Author: John Langenstein

A Tale of two Prefaces

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

“Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble.” – Sojourner Truth

Two prefaces are provided in modern editions of RBMW, the first from 1991 and the second from 2006. They reflect the difference that fifteen years can make in the world, but also fundamentally play upon the same concepts, almost perfectly in step with one another. We will discuss each in turn before evaluating them together.

1991

            Four years before I was born, the first preface was written. It highlights the usual plight of the authors. Men and women are being treated as equal in society. The preface cites the “rejection of a unique leadership role for men in marriage and in the church,” as the cause of significant controversy in Christendom. This arises from “new interpretations,” (emphasis theirs,) of Biblical texts. The preface highlights that “selfishness, irresponsibility, passivity, and abuse,” have made the traditional stance unpalatable to many. This is, we are told, a widespread issue.

            Here, we come to one of the most confusing aspects of this kind of writing. We are told, “the vast majority of evangelicals have not endorsed the evangelical feminist position.” Within conservative texts, you will often find that the problems they address are described simultaneously as having taken over the world because they are more appealing than tradition, and also that most people reject them because of some concept of “common sense.” Both are held up as true. Men and women, it is argued, know that it is wrong to be social equals, and yet they also rush to embrace egalitarianism. I think a lot of writing about issues does this, but in traditionalist literature, the need to be winning because of the common people and also being crushed by liberalism are often paired as simultaneous realities.

            The 1991 preface takes time to highlight that it is not written to simply bash feminism, it is meant to be a critique of the movement toward egalitarianism while also acknowledging that evangelical feminists have shown the ways traditional gender roles hurt women. From this the term “complementarity,” is coined – a vision to “correct the previous mistakes and avoid the opposite mistakes that come from the feminist blurring of God-given sexual distinctions.”

            The preface is clear that it wants an audience of both men and women. That women need to know they are “fully equal to men in status before God, and in importance to family and the church.” They also wish for them to see in complementarianism a route toward, “wholehearted affirmation to Biblically balances male leadership in the home and the church.” This is similar to the desire that men know, “women are fully equal to men in personhood, in importance, and in status before God,” but with an additional note. The authors wish for men to support women’s ministry, “without feeling that this will jeopardize his own unique leadership role as given by God.”

            This highlights another element of this movement. While men are treated as being naturally lifted up as leaders, the sacredness of their leadership, and more specifically its violation, is described in terms of “offense.” A woman ought not to “offend,” a man’s sense of leadership. This will pop up throughout our analysis, but it has always struck me as strange that a man’s feeling of being threatened by women in power is often given as evidence that there is an “unbiblical,” balance of power. We will address this more when the arguments are actually presented regarding this matter.

            The 1991 preface ends with the main authors (John Piper and Wayne Grudem,) thanking their wives.

2006

A portrait of doom is revealed in the opening pages of the 2006 preface. “A conservative backlash against radical feminism has reverberated through pop culture during the last twenty years; simultaneously, egalitarianism is now the cultural norm.” The movement for complementarianism is more popular than it ever was, but also losing its battle on every front.

This 2006 preface spends more time pointing to churches as the cause of the decay in “biblically defined roles in marriage, family and the church.” Ministers have embraced egalitarianism, and no one believes or teaches what the bible says men and women are meant to do. “Increasing numbers of men entering the ministry have little or no formal training, so they lack a thorough grasp of biblical teaching…”

The main audience of this text as moderate or conservative evangelicals is highlighted in the image of a minister presented in these opening pages. The leaders of the church have erred in believing the main purpose of the church is to “empower women to serve more broadly and visibly,” so long as they are not pastors or elders (administrators,) in the church. This violates the God given tasks of men and women, but so does compromise of any kind which only results in “a repackaging of egalitarianism.”

The “new generation,” must be told that complementarianism is the true and proper way to live their lives. “When male and female live and work together as God intended, there is nothing more beautiful, satisfying, delightful, and God-glorifying.” The fault of egalitarianism is that it fails to address “God’s creation design and redemptive calling of women.” I am curious at the outset what this “redemptive calling,” might be, but if I had a guess it has to do with 1 Timothy 2:15:

“Women, however, will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.”

The shift in the culture since the 1991 publishing is reflected in the additional notes this preface gives on what must be done in the church. “we must promote healthy, heterosexual, monogamous marriages.” As Meatloaf said, “two out of three ain’t bad,” and I can stand by two of those endorsements personally. The important thing about this addition is that it suggests a slippery slope is created through endorsing egalitarianism. Later in the same paragraph we read, “egalitarianism is part of the disintegration of marriage in our culture…”

In general, this preface seems less evenhanded in who it wishes to reach. We are told that the church “must also lead Christian women toward a joyous embrace of godly, male leadership as we simultaneously direct their men toward a self-denying, other-serving embrace of the leadership role.” While this maintains the critique of men abusing their power, it is focusing much more on catechizing women into this worldview. They must be taught that they are meant to submit, is a lot different language than “we want them to give thanks they are a woman.”

The authors of this preface highlight that “until about 1970,” the culture was still largely Christian – in content if not in faith. The problem arose that “pagan worldview[s]” entered in. This is cited as being part of a compromise with post-modernism and secular mindsets. If the Church ordains women, if it erases distinctions between men and women, then, the argument goes, they will soon do away with essential doctrines of the faith. “The church has been called to counter and bless the culture, not to copy and baptize it.”

The preface continues in saying that opposing complementarianism naturally leads to a disbelief in biblical authority. Here we find the main issue we will have on this matter. Christians do not, on the whole, disagree about biblical authority – but they do disagree on interpretation. Complementarianism, and indeed most biblical interpretation frameworks, see themself as the “correct,” interpretation, and so to deviate from their teachings is to deny the word of God. “If we can wrest egalitarianism from the Bible, we can pervert it to say anything we wish.”

The argument goes on to say that egalitarianism is based, not so much in scripture, as it is based in “church history or elsewhere.” This external study is seen as an attack on scripture, as it requires that we learn from archaeology, history, and ancient texts outside the corpus of scripture to understand what the scriptures say. I would argue that if it is an attack on scripture to learn about its context, then no amount of biblical archaeology should be permitted, let alone heeded. If leaning on history, culture, and language pollute our interpretation, then we ought to only keep the Novum Testamentum Graece beside out bed and only use the Masoretic text for study of the Hebrew Scriptures. Translation is interpretation, archaeology is interpretation, if we are to be people who view scripture as needing no context – we must be fully consistent in that view.

The preface asserts complementarians stay in the fight for the culture in order to preserve the faith and especially the scriptures. This is the only way they can “raise masculine sons and feminine daughters.” The preface ends with an endorsement of the book itself, that it is still relevant, and with one final wish that people might see “God’s design for men and women.” This preface was written by J. Ligon Duncan and Randy Stinson.

A Tale of Two Prefaces

The content of these two prefaces is largely the same, but the tone is quite different. The language of the 1991 preface is that of people who earnestly believe that they have something to offer people that will improve their life. Whether they are correct in that assumption is secondary to the point that they are writing in a voice that say, “We believe God made men and women to have unique roles and that they can thrive in a world where they acknowledge that.” The tone of 2006 reflects the shifting culture around these kind of views. “We believe God made men and women to have unique roles and if we do not enforce them we will be destroyed.”

I do not wish to imply that some of this thinking was not present when the 1991 preface was written. As we go into the actual text of this book, we will find plenty of doomsaying and hand wringing. What I do wish to make clear is that, post 9/11, our way of talking about the left and right in the Church, in society, in the world – changes. Language becomes harsher, the need to strike out against dangerous new ideas becomes more urgent. In the eyes of many, the September 11th attacks were the result of America’s failings to be the people of God. Whether that is through unjustified military actions in the middle east or egalitarianism and homosexuality depends on your political slant, but the attacks made whatever distinctions we had between us sharper than ever.

The argument of 2006 is closer to the fights we see today. Slippery slopes are everywhere, or at least so we are told. “If we embrace trans folks, then everyone will think they’re animals next!” Just like in 2006 it was common to hear people say that if gay folk could get married they would be marrying animals next. In terms of men and women the slope we are given is, “If men and women are fully equal in society, then you might as well throw away all the Bible!”

Personally, I do not see a need to throw away the Bible over egalitarian issues. The scripture is the bedrock of my faith, and I am honest about when something I believe is not drawn purely from them. I am a Methodist, I went to a Pentecostal Church for a while, I’ve been in non-denoms and I listen to Catholic Radio. Every one of those influences mixes together to make something that is not always 1:1 with scripture, but I do my best to make it so. The worst thing we can do as Christians is baptize our own views as infallible, because then we make ourselves sole arbiters of God’s words. We all have baggage, assumptions, and preferences that shape how we read scripture, admitting that is the first step to living a life like Christ.

I should also say that I see little of Christ in these prefaces. Christ makes one statement about gender dynamics, and that is in reference to men divorcing their wives without cause. Outside of that, we see his ministry involving men and women, and while I think it would be a stretch to call those early assemblies “egalitarian,” they were definitely more like that than they weren’t. In the letters of Paul, we see indications that both liberation and constraint existed in the early church regarding the role of women, as did abolition and the continuance of slavery. The New Testament, the Church, has always had a messy job of relating the incarnate God to the world we live in. However, just because it is messy does not mean that we should not attempt it.

The prefaces largely speak for themselves in terms of their goals, but it is in the actual chapters that we will be able to engage more directly with ideas. I hope you stick along with me as we dig deeper into RBMW and hopefully find something we can use in our discourse around these topics, nearly forty years after these texts first began to come together.

Stay safe, stay sane, and tell someone you love them.

Sermon 08/31/2025 – Mud Holes and Warm Springs

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Jeremiah 2:4-13

Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord:

What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me and went after worthless things and became worthless themselves? They did not say, “Where is the Lord, who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?”

I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination. The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?” Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit.

Therefore once more I accuse you, says the Lord, and I accuse your children’s children. Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look; send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has ever been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.

Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked; be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

Sermon Text

I am out of town on vacation this week. Which means I get to write a sermon that will pretty much just exist between me and the couple dozen who read this blog. I like these moments, because I get to think about the sermon as a thing which is read, and not something I will have to say.

It is also an opportunity for me, as I get about once a year, to talk about the imagery of springs in Biblical Literature. Growing up in Berkeley Springs, WV, water bubbling up from underground is an essential part of my world. The springs, since the days of Francis Asbury, have been a place folks go to in search of peace, healing, and life itself. Within those tepid waters are a variety of microorganisms, tadpoles, guppies. The occasional bird flits down to visit the waters, to drink or to wet its feathers. Out of the aquifer just under the limestone, life itself is given to the surface.

Springs like this occur in most parts of the world. Wherever an underground water deposit happens to get too close to the surface, such that it can be pushed up by pressure into a small pool or stream, there a spring will form. Like many springs, the springs at Bath are “warm springs,” maintaining a temperature of about 75 degrees all year round. They are beautiful, they are carved out of the earth, and they are permanently part of my being.

The scripture out of Jeremiah can give many lessons. It gives us a lens to the status of cultic worship in Jerusalem – the presence of Baal alongside Adonai is just taken for granted. Likewise, we cans see the concept of sin “spoiling,” the land – God’s position as the source of fertility is confirmed when the land does not give produce due to the repeated sins of God’s people. Yet, for myself today, I think that the image of springs and cisterns, specifically in terms of God’s people choosing “no gods,” is compelling.

There is a tension within the scriptures regarding the existence of deities other than the God of Israel. Paul in some letters of the New Testament implies that idols are just empty stone shells, elsewhere he seems to imply a spiritual reality to the Greco-Roman pantheon. Likewise, God is described in the Hebrew Bible as being the chief of the “Gods,” having taken his place at the summit of the universe and divvying up nations between the other Gods, choosing Israel for his own. He fights with Chemash at one point, he actively opposes Dagon in his sanctuary, he appropriates and subverts the language of Marduk. Yet, as Jeremiah shows us here, many other times the foreign Gods are treated as non-existent, as phantoms, as “no Gods.”

While I do not think this would be a helpful thread to follow in discussions of interfaith dialogue, I do think that this can be helpful to understanding a persistent problem within Christianity. We adore creating other Gods, in establishing pantheons of fear, all so that we can feel more secure in our own strength and abilities. We empower the circumstances of the world around us with supernatural agency and power and create Gods to fight against our own. While some may argue this creates a more compelling narrative of a “conquering king,” image for our God and Messiah, I think it weakens our witness in an attempt to secure our own positions and hegemonies.

I speak directly against the idea that this world is inhabited by “Spirits.” Constantly you hear folks in Church contexts use the term “Spirit,” to instill personality in problems. Depression is difficult, it exists at the crossroads of mental, behavioral, and environmental causes. A “Spirit of Depression,” which is easily rebuked by a faithful person requires no questions. Add “Spirit of,” to just about any problem and suddenly the day to day struggles we face become Spiritual battles. More than that, they can become battles that you can win, if you just assert your positive affirmation of faith over them. It’s The Secret, baptized and dressed up for Sunday Service.

I believe that spiritualizing these matters is not inherently problematic. Depression, division, doubt, and all manner of evils beyond this have a spiritual element to them. The problem is that these Spiritual conditions are not personified conditions. My depression impacts my spirituality, but an evil smoke monster does not sit on my shoulders and whisper bad things to me. In my mind, the modern formula of, “I rebuke the Spirit of X,” is the creation of a new kind of magic. We are using the language of religion to try and make God act at our discretion. We have created enemies for God to knock down, but often times the enemy is simply something we have invented.

A Spirit of Division is easier to oppose than the complex web of misunderstandings, egos, and legitimate concerns that cause Church conflict. A Jezebel Spirit is more marketable than telling a woman you disagree with to sit down and shut-up. So on and so forth, et cetera, et cetera. We take the complex web of human experience, human relationships, human sin and outsource them to invisible phantoms that we can claim to chase away with a single word. Do I believe in Spiritual Forces of Evil? Yes, but I cannot accept this phenomena in the Church honestly deals with those forces.

In establishing a complex web of demonic, anti-social Spirits we are ultimately committing the same superstitious mistake that the Medieval Church did. We are making new “Maleus Malifarcarum”s to identify witches in our midst. We write out exhaustive grimoires so that we can name the Spirits of our own invention and make them bend to our will. We come up with ritual and with incantations, to defend against the Gods of this world… The God who we must honestly confess are, “no Gods.”

Superstition is one of the primary dangers faced in the Church today. Having lacked a true Spiritual core, Protestants, Catholics, and all streams otherwise have fallen into lesser manifestations of spirituality. We are in a never ending Satanic Panic that sees the devil in every book, movie, stage performance, or opening ceremony. We fear that by accidentally misspeaking or striking a yoga pose a dark creature may enter our hearts. Yet, there was already a creature in our heart all along working evil within us. We are our own worst enemy, “The heart is devious above all else…”[1] We do not need an evil spirit to lurk on our shoulders, because our own evil and sin-sick spirit is capable of plenty of evil.

The reality of God’s existence, of the power that we are given over evil in this world, is most powerfully reflected in two things. Acknowledging, firstly, that there is no other source of life and truth except God. We may delude ourselves, may create self-aggrandizing narratives and incantations, but at the end of the day we are wholly dependent upon the God from whom we come and to whom we earnestly seek to return. We do not need to invent conflicts, because the conflict of God fighting the forces of sin and death to reclaim our souls is more than enough. It plays out in our hearts every day, God fights back evil within us every moment. The truth of God’s struggle for our heart is enough.

The second thing we must acknowledge about God’s reality is that we are the antagonists of the story. Whatever Spiritual Wickedness there is in the world, it does not constitute hob-goblins tricking you into pacts. The evils of this world are fed by our own human will and cognition. We choose evil, constantly, and we are left the lesser because of it. Humanity is the core driver of wickedness in this world, not the false Gods we wish to blame for it. In the mirror every day you see the image of God reflected back to you, and every day you have the choice to live like that image or against that image. We are the villains, Christ is the protagonist, and all of life is the story of how villainous humanity is redeemed.

Back to the initial imagery of springs. God tells Jeremiah that in worshipping the Baals, the people have traded a spring of living water for a muddy cistern, cracked and incapable of even holding water. I maintain that this is true of our Christianity when we tack on superstition to it. We trade a sacrificial faith that asks us to examine ourselves, to chase after the lifegiving waters of God’s instruction, grace, forgiveness, and blessing – we trade all that away for a series of spells and superstitions that satisfy our daily ennui, but fail to grow us as people. If I think all my problems are external, the work of Spirits that I have to constantly watch out for and say spells of protection against, then I will never look inside, never correct my own faults, never seek the true belief and true repentance I need to find life, and life abundant.

I have cast my life upon the altar of the one God of Heaven and Earth. I shall not elevate artificial divinities to that same level. No Spirit of human invention can overcome the One Spirit that dwells within me.[2] No manufactured tulpa is worth worrying over when I am earnestly struggling to see that my name, written by God’s grace in the Lamb’s Book of Life, is not written with an asterisk beside it attesting to my inability to become worthy of the call to which I am called.[3] When true Spiritual Evil appears in my life, I want to truly be prepared to face it, not left to the mercy of my own half-baked hero narrative. God is in his Heaven, and above all the “no Gods,” he holds his court. I shall not create a graven image to oppose him, I have shown myself opposition enough, time and time again. I want the springs of life, not that muddy pit… Amen.

[1] Jeremiah 17:9

[2] Luke 10:20 c.f. 1 John 4:4

[3] Revelation 20:12 c.f. Ephesians 4:1

Introduction

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

“There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28

This is perhaps my most ill-advised project, and yet one that I have wanted to tackle for a while.

In my final years of seminary, I became fixated on understanding the current landscape of Christian theological discourse. In particular, the way that the Church discusses gender and sexuality seems to be self-defeating to the point that something must be fundamentally flawed at the root of these discussions. Conservative ideology clashes with progressivism, and very little productive biblical interpretation is embarked upon to find any sort of reconciliation point for Christian Ethics.

Even now, prominent voices in the Evangelical movement such as Ed Stetzer have come forward to say that views on LGBTQ rights in the Church are not subject to debate. This comes from a foundational belief that, “creation accounts [in scripture,] set the theological foundation for understanding God’s purposes for gender, marriage, and sexuality.”[1] Indeed, arguments regarding traditional views of human sexuality, and by extension gender and marriage, tend to focus upon three pillars. Firstly, the natural and God ordained institute of heterosexual, monogamous, marriage. Secondly, the inerrancy of scripture. Thirdly, the cultural practice of masculinity and femininity as cross cultural, yet culturally distinct.

Entire books are written to address each of these topics on their own. Yet, as I have taken it upon myself to read conservative theology texts (when I think they sound interesting,) I notice that there is very little in them (or in progressive texts,) that is even trying to address the opposite viewpoint at their own level. Perhaps we have an inherent understanding that the ground between us has grown too large, that the chances of finding any sort of reconciliation that does not deny the rights and dignity of queer folk on one side and the desires for orthodoxy on the other are very slim… More optimistically, however, I think we just have a very vague understanding of the theological foundations that bring folks to one conclusion or the other.

It is with this in mind that I launch this new project. Decoding Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Complementarianism is designed to go, chapter by chapter, through the foundational text of the modern complementarian movement, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. As a staunch advocate for Egalitarianism, I am one such “evangelical feminist,” as is referred to in the title. I am, likewise, a person committed to orthodoxy, even as I advocate for LGTBQ inclusion and all sorts of other liberal positions. According to this book, that second statement makes the first one a lie, but this book says a lot of things I do not agree with, so I’m not going to let that stop me.

My goal with this project is not to be mean-spirited or libelous, but to honestly evaluate each chapter as I read them. Where I see thoughts worth entertaining, I shall entertain them, and where I see something born of Hell and Capital I will treat it as such. I do not promise perfect analysis, I do not promise to be above my own convictions and biases, but I do aspire to be thoughtful and honest at every turn.

This project is going to take a while, and I am not constraining myself to any timeline. This book is long and takes strange turns. At one point John Piper takes a long time talking about how muscular women are sinful, but also that he finds them incredibly attractive (I will talk about that at length when we get there.) I will release articles when they’re done, and not a moment sooner. In the short term, I will be writing an analysis of the Preface to the 2016 edition in the very near future.

Till then, be well, be safe, and tell someone you love them.

[1] Ed Stetzer. “Can Faithful Christians Agree To Disagree on Sexuality?” available at: https://churchleaders.com/voices/512232-agree-to-disagree-christian-sexuality-gender.html

Sermon 08/24/2025 – Where no One has Gone Before

/ John Langenstein / 1 Comment

Hebrews 12:18-29

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking, for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Sermon Text

In 1917 Rudolf Otto wrote a book that redefined the philosophy of religion. His book Das Heilige (Localized as: The Idea of the Holy,) is focused on the way that we as human beings experience the presence of God. Otto calls this experience with something greater than ourselves “the numinous,” and he takes for granted the reader knows what he means when he talks about experiencing the presence of God. After two chapters of introduction, he begins a new one with this instruction “The reader is invited to direct [their] mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience… Whoever cannot do this… is requested to read no farther; for it is not easy to discuss questions of religious psychology with one who can recollect [every part of their life,] but cannot recall any intrinsically religious feelings.”[1]

It is not usually a very productive method of selling books to tell your audience to stop reading on page eight, but for an author who does not want to waste your time I think I can appreciate it. Our faith is easily turned into something purely social. We are Christian less because we have met our risen savior, and more because we like the people who attend the church with us. Certainly, we are to like each other, called to be a family in the truest sense of the word, but we cannot just be a social group. Paul says that we are to be pitied if our faith is revealed to be false, but I would say it is also pitiable if our faith becomes just a reason we get together on Sunday mornings. If we believe we have seen God, and we believe that we have something to share with the world, we have to do more than just get together from time to time.

The writer of Hebrews was writing to his community at a time when they had to decide what their identity was after a significant shake-up. Though it is not exactly clear what lead to the writing of this letter, there are two likely situations. Firstly, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and, secondly, the expulsion of the author’s community from their synagogue. It is unclear if one or both is involved, but the author is trying to explain to the people how to exist away from one they always knew to be the only way to serve God in their life.

Without a temple, how can you meet God? Without the synagogue, how do you connect with the people of God? For the first generation of Christians, those who were Jewish, existing in a space outside Jewish worship norms would have been incredibly uncomfortable. How do you worship God, when the way you have always worshipped God is suddenly locked away? The people needed assurance that they were doing something more than just existing as a social subset of Judaism. They needed to know that there was something beyond themselves that defined their faith.

The author of Hebrews answers these concerns by calling them to consider a life beyond the Temple, beyond worship as they once knew it. I personally lean to the destruction of the Temple as the trigger for Hebrews’ writing because of the emphasis upon the Temple throughout. The book constantly orbits the idea that Christ now acts as the High Priest of believers. Whereas other priests were born, only to die and be replaced, Christ was an eternal priest who stood in the presence of God as no one had ever done before. As is always the case, the person of Jesus had to be the center of the new life the Jewish Christians had been forced into.

In the person of Jesus we are have someone who stands before God, “with a loud voice and tears,” advocating for us. Christ prays unceasingly in the presence of the Father for the troubles that we face. Christ also, we are told, through his death, secured for us the means by which we can, through, faith, be redeemed from our sin. We need not succumb to our failings, we need not continue on causing harm to ourselves and others, we may truly escape the burden of wrongdoing within and around ourselves. Finally, in approaching the mystery of the faith, we meet the person of God. Beyond the mundanity of life, beyond the excesses of our sin, in the deep darkness of truest truth, there is God. This is the blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, our scripture speaks of – the overwhelming presence of God – now freely available to be known.

If we believe that this is what we encounter as Christians, then we cannot just be another social group. We cannot allow ourselves to be lost in the sea of options people have. We must offer people what we truly have, and irreplaceable understanding of God and God’s presence in this world. If we believe we have come to the “thing that cannot be touched,” which Otto called Numinous and which we call Christ, then we need to share that revelation with others. It must mean more to us than just a group to be aligned with, a box to check, a surface level identity to separate ourselves from others.

Last week I shared a summary of census and research data with our Council on Ministries. It highlighted a few truths of people in our area. Firstly, that 75% of people in the Keyser area are not associated with a congregation. More than that, only about 5% of people in our area are likely to change that – either by joining or leaving congregations. Secondly, among those who are not presently in churches, the main opposition they have to attending is that Churches are too focused on money, and that they are too judgmental. Thirdly, despite not being affiliated with churches, about 70% or people do consider religious to be at least somewhat significant in their life. Finally, among that 70%, a majority believe these two things: Christians should act as Jesus did, and Church is not necessary for them to practice their faith.[2]

This paints an interesting picture of our ministry area. While we often project the main struggle in religion these days as between trendy non-denoms and mainline establishments, the data seems to suggest that we are facing a more nuanced landscape. When religion is turned into a social gathering, then it becomes optional, and so people naturally will choose non-participation. The majority of people in our area believe in God, they identify with the person of Christ, but they cannot see themselves as part of Christ’s Church, because the Church has failed to be a place that acts like its savior or that reveals the mystery of Christ to the world. Indeed, if we are no more than place people come to read scripture and hear a sermon, then why shouldn’t people just stay at home?

A strange artifact of this practice is that, while 75% of people say they are not affiliated with churches, an equal proportion claim to attend weekly worship. Yet, I believe firmly that we are not meant to be solitary creatures. I cannot worship at home and say that I have fully engaged with all God has to offer. The fullest expressions of who God is are found in the moments we learn to be God’s people together. How can I become a loving person without folks to love? How can I know I have grown in holiness unless I encounter temptation and overcome it? How can I be active in the world as the presence of God, if I flee to be alone at the first chance I get?

We are here together because we have all seen something we cannot neglect acknowledging. The Spirit of God moved in our life and we are not willing to ignore that movement. We feel it in our bones, in the midst of our flesh there is something enlivened by God’s very breath. We have a story to tell the nations, oh yes, but more than that we have the experience of it to offer. In gathering together, we are meeting mystery, in following Christ we go where no one has gone before. In being the Church, we discover what it means to truly thrive. Live with the truth, live with hope, break out of life’s mundanity. – Amen.

[1] Rudolf Otto. “The Elements in the ‘Numinous’” in The Idea of the Holy. Tr. John W. Harvery (Oxford University Press; London, England. 1958) 8

[2] All data provided through MissionInsite.

Sermon 08/17/2025 – Craving Falsehood

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Jeremiah 23:23-29

Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed! I have dreamed!” How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord. Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

Sermon Text

I am a strong advocate for truth. As obvious as that can seem, it often falls to the wayside in the rush of daily life in our world. All of us are prone, whether we want to admit it or not, to finding a version of reality that is more palatable than the one in which we live. We talked just two weeks ago about the fact that the cycles of life can exhaust us. In the midst of that exhaustion we can choose to chase after true hope or manufactured hope. Do we find our hope in the truth or do we create a false reality that offers its own false hope?

Despite my commitment to truth, I do acknowledge that many so-called “warriors,” of truth are just bullies. Growing up, I was blessed to have people on my television like Carl Sagan who explained concepts of science in terms that my five-year-old self could not quite understand, but which nonetheless opened me to the wonders of this universe. Now the people who are trying to educate people about deep truths of the universe are usually people who are trying to make money or build clout more so than people who truly wish to educate. We are a culture that is dependent upon bombasticity and upon people fighting each other for engagement, and so we do not often find people educating or revealing truth, so much as selling a narrative or offering confirmation of our own ideas.

As I’ve already said, the tactic of bullies is to take hold of this idea of an objective truth and then to beat people with what their perspective is. However, truth is separate from what we may have as a concept of what is right or wrong. A true situation can be good, or a true situation can be bad, the duty we have as interpreters of this world is to decide how we react to the truth. Truth, nonetheless, sits separate from our impression of it. A true thing might be good, or it might be bad, but it remains true.

What we read today out of the book of Jeremiah comes after a period of time in which Jeremiah has said some of his most devastating prophecies. If you read the book of Jeremiah, you will see a man who is constantly given the chance to advocate for his people and who constantly decides they weren’t worth the time. He stands in front of God and pleads saying that there must be righteous people in Jerusalem, there must be righteous people in Judah, and in the next chapter every time that he does this he is shown that there is in fact very little hope for the people he knows. The prophet is beaten down by the words that he has been given. He describes his bones as cracking, his stomach as boiling, his mouth as pouring out fire, even as his eyes are running out of tears to shed. Still, the whole time he is suffering under the weight of truth, there are other prophets selling a more convenient message.

We get a direct interaction with one of these prophets in Jeremiah 28. Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke around his neck to symbolize the oppression his people suffered under Babylon. A fellow prophet came in one day and broke that wooden yoke. He promises the people that, rather than suffering, they are going to be liberated through the work of their king. Jeremiah looks this prophet in the eye and says “Oh, that that would be true! However, the truth is that God has forecasted an even darker day for the people of Judah. I will be replacing this wooden yoke with one made of iron.” Jeremiah is proven right as the people are taken into exile and some of them forced to flee into Egypt rather than to face their annihilation. The prophet is not happy that he is correct, the message he brings is not a good one, but it is true.

I wish to put forward that there are two things we do to explain the state of the world that are harmful to truth. The first is that we deny when there are problems in this world and the second is that we create easy answers to explain the ones we do acknowledge. On one hand we look out at the broken things of the world and say, “They aren’t really that bad!” On the other hand, we say, “They are that bad! And its all because of those folks over there!” When we simplify the world and its problems, erasing them or making them someone else’s problem, we deny the truth that is plainly laid out around us.

When I was serving in Clarksburg, there was a fairly significant population of homeless folk. If you talked to people in authority in the city, they would tell you they were bussed in regularly by outside forces. They were people who were unwanted in the cities they came from and were sent to Clarksburg to become the city’s problem. This is a storyline many cities adopt, and it comes from a shred of truth. Some cities do choose not to help folk and instead move inconvenient populations in their midst. However, the truth in Clarksburg was harder to stomach. Of those surveyed during the shelter season, some 200 souls, a vast majority were locals. People who fell into a bad habit, or lost a job, or had rent raised above their means, and ended up on the street. The people out on the street were not someone else’s problem – they were our literal neighbors, pushed onto the streets.

Here we see a systemic denial of the truth and simultaneously an easy answer. “If we make it hard for these folks to live here, then they’ll just get on another bus!” That works if you assume people are maliciously being transited, but the reality that people fall into homelessness and poverty within our own community… That opens up responsibility on our part, on the community’s part, in order to make sure we’re doing all we can to care for one another.

The wider the circle, the more complicated the narrative becomes. When a Pandemic ravages the world it is easy to say, “It isn’t that bad!” or “I bet those people caused it!” When floods wipe out communities it is easier to say, “Those folks deserved it!” or “The planes caused it!” than to accept that disasters happen, and in preparation and execution to counter them, mistakes happen.

We are all participants in narratives: national, local, and personal. We will always pick narratives that make us have the least amount of culpability and discomfort with the way the world works around us is. At least, we will until we choose to pursue truth. Without a commitment to truth I will always assume that I was in the right in an argument, that my worldview is unimpeachable, that the people I disagree with are the root of every problem and the people I agree with have all the easy answers in the world… Unless I choose to search for truth, I will settle for something lesser.

Truth is made up of data and stories. It requires finding accurate reporting and reading through more than one article or report to understand a larger context. It requires meeting people from different groups, places, and perspectives rather than trusting stereotypes or assumptions. Truth is a gestalt of many pieces of life, and not just the pieces we decide are most palatable.

As Christians, we hold the most important truth in the universe in our hands. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is yours to reveal to the world. If we are left at the mercy of the tides of narratives, and not rooted in a true pursuit of truth… Why should anyone believe us? We are just selling another perspective, another narrative, not dealing with truth in the absolute sense of the word.

Truth is furtive. It’s hard to keep alive because it constantly is shifting under our own pressure for it to look more like this or more like that. Worse still, in falsehood we find none of the ambiguity of doubt that truth can cause. Yet, we must remember, “no matter how tender, how exquisite… A lie will remain a lie.”[1] If we wish to serve the God of truth, we must commit ourselves to truly be people of truth. Abandon the notions you have created to prop up your own desires, egos, and worldviews – embrace the messy things of this life, and find that God is holding a mop and bucket for those who wish to acknowledge the mess. – amen.

[1] Toshifumi Nabeshima. Dark Souls II. V. 1.10. Bandai Namco. PC. 2011

Sermon 08/10/2025 – That Better Country

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible…

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Sermon Text

Faith and Hope are two sides of the same coin. Through our faith in God, we are convinced that the things we do not presently see are nonetheless real and forthcoming. When we believe that God is active and that salvation is real, then we naturally believe that its benefits and consequences are likewise real and active. Faith is not a basic admittance of belief in something, but a firm stance we come through convincement – by God and through other faithful people – to the truth of our religion.

While some people are squeamish about the use of the term “religion,”, I am  not. Religion is, broadly speaking, any of the ways that we conduct ourselves in this life toward something bigger than ourselves. Whether we express our religious convictions in a legalistic way or with an eye toward a faith that frees us is a matter of choice. Religion is, therefore, not the end of our faith, but the way in which we express faith. The outpouring of what we believe into what we do, that is the essence of Christianity.

Faith is inseparably linked to hope, the anticipation of something unseen and yet promised. When we live out a life of faith, we do so because we believe that God is honest in projecting a future for us that is better than our current one. This “better country,” is not a temporal reality, but a spiritual and eschatological one. In the present age we are given assurance and strength to face the broken world around us. In the age to come all promises are fulfilled and all troubles cease. In the time between we live a life that makes the hope that our faith points toward break out in intermittent flashes. In our honoring of God’s covenant through faith in and Christ and our service to one another, we make the Kingdom of Heaven exist in the now, even as we wait for its fulfillment at the end of time.

As we talked about last week, the cycles of life can make it difficult to have hope. We get lost in the day-to-day hustle and bustle as well as the legitimate hardships that come from disease, and death, and greed. The systemic and personal evils of this world are such that I never begrudge a person who says they have struggled to find or keep it because of questions about the problem of evil. If I did not have a personal experience of Christ, I do not think that I would be able to come to faith naturally. Not raised in the Church, not brought up with a full understanding of who God is and what Christ reveals about God, I would have easily let my cynicism take me down the road of unbelief.

The thing that allows us to exist as people of faith is simply that we have met God. In our worship and our sacrament in our scripture and in our prayer, we have come again and again to the well of eternal life and found that its waters do not dry up. The only reason we can have faith is because of an act of God, through the person of Christ, and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Apart from these gifts of grace, we would not be able to look at this world with the hope that we carry. Faith is a belief, begun by convincement, that God means what God says. Without the blessing of God’s presence at the outset, we would never find our way to faith at all.

The stories in Genesis, which the author of Hebrews pulls upon in describing faith, shed light upon the messiness of belief and the foundational need for God’s presence to produce it. Abraham went into Canaan after God called him to do so. He also fled into Egypt at the first sign of danger. Isaac was born to Sarah and Abraham, but only after they got tired of waiting and forced a slave to carry a child in her place. They answered the call in faith, but they also frequently ran into a situation that challenged that faith. Most importantly for our own stumbling walk toward God’s promises, they frequently met that challenge and failed to act as they ought.

Whether in fleeing Canaan, or in first involving and then chasing away Hagar and her child, Abraham sinned abundantly in his pursuit of God’s covenant. Yet, through him a blessing was shared with the earth. The culmination of Abraham’s work was the person of Christ born from his descendants and out of Heaven. The savior of the whole earth, even of the whole creation, was at the end of a long road of mistake after mistake, and yet Abraham held on in the midst of his failings, trusting that something better was coming down the road.

In our own life, there are many times we encounter challenges that make us question our faith. I think we would be delusional if we did not look at the suffering in this world and not have the question of, “Why?” creep into our mouths. Someday we’ll look at Job and how God blessed his interrogation of divine mercy, but that book gives us a clear message – faith is not diminished through questions, but enhanced. We cannot be convinced of God’s goodness unless we look at God in the face, unless we ask “Why?” and “How long?” and “What are you doing?” To meet God is to meet with the known and the unknowable. To know God is to grow in understanding the hope that hides beyond the horizon of each dark day.

I find it hard to talk about Hope without quoting Emily Dickinson:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
– That perches in the soul
– And sings the tune without the words
– And never stops – at all,

When we find our hope in Christ, it is not always a loud and triumphant thing. Like Abraham, it meets us in the midst of deep darkness and unknowing. It sings a tune we do not know the words of, but that we can follow faithfully as the beat echoes in our chest. We go forward to live the life we do, so that we might teach the tune to those we meet. In kindness shown to others and in hard lessons of love we have learned and in an endless march toward that better country we have seen only in dreams and deepest prayers, in all these things we proclaim our hope through faith. Listen to the song of Hope within you today and let that song bring you closer to home. – Amen.

Sermon 08/03/2025 – Real Exhaustion

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Ecclesiastes 1:2-14

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. All things are wearisome, more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in the ages before us. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.

I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to humans to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

Sermon Text

Mundanity is a killer. The sun comes up and goes down, the laundry always needs done, and the weekend ends just as soon as it begins. The ebb and flow of time leaves us reeling. How do we stop ourselves from being consumed by the endless repetition of the same old thing? Novelty is only temporary and the newest thing will always become old given enough time. The sunshine, the rain, the coming and going seasons, all can just be a bit overwhelming sometimes.

You may be saying that this is a strange way to look at the coming and going of things. If you read further in Ecclesiastes, for example, you come to a point in which the Teacher tells us that there is a season for everything under the sun. There’s a time to mourn and a time to dance, there’s a time to build and a time to tear down, a time to gather stones and a time to throw away stones. It’s all very poetic, all very beautiful, The Byrds even sang about it. However, at the end of it all, that passage is part of the ongoing theme in the book of Ecclesiastes. The succession of one season, to another, to another is an irritation, not a consolation.

This month I would like for us to take some time to look at several places in scripture that tell us about the world as it is – fundamentally broken – and also what they tell us about what the world can be. As we go through, I’m not going to hesitate to name the broken ways that we experience the world now. I’m not gonna leave you without hope each Sunday, don’t you worry, but I think we can only truly understand what the Gospel means to us if we look at the world now and draw conclusions from that about what work Christ is really undertaking in this world. Today we do that by looking at the book of Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite books in all of scripture, to talk about what this world can do to really exhaust us.

As we consider the book of Ecclesiastes, it reads as an honest assessments of ourselves and the world we live in. Admit it to yourself and find yourself freed by the admission that sometimes you’re tired of the way things are. It doesn’t have to be a profound realization, it doesn’t even have to be something that affects your life very often. The world is not the way it should be and it manifests in one-thousand tiny ways that makes us aware of that imperfection. The snide comment that we make towards the people we love that becomes a source of guilt in our heart. The offhanded comment someone else makes about us that we sit and think about and agonize over day after day wondering what they really meant. The seasonal bronchitis that rests in our lungs or the return from remission of one disease or another deep in our bones and in our flesh. The patterns of this life are not always a constant entering into something pleasant. Sometimes we take a step forward and find that our path is quite a rocky one.

Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher seeks to find some way to understand how to live in this imperfect world. We’re told that he tried literally everything he could think of. He tried womanizing, he tried drinking, he tried pouring himself into work. Any distraction, any vice, it was worth it in his mind to give it a go. Their conclusion is telling: every last bit of it was useless. “Vanity of vanities,” is the way that this is usually translated. Other translation put it as “Useless! Useless!” However, in my mind the best example of a translation comes out of Robert Alter, who puts forward the translation as “Merest Breath!” The Hebrew gives the impression of a breath breathed out early in the morning, the last bit of vapor fading away… That is how the Teacher viewed his journey for purpose.

 More than just dealing with the troubles of life in the present moment, the Teacher looks beyond his life. Everything he worked on will be handed down to a relative and he has no idea if they will do a good job. He could become rich and comfortable one hundred times over, but he would be unable to take it with him when he died. Everything terminated the same way for everyone, the evil who lived far too long, the good who die far too young, are all gathered together into the same ground. Death is the only ending to the long succession of exhausting cycles we are trapped in.

This, people of God, is the world as we know it. Now, here I could do a really easy thing and turn this around in a few words. “God shows us the world as it could be! The resurrection changes all that!” And I would be right to say it. However, I do not think that you or I would be completely satisfied with so quick an answer. We need better answers than, “mysterious ways,” and “it will be better by and bye,” we need to actually wrestle with the brokenness of the world. If we are going to say the Gospel makes a difference, we need to talk about what the Gospel does to change these things! There is hope for this world, and that hope is in Jesus Christ, but it will take us the rest of this month to even start to address just how Christ gives us freedom from the drudgery of this world.

If I can spoil the ending of Ecclesiastes for you, though, I can say that the Teacher comes to two simple conclusions. Firstly, that we should live each day in the knowledge that we only have today as a guarantee, and only have one life to live on this side of eternity. Do not focus on “legacy,” or career to the detriment of enjoying this life and the people you have around you in it. Do not chase a hedonistic lifestyle of getting whatever you want, whenever you want it either, extremes are usually bad. No, instead we should all be willing to say, “My time on earth is limited. I will take none of my money with me when I am gone, my resume shall not go before me in the grave. I have today to do what it right, to care for those around me… That is more than enough.

Secondly, the Teacher decides that of everything he did, only his commitment to God really mattered. We cannot regret time we spend in prayer or in worship. We cannot regret service to those around us done for love of God and neighbor. We cannot regret the things which God has placed in front of us, because those things alone have any true lasting power. Through God, the mundane is made into something holy. G.K. Chesterton puts it well, “God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.”[1]

As we speak of the mundane being made holy, we must turn our minds to the meal we are about to share. If you are like me and get tired of this world’s many problems and the relentless ebb and flow of time, then this table is here to give you strength. Christ came into the midst of this world’s mess, not standing from far off and yelling platitudes at us, but taking on the same troubles we faced. Christ drank deep of the mundane troubles of this world, took on the pain of disease and injury, lost friends and family, and even died at the convergence of all these struggles. In death, in the fullness of solidarity, Christ secured his right to rise again, and lift all of humanity with him.

Today, we have mostly stated a problem. We take up this spiritual food and drink to continue on in the midst of that problem. Yet, I believe, and I hope you do too, that by the end of this month, we will not find life to be “mere breath,” but so much fuller and worth living than that. – Amen.

[1] G.K. Chesteron. “The Ethics of Elfland,” in Orthodoxy. (John Lane ; The Bodley Head, Limited. 1926.) 107

Sermon 07/27/2025 – Fight for Mercy

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Genesis 18:20-33

Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.”

So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”

And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.”

 He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.

Sermon Text

What are you willing to fight for? I think that is a valid question we all have to ask ourselves. Many people are so conflict avoidant that the answer is “Nothing! I don’t want the trouble!” Yet, even at our most anxious or complacent I think there are certain things we care about enough to pick a fight if we have to. I am not talking about violence, I am not talking about anything mean spirited, I mean standing up for something, taking a position on something, and accepting the consequences for the action we take.

 If you live with anyone – a spouse, a child, siblings, whatever they might be to you –  then you know that there are certain disagreements that naturally come about from inhabiting the same space. You also are well aware that not every conflict is worth actually having words about. It does not actually matter, for example, the way that my wife loads the dishwasher as long as the dishes fit and are done. It does not matter, likewise, the strange order of operations I have when I do the laundry. In these things we clearly differ, but we understand that the end is much more important than the means.

If we think hard, and probably not as hard as we would like, we will quickly think of various examples of when we have had an unnecessary fight with someone in our life. We let our own weakness, tiredness, or sadness at something in the world, lead us to lashing out. We took comfort in the briars and barbs we placed around ourselves and forgot the people closest to us are closest for a reason. We have many times stood up against imagined offenses in our lives – how often, I wonder, are we willing to stand up for those things that truly matter? Are we willing to fight for mercy? Are we willing to go against the powers that be, if it means a better day for the people around us?

In our scripture today, we read what happens after Abraham has been promised a child. Having given food and drink to three travelers, they reveal themselves to be none other than God and two angels. How this pre-incarnate appearance of God works mechanically is unimportant, but what matters is that when this conversation over dinner ends, God turns toward the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God speaks aloud, perhaps wanting Abraham to hear, and names the evils of the city. “A great outcry,” has risen from the people around the cities, and now God is going to do something to clear away that wickedness.

This passage is one of several places where the Hebrew Bible, and especially the Torah, expresses skepticism over the existence of cities. Whether it is in Babel, Sodom, or later Jerusalem, there seems to be this idea that the way cities exist in inherently exploitative. In an agrarian society the city depended on the farms around it, and most of those farms were tenant farms. Since serfdom defined most of the commerce of the era, we can assume that most farmers were taxed heavily for their right to eke out a small living on the land. Add to this the rent they paid, and soon they had barely a leg to stand on. No wonder, then, that Ezekiel names the sins of Sodom as having, “… pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.”[1]

God sends angels ahead of this wrath, to investigate the city. Yet, even as the men make their way across the plain, we see Abraham come up to God. The father of nations looks God in the eyes and asks a direct question, “Do you really plan to kill a whole city? The righteous and the unrighteous all at once?” Though layered in respectful language, there is no doubt that Abraham is taking a risk in questioning God’s decision. The two then seem to engage in protracted haggling – “For fifty will you spare them? Fifty isn’t much more than forty-five, how about that? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?” Abraham looks God in the eye and says, “I believe you are merciful, prove that to me.”

Would you be willing to do that? A pious answer might be, “No! Far be it from me to question God!” Fine, maybe Abraham has a special pass. Have you ever asked it of anyone else in your life though? How many times have we seen someone treated harshly and just shrugged it off? Let the cruel comment or reprisal pass by uncommented upon? When local government, or state, or federal even, target the vulnerable, have we opened our mouths to ask why they think their conduct is acceptable? What line in the sand are you willing to draw before you stand up for people around you?

The prophets have a tradition of standing up to God in the face of judgment. Moses begs that God forgive the Hebrews, Jeremiah pleads for the life of his fellow Judeans, and even Christ speaks of  the people persecuting him and their needs, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”[2] In the face of even well earned judgment, the character of a person who knows God’s heart is to advocate for mercy, not punishment. Divine justice is based in mercy, they are not separate ideas, and so we need to learn to advocate for those around us, for the people trampled down, for those the world has rejected.

This is not, I should say, a satisfying venture. More often than not, power wins out over righteousness. People go to death row whether letters are written to the governor or not. Benefits are cut to those in need, even if the phones of senators ring off the hook. Family members you forgive and give another chance may well betray you once again. Mercy is not a pleasant exercise, but it is a necessary one.

In the next chapter, after the angels save Lot from Sodom (though Lot was far from righteous himself,) we are told Abraham went out and looked toward the city. He saw the five cities, Sodom and Gomorrah at their center, burning in fire. He looked out and saw that, despite his plea for mercy, not even ten righteous people could be found in the city. How many tears did he weep over the city? We are not told. Yet, I believe his heart would ache, that his hope in humanity was larger than their righteousness in reality.

Yet, I do not believe Abraham would mourn the mercy he exerted. Nowhere in scripture is mercy treated as a weakness. If anything, the lack of mercy is what leads to disaster – time and time again. When we take up the life of a Christian, we put aside the ability to seek revenge, and instead take up a cross that bears the blood of a Christ who died for us while we were yet sinners. If God died for us when we were enemies of God, then I think we all have room to grow in terms of our capacity for mercy.

Concerned souls may worry that seeing the world primarily through a lens of mercy, “Lets people off the hook.” Certainly, I think it could be possible to become laissez-faire, but mercy is not the same as eliminating consequence. If someone steals, they should be expected to repay the damages of what they stole. If they kill, they should lose time and freedom as a result. Those are not controversial ideas. The character of mercy, however, acknowledges that punitive measures do not actually serve the good of anyone. You cannot bring back the dead through killing, you cannot repair property through mass incarceration, you cannot heal a broken heart by retribution of any kind. Consequences are one thing, wrath is another entirely.

We are told in scripture that God’s primary disposition is toward mercy. Our old eucharistic prayer puts it nicely saying, “… thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy,” even as we acknowledge our own faults.[3] To be like God, we must learn what it is to be merciful, and we must be willing to stand up for people, even when they cannot repay the favor and sometimes even when they do not really deserve that consideration. Mercy is either poured out on all flesh, or no one at all. We have to live as people who have been redeemed, not as the world would otherwise permit us to. No more, “an eye for an eye,” but now “turn the other cheek.”

Think on the fights you have been willing to have… How many have been for the good of others? Really, for the good of others? I bet the list gets smaller. I bet it shrinks down to very few if we are honest about it. So quick to strike out, we forget what it is to love. So quick to judge, we forget that we ourselves have been freed by the one judge who has the right. So quick to plot revenge, we neglect the weightier parts of the law. God is a God of mercy, and Abraham was willing to ask if that was really true. Will we, the people of God, recipients of that same mercy, apply even an ounce of that energy to question those who do harm to others in our own place and time? – Amen.

[1] Ezekiel 16:49-50

[2] Luke 23:34

[3] The Ritual of the Methodist Church. The Methodist Hymnal. 1935

Sermon 07/20/2025 – Icon of the Father

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Colossians 1:15-28

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a minister of this gospel.

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. I became its minister according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

Sermon Text

A few weeks ago, although you all would not know this, I preached a sermon on idolatry.[1] In it I came very hard against visual depictions of God. Despite this, I am not truly an iconoclast. I have art all over my parsonage – some of it is secular and strange and others are sacred and intentional. In my son’s room I have an icon of Mary holding an infant Christ, a reminder that Christ, who was an infant, cares for my infant son. Likewise, I have a picture of Christ triumphant outside my bedroom, a reminder at bedtime that whatever problems I have can wait till the morning, for Christ has overcome the world.

The imagery we use for God is important, lest we misrepresent God in art or media. The truth is, however, that any image of God is unnecessary, because we have already received the greatest and most perfect image of God. Christ is the “image,” (in Greek eikon (εικον,) of the invisible God (that is God the Father.) In seeing Christ, we see God, one is essentially identical to the other.  We do not have to speculate about the nature of God if we are able to see who Christ is and to understand what Christ does.

The question we have to ask then is how we can engage with who Christ is. What is necessary to know more of what Christ is like? How may we uncover the fullness of God, and, having done this, find ourselves transformed more fully into the image of God? We need to see how we are able to see God face to face in our own lives and take full advantage of Christ’s proximity to us. This should sound familiar, because this is the idea we started to consider last week. To put it in a single question: How do we fully enjoy the presence of God?

There are three primary, ordinary ways that we encounter God in our day to day life.[2] The first is in the scriptures, the second in prayer, and the third in our celebration of the sacraments – especially communion. When we engage with these means of grace and especially when we enjoy them together, we see God – in glimpses – face to face. I do not think we can rank these in terms of importance, but I would like to look at them each for a moment, and hopefully we can acknowledge that even the most obvious way we meet God only takes on meaning when we engage with it intentionally.

Scripture, the way most of us learn about Christ, seems like it would be the easiest way for us to look at who God is. Reading through the Gospels we can read Christ’s own words, see the things he endured, and the life he lived. Each of these paints a picture of God’s priorities in the world. When Christ stands against unjust authorities, we see that God opposes the abuse of power. When Christ cares for the poor, we know that they are given as an inheritance for us to care for as well. In teachings, in miracles, in work after work, we are shown the character of God through what is revealed to us about Christ in the Gospels.

The thing about scripture, though, is that it is far more expansive than just the Gospels. We have the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures – the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings of God’s people – all of these reveal God and, almost equally important, how God’s people knew God in times of abundance and in times of trouble. Beyond this, the New Testament is much more than the gospels. The book of Acts tells the story of the Church in its infancy – its first miraculous successes and its first tumultuous failures are recorded across just a few dozen pages. The letters of Paul, Peter, John, and all the others tell how these people from all manner of backgrounds and lives found a way to be the people of God in this world. Scripture, in recording the work of God and of God’s people, is so much more than a list of what Jesus said and did.

We understand scripture, and truly the wider fullness of life, only if we temper it with a good measure of prayer. Everyone close your eyes and answer truthfully with a hand in the air: How often do you pray? Daily? Twice a day? Three or more times a day? Final question: Do you take intentional time to pray, or do you just pray when you have time? Ok, hands down eyes open. I ask all these questions because we are asked to, “Pray without ceasing.” And if you are anything like me you are not anywhere near ceaseless prayer.[3] Prayer is one of the most fruitful ways that we can connect with God, transform our perspective, and shape our heart, but it is often one of our most underutilized.

Christ prayed constantly, disappearing for what seems to be hours at a time just to have uninterrupted access to the Father in prayer. Wesley, in his covenant service, gives the specific injunction for Methodists to, “set apart some time, more than once, to be spent alone before the Lord.” This time needs to be intentional, because without that intentionality we will not develop actual virtue through prayer, not even a habit of prayer. If we only pray when we happen to remember, then we will make prayer, and therefore God, a part of our life only during our spare moments.

In my personal life, I have made steps to set aside intentional time for prayer at least once a day. I take that time to pray for at least five things in my life I am presently concerned with. I also end that time of prayer with a prayer thanking God for the good things in my life and then I sing a hymn. For me, this highly structured format has worked to make me more prayerful in general, and it has changed how I pray outside of my end of day examen. I would encourage you, if you do not have a program of prayer, make one. It will make you better at praying generally.

The final place we ordinarily see God is in the sacraments. We Methodists hold to two sacraments – baptism and the eucharist – and otherwise believe in various “sacramental,” parts of life. In baptism we are greeted by God’s grace which has been with us our entire life as we join the Church universal, in the eucharist we are taken to the moment Christ broke bread with his disciples for the last time, we stand at the foot of the cross, we see the empty tomb, we anticipate his coming again to set all things right. In the eucharist, all of time and space are compressed into a single phrase, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

In the elements of bread and wine, we are transported into the presence of Christ. The first part of our scripture speaks to the various works of God, and in the eucharist we see them laid bare for us: Christ as creator, as incarnate God, as willing sacrifice, as triumphant and risen savior, and as eternal and ever living redeemer. In all ways that we can understand Christ, the eucharist stands out as being representative of everything that Christ is. We are not called to rank the way Christ appears to us, but in this I personally find the most obvious presence of Christ in my life.

How will we know if this all works? How will we know that we have seen Christ and begun to look more like him in our way of being? The answer comes at the end of our scripture for the day. Paul, having seen and fully acknowledged Christ’s true self, Christ’s true nature, becomes a suffering servant like Christ had been before him. Can we take on the mantle of suffering servants? Are we willing to give up our comfort and our abundance for the good of others? I hope we are, because that is the only true response to God’s grace we can take and still be obedient to Christ. The icon of the Father, the true face of God is ready to meet us here and now. Will we follow him to the cross? Or will we just wither away on our own? – Amen.

[1] John Langenstein. “Golden Calves, Bronze Serpents,” 03/23/25 available at: https://teachusto.com/2025/03/23/sermon-03-23-2025-golden-calves-bronze-serpents/

[2] This idea is adapted from Wesley’s Sermon The Means of Grace. Available at: https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-16-the-means-of-grace/

[3]  Thessalonians 5:16

Sermon 07/13/2025 – No Excuses

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 30:8-14

Then you shall again obey the Lord, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, and the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the Lord your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

Sermon Text

Proximity makes a difference. Moving to the Panhandle, I am much closer to family, just knowing that makes a difference. When you can take a step outside and see plants, animals… Nature in all its glory! You feel more alive yourself. On the other end, proximity can cause trouble too. Living by a dump will confer its stink onto you. If you go into a nuclear site or swim in a coal run-off pond, you are going to have your health affected. Everywhere you look, how near a thing is to you will have an effect.

It should not surprise us, then, that our proximity to God makes a difference in our life. While God is present in all places and all times, I think we all experience that truth to different degrees throughout life. Many of us come into God’s presence, in worship or prayer or scripture, and do not really realize the magnitude of what that presence means to us. We do not open ourselves up to know God more, or to be known by God. We shut ourselves up, refuse to take advantage of the moment. It is like seeing a dear friend, and scrolling on our phone the entire meal you share together. We meet something precious, and we let the moment pass.

We are not unique in this trouble. All of Scripture and all of Church history shows people neglecting the reality of God’s presence. At Sinai the thunder and fire on the mountain did not prevent the people from making the Golden Calf. In Canaan, the words of the prophets did not stop the people from abusing one another. Even Christ being near his disciples did not prevent their many mistakes,  and of course did not prevent Judas from his betrayal. From the Garden to today, the simple truth is that we are excellent at ignoring God.

Our scripture today is part of Moses’s farewell address to the Israelites. Looking out at the people, he would be remembering all the amazing things they had seen together. The torrenting water shutting behind them as they fled Egypt, the miracle of Mana appearing in the wilderness, the giving of the Law itself. He also would remember their many failings. Their bitter complaints at Meribah, their demand for excess meat, their actual rebellion at Korah… Thousands of highs and lows, all culminating in a final chance to share God’s words to the people.

As Moses works through his preamble to his second giving of the law, he reflects on God’s unique status in the world, on the people’s need to be devoted to God, and seeks to remind the people that they can, with God’s help, meet the high calling of what God has called them to. Moses knows that if the people follow God’s laws, they will flourish – because the laws are not based on obligation, they are based on what is good. If the people care for each other, for the poor, for the foreigner, for the oppressed – their lives and the lives of everyone they meet will be made better. God has given a gift, and they have the chance to do something with it.

There was a time in my life, before I had worked in churches and had a child, when I would read Moses’s words in this passage as judgment. “You all have made me walk up a mountain, time and time again, but I’m done! You want God’s teachings. Too bad! This is what you’ve got, make us of it or get over it!” I am sure he was frustrated after all these years, but I do not believe that this was Moses’s energy in his farewell address to the people. I think it was more similar to a frequent situation I find myself in with my son.

He has a habit of going under tables, chairs, or crawling into the corner of a room and thinking that he is stuck. He has the ability to get out, but he cries waiting for us to come and rescue him. I will sit down on the floor near him, and cheer him on. “You can do this! Just turn around! You aren’t trapped, you’re just confused!” I see that energy in Moses’s words. “You do not need to crawl up that mountain, you are not that far gone! It is so close to you! You’re almost there!”

We are not given any excuses to not follow through on what God has called us to do. We are called by Jesus to pursue perfection, being, “perfect as your father in Heaven is perfect.”[1] Yet, despite how high that calling sounds, it manifests in our life through a fairly simple paradigm. Does our daily work promote the good of our neighbors? Then we have loved our neighbor. Does our daily work bring us closer to God, and honor the holiness to which we are called? Then we have loved our God. Those are not easy, I cannot lie to you and tell you they are, but they are not beyond our power either, not with God’s help at least.

For God’s people at Sinai and beyond, they had the Torah to lead them. For us, Gentiles brought into the faith through Christ, we have Christ himself. The scriptures we read, the continual presence of Christ through the sacrament, the fellowship of the faithful, and the Spirit that dwells within us – all these facilitate our pursuit of God’s will. The Word of God is truly not too far from us, we do not need to chase it down, because the Word came down from the Heaven, dwelt among us, and showed us what can happen when we make use of the grace that is imparted to us.

God continues to come near to us. God is with us now in this room. Will we draw near, open our hearts, and embrace what God can do to transform us? Or will we ignore God and continue life as if nothing is happening around us? I hope we choose to meet God and be transformed by God. To be more peaceful, patient, kind, gentle, and self-controlled – in all things to embody all that God calls us to be. “… the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” In prayer, in action, in the deepest part of our being… Let us make use of our God who has drawn near to us. – Amen.

[1] Matthew 5:48