to really understanding what our community needs and how we have been called to meet those needs. With the full support of one another, our Parish, our Conference, and all the body of Christ, we will go on to achieve God’s will here in Clarksburg, in West Virginia, wherever we are able to reach out and act. I hope that you all will be willing to embark on this journey, because it is not always going to be simple or easy. Sometimes we’ll probably quite honestly get well and truly upset with one another if we do it right. Still, it will be worth it to take the trip forward.

Next week, we are going to go beyond vision to talk the hard and fast numbers behind our operations. That is right, we’re going to be talking about money and the ways its spent. I know that that is always a favorite in churches, but we gotta talk about it at some point. We’ll be honest and direct as we delve into the nuts and bolts. Till then, join me in letting God write the dreams of this congregation, and trust that God will give us the means to get there. – Amen.

A Worthy Sacrifice – 01/16/2022

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Amos 5: 18-24

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Sermon Text

Tomorrow we mark, on our secular calendars, the work of a man who was committed to justice for all people. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a minister like his father before him. His father had changed his own name, and that of his son from Michael to Martin Luther in honor of the reformer who, to him, reflected resistance to the evils of the world no matter the cost. The Kings were both ministers, tending to their flocks, but they also cast their eye beyond the needs of the local church to the needs of the culture in which their flock lived. It was not enough to offer pastoral care to people grieving under the weight of oppression, it was necessary to work to remove that oppression from their life. King was a diligent participant in the Civil Rights Movement, an advocate for the abolition of people of color from the tyranny of the Jim Crow South, and from any and all discrimination.

Growing up, we learned about Rev. Dr. King in school. Some of you here might remember the news covering his marches and speeches as they happened. Yet, most people who cover his work do so as though he was merely a secular thinker, an offshoot of the enlightenment that was bringing social change through political action. But Rev. King was not just that, his political advocacy was a ministry in itself. His fight for the rights of all people was rooted in his Biblical convictions about human dignity, and his overwhelming desire was to see God’s glory reflected in the conduct that one person showed another, regardless of appearance, circumstances of birth, or country of origin.

            This mission worked against centuries of human conflict, but especially in the United States. It would be hard to deny that there has always been a tendency for people to fight amongst themselves and against those they write off as members of out-groups. The first thing humanity did outside of the Garden was to kill – Cain slaying Abel out of jealousy.

            Despite what we may think, our modern conflicts are different from the forms of conflict which were experienced in antiquity. While it would not be fair to say there were never ideological conflicts in the ancient world, far more battles were fought of resources than they were for ideas. As empires developed more distinct cultures and exclusionary ideas of in and out groups, conflicts rooted in issues outside of the need to survive became more common. I admit this simplifies human history a great deal, but I am willing to make this sort of statement generally if not specifically.

            The key moment that shaped our modern world in terms of how we formulate ideas like “race” and “ethnicity,” those key places where we choose to favor or discriminate against others, or worse yet to plot violence, was the expansion of European powers into the Americas and into the African Continent. The discovery of the “New World,” led to the enslavement of local populations by Spanish colonizers. Christopher Columbus, governor of Barbados was so cruel in his governing of the colony that a monk reported him to the Spanish Throne and he was repatriated to Spain to stand trial for “tyranny.”[1]

            At the same time, German activity in Africa and on the European continent began to form the first concepts of “race,” as an essential quality of a person. While there had always been general categories of people, usually based on ethnic and cultural groups, the Dutch were the first to make a science of racism.[2] They began to rank the races, the Nordic peoples were the top of the great chain of creation, and as skin got darker and culture became less Germanic, the dignity of people eroded along with it. The Dutch influence would spread to other imperial powers and before too long, a concept of racial superiority undergirded much of European activity in the world.

            Again, I am simplifying the story a little bit, drawing from writers and historians who are infinitely better versed in the subject than I am. However, when we look at the current conflicts in the United States, indeed in any former colonial power, we have to understand that there was a very particular mishmash of philosophic ideas that led to where we are. Slavery existed throughout human history, but chattel slavery and the triangle trade were the first to enslave people exclusively by the criteria of race and to regard the enslaved as having no rights except which were given to them by their “owners.” The abolition of enslaved people in the United States after the Civil War did not cease the problems we had inherited from this mindset, shifting the problem over to segregation, Jim Crow laws, and civilian violence against people of color –  more properly described as lynchings.

            The Church, sadly, through all of this was a supporter of the popular perspective that the enslaved, and more generally people of color, were lesser than white free persons. John Wesley was an outspoken critic of this perspective in the Church, arguing that all people – regardless of race or nation – had equal dignity under God and demanded the end of slavery wherever it was practiced. American Methodists, after the Revolutionary War, buckled to the demands of influential slaveholders, allowing the practice among its members. It was only after a Bishop refused to manumit his slaves that the American Methodist Episcopal Church stood up in any capacity for the enslaved as an institution. The Methodist Episcopal Church split, the North rejecting slavery in all forms, the South insisting it was a right. This happened only a few years before a war would be waged over the same principles.

            The Northern Methodists were not much better than the Southern ones. They joined in with the opinions of people like then President Abraham Lincoln, arguing that people of color could never live among whites as equals. They were some of the staunchest advocates for Liberia, seeking to remove people of color from their midst rather than seeking true peace. It is because of this failure to see all people as equal that prominent figures like Frederick Douglass left the Methodist Church, and that Bishop Richard Allen separated from the Church to form his own denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

            Even after the Northern and Southern Methodist communions came together again in the 1920s they did so as a segregated body. Black Methodists were part of their own conference, the “Central Conference,” distinct yet connected to the wider Methodist General Conference. This term, it should be said, is still used for any Methodist Conference outside the United States. It was only in the merger of 1968, when the Evangelical United Brethren joined the Methodist Church, that the Church formerly integrated – and only then because the wider culture was now accepting of the idea. The Church, the champion of God’s justice, has often failed to uphold its high calling.

            I could talk about a dozen more denomination who faced similar troubles. I could also point to the persistent drum beat underneath the “civilized” veneer which the Church had put on in its tolerance and support of oppression. The constant beat of the drum of justice. There were always the abolitionists, always those fighting for integration in every aspect of life, always those rejecting any definition of a people that denied them being made in the image of God. These people were the ones who defied the Spirit of the Time, who prove that those who lived before us were not above reproach, that showed that morality is more timeless than we might think.

            It is in that tradition of justice workers that our opening subject comes into view. Rev. King was one of those people who fought for Justice no matter the cost. He was imprisoned multiple times, he was written off as a rabble rouser, accused of starting riots, and would ultimately go on to be murdered for the work he did. In fact, it is one of the letters he wrote from jail which makes the above deluge of history necessary. In King’s Letters from a Birmingham Jail, he lays out the framework he uses to plan his political actions. More than that though, he names the most dangerous force working against his ministry. It is not in the racist mobs, not in the Klu Klux Klan, but in the white moderate Christian, that King sees the most danger for America.

            As I mentioned a moment ago, King was often accused of causing unnecessary trouble. His methods disrupted public transportation, they prevented people from going about daily life, they forced people to see and hear the cries of those in need around them. These disruptions are at the root of protest – a protest that does not inconvenience people has no teeth, it does nothing other than make the people protesting feel good about themselves without actually causing any changes in the world around them. Yet, people insisted King was wrong to disrupt, wrong to rock the boat, wrong to speak up because everything would get better if they only waited.

            Yet, as King pointed out, there was never a time that people of color would get their fair share unless they made a fuss. To quotes him directly, and I use his exact words so excuse the antiquated language:

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.”[3]

            The United States is a place of untold potential, it is a place of abundance, and it is a place that we are all here proud to be a part of. Yet, we cannot deny the legacy which we all carry with us. While we are not responsible for the sins of our ancestors or for the sins that led to the unfair systems that live on into today, we are responsible to do are part to help break every chain that keeps people from living a full life. There is still prevalent racism in this country. There are still people discriminated against, bullied, and killed because of the color of their skin. Until such a day where we erase any image of humanity that denies the image of God from our hearts and minds, we will always find ourselves guilty – not of the sins of our fathers, but of our own inaction.

            Our scripture today is one of my favorites because it opens with a powerful warning to God’s people. “Woe to you who seek the Day of the Lord!” The day that God is coming to set everything right, the day when all wickedness is cast down and the righteous uplifted. “Woe to you!” Because we are unrepentant in our wanderings away from God, unrepentant in our support of injustice, unrepentant in our stopping up our ears to our neighbors. “Woe to you!” because we cannot see that God does not want prim and proper people respecting the status quo, but a community that is willing to stand up for the least of these, even when they look nothing like us.

            The sacrifice we offer to God, in faith and in prayer and in ministry, is a sacrifice of our own feelings of superiority and apathy. Superiority that makes us doubt the intentions of anyone outside ourselves, and apathy that makes us unwilling to help anyone who is not directly tied to our own interests. God forgive us of our inaction and God free us from the brokenness which has plagued this nation from its inception. Let every person be as a sibling to us, let every barrier we erect between one another be cast down, and let love be the banner we are willing to fight for the rights of all people under. Let us see justice roll like water, and righteous flow like a stream. – Amen.

[1] Giles Tremlett. “Lost Document Reveals Columbus as Tyrant of the Caribbean.” In Madrid. Reprinted in The Guardian.7 Aug. 2005.  Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/07/books.spain

[2] Again, this is a simplification of a very complex dynamic, but more information on this can be found in.
Josiah Young. Dogged Resistance in the Veil. (Norcross, Georgia: Trinity Press International. 2003)

[3] Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from Birmingham Jail. August 1963. Available at: https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf

Adoration – Epiphany 2022

/ John Langenstein / 1 Comment

Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Sermon Text

Epiphany is one of my favorite holidays of the Church. We celebrate the moment when people outside of the immediate path of Jesus’s entry into the world come to acknowledge the incarnation of God on earth. The magi make their long journey from the East and come into Judea. The brief portrait we are given of that journey is that they followed a star, came to the Herodian palace, and from there found their way to Bethlehem. It was in Bethlehem that they found the Christ. This was not immediately after Jesus was born, as we often depict it, but probably a few years later. Jesus was not an infant, but a toddler, perhaps even walking, by the time these strange wanderers arrived.

The title given to these visitors is “Magi,” or singularly, each one was a “Magus.” This term is where we derive our modern word “Magician.” While this term could indicate any number of people, from court wizards to street entertainers, it is generally understood that these Magi were likely tied to Persia and its mystical traditions. This would not be idle sorcery but was an official position similar to that of a priest. These would be doctors and astronomers, soothsayers, and miracle workers. The people, far removed from Judea and its ancient Israelite religion, were among the first to discern that a savior was coming into the world.

The fact that these travelers were not Jewish revealed a truth about Jesus that even his followers would not understand until some time after Jesus’s resurrection. This truth was that God was not coming to save one people alone but was beginning work that would eventually bring the entire world into the Kingdom of Heaven. The first to proclaim the gospel were a few shepherds in Bethlehem, but the first Gentiles to be welcomed in were these travelers from far outside the Judea’s boundaries. We never get the full story of their life, what this visit ultimately meant to them, but it cannot be denied that they left an impression that we celebrate to this day.

The exact number of people who came to give Jesus gifts is not given in the Gospel. Not only do we not know the number of Magi present, but we do not know who they brought with them. A group of officials like this would probably have a full entourage trailing behind them. Retainers, servants, armed guards, you name it, they would have brought it. This huge group would have snaked their way across the ancient highways of the world, leaving Persia and coming into the Levant. When they arrived in Jerusalem it would have been the talk of the town for weeks. “Remember when those dignitaries came through! They were following some star apparently! Who’d have thought?!”

Their arrival was not announced ahead of actually entering the city, and so it did not take long for the King to hear what was going on in the city. Herod the Great, the ruling monarch, had stayed on the throne through a delicate dance of placating Roman power and appealing to his Jewish subjects. He himself was Idumean, or to put in Old Testament terms, he was an Edomite. This group had a consistent rivalry with Judea before the Babylonian Exile, and so many would have been suspicious of him when he took to the throne. He tried to secure some favor with the people by rebuilding the Temple, but to fund it he pillaged the tombs of King David and Solomon. He was a ruthless man, and he had several family members killed to maintain his power.

So, when these foreign dignitaries arrive telling him that a new King has been born in Judea, Herod would instantly see this as a threat. A foreign power was acknowledging someone other than himself as the legitimate power in his Kingdom. Herod spoke sweetly to the visiting Magi, but he was already plotting murder the moment he heard a threat was brewing just a little south of his capital city. He sent them off with a few kind words and the promise that, if they found the child, he would follow behind and worship him also.

It is this visceral political drama that sets the stage for the Magi to give their gifts to Jesus. This small child receives gold and frankincense and myrrh. While these are sometimes written off as symbolic gestures – Gold for a king, incense for a God, and myrrh for a burial – it is more likely that these were purely practical gifts. Gold allowed the family to survive the uncertain times ahead, the incense would be used in the home and for worship, and myrrh could be used both religiously and medicinally for any number of purposes. The three gifts given were not meant to be symbolic portents of Jesus’s future, but a present provision for his life in the moment.

When the Magi left, they were warned not to go back to Herod. It would not have taken the King long to realize that they had caught wise to his plans. Not long after the Magi are warned, Joseph and Mary would also be warned of Herod’s plans. The family would suddenly become refugees, fleeing into Egypt like Abraham and countless others before them. Herod would follow behind, killing many innocents in the name of his own claims to power. A hollow action for a seventy-year-old man who would die only a year or so later.

The epiphany captures such highs and lows of humanity. The pure expression of adoration from the Magi is contrasted by the darkness of Herod’s murderous rage. When we look at these three statues over here, we should see the weight they carry. They are the first to acknowledge the divinity of Christ outside Judea, but they unwittingly bring death to Bethlehem in their visitation. The Kingdom of God is breaking out in the most unexpected places, and the powers that be are unhappy to see that they are not included in that estimation. God is shaking things up and whenever there is a shake up, those with everything to lose are usually the first ones to start fussing over what comes next.

In our own lives we are constantly given the choice between responding to Jesus like the Magi or like Herod. If we act like Magi, then we see Jesus appearing among the unlikely people of the world and rejoice. We seek out God in the places we do not expect to find God – the poor, the oppressed, those with no money or power in the world. Jesus is not hiding in the halls of congress or the throne rooms of Kings, Jesus is in the presence of all the poor and powerless of the earth.

We could also respond to Jesus like Herod did, seeing Jesus as a threat. To do this is to define the Kingdom of God in our own terms. Jesus is found among those who act the way we would like them to. Those with money and power and influence that we can benefit from are welcomed in, while the poor are left out in the cold. We define neighbor as those, not who share the world with us, but who offer opportunity to us. The Kingdom of God, as we imagine it in this vision of the world, would be a continuation of the World we currently live in. The rich get richer, the poor keep pulling on bootstraps that just get longer and longer, and no justice ever manifests but the cold indifference of a fallen world.

The Magi teach us what it is to adore Jesus. To come before the throne and truly offer up all that we are to a power beyond ourselves. These men who had everything in the world were willing to make an expensive journey, to cover hundreds of miles with hundreds of people, all so that they could worship the God they had known was being born into the world. As difficult as it was to make the journey, the duty they held toward God was enough to keep them pushing forward. The gifts they gave were what saw Jesus and his family through their time in Egypt, they were a provision for the needy family as they fled over borders to avoid the dangerous of their homeland.

The Kingdom of God is still bursting into life all around us. For all of us here there are opportunities for us to join in the adoration of Christ or to join in the glorification and continuation of our own sinful ways. Do we want the world in its present broken form, or in the form that Jesus promises to us? I for one put my money on the King of Kings leading better than any leader that comes or goes in this world. Herod fought long and hard to take the throne, selling out his people to an oppressive empire whenever he could to stay there. Jesus gave up everything to live among his people, and even when they repaid his love with murder, he did not cease in advocating for them, rising up to prove even death could be overcome.

Epiphany is the day that the powerful laid down all they had to glorify the lowly child that had come to save them. Once a year, as Christmas fades away and we count the days till Lent, we take a moment to realize the stakes that were laid out for us at Christmas. This was not just a day to celebrate a birth or to welcome in Winter, Christmas is a season to count the cost of our salvation. The cost to the people of Bethlehem, to the Magi, to the Holy Couple, and most of all to God in Christ. We are saved for a terrible price, and that price needs to be lifted up and remembered.

Today, we adore the author of our salvation. Today we count up all that was given to see us freed from our sin. We all see in the revelation of God on earth something profound, and we see in this appearance of perfect holiness on earth the beginning of something we cannot even understand. The world of God, perfect and new, breaking out in the furthest corner of our world. God is bringing Heaven to Earth, let us come and worship the one who brings us into this new existence. – Amen.

All the Ordinances of God – 01/02/2022

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 31:9 –13

Then Moses wrote down this law, and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. Moses commanded them: “Every seventh year, in the scheduled year of remission, during the festival of booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people—men, women, and children, as well as the aliens residing in your towns—so that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and to observe diligently all the words of this law, and so that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.”

Sermon Text

 Today our service centers mainly around prayer. We commit ourselves on this first Sunday of the year to remember what it means to be a Christian. While it is our faith alone that saves us, we accept a great deal of responsibility in accepting the divine calling we have been offered. Regularly it helps for us to take time to intentionally remember all that God has set before us. Like the Israelites at Sinai, like those who celebrate Sukkot into today, we must recount the covenant we are part of and re-affirm our desire to be part of God’s kingdom.

Normally I would take ten or fifteen minutes for us to review our scripture and engage with it on a deeper level. Today, I want our covenant prayer to speak for itself. Written by John Wesley long ago, this service has been performed since then by many in the Wesleyan tradition. It is not scripture, and so is not essential to salvation. Yet, it is dripping with the truth of the Gospel, and our recitation today will cover a great deal of what God has done to set us on our path of righteousness.

If you have ever been a part of a service like this, rejoice in being able to once again recall all that God has done for us. If you have not been a part of this sort of service before, listen carefully and weigh carefully the burden of the faith which we all take on every day. Though far lighter than the burden of sin and death, it is not something to be taken lightly, and we should not commit today to something we will be unwilling to do tomorrow. Today, we reconfirm our love of God through the rejoining of our Covenant with God. Let us approach in joy and solemnity the altar of God which welcomes us all home. – Amen.

The Covenant Service Can be Found Here:
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/book-of-worship/covenant-renewal-service

God With Us – 12/26/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 1: 1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

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. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Sermon Text

            If you were told today that tomorrow there would be no Bibles left in the world, what scripture would you want to memorize? Is it John 3:16, short and sweet but clear in what it tells us about Christ? Or perhaps Matthew 25, less salvific, but more definite in explaining what is expected of us as Christians. There are plenty of good Psalms, maybe even the ten commandments, but how can we ever choose what we would want to save if all of scripture were to disappear tomorrow?

That question is probably more daunting than any of us are prepared to face. However, if we think of it from the opposite direction, we can see what life was like in the early Church. Jesus was born between six and four BCE, his ministry spanned from somewhere between twenty-seven and thirty-three CE. The letters of Paul were written not long after this, but the earliest Gospel would not be written until the year sixty-five or seventy – thirty years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. While some pre-Gospel texts probably existed, the bulk of correspondence among Christians would be word of mouth, small snippets memorized and recited or sung together.

The opening of John is one of these early fragments that was likely passed among the early Church. The community which gives us John, the Johannine epistles, and Revelation is markedly different from the other New Testament communities. They were mystical Christians, focusing as much on God’s mission on this earth as they did God’s divinity in Heaven. It is this community that gives us the first concrete understandings of the Trinity which is only hinted at in other Gospels and Epistles. Likewise, John is the one to wrestle with Christ’s dual nature – human and God all at once. This deeply reflective tradition is reflected in this hymn which we read a moment ago.

The opening question I gave you, which scripture you would choose to memorize if you had no Bible, is important to consider when you see something like today’s scripture. As long as this passage may seem to us to read all at once, it would not take much to memorize. From learning it, a person would be able to quickly state some of the essential points of the Christian faith. The eternal Word of God, who is God, came to be with humanity, taking on flesh and bringing light into the dark world. Though this arrival was heralded by a prophet, this God was rejected by the people he had created, cast away. Yet, those who did accept this God were given a new life, one that made them part of the household of God.

That’s not bad for a page or so of memorization. You may not be able to write a systematic theology with it, but it will get the Gospel out and ultimately that is better than any ten-cent word we might chase after otherwise. John gives us, as an introduction to his Gospel, a summary statement of what we can expect to find within it. More than that, his audience probably knew the hymn even if they had not heard any other part of this gospel. By opening his telling of Jesus’s life in this way, those who heard it would be more familiar with what followed. Think of how much better engaged we all have been since the worship team has steered me away from unknown opening hymns – when we come into worship with something familiar, we are better prepared to see the details within.

The key focus of this passage is that God became human. Throughout all the Johannine writings there is a constant return to the reality of Jesus’s humanity. While we today tend to accept Jesus as fully God and fully human, that was not always the case. Some people denied Jesus’s divinity, saying that he was God’s best creation, but not God in himself. Others denied Jesus’s humanity, the most extreme among them, the Docetists, insisting Jesus was a Spiritual presence rather than a physical one. A Holy Ghost pretending to be a human.

John may have been primarily concerned with letting people know that God really had become human in the person of Jesus, but he was equally concerned in letting people know that Jesus was not a distinct being from God. The riddle that opens the Gospel is something which carries the weight of all our faith. In the beginning, before anything had been created, there was the Word. The Word was with God, standing face to face with God. And that Word was, somehow simultaneously distinct and united, also the same God. The Greek of this passage is one of the first things which is used to teach new Biblical Language students how to differentiate parts of Grammar, and it is a handy verse to memorize for parties. (Ἐν αρχη ἠν ὁ Λογος και ὁ Λογος ἠν προς τον Θεον και Θεος ἠν ὁ Λογος. “In arche ain ha Logos kai ha Logos ain pros ton Theon kai ha Theos ain ha Logos”)

 To identify the Word as being God would mean nothing without the further development of the chapter, namely that that word dwelled among us, taking on full humanity. This God was not someone who just stood on high and cast a judgmental eye of the fallen world, but was willing to be rejected if it meant giving us another chance. Even though the incarnate Word had made all things, nothing accepted their participation in the world. Even the disciples, close as they were to God’s presence on earth, ran away when the going got rough – all but a single, devoted follower.

In the close of this opening hymn, we are given the final bit of information we need to understand what this Gospel is all about. This incarnate Word had a name, had a personality, had a person that could be met and talked to – Jesus Christ, the only Son, who has made God known to the world. As abstract as John sometimes can be, and as philosophical as this opening passage may seem, it all ties into a single earthly reality – Jesus walked this earth and Jesus was the image of the invisible God made manifest in our lives.

For the early Church, recitation of this hymn allowed them to keep the essentials close at hand. It isn’t very different from humming your favorite hymn or sing it when you want to engage with the truth of God directly. The prayer which I most frequently pray, and which I have brought up a few times since coming here is another example of this kind of rehearsing God’s truth. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” As short a prayer as that is, it hits the same points that John 1 does. Jesus is the Christ, the Lord of all. Jesus is the son of God, divine from before creation. Jesus is a savior, and I am in need of salvation.

The simplicity of our salvation is that there is no need for long complex explanations. They can come in handy, and when we get down into the particulars of any given issue we are bound to have more and more to talk about. Yet, even for long winded people like myself, the more we stray from the essential claims of our faith the more we open ourselves up to blunder into something we do not intend. I love a complex theological conundrum, I love to wax poetic about incarnational theology, but at the end of all things my love of making things complicated cannot get in the way of the simple truths of God.

The opening of John is poetry, perhaps to help it be more easily remembered, perhaps to simply attest to the beauty of God’s entrance into human life. The metaphorical and artistic aspects of this story are often treated as obfuscating of some of the plain truths of Jesus’s presence on earth, but I think the opposite is true. Art is how we engage with the plainest parts of our life. If you think to any part of your life, one of the key things that you’re going to think of alongside anything that happened is the songs you listened to while it happened. The movies we love, the paintings that speak to us, we engage with the world around us through art. How fitting then that John’s summary of the Gospel is a song sung for thousands of years.

As we continue on in the Christmas season, twelve days which spans two Sundays this year, we remember the fullness of God which chose to dwelt among us. The simple truth of our faith, expressed in just about a page, is that we do not worship someone who is far off and away from us, but up close and personal. Jesus could have stayed up in Heaven, or maybe even have come to earth as a king living among nobility. Instead, Jesus chose a normal life, more than that a hard life among the poor and downtrodden. God became human, and God became a poor human at that.

We carry with us the simple truth of Jesus’s presence on the earth. We do not need long complicated formulations to understand what it means for God to have come to us, we only need to acknowledge that God made that trip down to us. Why would God do this? To bring us closer to the divine presence we long ago threw away. We were no one’s family, but now God has made us part of God’s own family. That transformation, that unity which we are all invited to, that is the essence of our faith. When we acknowledge that God is with us, that God is here to save us, then the rest finds its way bit by bit.

This does not mean we cannot be intellectual, or that we cannot study hard both the scriptures and the world around us. It simply means that we do not need to complicate the world as we do so. We are not saved by the mental tap dances we put together, but simply by faith in Christ. As we enter a New Year, let us commit ourselves to love and service, to study of scripture and prayer in the Spirit. Let us proclaim the Gospel, accepting that we are not only qualified for the job, but perfect for the job. The truth is simple, God is here to save us, let us all tell that story simply, well, and often. – Amen.

Christmas Eve 2021

/ John Langenstein / 1 Comment

Luke 2: 1-20

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Sermon Text

The past four weeks we have been exploring, through our Sunday services, the various members of the Holy Family. The parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the Holy Couple themselves, Mary and Joseph. Today we gather on this cold winter evening to celebrate the final member of the Holy Family, the one that sanctifies all others mentioned and each of us gathered here today – our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The great drama of human history has finally met its main protagonist. God, the creator of all things and the author of every story, now has come to dwell among us as a human being. Born in a stable, laid in a food trough, the eternal Word of God now knows what it is to be cold, to be hungry, to feel the prick of straw bedding.

Christmas is the day we all take a moment to remember that the story of our salvation began with mundane pieces. A government official wants to collect more taxes, and so he calls for a census to be taken in order to determine exactly what amount he might begin taking in. A couple, unmarried and yet expecting a child, make their way from the small village of Nazareth to the slightly more cosmopolitan Bethlehem, as near to a suburb of Jerusalem as the ancient world could muster. There a child is born; there a mother falls asleep with her husband and child nearby. There, somehow against all odds, the salvation of all humanity was set in stone.

As with everything surrounding Christmas, we don’t know much about the night Jesus was born. We celebrate it on December 25th, but there are many reasons behind that, few of which have to do with Jesus’s actual birthdate. Some people do the math to say he was born in March, some others insist December makes equal historical sense. Yet, the actual date doesn’t much matter. While this day is fixed in our calendars, plenty of other important ones are not. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Vernal Equinox, and yet that day is still important to us as though it were the actual moment Jesus rose from the dead. In the same way, today is, to us, the day Jesus was born, because we celebrate it as such.

Today the walls between Heaven and Earth lose all meaning. God sits among us. The long separation between God and humanity is finally erased. God is a human being. The long wait for salvation is finally ended. God has come down to save us. Christmas is the celebration of love, manifested in the most fragile of forms. An infant, born into a world where not many children lived to even be named. A child named “Salvation,” a child named Jesus.

The story of those who brought Jesus into this world are simple stories. A couple who longed for a child finally having one. A couple due to be married when a surprise pregnancy threatens everything they thought they had known. A loving cousin who keeps the young girl safe, a gentle angel that assures that boy that he is doing the right thing in going on loving his fiancé and her unborn child. The set pieces, minus perhaps the angels involved, are not unlike something we might see right here in North View. God could have made a grand entry into the world, but God chose to make a much more gentle one.

A hundred million lessons are set out before us when we pick up this story. The importance of worship, the power of family, the significance of a mother’s love. Yet, if we have been paying attention to the past few weeks we have spent together, I hope we can see that the real lesson of Christmas is in the simplicity of it all. Normal people worked to bring salvation into the world, and that remains true for us today. It is not the work of politicians and kings and rich donors that brings about the Kingdom of God. It is the work of the everyday person, of the poor and the disgraced, the cast aside and the unhoused, the lowest of the low. God came down on Christmas and God, who was owed a chariot of gold, came down in rags.

Though in the distance, foreign magicians were making their way across Arabia to visit Jesus, the only witnesses that night were shepherds. Unwashed, uneducated, rough and tumble shepherds were the first to attest to the glory of God’s salvation. How strange it would have been to see them dancing in the streets singing the songs the angels had taught them. They pointed to a distant stable, perhaps attached to a house and perhaps set into a stone wall, and they insisted “God is in that manger, cradled next to his mother, and God is here to save us.” Lunatics, madmen, or perhaps the first people outside of Mary to bring the truth of Jesus into the world.

As brief as our time together tonight is, it is a reflection of that night long ago. Unassuming though that night was, unremarkable in any of its features except to those who knew what it brought. A light, furtive and small, bursting out in the darkness of a sin-sick world. A light, blazing truth through the lies that we had built up around ourselves. A light that flickered, and threatened to go out, but would not be snuffed out just yet. The light of Christ, the shining love of God on display for all to see.

The work begins, once we leave here, to make sure that that light is allowed to shine. It is a light spread not with cruel flames that cut through the world, but with the gentle smoldering of our hearts. Love is like a fire, that jumps between the embers within us, alighting and bringing yet more light into the world around us. The simple message of Advent is summarized in Christmas, that God is coming to be among us, and God is already here. So go out tonight, to be with family and friends, and go out tonight in the knowledge that salvation truly is here with us. Go forward and love the world, love each person like they are family and protect them, feed them, house them, however you can. Christ is born in Bethlehem; Christ lives among us. The glory of God now must cover the earth, and all the world proclaim the glory of our salvation. Today we celebrate a world that will never be the same. Today we say, Merry Christmas. – Amen.