Author: John Langenstein

Sermon 05/18/2025 – A Proper Ending

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Lesson                                                                          Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

Sermon Text

 Ideally in life, we would always have stories with proper endings. There’s nothing worse than reading a book, and usually a nice long book, only to find out that it throws everything out at the very end. For many people, I was not one of them, there was a huge cultural moment when George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones series was turned into a television show. The series eventually reached a point where they went beyond where the books had been written. And when the ending finally came, all those eight years of fandom and success terminated in a series ending that everyone, almost universally, hated.

We were all almost always run into some story that does this to us. Mine was the sequel series of Star Wars. It started so promisingly with The Force Awakens, moving on to the apex, I think, of good Star Wars movies, which is The Last Jedi (I’ll fight you on it,) and then terminating with the movie that was made only to make people on Reddit happy… Diatribe aside, I think we are, as a species, worried that, at the end of the day, our own story is going to have an ending that is unsatisfying, an ending that ultimately doesn’t make the story work.

When we look at life, whether it’s our life or human history, a profoundly painful story unfolds. Hegel, a philosopher, once proposed that history is working towards an end. He narrativized history in saying that, as we keep moving and moving, there is an eventual and definite ending. As everything we do follows patterns, those patterns have to lead to a conclusion. Others like Marx would pick this up and propose definite endings to their history – whether that is in Proletariat Revolution or if that’s in the full freedom of humanity through some other means. But the thing about any of these stories that are told about our history is that they’re often stuck in the assumption that the patterns that currently exist will keep on going. That we will keep going down the drain until we finally hit the bottom.

We in the church proclaim something different because we believe that history was interrupted. When Jesus Christ was born, it was a disruption of history. Everything that was leading up to Christ being born is different than everything after Christ being born. In Christ the fullness of God entered into the physical world in a way that had never happened before. God, who we know is largely content to allow the world to spin by the laws of physics and all other things which God has ordained for it, suddenly interrupted it in the most startling way God could – by becoming a physical part of the story. When the author of a story puts themselves into the story, things have to change. You are no longer dealing with narrative, you are dealing with meta-narrative, a story that is commenting on itself and on the idea of the story at all. When Jesus came into this world, God was saying definitively that regardless of whatever rules there were physical or otherwise, God had a different plan for the world than the one the world had for itself.

In terms of physics, the world has only one ending. This universe will eventually run out of usable energy and when that usable energy ends we will experience something called “the heat death of the universe,” where nothing can happen. There can be no new creation, there cannot be anything, because all there is, is useless heat with no kinetic or chemical energy left. If we go over to a historical perspective, then the only thing that we have in front of us is a succession of national powers. One empire rising and another falling, until eventually one wins out or everyone is killed off. If you look at our history, I believe our extinction is a more likely consequence of our own action than the triumph of any one party. If we as human beings are allowed to keep acting the way we do, we will kill ourselves. We will destroy this planet and everyone. That is the culmination of humanity in their sinful existence ever since Cain killed Abel.

So, what does Christ coming in and offering something new to us achieve? We, of course, in this Easter season proclaim the fact that Christ has risen and in that resurrection has defeated death For those who choose to follow Christ, there is no end to life only its brief interruption, followed by the overwhelming joy of an eventual and bodily resurrection. But what does that resurrection mean in a cosmic sense? What can we understand about how this entire universe is changed by Christ redeeming it?

You see, when Christ took on human form, Christ did not just take on the fullness of humanity – although that was his primary work – Christ also definitely combined himself with the very matter of the universe. Christ was made of protons and neutrons and electrons, Christ was made of atoms and molecules, Christ was real and physical in every way that matters and therefore all of creation is redeemed through the work of Christ.

We can infer from this that matter itself is in some way resurrected through Christ. The eventual heat death of this universe is no longer our necessary end. Christ will make a world in which entropy does not exist, in which we as humans and, indeed, the universe itself do not have to see degradation as a necessary thing, Things will be allowed to exist in perpetuity. There won’t ever be a time where something cannot exist and exist in abundance.

As for our human history, we are told in a latter part of Revelation that the work of God is so complete that the Tree of Life, the thing that was forbidden to humanity in the garden of Eden because of our evil, will be freely available. We are told that the leaves that grow on that tree are for the healing of the nations, that the healing of all of the people of the world is complete in the work of God. We are no longer separated by where we were born, how we were born, or the conditions of our birth, but united in the work that God has done to bring us into the Kingdom which has begun by Christ.

Perhaps the most important thing for us in our day-to-day life (although I would say sociopolitical things are much more important in our current socioeconomic climate,) is that we are told that every tear will be wiped away and that there will be no sorrow in this world which Christ has created. Life is so overwhelming, and the course of human history so self-defeating, that it is no wonder that we feel like we have no hope. It is so easy to be hopeless, so easy to give in to the cynicism of the rest of the world. We find ourselves looking for politicians to save us, but they all of them disappoint. They all have to protect either their business interests or their personal interest or the continuation of the system itself, and the system will always hurt people, you can’t have a system that doesn’t.

We look to align ourselves with the most powerful parties, instead of trying to find a way that we can live together for the mutual good of each other. We have to find enemies and we have defined our allies, as we talked about last week, not by what we agree on but by who we disagree with. And most importantly, I think, is the reality in this world that always fails to deliver on good things, we will become despondent, depressed, and we begin to think maybe we should just give up.

The promise that we are given in Christ is that there is a proper ending. After all this hard work and after all the suffering we deal with, we are not going to be disappointed by what Jesus does with the end of time. We’re used to being disappointed, we’re used to being lied to, but Christ is the truth and so when we’re told that at the end of all things everything will be coming together perfectly we have to believe it. Yes, now it’s hard, and yes we need to do things to take care of ourselves – go to therapy, take your meds, talk to the folks around you about what’s going on in your heart, because you need to do that! And pray, pray, pray.

We do all of that and we put the work into making ourselves right on this side of eternity because we have the assurance that there is another side to eternity at all. This other side of eternity is much better than this one, in fact it is the perfect and proper ending to the chaos of this one.

We hold in our hands the most important truth there has ever been. Not just that God loves this universe, loves every person in it, but that God came to be a part of it. To fix it so that it could have an ending different than what it was writing for itself. There is hope for you and for me and for everything in this universe, we only have to participate in what God is doing and be willing to tell people that good news. Because the thing we’re trying to do, even as much as it is saving souls and redeeming sinners (of which we are all good company I’ll remind you,) is to bring hope to the hopeless.

In a world that is purely material, in which entropy will always create the least energetic outcome, there’s always going to be the heat death of the universe, the rise and fall of nations, and ultimately not a single source of hope. We people of God tell a different story, one that has the proper ending, let us share it and let us believe it. Things are not good now, they will get worse.  We can go through our entire life with things going wrong, but if you have faith in Christ and you seek to live in peace with one another, doing all your part to make sure this world is better than it is now… The next world is guaranteed, and it will be better. You, dear people of God, are blessed with the knowledge of God’s true story.  You can tell it. When you tell it make sure the ending is the right one. – Amen

Sermon 05/11/2025 – Jesus’s Messy Chanukah

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Gospel Lesson                                                                 John 10:22-30

At that time the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, in regard to what he has given me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”         

Sermon Text

Every family, I believe, has some way to find each other in a crowd. My father has a very specific cough. I remember once I was at the state capital, for the Golden Horseshoe (humble brag,) and my mother and I could not find my dad and step-mom anywhere. Then, far away from us we hear that telltale cough, rising up across the crowd. We found him within the next five or so minutes. My mother has a very specific whistle, and when I hear it go, low and then very high, I know two things – I better hurry to where she is and exactly where she is.

Those little identifies, the things that mark us as connected. We do not have as many of them as we used to. We are a paranoid culture, we are less concerned with finding people we can relate to and more concerned with finding out if we do not agree with people. In the book of Judges, there is a story of Ephraimites and Gideonites. The Ephraimites are defeated in battle and try to flee across the Jordan river. The Gideonites are unable to determine who is an Ephraimite or a Gideonite just from looking from them. So they came up with a test, “See how they pronounce Shibboleth.” We don’t know what the difference in pronunciation would be, but it was something significant. It is like asking people to pronounce “Appalachia,” to see whether they’re from one corner of the mountain range or the other or seeing if they call a group of people, “y’all,” or “y’inz.”

In our social life, we do not look anymore for commonalities for productive reasons – but to bolster our own worldview and comfort. We mention off handedly political ideas and gauge the response of the people around us. We mention movies or controversies to see if people are “on our side,” and only after we are absolutely sure that we are in a place of uncritical normalization of our own ideas, do we allow ourselves to let out a deep breath, and tolerate the existence of the people we have proven aren’t “one of those people.”

I do not want to sound like I am oblivious to the fact that there are folks who need this sort of confirmation of safety. There are many reasons why you, especially when moving into a new area, need to check that you are in a safe place. You want to be sure that no one opposes your existence, believes you do not exist, or generally hates you out of principle. That I get. However, we then sequester ourselves further and further until we are starved for any real connection. If we define our community only by the lack of people who disagree with us, then we will never find a group of people we can truly belong to. You cannot build a community off of a negative principle – e.g. not being “one of those,” and expect anything good or productive to come of it.

In Jesus’s time, like ours, there were a great many sects and political parties to align oneself with. Are you a moral pillar of the community, more focused on daily goodness than strict doctrinal correctness? Then you would be a pharisee. Is worship more important than anything and the Bible limited and literal? The a Sadducee will make you feel right at home. What if your more political? The sicari are willing to kill for their ideas. Zealots, Essenes, Herodians, Hellenists, and so many more were all around.

These were the kind of folk who tracked Jesus down one day in Jerusalem. Jesus was celebrating “the Festival of the Dedication,” a commemoration of when the Maccabees won Judean independence from the Seleucid empire. The feast, and the associated miracle of oil lasting for eight days, would evolve over the next few hundred years to be what we now call “Chanukah.” In Jesus’s time there would not be dreidels or menorah, at least not the same kind of menorah used today, but the festival still celebrating God delivering the Judeans and liberating the temple from Hellenistic impurity.

Jesus, going to celebrate this moment that united his people, found that there were people interested in learning if he was the messiah, the ultimate hero of God’s people. Some did so out of genuine curiosity, but later context tells us the full scope of the questioning. After Jesus gives his answer, some in the crowd turn on him, because Jesus identified himself as one with the Father. This statement of Jesus’s divinity angered some of those in the crowd, Jesus failed to provide the right answer. He said “shibboleth,” in a way that identified him as the enemy in their eyes.

Yet, Jesus’s answer is confirmed in their rejection. “You do not believe me, because you are not my Father’s sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them.” For the people who know Christ, and whom Christ knows, then the truth of Christ’s word is self-evident. We hear Jesus, and we know that Jesus is the one who gives us life. When we hear those words, when we are truly revived in our soul – that is when we are able to fully live – only when we accept the truth of Christ and, more than that, accept that we are part of Christ’s flock.

What I cannot stand about the Church is that we are so prone to factions. We want pastors who preach exactly as we agree with and denominations that have no rough edges. We want to come into Church and get exactly what we wanted and we want to go home and go one social media and be told exactly what we already believe to be true about the world and be perfectly content to live and die in a bubble of homogeneity. We do not desire the true communion of God’s Church. We do not desire to see people of all races, nations, and creeds, gathered in the same flock. We want to create for ourselves criteria that define God’s people as nearly identical to us, and then to apply that cookie cutter definition to everyone else.

Again, there is room for discernment in find the right group of people. Churches exist that do more harm than good, and there are social groups that no one has any right being in or associating with. The problem is that we have defined our opposition to people so well, that we cannot find our commonalities. When we all hear the sound of our Shepherd, we should be able to move toward him in, even approximately the same direction. Yet we pull and kick and beat each other, just to go our own way, just to destroy whatever unity there ought to be in Christ.

I believe that the Church can find a new way of being – one that sees that “those who are not against us are for us.”[1] However, it takes a mortification on our part. We have to let go of some of those code words we listen for, to some of those indicators of one thing or another that let us make immediate judgments of who is “in,” and who is “out.” Really, unless something indicates malice or hatred – people yelling slurs or putting white supremacist or other hate signs on their body or property, abusing other people, generally causing trouble etc. – we should at least try to relate to one another on a deeper level.

When we get to Heaven, we will find people there we do not expect. I know I will. Even as hard as I try to maintain hope for all souls and an equality of grace in all I do, I have written people off that God has not. There are people who, when they hear the call of God, will make their way to the throne of grace and receive it in full. I do not believe they will be hateful people, hate cannot live alongside Christ nor can anger cohabitate with the Gospel. Yet, they may be people I cannot relate to and maybe, worst of all, who I disagree with.

If we truly believe that we are made Christians by our answering of Jesus’s call, then we need to stop coming up with other things a Christian “must be.” Because, if you read this book, really read it and try to understand it, there is much more latitude and grace than definitions and strictures. Let us listen close for the call of our shepherd, and not focus so much on the shibboleths we have prepared for war. – Amen.

[1] Mark 9:38-41

Sermon 05/04/2025 – Eternal Worship

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The New Testament Lesson                                          Revelation 5:11-14

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them, singing,

“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

Sermon Text

Today, as we gather for our service, we do so in anticipation of a baptism. Not only do we gather for a baptism but for a reaffirmation of faith and the joining of our local church by one of our newest additions to the community. Today is a big deal for us as a congregation. More than that, however, this is a day in which Heaven itself is able to rejoice in what we are doing here. As Christ says in the holy gospel there is nothing that causes the angels of heaven to celebrate more than the homecoming of God’s people, the moment that we whether we have been gone our entire life or for a season find our way back into the fold of the thing.[1]

Our scripture today looks specifically at a scene out of the Book of Revelation. If you were part of our Revelation Study then you can tell me all about the different features of this, how it ties into apocalyptic literature, and of course how the four living creatures are references to the cherubim in the book of Ezekiel. For those of us, however, who would just like to read the scripture as we’ve presented it today, the image should be clear to us, angels and archangels, alongside heavenly beings that do not have names, all are celebrating the salvific work of Christ and the wonders of the Lamb who was slain and yet lives. Sometimes in this life, so tied to earthly things, we forget the heavenly dimension of it all. We forget that you and I, here today, are part of a group of people that does not simply exist on earth in the flesh but that is made up of spiritual beings. Some are humans awaiting resurrection and some of are angels that predate perhaps even the earth itself.

This spiritual aspect of our existence can’t be overemphasized but it can be poorly emphasized. So often, you have Christians who are so concerned with angels and demons that they forget about their business that’s in front of them, the things that Jesus actually told them to worry about. So, “heavenly minded,” the saying goes, “that they can do no earthly good.”[2] But the reality is that a Christian who is heavenly minded should be invested in the earthly work that we take part in. To truly understand heaven and its workings now and the heaven that will be when heaven and earth come together at the end of time, is to truly understand that what we do now matters. Our care of the earth and each other, the care of the souls that we are given, and the souls that are around us.

I’ve been reflecting more recently on the work that we have as the church. We talked just last week, after all, about how though our message is eternal the way we tell it has to change. We can clearly see the consequence of staying the same too long. Yet, I think sometimes as we discuss the work that the church is doing we forget some of the simplest parts of it. We believe that the church is a place that people can come to find an experience of Christ and that that experience of Christ would not only change the individual but will save the individual. Salvation is more than just where you go when you die, it’s a transformation of yourself in the present, a giving away of greed and selfishness, and all evil from within ourselves. in exchange for the wonders that come from the love of God.

The scripture that we read comes after John has written for two chapters about the churches of God. The seven churches to whom he writes are spread across the ancient world, but they are congregations that, though different in time and culture, are not that different really from you and me. These are churches who are on fire for God, who are doing so well, and yet each and everyone has a problem. There are the churches with more money than they know what to do with, and they aren’t using it to take care of the poor. There are churches who are doing a great job taking care of each other, and yet have abandoned the essential teachings of the church – the incarnation of Christ, his death, his resurrection, and the call on the Christian to follow that cruciform life. In fact, the only congregation that John writes to and has no negative word for, is a congregation of whom he says, essentially, “You are good at nothing except thatt you have loved God with all your heart. Therefore, keep doing what you’re doing. Even if it is only to be good at loving God you are doing more than most.”

After he has laid out the state of these churches only then does he give him the message of hope that is the Book of Revelation. And he begins it with a beautiful stretch in which nothing happens except Christ is worshipped. When we think of our future and eternity there’s lots of things, especially questions, that come up. However, there is one thing that is certain. We will join the angelic choir, the heavenly elders, the mysterious crowd, in worship of Christ for all eternity. That worship is not something that is waiting for us to happen but something that is happening as we speak in this place.

As we go forward into the service, baptizing one man into the church and accepting another into this congregation, we know that, as Jesus said, heaven celebrates with us. In one case, heaven celebrates the fact that no matter where we come from denominationally we are still all the church and therefore we can find a home with people who are willing to live and love us together. In the other case, we get to celebrate a long work of the Holy Spirit to bring someone into the fold of the faith and to the joy that is a life in Christ. In either case heaven is singing out today.

When we gather at the baptismal water and when we gather at the table of Christ we will join with choirs of angels as we sing, “Holy, holy, holy. Lord, God of power and might,” for heaven and earth are truly full of the glory of the lamb who was slain and yet lives, of Christ who died and yet rose again, who gives life where previously death reigned. Together as we are here, today, we are able to say behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the worl,d because we see what the work of the Lamb can do in the life of the people around us. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, people of God, because today we see one of the simplest truths of what we are here to do. To bring people home into a church that they can call there own and to love them with the love of Christ first showed us.—Amen

[1] Luke 15:7-10

[2] The exact provenance of this saying cannot be determined. While some tie it to Oliver Wendell Holmes, there is no record of it in situ of any of his writings.

Sermon 04/27/2025 – An Eternal Testimony

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Torah Reading                                                                   Exodus 6:1-7

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh: indeed, by a mighty hand he will let them go; by a mighty hand he will drive them out of his land.”

God also spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name ‘The Lord’ I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they resided as aliens. I have also heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians have enslaved, and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians.

The New Testament Lesson                                                    Acts 5:27-32

When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

Sermon Text

 Following Christ’s resurrection and ascension, the Church was devoted to creating a community that did two things. Firstly, it cared for those in need through visitation with the sick and feeding of the hungry. Secondly, it proclaimed the truth of Christ’s resurrection through works of the Spirit and through proclamation of the Word. In general, we tend to separate out these missions as the modern church. We can no longer in good faith do this, however.

For centuries the church has allowed itself to be an institution rather than a movement; to be something that exists that stands the test of time but in so doing becomes static. For those of us who are called to be a part of Christ’s Church we should not see our continual existence as a call to be unchanged but instead to be a call to preach an unchanging testimony. The difference is small and yet it can make a profound difference to our ministries to acknowledge it. The gospel must be “all things to all people that by all means some may be saved,” but it must also somehow retain the essential truth that is at its root—that God took upon human form lived among us died a human death and rose in the perfection of glory.[1]

This story predates us. In some ways even before the church existed this was the story of God’s salvation. It was told in Abraham’s flight into Canaan and then into Egypt, in the patriarchs who survival against all odds in the time after Abraham lived, and it was shown most obviously in the salvific work which God worked on behalf of the Israelites as they fled from oppression in Egypt. No longer existing as Hebrew outsiders, but becoming the people of God who received God’s perfect instruction. At Sinai a foretaste of Christ’s glory was shown and it was shown in the incredible work which God did on behalf of God’s people.

This morning, we saw an excerpt out of Acts in which two of Christ’s disciples are called to trial because they continued to preach Christ’s gospel even though they have been warned against doing so. This reprimand from the powers that be was something of a controversial measure even among the leadership of Jerusalem in the day. There were those within the leadership who saw this Jesus movement as a new expression of God’s spirit. They believed that God had somehow found it was time to create a new sort of faith, one that was inaugurated through the work of Jesus Christ. Others more skeptical of the movement, either because they were directly involved in Jesus’s death or because they feared that their own power would be impacted by the work of the church, were less charitable and saw this new movement as a threat to national security as well as to religious sensibility.

In this climate the church had several options for what it could do: either it could capitulate to the demands and cease preaching the word and cease uniting Greek and Judean Jews, or they could continue to preach the word of Christ to unite the people who used to be separated by the language they spoke and the culture that they practiced. The choice was obvious for the Christians in the first century. You have to keep preahing! It’s interesting to me then that it became difficult for the church to define what it should do later on in its history.

Looking at the story out of Exodus, we see where God speaks to Moses and tells him that he shall go into the halls of power to challenge the pharaoh and free God’s people. It seems to me that God’s general goal for this world is obvious—the abolition of humanity, the freeing of all people to follow God and to live a life in concert with God’s ultimate truths.

For Moses this meant freeing the Israelites from Pharoah, for the prophets it meant liberating the people of God from their own idolatry, and in Christ we saw the ultimate expression of this abolition when Christ freed all flesh from sin. We were no longer required to die, but were finally given the chance to experience eternal life and more than that a blessed life of holiness and perfect love.

Yet, time and time again, we turn from the idea of standing against what is popular or powerful. We give in to the idea that the cruelty of the world must be the cruelty of the Church. What is popular defines what the Church feels it is capable of doing. The simple fact is that you will see this in any tradition, even our own. For as much as I adore the Methodist Church in all of its historical splendor and with them the Evangelical United Brethren who stood by their side, siblings in doctrine separated only by language, I cannot deny that we paid heavily for our participation in the cruelty of the world rather than the love and service to the truth of Jesus Christ.

When the early Methodist movement started getting popular, did they stick to being abolitionists? No, they endorsed slavery through inaction. Even when they split over the issue, Northern Congregations supported the creation of Liberia and not freedom for black folk on American soil. It was a matter of Church government that people of different races should be in different churches and have different leadership, not for only a few years – but until 1968, four years after the country had legalized integration through the Civil Rights Act. While the EUB has a slightly better track record than the Methodist Church, there are essentially no Church movements in the United States that have succeeded in championing justice ahead of the larger societal acceptance of a movement. The exception being women’s groups, like the UMW now called the UWF, who remain at the forefront of justice work in this world.

We have failed to charge ahead when it comes to proclaiming God’s goodness to the world. The Church is always behind in its proclamation because we are so unwilling to change. We were slow to integrate into the Internet and so only in COVID did most congregations truly begin to connect and by that time those who worship online already had their favorites: with much better equipment and with much better production budgets.

While people were beginning to realize that if you wanted to make a difference you had to go out on the street, the Church refused to leave its doors saying: “If anyone wants to be saved they can come to me, but I will not give an afternoon or an evening or any time to anything that would require me to leave this place.” So stingy with ourself, with our resources, with our schedules that we have forgotten there were those who were willing to be beat to be dragged out into the street, to be thrown out of cities simply to proclaim the good work of God and to feed those who needed food.

For what do I bring this doom and gloom on this Sunday after Easter. People of God, we have the chance each day to experience the resurrection. Having just celebrated the fact that Christ overcame even death itself I would hope that we can acknowledge that perhaps there is more than just the state of our soul in need of resurrection. Our systems, our commitment to justice, and to care for the people around us needs to be filled with the same fervor with which we approach the throne of grace through which we worship before the Lord. With which we kneel at the altar and call upon God’s name.

People of God when Moses was sent to pharaoh, he was afraid because he could not speak properly and yet what came of it was  the liberation of the people. When the disciples saw, that Greeks were not getting fed in the same way that Hebrews were getting fed they could have panicked, they could have defended themselves, but they hired Greeks to do the work of feeding Greek and Hebrew alike. Eliminating the bias through embracing those affected.

The Church has two eternal witnesses that it must give: firstly, that Christ came and lived and died and rose again to bring us all out of sin and into the Kingdom of God. Secondly we are called to feed every hungry person, to give drink to the thirsty, to care for the sick, however we are able to, and to bring the stranger into our world, to let them know that they have a place with us: whether that is a homeless stranger, a migrant stranger, a foreign stranger – we are called to be the hands of feed in Jesus Christ in service to the people around us.

Are we willing to face even the mildest scrutiny in our continued commitment to this work? Remembering that there are those who die to do it in other countries? That our scripture records the tale of apostles who were killed and put on trial and beaten to do the work that we choose not to today? Are we willing to let God’s resurrection lead us to change something about the way that we do this thing called Church? Or are we content to keep the status quo as close as possible, to sit comfortably to not do too much that’s new, and just wait out the rest of our existence as a lesser form of what we could be…

People of God, the Spirit of the Lord, is upon us the people of God… We need to do our work, we need to help our community, we need to be a part of the people around us. Let us go and proclaim our risen savior! Let us go forward and lead the way in justice and mercy and service to all! And let the church no longer be a place where people can come and hear something the rest of the world figured out twenty years ago, but instead be a place where the Gospel is given once more, in a new way to tell the same ancient truth. Our Lord and Savior, is knocking at our door asking to be let in… To change us completely… Are we willing to be changed? Or are we content to fizzle out this is the charge before us today and forever? People of God, I hope we know there is really only one answer. – Amen.

[1] 1 Corinthians 9:19

Sermon 04/20/2025 – A Risen Christ

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Gospel Lesson                                                                   Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.”

Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

Sermon Text

There are three things that makes Christianity valid, three things we cannot ever stray from believing or understanding. That Christ came to live among us, that Christ died a human death on a cross, and that Christ rose into glory that we all might join him in his victory over death. While we can think differently on many aspects of faith, worship, and religion at large – these are the unalienable precepts we cannot escape. It is in this we find our hope, upon this all creeds are founded, and from this that we know that truth that “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

On a chilly morning long ago, as the stink of death had fully infected a stone tomb set into the hillside, light and life exploded into the world in a way it never had before. For the first time a dead person was not only raised, but resurrected, glorified in their assumption of true life. This “first fruit,” was not just a normal human, but the perfect Word of God, perfectly united to humanity, who lived and died and rose again for our sake. All flesh was now redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ and all people could know the resurrection that came from his liberation of us all from Sin. The world would never be the same.

While choirs of angels were required to mark the birth of Christ into the world, as his glory had been hidden in the fragile gift of a baby, only one angel was needed to proclaim his resurrection. Almost glibly, the celestial messenger looked down on the disciples and asked a simple question, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Though they had been told Christ would need to die, and that Christ would rise again, that belief in the mind had not translated to a belief in the heart. Only faced with the reality of an empty tomb and of an inhumane, glorious creature proclaiming what had happened, could they begin to see that Christ meant what he said when he claimed he would die, but death would not hold him.

We are removed now from this event by about 2000 years of history. Movements have come and gone, empires risen and fallen, and yet one truth remains. Christ is risen, Christ is alive, and Christ invites us to come and feast at the table of God’s grace and be renewed ourselves. Light from Light eternal, Christ was eternally present with God and was God. Born of a Virgin, Christ was fully human and faced all troubles and pains we have faced. Dying as a criminal, Christ took on complete solidarity with our weakness and with our guilt. Rising in glory, Christ shows us a glimpse of what our life will be like in the World to Come.

I cannot imagine what it was like for the disciples to come to that tomb, filled with the dread of their master’s stolen body, his defiled tomb, only to be met with the bizarre revelation that Hope came from that empty tomb – not despair. As they ran, how horrible it must have been to think about all that could be happening with the displaced body. As they looked in the tomb, how wondrous it must have been to consider that what the first visitors to the tomb, the women who came to attend to Christ, had said was true.

I cannot speak to the emotion that morning would have carried when it was first known, but I can speak to what it can give us now. Hope – that the brokenness of our world and the evil in our hearts and the hearts of others cannot win. Faith – in the resurrection that will bring all flesh before the throne of God someday. Love – the transformative actions given to us by Christ, that we may grow into Christ’s image and make this world into a foretaste of the World to Come. When we gather today, we do not just celebrate a holiday or a historic event, we celebrate that there is still a reason to hold tight to faith, to hope, and to love, even in the tumultuous world we are a part of today.

Let us remember, and let us celebrate. Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen Indeed. Hallelujah, hallelujah – Amen.

Sermon 04/13/2025 – Celebrating Emptiness

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Epistle Lesson                                                         Philippians 2:5-11

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus:

who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Sermon Text

 Traditionally, Churches will observe one or two things on Palm Sunday. The Liturgy of the Palms, where we wave our branches and remember when the crowds outside Jerusalem did the same, or the Liturgy of the Passion, where we recount the crucifixion in preparation for the Easter celebration we all will partake in next week. The difference in service is usually decided by whether or not the Church has Holy Week services – if you have Good Friday service, why have two services recounting the crucifixion in one week? Today though, I’d like to do something like splitting the difference. We remember the celebration of Palm Sunday, we do so looking ahead to the crucifixion, and we do so by remembering just what Jesus’s entire work upon the earth was about.

We start at the beginning, or lack thereof. There was never a time when Christ was not. You and I are finite in our existence, our soul forming sometime in the process of our coming into being or being born. There was a time when you were not and I were not, but there was never a time, unbelievable as that seems, where there was not The Son of God, the only Word of the Father, existing alongside the other members of the Godhead in perfect unity. Before the first word was uttered, before the big bang went from a singularity to the entirety of being, here was the oneness of the Divine. Christ always was, and would have existed eternally in the infinitely expansive sublimity of God’s presence within the Godhead.

The full complexity of God’s pre-creationary existence was made clearer when God first created this universe we live in. Suddenly, there was a contrast, the finite and definite creation contrasted with the infinite and sundry persons of God. Father, Son, and Spirit knew no limits but every element and piece of creation – from the sky above to the waters below – had boundaries and limits all around.

Christ still could exist without limitation, could still experience the infinite existence he had always known. Yet, something greater than that was coming, something greater than the perfect presence of the Godhead or the adoration of angels or the infinite span of eternity. The greatest thing that Christ could or would ever do was found – not in further exaltation – but in deliberate, intentional, and complete humiliation. The infinite God of the universe, took on an impossibly smaller form, gave up the benefits of divinity – though never giving up divinity itself – all for the chance to reconcile the creation God loved so much.

We cannot conceive the sacrifice Christ made, even before the cross, in his taking on human form. In becoming a human being, the fullness of Christ’s divinity suddenly had limitations. There was a stopping point to his being – he had hands and feet, organs and dimensions. His eyes could only see so far and his ears hear so much. Cold could chill him, heat could exhaust him, and the first few minutes of every day would greet him with aches and pains just like they greet anyone else on earth.

The one who “does not faint or grow weary,” now had to rest.[1] His perfect and spiritual substance, now united to flesh could get sick – he had to cut teeth and fight fevers. Every rock he slept on would press into his back as a source of dull pain, every cut on his foot would rub against his sandal and be made raw, every pain and every trouble of humanity came his way. The Perfect Son of God, tempted at every step, still never sinned. In this alone, Christ was different from us in his humanity – that he never strayed from his Father’s will. Yet, in all other things, the God who never needed to feel anything negative in all of eternity, chose to take it all on, even unto death, even death on a cross.

Palm Sunday is a day we remember people understanding, even for a moment, who Jesus was. The rich quaked in fear in the city, while the poor country folk celebrated in the streets. Palms were waved that would not be taken up in Christ’s presence till the reign of God is fully inaugurated at the end of time. The King of all Creation, who had seen unspeakable creatures worship him in eternity past, now accepted the simple praise of human beings running naked in a filthy street. A celebration half-hearted in its adoration, not knowing who Christ fully was or what was about to happen – an echo of something far in the past and far still in the future.

Today we remember that celebrating what Christ did is a celebration of emptiness. In Greek, Christ’s setting aside of the benefits of his divinity is called his, “Kenosis.” A scooping out of who he was, just so that he could fully take on humanity, and not only that but the poorest and most destitute and most troubled experience of humanity he could face. Jesus faced all this, not for his own good, but out of devotion to his Father and love for his creation.

It is because of this humility, because of this willingness to be humiliated, that Christ holds the status he holds in our hearts today. Still fully human, though raised and perfected in glory, Jesus is now the perfect and fullest demonstration of both God and humanity in one single entity. In Heaven there sits a human person, seated at the right hand of the Father as he had previously only done in Spirit. Christ the Lord, raised and given the name which is above all other names, because though he was fully God and had all the benefits thereof, he was willing to shed it all for the good of those he loved.

Today we wave our palms and cry out our praises, but we do so with the knowledge that what we celebrate was horrific for the one who receives our praises. The heartbreak of the Last Supper, the horror of the Crucifixion, all await us before we can step into the resurrection. Today, though we celebrate, let us do so fully aware of what is happening in front of us. – Amen.

[1] Isaiah 40:31

Sermon 04/06/2025 – Worship and Service

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Sermon Text

One of the more interesting episodes in scripture is the one which we just heard out of the Gospel of John. Jesus, having come to Bethany ahead of his crucifixion, is sitting at the table with his disciples. Suddenly, Mary sister of Martha comes in and anoints his feet with expensive perfume, wiping the excess with her hair. Judas objects, saying that they money used for this could have been used to help the poor (a claim John doubts was meant earnestly.) Jesus assures Judas that this was the right thing to do, that as Jesus goes to die he should be prepared for burial – and that Judas should not worry, “you always have the poor with you.”

To my mind, this is the only time we see Jesus seemingly discourage something being given to those in need. When the disciples question his giving before, he always waves them away and goes back to what he is doing. Yet here, at the end of his earthly ministry, he tells them that this time the money does not have to go to the poor. More than that, Jesus seems to address poverty as inevitable, a strange vision for the world coming from its savior. What are we to do, then, with a Messiah who leaves us with so many questions all at once?

The journey we take should begin with the context of how Jesus’s other teachings address how his earthly ministry differs from the ministry of the Church. Afterall, Jesus was upfront with his disciples that things would change when he had ascended into Heaven, they would not always have him physically and directly in front of them to tell them what to do or how to be. Naturally, this means that after Christ rose from the dead and then ascended into Heaven, the disciples would do things differently than they had before. Pray, the eucharist, all manner of acts of worship and service, would alter the live of those first few believers.

The most direct comparison between Christ’s words about the poor and his wider teachings comes in his words about fasting. Following the complaints of his religious rivals that his disciples do not fast like they do, Jesus explains that fasting is indeed holy and good, but that now was not the time for it. “When the bridegroom is here,” fasting was not necessary. In other words, during Christ’s earthly mission, his disciples did not need to escape distraction to see him. Only after he was no longer physically present would such a thing be required.

In the same way, Jesus seems here to not be giving us an excuse to frivolously spend our money in the Church or for “worship,” of God, but is instead speaking to an aspect of ministry unique to his time on earth. The disciples only had a few more precious hours with him, and they would spend most of that time sleeping or hiding. Mary alone seemed to appreciate the gravity of the situation, offering a personal gift to Jesus and showering him with worship while she had the chance. The gift of nard, the wiping of Christ’s feet clean with her hair, these were gifts given to a friend, a teacher, a savior and God, that she would soon no longer see face to face.

Jesus was not callously lauding comfort as more important that care for the poor, but speaking to the particular chance that was afforded to his disciples as they sat awaiting his final days. “The poor are always with you,” was not an attempt by Christ to legitimize poverty either, but a statement of the evils of humanity and the inequality they produce, always having victims.

In Christ’s time there was not an “economic system,” in a philosophic sense. Trade was still mostly by barter, and while the coinage of the empire allowed for standardized trade it did not reflect a radical shift in ideals about how business exists. In our modern era we throw around words like “capitalism,” “socialism,” “communism,” “distributism,” and many more to describe our economic ideals. Yet, I tell you this sad fact – not one economic system, ancient, feudal, or ideological has succeeded in erasing poverty. Some work better at it than others, but it does seem that anything other than deliberate community care cannot erase poverty or its consequences. “The poor are always with you,” is not a statement of defeat but of the reality not everyone cares enough about each other to change the way the world is… Not until Christ comes in final victory will we see poverty truly erased.

In that way, we will always have the poor with us, but in a much more important way Christ tells us that the poor are always with us because we owe them our service and our community. Christ does not say, “There will always be poor,” but that “the poor are always with you.” More specifically, Christ speaks to a degree of ownership – the disciples “had,” Christ with them, they had a relationship and not just proximity. The day was soon coming where the disciples would no longer “have Christ,” next to them, and so their attention would need to turn directly to Christ’s presence upon earth, “the poor.”

In Matthew 25, Christ puts forward that only those who care for the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the imprisoned, and the sick will have a place in his Kingdom. A few years ago it was popular to limit this to only apply to people in your Church, but that is not what it says. When Christ calls us to love “the least of these, [his] siblings,” he is speaking of all people who suffer in this world as it is. All of them are meant to share something with all of us. The Church and the poor, they can never and should never be separated. As long as we wait for Christ, we are to be in community with them.

There is a time for worship of God, for piety to overcome the need to serve others. It lasts for about an hour on Sunday mornings and it lasts when we take a moment away to pray or to give praise or to study scripture. At all other times, service and care for others is more important than any other aspect of our faith. “There is no holiness, but social holiness,” and unless we can live our lives together, to overcome the many problems of this world, we will be no better than Judas. For Judas claimed to love the poor and yet only loved himself, how greater is our sin if we claim to love Christ but deny the poor he calls us to love. Love one another, serve one another, for there is no greater worship than this. – Amen.

Sermon 03/30/2025 – An Icon of Sin

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. 

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Sermon Text

 Last week we looked at the way that our images of Christ impact our Christian walk. If we engage with Christ as anything but who Christ truly is, the perfect incarnate Word of God, then we miss out on imitating that same God in our walk to perfection. There is another way in which Christ acts as an image, however, or more properly how Christ acted as an image. Christ, despite living without sin and living perfectly from eternity to eternity, became the perfect image of human sin, so that humanity might aspire to the perfection of his divinity.

That language is too technical though. We could dig into hamartiology (the study of Sin,) for years and not come any closer to the central and simple truth of what Christ was able to accomplish for us in his death. The work of the Cross, a perfect sacrifice offered once and for all, was the moment that redemption and resurrection became possible for humanity. Yet, what does it mean for Christ to have “become sin?” Furthermore, what about dying as this image of Sin was means that we are saved by Christ’s work in the first place?

The general way we talk about Christ’s saving work is with the moniker of “atonement theory.” We use this large net because it covers all the different ways that people talk about Christ’s work to save us. You see, when you have something as major as Christ’s death on the cross and subsequent resurrection, no one way of talking about it is enough. Most people have a singular explanation that they focus on when they talk about how Christ saved us but each has a little bit of the picture within their vision of Christ’s work. Imagine you have a bunch of clear projection papers, each with a few lines drawn on them. Each one you stack on top of the other will give you a little bit more of the picture, and all of them will complete the picture. In the same way, we talk about God by stacking images of God on top of each other until we can see who God is, and more often who God is not.

Christ’s becoming sin on our behalf is ultimately a completion of his work in the incarnation. By becoming human, Christ experienced everything we as humans experience: sickness, tiredness, temptation, hunger, thirst, pain, and even death. The only thing Christ never experienced was sin itself. In becoming fully human, Christ took on all of humanity. In going to the Cross, he took on the penalty for all of humanity’s sin, and in his death therefore removed the punishment from the rest of humanity. Though flesh may die still, the soul could be freed and the resurrection that Christ himself would take part in was promised to all others who had faith in that same resurrection.

The thing that most people disagree with is in what way Christ “became sin.” Some put forward that Jesus, like the scapegoat of ages past, literally became filled with the sins of all humanity as he hung on the cross. Therefore, all sin died with him on the cross. Catholic doctrine asserts that the agony he felt in Gethsemane came from him looking ahead and seeing all of human sin, and still choosing to take it upon himself. Others see it simply as Christ, though innocent, died for our sins and therefore “became sin,” in the sense of taking punishment on despite having none of the spiritual taint of Sin within him. The difference in those two ideas is subtle, but it does lead to some interesting nuance in how we talk about Christ’s death.

I remember when I was at a funeral once, there was a plant in the crowd. Very strange to orchestrate a funeral like that, but so it goes. The minister leading the service “noticed,” another minister in the crowd and asked him to pray to close out the service. “Lord Jesus, we thank you for your mercy and for you substitutionary death upon the cross…” He began. Substitutionary here means that Jesus died in our place, took on the punishment meant for us, and so satisfied God’s wrath in his death. This idea is reflected in Hebrews where it speaks of God seeing Christ’s righteousness and not our sin, when God looks upon us.

The problem with substitutionary language is that, while it is true Christ died in our place, if we leave it only at that – where do we stand now? Between the life material and the life eternal, there has to be something more to what Christ did for us. Did Jesus die to free us from the consequence of Sin, or did Christ die to fully reconcile us to God? If Christ is just a divine distraction from God’s wrath, then the crucifixion was a singular act with a singular outcome. That, to me, does not reflect the wider narrative of scripture in what Christ did for us.

Christ did indeed die and take on the full consequences of sin, but as our scripture says in dying he became “Sin,” not merely the consequences of that sin but the idea in itself. In dying, Christ destroyed Sin in its entirety, leaving a shell of what the evil had been before. As John Wesley put it, when Christ saves he does not save by “mere deliverance from Hell,” but by completely freeing us from the weight of Sin and from its hold in our life.

A fully regenerated Christian, washed in the water and the blood, filled with the Spirit, has nothing in them that means that must sin. Ignorance or thoughtlessness is the only cause that must necessarily result in sin in our life. All other sin is a consequence directly of our habits that engrain sin within us, our conscious choice to sin despite knowing better, or our brokenness misleading us into acting in sin rather than facing our trouble directly. We who are saved do not sin out of powerlessness, we sin because we have allowed sin to be our nature even though sin was destroyed once and for all on a hill far away.

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, he paints the image better than most. In the poem, after Satan decides to go to Eden and tempt Adam and Eve, he approaches the gates of Hell which are guarded by Sin and her horrible child Death. The gates of Hell are sealed, not from the outside, but the inside. Satan, Milton puts forward, chose his imprisonment, and in the same way we decide again and again to submit to sin rather than be free in Christ.

Christ lived a life of perfection, not only as a highlight of God’s goodness, but to demonstrate to us what was possible once we were freed from Sin. Christ was fully human, inclined to the same temptations and weaknesses we are, and yet Christ overcame sin in maintain his perfection of will as a human and as God. When Christ took on sin – literally or consequentially – he took on every aspect of it. He broke the chains that had held us forever in bondage, and offered us the key again and again through his grace. In descending to the dead, Christ suffered the fate of all who taste sin, proclaiming the Gospel even in the grave. In rising again, Christ was forever victorious over death – the ultimate consequence of sin.

The Gates of Hell were forever taken off their hinges. The vice grip that death had on humanity was shattered and the beast reduced to a whelpling. Satan was crushed and all his minions reduced to shades in a kingdom of shades. Christ, the Icon of Sin in death, is now the eternal emblem of God’s grace, power, and mercy – perfected humanity forever wed to the perfection of Godhead. All things began, and found their natural end and purpose through Christ’s journey to the cross and from the grave.

Whether we talk in terms of substitution or moral exemplars, in Christus Victor or ransom, Christ died for our sins. Christ in that death took on Sin in a substantial and real way. That taking on of our sin allowed for us to be freed from all of Sin’s power in our life. We can, in other words, be perfected, and Christ gladly will lead us toward that perfection if we willingly submit to the work Christ sets before us. Having been redeemed, justified, saved through Christ’s work on the cross – Christ now offers us the Spirit and the Church, and asks that we live so that we may know true abundance. Abundance of love, or mercy, of holiness… Life is born out of death, because Christ changed everything… Praise God, praise God, praise God! – Amen.

Sermon 03/23/2025 – Golden Calves, Bronze Serpents

/ John Langenstein / 1 Comment

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did, as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” We must not engage in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it

1 Kings 18:1-6

In the third year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, Hezekiah son of King Ahaz of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan. He relied on the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him or among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following him but kept the commandments that the Lord had commanded Moses.

Sermon Text

Growing up, in my home church, I was caught between two extremes. On one end was the hyper-contemporary services my family attended. They would always go to either the service that met in our church’s multi-purpose building or a local community gym. All around were normal fixtures of business – standard seating and bare walls, basketball hoops and industrial fans. In these places of baren utility, however, God’s spirit still found a way to people, and without the frills of anything “churchy.”

However, that was not where my heart rested. When I was old enough, I would go to a different service than my family. Even though the service was the latest in the morning, I didn’t go so I could sleep in. Instead, it was the content of the service that enticed me. Hymns, organ music, doxologies and unison prayers were shared week after week. I found that I was drawn to the more historic expressions of the faith. When I came to them, I found a deep well that I could pull from. It was no more legitimate than the services my family attended, but for me I couldn’t turn back once I found my niche. I was home, and throughout college and seminary, I found myself settle more and more into the trappings of traditional expressions of worship.

One of the most treasured aspects of the Church, throughout history, has been the art and iconography we use to express our faith. When we picture “Christ,” we usually have pictures in our head drawn from stained glass in churches we’ve sat in for years. When we picture “the Last Supper”, it is Da Vinci’s impractical table setting that jumps into our heads. More recently, “The Chosen,” and its depictions of Christ shape how people see Jesus and his works. The way that Christ and the various figures cast throughout scripture are depicted in popular culture, in art, and in our own spaces of worship and homes shapes our perspective a great deal.

However, there is a danger in representing God – mainly that by representing God we are suddenly opening ourselves to “mis-represent,” God. Removed from the context and intent of the author or artist, depictions of Christ with an intended message or symbolic purpose, simply become our de facto image of our savior. Films replace scripture in our recollection of Christ’s life, and bit by bit we are given a lesser version of the riches that are freely revealed through the real source of knowing Christ – the fellowship of believers, the sacraments, the study of Scripture, and the visitation of the Holy Spirit. These and other “means of Grace,” are where we truly meet Christ.

Let me take you back to my home church for a minute, where I first fell in love with God. Behind the altar, up at the back of the chancel, was a massive picture of Jesus. Christ appeared life sized, seemingly stepping out of the painting and into the sanctuary. It was a powerful image, and for many it defined the presence of Christ in the building. However, that painting was the thorn in the side of every minister I ever knew to stand in that pulpit. The picture, beautiful as it was, had become a focus of the people’s worship, and the second it became the focus of their adoration it became the most insidious thing an image can become. It had become an idol for the people of that church, a sacred thing that must never be touched.

Our scripture today, the Epistle reading firstly, tells us the cost of idolatry. I used to always find it strange that scripture lumped “idolatry,” in with a variety of other sins. In particular, Paul is focused upon sexual consequences for idolatry, interpreting the “play,” of the Israelites in carnal terms. I don’t know if I agree with Paul’s reading in this instance, but over time I have begun to understand his and scripture’s broader prohibition against idolatry – and more particularly of images in general. Idolatry leads to sin, not because the pieces of wood or canvas or metal that is being worshipped impacts the people, but because the lack of God’s real presence does.

For the Israelites wandering in the desert, they had just witnessed God’s amazing saving power. They had seen plagues afflict their oppressors, they had seen the Red Sea part, water came from dry stones and quail fed their appetites even beyond God’s provision of Mana. They were given every good gift, but they were still not sold on God. When Moses went up to the mountain to receive the Law, they began to worry that the Moses would never return. They feared they could not hear from the true God again, and so in desperation they cast an idol of that same God, an image of a bull cast in gold.

We know from archaeology that bull imagery was commonly associated with the God of Israel, indeed scripture confirms the same.[1] Yet, when Aaron held the calf aloft for the people to adore, he did not say, “Behold, this is a representation of the God who brought you out of Egypt.” He said, “These are the Gods that brought you out of Egypt.” The people immediately replaced the true God with a lesser facsimile. The true God thundered above them, ready to give them Teachings that would give them new Life, but instead they decided to embrace a lesser image of divinity – to doom themselves to a half-life lived in imitation of an imitation.

“But,” a concerned listener may say, “The images we use in Church and in our homes are different. We do not intend for them to be Gods in their own right, just reminders of Christ’s presence in our lives.” I hear your concern, and you are right to name it. I am not so iconoclastic as to oppose any image of God. John of Damascus argued that as Christ was the Icon of God’s invisible substance, so iconography provided us a window into Heavenly things. In my own house I have a pantocrator, a picture of Christ in triumph, to remind me that God prevails over all troubles. I have an icon of Mary and Jesus in my nursery, to remind me that Christ who once lived as a child, watches over my own child. Yet, I would destroy either image the second they became all consuming to me, the moment I saw God’s presence in them, the second I made them into idols.

Well intentioned images often are the first things to become idols. In the wilderness, God commanded Moses to break the law against graven images and create a bronze serpent. That serpent was lifted into the air, and whenever people were bitten by the “Nachashim Seraphim,”
“the flaming serpents” they would look on it and be cured. This serpent eventually found its way into the Temple, where it served as a reminder of God’s salvation… Until it became something else. People began to worship the serpent, offering it incense, transforming the emblem of salvation into a source of destruction.

The Church in my hometown, the one with that picture behind the altar, were forced each Sunday to imagine Christ within the confines of that image. They looked up at his blue eyes, his pale white face, his long brown hair, and they never could see from it anything but a savior that reflected back their own visions of respectability. The Christ that hung above the altar would not live on the streets as the real Christ did, his robe was too clean. The Christ that hung above the altar would not reach his hands to heal the sick, they were too properly manicured for that. The Christ that hung above the altar was not just a flawed representation of the Christ that hung on the Cross – they had nothing to do with one another.

The images we form of Christ are not just in paintings or in statues though, no they are in the stories we tell and in the testimonies we give. When we present Christ to the world, are we truly presenting the Christ of scripture? Or are we presenting a therapeutic presence, a God that makes us feel good and that makes death a little less scary? Do we see in Christ a figure that is great than ourselves, that calls us to be better tomorrow than we are today, or do we see a divine yes man that is constantly patting us on the back for all our good work? Are we willing to meet the real Christ, and not the sanitized image that we have enshrined in our hearts?

So what do we do now? Go home and burn all our paintings and crucifixes? Of course not! What good would that do? It would not change our hearts. No, instead today I call us all to search our hearts and see what idols we have put up. What half-baked images of Christ are we accepting rather than the one, true Christ who reigns now and forever? If that half-baked image has a physical form, by all means get rid of it, cast it far away from you. I would wager though that it probably isn’t on your wall, it is more likely in your heart, in your mind, in the capitulation to “the world as it is,” we are all prone to. We all have idols to smash, people of God, and we had best find them before they ruin us. – Amen.

[1] C.f. 1 Kings 12:28 with the Kuntilat Arjud Pithos depicting “’HWH and his Asherah.” Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ajrud.jpg

Sermon 03/16/2025 – Enemies of the Cross

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

Sermon Text         

I’ve said it before, and I will say it many times more before I am done on this earth – Philippians is my favorite book in the New Testament, perhaps the entirety of scripture. This letter captures the final words Paul has for one of his beloved congregations, he speaks to them so earnestly and honestly that we see an image of the Apostle we don’t usually get access to. Paul is confident, but he is not unafraid. Paul is secure in his salvation, but he is not unaware of his own weakness. He is staring death in the face, and in the midst of the anxiety and uncertainty of his earthly life’s end, he writes one of the clearest and most beautiful expositions on faith ever put to paper.

Though there is some debate about the matter, I agree with older scholarship that places Paul’s writing of Philippians to his time in prison in Rome. Having appealed his case before Herod Agrippa, Paul had set up the series events that would lead to his execution. Agrippa was prepared to release Paul, but Paul saw an opportunity to share the gospel in Rome – the city he never made it to in his own wanderings – and even to speak to Caesar, or Caesar’s representatives at least, on matters of faith.  Paul had freedom from bondage, freedom from the chopping block, in his hands, and he gave it away willingly – just so God’s word might find a new audience.

In this place, where Paul has decided to imitate his savior through giving his life for others, Paul encourages the congregation of Phillipi to do the same. “Be imitators of me,” he says – not out of pride but out of the awareness that he has nothing left on earth but the work of Christ. He wants them to follow him, to take up their cross, and be willing to minister to the Gospel in ways that are unafraid of the consequences. When eternity is promised to you, death is a temporary setback rather than the end of all things.

Paul warns, however, of a group which he calls “enemies of the Cross of Christ.” We are not given specific identifiers for who this group is. Some point to the local pagan authorities in the area, others to rivals to Paul in Jewish society. Personally, however, I think the context suggests that Paul is worried about the congregation picking the wrong role models. When we are asked to “imitate,” Christ, we usually do so through the framework of people and teachers we know. We can only learn by example, and the most obvious example of Christian virtue will be found in the Christians in our own congregations – the ones who model what it is to be a faithful follower of Christ in thought, and word, and deed.

Yet, there are those in the Church, and often in leadership, who do not earnestly seek to imitate Christ. While all of us fall short, some have distorted their image of Christ into something primarily self-serving -something we’ll discuss in depth next week. These are the people of whom Paul says, “Their God is in their belly.” In other words, they worship the things they want to have and the acquisition of that thing rather than worshipping the God who brings both good gifts and adversity to those who follow the narrow road.

I think of those ministers who promise that God will bless you, if you only give a little more money. The minister who tells us that God agrees with what we think, and disagrees with all the people we also disagree with. “God loves who you love, God hates who you hate – how holy you are for being right!” Worse still are those who have made God into an economic system – pay in your devotion, your faith, your time – and receive a custom made blessing. The Gospel of prosperity, the Gospel that seeks to make the average churchgoer feel good at the expense of their own goodness – this is the worship of our appetites, of our belly, that will lead to our destruction. If we are to be imitators of Christ, we cannot lean on the teachings of subpar ministers and church-folk as the basis of our Christian walk.

I grew up in a ministry that was led by someone who I can confidently say was unfit for the role of minister – especially to a minister of young people. Vain, controlling, and singularly bent on manipulating people to support their every wish. In their mind, they spoke for God – and to contradict them was to contradict the Lord. I grew in holiness despite him, because I learned at some point that while he held some of the key doctrines of faith in his hand – he did not practice them. For that I had to look to others in the congregation.

I remember the sweet older women of Berkeley Springs, the kindly grandmothers and great grandmothers who had learned long ago that prayer really did change things. The 85 year old man who would climb up ladders to repair rooves – and only once broke every bone in his body by falling off one (he got better!) In particular, I remember one person in the congregation – she seemed spacey at times. She was quiet, often sitting silently in the back of a room. Yet, when she spoke – you listened – and the words she spoke were the words of Life.

True religion is not found in someone telling you everything is going to be ok. Nor is it found in someone congratulating you on already having all the answers, in being right before you even tried. True religion challenges us, and asks us to be better than our instincts. To give up the “fleshly,” part of ourselves, that God in our stomachs, and embrace what Christ wants us to know. When Paul introduces the idea that his disciples should imitate him, he says what is, to me, the most beautiful summary of Christianity there could be.

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”[1] Paul did not want his disciples to imitate him in that he was especially holy or perfect, but in that he had realized what Christianity was about. Not triumph, but sacrifice, not profit, but emptiness. To serve the Lord was to offer everything up on the altar, to accept losing in this world, for the glory of the World to Come. True compassion, true repentance, true transformation, requires the end of our ego and the beginning of us fully embracing Christ’s humility. “To die to self, and chiefly live, by [His] most Holy Word.”

Half measures are not enough. The triumphalist religion of the past hundred years is not enough. “When Christ calls [us,] he bids [us] come and die.”[2] To be an enemy of the Cross is to deny that the Cross is asked of us at all. Comfort is our destruction, the desire to avoid awkward conversations or dissenting stares is our end. Only in embracing Christ, the radical love and piety that comes from devotion to a World we don’t currently know – that is the only way forward. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”[3] Have we even gone so far as to put our hand on the plow? Have we, really?

We are called to be imitators of Christ, and to do that well, we must find our role models among the holy – and not the marketable. It is not in pulpits flushed with the most money that God’s presence rest. Not in the Facebook Vloggers who make the most people angry in the name of so-called “religion.” Only in those who imitate Christ can we find our inspiration. The meek, the mild, the humble, and the servants – those who desire peace and challenge those who oppose it. People of God, you will be influenced by those you place in high esteem – make the right choice in who you follow. Let yourselves be led by those who resemble Christ, and not the powers that be – only then will you find the life that comes through suffering alongside Christ, and through the resurrection which is promised to all people who have faith. – Amen

[1] Philippians 3:10-11

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Costly Grace,” in The Cost of Discipleship

[3] Luke 9:62