24 – The Life of the Prophets

July 28, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Kings 4:42-44

A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.” But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord: They shall eat and have some left.” He set it before them; they ate and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.

Sermon Text

There are themes that repeat again and again in scripture and once you start to learn them, you can’t help but see them in readings across the canon and even in our own lives. One of the reasons I encourage people to read their Bible’s is that the more you know about this book, the more you will see that it does actually have something in it relevant for most every aspect of life. Stories that teach us something about what it is to be human, and what it means to know God. Teachings that tell us what we should be doing and what we should be avoiding. In this book are all things needful, and the more of it we consume the more of it will consume us.

Of all the themes in scripture, there is a near constant refrain regarding the need to feed the hungry. In Genesis, it was setting a table for strangers that allowed Abraham to receive a blessing from God. The Exodus sees God feeding God’s people with bread from Heaven, and instills in them lessons about what it means to share their excess rather than hoard it. Prophet after prophet tell the same tale – “You would be blessed by God! But you forgot to love your neighbor and feed them when they were hungry…”

In this constant refrain to join one another around a table, to share our food, we are given a variety of other clues about what it means to be a person of faith and live into this prophetic identity we have all been called to. On one hand it seems overly simple to have food and share it with other people – if there’s a problem then we need to be part of the solution – but sharing food is such a common theme because we do so much more when we eat together than just share food. To sit down with someone, to pass plates and bowls between each other, to sit and talk and share life, this is all so much more than just providing calories – this is sharing the very essence of life – connection and community that allows us to become more than we ever were before. In meeting each other over a table, we become vulnerable, and in that vulnerability find strength.

We read in our scripture today an episode where the Prophet Elisha receives an offering and turns that offering into a blessing for the people. Two things are interesting about this gift. Firstly, the offering was from the First Fruits of the Harvest, an offering usually reserved for feeding the attendants in the tabernacle or temple. Yet, when the prophet receives this food he does not save it for himself, as would be all that was required of him, but asks that the people around him be fed with what was brought forward. The few pieces of bread, the collection of grain, it suddenly multiplies miraculously, but this multiplication is a consequence of a far simple action – sharing the abundance God has given for the good of others.

The entirety of this chapter captures other actions that Elisha took for the good of others. He miraculously made oil to save a woman’s children from slavery, he gave a woman her child twice, he made inedible food edible with just a sprinkle of flour… Mundane creatures of oil and wheat were used again and again to care for people. The prophetic life is shown, just across the span of a few pages, not to be found only in dramatic declarations or in fire falling from Heaven, but in the simple act of caring for others and showing love to those who need it most.

If we fast forward to Christ’s ministry we find him acting in much the same way. Famously, scripture records two instances where Christ multiplies bread and fish to feed thousands of people – showing him as a greater miracle worker than anyone before him. Yet, Christ’s ministry was not just in the multitude, but the individual. People would come to Jesus to be healed of all kinds of trouble, and Jesus would address them each in turn. Christ cared for the crowd and for the individual, for the ninety-nine and for the one. This care, the ministry poured out for the good of all people, is the example we all have to follow if we are to call ourselves followers of Christ.

I see, with some regularity, a constant need for people to define the reason for why Jesus would sit and eat with people who were marginalized by society. The sinners and the tax collectors were those Jesus chose to eat with, and people feel the need, and it is a well-intended impulse, to explain why he did this. The problem is that in explaining it, we often miss the point. Jesus tells us point blank that “Those who are well do not need doctors,” telling us this is a redemptive work.[1] The argument usually goes forward then that any work we do in the Church to expand the table and let more people in, must be to “fix,” them and we should always have food in one hand and a reprimand in the other.

As we talked about last week however, the only way anything really flourishes in the life of faith is if God is the goal of our work. For Christ, the reason he ate with sinners was indeed to bring them to a place they could be healed, but that was accomplished through a far simpler method than inviting them in and then imposing change upon them. Christ was changing their lives by making access to God available for them. The “righteous,” those who knew what the word of God was, who read their scripture and claimed to live by it, would not condescend to be with those unlike themselves. They would criticize people for not knowing God and then use every excuse for why those “godless,” people shouldn’t be allowed in their “sacred” spaces.

In opening up the table, in joining the outcast in their homes, Jesus was not sitting there eating with them and waving a finger the whole time. Instead, Christ was moving what was defined as a sacred space away from those with money, means, and access to those who had nothing at all. Christ, the focus of our life and our ministry, moved away from the Church folk and went out to the World, and when Christ did that the entire focus of our lives should have moved with him. Christ did not sit with sinners for any other reason than to allow them to sit, and eat, with God almighty, and we ought to work toward the same goal.

If we want to be a vibrant church, if we want to be Christians in the truest sense of the word, we should work to spend real time with the people in our community. It can be hard in a world where we are so often fixated on our own troubles, locked up in our homes with all the things we could ever need, trapped in bastions of privilege that make us believe the lie that we do not need one another. The work of a prophet, of bringing Christ’s words into the world, requires us to be centered in Christ, to give a message different than what the world offers, to establish something much bigger and long-lived than ourselves… The work of a prophet, grandiose as it is simple, is summarized in simply opening the doors and letting people in.

What are we doing to love other people? What are we doing to get to know them? To pray for their needs and to do what we can to see that those same needs are met? Prophets are not just people who say things, they do not just proclaim, they do! The Church is one source of prophetic work, but through faith we have become a “nation of priests,” and if we are all prophets than we all ought to be doing something. How have you loved your neighbor this week? How have you shown kindness to those who have not had any kindness for some time? How are you opening the doors of faith for others to step in, and centering Christ in all things?

We are here today because someone said to us that we could eat at their table. Let us do the same for others. Open wide the gates, break every lock, remove every barrier! God is here among us and God is here to stay! Let nothing keep people from coming and feasting at God’s table! Let your heart be lit with love and care, let that flame burn bright and let it light this darkened world! – Amen.

[1] Matthew 5:31-32

Sermon 07/21/24 – The Hope of the Prophets

July 21, 2024July 17, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Ephesians 2:11-22

So then, remember that at one time you gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.

So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone; in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Sermon Text

We’ve been looking this month at a general view of what it means to be a prophet. Did you know that? If you’ve been paying attention you might have seen that from Ezekiel, to John, to Paul, we have seen various aspects of the Prophetic life. I talked the week of July 4th about our need to provide a witness that is different from what the world gives. Last week we looked at why we need to build up our work and ministries in such a way that we leave legacies behind us – all prophets must end their time on earth after all. Today, we look at a different sort of “end,” for the prophets, we look at their purpose, their τελος (telos,) their reason for existing.

As I continue on in ministry, I find that there is a need for the Church to be more focused in its proclamation of the Gospel and more sure about what it means to be a participant in God’s economy of Grace. We are all people who have been saved by the blood and redeemed through the work of Christ. We’ve entered into the household of God, we’ve tasted and seen what God is all about, now we need to find a way to show that to others! What are we proclaiming, and why do we bother to proclaim it? We offer something the world cannot compete with, but are we offering that because we want something out of the deal or are we doing it because we want people to benefit from participating in what we’ve got going on?

Let me put it another way. When I go outside and water the garden we have below the Church, why am I watering it? Is it so that the plants can grow? Yes, necessarily. Is it so that people see them grow and know I have not abandoned my responsibility to them? Less so, but I would not want to earn the ire of anyone involved with building the beds either. Do I think, and this is the most important question I think, that there is something inherently good about growing these plants? Do I see beyond the consequences of them growing – food for the pantry, living things in flower beds – and see something quintessential to the nature of preserving life?

Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians that there is no longer any separation between God’s people and those who were once considered “outsiders,” within the Kingdom. Christ, we are told, has eliminated the categories of race and nationality we defined ourselves with, erased the human traditions and precepts that formed a wedge between Jew and Gentile. Christ through all that Christ did, was a great unifier, and in establishing Unity, Christ built up a new kind of existence for us. We are all no longer this kind of person or that kind of person, but by being built up into the Church we all share the same dignity, worth, and purpose.

In this room are people of various backgrounds. In same way that we could go from person to person and find all kinds of different skills and character traits, so we could step outside and examine the brickwork of this church and quickly find that none of the bricks making up this building are alike. Sure, they can be quite similar, but the individual grooves and weathering are all different. Each one in themselves only gives a slight glimpse of their intent, but all together their purpose is clear – they build up to be a building where God’s people gather, where God’s word is preached, the Sacraments are duly administered, and best of all the work of God done for the good of all people.

As a prophetic voice in the world, we are involved in a lot of different things. We are responsible for helping to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick. We proclaim the truth that Christ died and rose again, and that we too can join in that resurrection. Yet, in this proclamation, and in this service, we are not fully completing our purpose. We are not completing our purpose in these two categories unless we root ourselves in something beyond the work itself. Our work, our life, our entire identity, is ultimately centered in and working toward the person of Jesus Christ. No other focal point exists because on this fulcrum all the world must turn.

Returning to that Garden down the hill. The care I give it cannot be out of an obligation to the end product, because I cannot know if any substantial fruit will grow on any branch of it. I cannot depend upon watering it because I want people to know it was I who watered it, because I don’t always remember to do it at the right time, it rains as often as I have to do it, and sometimes other people do it anyway! I have to want the plants to grow because I think it is good for them to grow, regardless of any other outcome, or else I simply will not invest the energy I need to into their life. The thing in itself, the growth of the plant, must supersede all other considerations I have in this venture.

In the same way, if Christ is removed from the center of our mindset, we will lose track of our own work and our lives. If Christ is not the center of what I do, I will have to become a far greater source of motivation. Even in the most disciplined person cannot be completely inwardly motivated, I must believe I am working toward something outside myself. If I do not, every success will only prop up my ego and every failure will only make me feel like a wreck not worthy of anything. Our center must be on Christ, because outside of that center will we prioritize and exalt just about anything and everything we touch.

Paul was working against two large competing identities in the Church. There were the “Circumcised,” and the “Uncircumcised,” the Gentiles and the Jews in other words. Each group had worked to claim themselves, in some places and at some times, to be the superior stock from which Christians could be made. Gentiles were born into the Church by God’s grace, and knew only Jesus – therefore they might argue they had a purer Gospel. The Jewish believers, meanwhile, would lean upon the long history they had with God, upon Moses and the Prophets, and show their clear advantage as proof they were superior. To pull either off their pedestal would not be easy, and so Paul pointed up to a far taller pillar in their lives.

To the Gentile, Paul offered the truth that though they were once far from God, they were now brought close to God. “You do know of God only through Christ! You are brought into the faith by his works!” Paul this says to the Gentile, and to the Jew he affirms their antiquity. “We are God’s people! We have the benefit of the Law and the Prophets, and we always been close to God because of this!” Yet, Paul is clear, neither group really had the fullness of God without one thing. Faith. Moreso their faith would not mean anything if it did not have a strong center – God in Jesus Christ.

Christ, and not any work of the Law or of its absence, is what had made God’s people into who they are. The household of the faith was built off of a single cornerstone, not two. There is nothing that can separate God from God’s people, because God is the one who made them who they are. In the verse immediately before what we read, Paul makes this all the clearer, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them”

As I was driving around Clarksburg recently I thought of what a shame it is that, especially in America, there is no single idea of what it means to be a Christian. I don’t mean styles of worship or types of people, even specific practices can be very different – after all, we aren’t saved by any of those things. No, I mean there is no concept of a unified belief in most anything. When the Ministerial Association tried to reform in Harrison County, I was one of the first people to say we should get a group together to state what we all, as Christians, can agree on and base our work on the firm foundation our shared faith in Christ gave us… We did not have those kinds of meetings, and so we floundered trying to identify what our purpose would be.

That is the problem in most things that the Church does. We are no longer centered on Christ in a way that can produce fruitful work. In our own congregations we are willing to fight and bicker until we inevitably splinter and perish. If we have a firm foundation in Christ, in the need to have faith, and in the striving together toward God’s righteousness, centering everything in Christ’s example – the Church could change the world. The problem is, as we talked about in week one – we are all trying to make a Christ who agrees completely with us, and are unwilling to accept a Christ that challenges us.

When we are told that Christ has destroyed the dividing walls, we should feel something within us quake. When we hear that Christ has abolished distinctions as important as “circumcision,” and “uncircumcision,” we should feel something deep within ourselves. The sign of God’s presence with God’s people is no longer the defining mark of God’s promise? It’s an emblem of suffering and death turned into the ultimate source of life for all people! We are called to love, to a commitment to Christ that means we do not categorize ourselves a million times over, just so we can say who is allowed into the Kingdom and who is not.

The Hope of every prophet is that God’s word, planted in the world, will bear fruit as God’s kingdom. That Hope has always been expansive and outward focused. The day is coming, and is already here, where all flesh will know the Goodness of God! If only we are willing to share it, to live it, to be it! We can only do that if we see beyond any worldly goals. More money in a plate, more seats in /our/ pews, more of a say in the world stage – if we see beyond this and see the one goal that matters, the one focus that amounts to anything. Jesus, and Jesus alone, we will thrive. Christ with us, Christ clearing the path for us. Our life is found in beholding God, let us behold God with all our heart and soul and mind, that our work may be unclouded and our hearts pure. – Amen.

Sermon 07/14/2024 – The End of the Prophets

July 14, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Mark 6: 14-29

King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’s name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead, and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”

For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee.

When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests, and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The king was deeply grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.

Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

Sermon Text

One of the most difficult aspects of life is the nature of our legacies. We have no control over what happens to something once we no longer have our hands on it. When you work for years in the same place, and then move to a new job or retire, you do not know if the person who follows after you will keep anything you started going. Will they respect it, grow it, revamp it? Or will they squander your hard work and leave you feeling like it was all for nothing.

Scripture gives an entire book for us to consider the frustration of life’s cycles. When we open up Ecclesiastes, a personal favorite of mine, we see page after page of reflection on how hard it is to see life go on beyond us. Whether it is our industry, our community, or our Church – the fact that at some point we have to hand off what we’re doing to another person can be difficult. The period of transition itself can be one of the worst aspects of these changes. When one era of our life ends and another begins it can be hard to accept. Whether that is a natural change in our life – kids leaving home (or being born,) a death of a loved one – or more social changes – a change in jobs, the end of a friendship, a move from one place to another – change is just no fun.

The reality persists, all the same, that the work we did is seldom completely abandoned or forgotten. It matters that we participate in the world around us and that we do good wherever we are. Maybe the organizational system we put in place in the office was changed once we left – but the need to be organized was likely imprinted on someone’s heart and mind. Maybe it seems that a friendship ended at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons, but the time spent with that friend and the lessons learned from this ending will carry on in both your hearts. Especially in the Church, in the work of God, it is only in extreme cases of actual harm that we see people’s work for the good of the Kingdom fall on fallow ground.

There is, however, a way that the work we do can be limited in its potential. When we are not thinking forward to what will happen after us, we inevitably begin to fall short of our goals. When we take up the mantle of a ministry worker and then hold onto it tightly, we risk smothering a fire that could be better fanned by multiple people working on it. We need to always be training up other people to take part in our work and ensuring that whatever we have begun will not be halted when we are no longer able to do it for one reason or another.

We are blessed sometimes that God provides a clear succession of help and leadership through the Spirit’s work in our lives. The scripture we read today reports, almost as an afterthought, the death of John the Baptist. Why is it that this central figure in the Gospels killed off screen? Because there was already a successor in his prophetic ministry, and more than that the end goal of that prophetic ministry. Christ was baptized by John, beginning his public ministry, and in that baptism the focal point of God’s work shifted and expanded in a way that none but God could have ever dreamed.

John was lucky that this transition would happen with our without his input, you were not about to limit what God was doing in something this major. Yet, all the same, we see in John’s reaction to Christ’s ministry certain hallmarks that are indicative of our own approaches to transitions. Reactions, neither good nor bad, but that all the same demonstrate how difficult it can be to hand over our roles from one person to another.

Christ’s public ministry was met with John making a clear statement, “He must increase, and I must decrease,” in other words he saw that the Messiah had come and the need to proclaim his work was no longer the most important thing he could do. He had to step aside so that Christ could be unimpeded in his ascent in ministry. Yet, John quickly grew anxious. This new prophet was not acting like he expected. For a Messiah and a prophet greater than even Moses, Jesus was not taking down Rome or establishing a new, vibrant kingdom within Judah. John’s anxiety bubbled up until he finally asked point-blank, “Are you the Messiah, or should we wait for another?” John was confident in handing off his work, until Jesus started doing it differently than he would have.

Jesus would reassure John that the work of the Gospel was being done, that he need not worry. Though we do not have John’s response written down, it is fair to say that John was content with this answer. He continued to preach a return to righteousness, and he continued to point the finger toward Jesus as the one who not only succeeded his ministry, but exceeded it. John was able to go confidently to the headsman because he had seen that he had handed off his work and trusted that God would do something with it. John secured an eternal legacy by acknowledging his role as a forerunner.

I do my best to model my ministry off of John the Baptist. While I am with a congregation we work hard to do the work of God, but I know that there is always another minister down the line who will take up the work when I am gone. I pray that they will always be better than me and pave a new and exciting way for any Church that I am involved in. If my ministry is not lived with the next minister in mind, then I will only ever fail the churches I serve. Once I’m gone, hopefully a while from now, things will change, but I want to be able to hand over more things than I have to end. Legacy matters in the impact that is left, not in the name attached to the work done.

In our own ministries, we should not have one person who does anything, there should always be at least two. One person can lead, but another needs to be supporting them and learning from them. Like Elijah and Elisha, mantles need to be passed on if we want the work we do to really flourish. We need to conduct our business so nothing is ever dependent on individuals – the whole Church must be accountable to its own ministry.

I ask that we all be in prayer, whether we are thinking about our personal lives, our work in the Church, or any aspect of life. Are we preparing the way for the people who will come after us? Are we teaching others to do what we can? Have we included the next generation of workers in our lives, in our work, so they can continue on what we have begun? If we cannot answer yes to these simple questions, we must repent of it quickly. There is much to be done, more than we could ever do in our lifetime. We must cherish the time we have now to get it done, we must pass on what we know to others that they may continue the work after we are gone, and we must rejoice in the transitions life sends our way.

There is great fear to be found in transition, in change, but there is also untold opportunity. Let God lead you to joy, that like John we might be able to find the time when we can say aloud, “I must decrease, that you may increase.” Lord, let us build our legacies so they may be fully enjoyed by those after us, and let us do so now and not wait until it is too late.

Sermon 07/07/2024 – They will Know there is a Prophet

July 7, 2024July 1, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Ezekiel 2:1-5

He said to me: “O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.” And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. He said to me, “Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.

Sermon Text

When I first took a Church, I was planning out the year ahead of me and saw that I would have the opportunity to preach on this passage one July 4^th weekend. Being a new minister, I decided better of it. Now, with some years behind me and a lot more grace in my heart, I think it is time for the serendipity of secular holidays and ecclesial text lists lining up just so, and see in it an opportunity for us to learn a bit about what we as Christians owe to our nation. How do we balance our identity as people born into the world, and therefore as residents of a singular location, and out identity as people born into Christ’s new world, into the Kingdom of Heaven which transcends any regional boundaries.

Many of us grew up, I think, in churches that did not really make a distinction between Christian identity and American identity. “Aren’t they the same thing?” We seem to have asked ourselves. Yet, I think we cannot deny that there is a difference between being a Christian – someone washed in the blood and born by the Spirit – and being a member of any one people group. To be in Christ is not to erase who we are, but it is to find ourselves defined by new terms. We are Americans, yes, but we are Christians first, and as Christians we have a calling far higher than what our zip codes dictate.

The first people to be called to follow God, scripture tells us, were native to a specific land. What land was that? Unless you answer “Chaldea,” or “Babylon,” you have the cart ahead of the horse. Abraham, the recipient of God’s covenant, was a Babylonian from the ancient city of Ur. He and his family left Ur, settled in Charan, and then eventually he and his descendants came to Canaan. Canaan was their home until they came to Egypt, then out of Egypt they returned to their ancestral home and established a Kingdom – Israel.

From the beginning the identity of the people of God was not based in who they were or where they were nearly so much as what they did. Abraham was promised his lineage would succeed, but his following that call to Canaan secured it for him. God’s call to Israel that he would continue that lineage was solidified only after he fought tooth and nail with God, learning his place in the process. Again and again, the promise of God was met with the faithfulness of God’s people and something came out of it that never was there before. A kind of righteousness born only out of knowing God, truly and personally.

Fast forward in the story and we eventually see Christ open the door of God’s family and covenant to all people who believe – not just those of any one family. Though Jeremiah had shown this was God’s intent centuries before, only after Christ entered the world did this movement really take off.[1] Christ’s mission from beginning to end was an expansion of God’s kingdom to all who believed, to all who earnestly repented of their sin, who sought to live together in a kingdom without end.

The scripture we read today is a lesson for this new kingdom, born out of an older one. Ezekiel, having just seen an incredible vision of all God’s glory, is told he must prophecy to his people in exile – and that the people he is speaking too are stubborn and cruel and intentionally ignorant. Yet, they are his people and he must preach to them – because then no one can deny the word of God is among them, whether they agree with it or not.

The presence of a prophet in the world… Don’t we need that? Someone to interpret the world in the words of God? Not to cast a vision of doom based on their own politics like so many supposed prophets are now. No, a prophet who looks out at the world and says, “People of God! Turn now and see yourselves thrive!” A prophet that cares more about what God seeks in the world than what is convenient or politically expedient. Lord, do we need such a presence.

[As Christians, we profess that Christ established a kingdom for all people from all places on earth. There is no one who does not have a place in God’s kingdom and no people who cannot find a home within that kingdom. This is not a kingdom like other worldly kingdoms – dependent on successions of kings and military might. It is a kingdom with one eternal ruler, a nation who takes up tools to help rather than tools of war. It is an empire of spirit rather than matter.

We are coming closer and closer to a general election in this country, and I do not anticipate that it will be a smooth election year. The lead up to our primary was nasty enough, I can only imagine how things will heat up as we approach the general. The political stakes are high in this election as in any. We all face a dichotomy between the reality that our vote matters – our view on what comes next in the country and in democracy – matters… and the reality that, regardless of what happens we will all have to wake up the next day and keep living life. There is always work to be done, there is always life to live, and in the face of any potential future – we must figure out how we as the people of God are going to live out our calling.

On one hand, this is endemic to the specific systems we in the Methodist Church have – after all we are a democracy. On the other hand, it is more than Methodists who try to make the Kingdom of God come into being through political rather than spiritual thinking.

Faith impacts the way we act in the world, and so there are politics that align with and that work against a Christian view of the world. Any policy that advocates for cruelty rather than compassion, that does harm to the least of these, that seeks to criminalize the marginalized, and that generally sets out to hurt others is obviously, should obviously be, anti-Christian in our minds. Yet the methods of this world and its power struggles are a matter separate from these concerns. While we as worldly people tend to group the world into enemies and friends, scripture asks us to blur those categories, and in so doing, create a kingdom where all people can find shelter.

This does not make us opinionless or uselessly moderate, it simply means that we do not make our decisions based upon categories or assumptions, but upon people and their welfare. People often criticized Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. because he took sides in political struggles. He was called a socialist, a communist plant, a Marxist seeking to destroy democracy. However, his stance was a Christian one – that all people were worthy of human dignity. His methods were likewise Christian – he called people to look upon the suffering of those who were hurt by the Jim Crow South and the ignorant North. He called people to nonviolently face atrocity, so that their cause would be obvious in the eyes of world. You cannot hurt unarmed people and not reveal your own depravity in doing so.

He called upon the White, Moderate Church to free itself of the idea that it was wrong to be political. He asked them to take on a Kingdom Perspective that would impact their politics rather than the other way around. Silence in the face of oppression is complicity after all. Yet, the kind of reconciliation he was seeking was Biblical and it was powerful. He did not advocate for cheap grace that would pretend injustice never happened, but an honest reckoning to the harm that white folk had caused to black folk since 1619 and beyond. It looked forward to a future where reconciliation was possible, it acknowledged a present where the evils of hatred still reigned, and it did not deny the past where even worse was perpetrated.

Regardless of what happens in November, we as the Church will be called to a witness that we have always held. We will be called to advocate for those in need, to acknowledge the harm that our current systems cause, and to work for a future where all people can live in abundance, peace, and harmony. We do this by seeking to live with people, not writing off others as our enemies. We do this through serious reflection and repentance on our own part. We do this through engaging with the world around us as members of a political system, but in the manner of people of God. We do so not to win, but to see that God’s will is done. We do so not to triumph over those we disagree with, but to see that all people are given their God given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.][2]

If we wish to truly celebrate the nation we are a part of, I pray that we will be willing to speak up about the need for us to live a life different from the world around us. Do you love the Lord? Then love your neighbor! Do you seek to live at peace with one another? Then you better advocate for you neighbor in the face of those who would disenfranchise them! Do you earnestly repent of your sins? Then stop doing the same tired things we’ve been doing for decades!

We have an opportunity to be a prophetic voice in this world, to proclaim that there is a prophet in this world, and it is Christ speaking through his Church. America must repent, and rather than basing our criteria of repentance on whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican, I invite us all to reflect on our contribution to this world’s problems. Let us not be the sort of nation God can call, “impudent and stubborn,” but one that embodies all God has called us to be. Blessed as we are to be in this nation, let us make it better tomorrow than it is today, tear down the walls of oppression and injustice we have let rise up between us. Let us see God’s kingdom made real today! Let us do the work! Let us preach the word! Let us walk the life! Glory to God! Amen!

[1] Jeremiah 29: 5-7

[2] This portion is actually from an earlier sermon I wrote but did not preach. Frequent readers may notice this. Sometimes the words we write are not meant for the Sunday we wrote them for, their true time is only revealed later.

Sermon 06/30/24 – Mutual Aid held in Balance

June 30, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.

I do not say this as a command, but I am, by mentioning the eagerness of others, testing the genuineness of your love. For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. And in this matter I am giving my opinion: it is beneficial for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something. Now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. For I do not mean that there should be relief for others and hardship for you, but it is a question of equality between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may also supply your need, in order that there may be equality. As it is written,

“The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

Sermon Text

We come to the yearly moment where the lectionary necessitates we dig into money for a little bit. I promise though, it will be a worthwhile discussion and not just me putting a hat out to you all. Money, time, resources, all of these are what allow the world to spin around and around the way that it does. We live in a time and a society where legal tender is the one universally accepted means of business. If you want to own a house, it takes money, if you want to feed your family it will take money, if you need non-negotiable health care, it takes money. As Joel Grey once told the world, “Money makes the world, go ‘round.”

Our scriptures were written in a far more fluid time in the world. While currency had revolutionized the way trade was conducted centuries before the New Testament enters the world stage, the world was not yet under its total thrall. Locally the main way people conducted business was via barter. I give you a chicken, you give me a hammer, any difference in value will come out in the wash down the road. Some people in this room may remember, distant though it may be at this point, a time here when people were willing to do something similar. So many babies in the United States were, not all that long ago, brought into the world with vegetables and fresh eggs paying the doctor’s fee.

Even as we do most of our transactions by cards and online, we still find a familiar rhythm working in our lives. Money comes in, money comes out, the bills are paid and the food is bought, and at the end of the month we hope that we have even a little extra money to squirrel away. We save, not so we can hoard our money, but so we can be prepared for emergencies that may creep their way into our life. Most people, at this point, are only about one paycheck away from falling into poverty – a huge departure from more hopeful economic conditions of a few decades ago.[1]

The wide disparity in wealth means that there is a constant need for us to be willing to work with others to meet people’s needs. When everyone is struggling it takes everyone to make sure that everyone has what they need. If only a few people are willing to help, then suddenly they are drained of their resources and pushed down lower than those they first set out to help. If no one helps, then nothing will move forward to better the world we are living in. The way that the world benefits the most is when everyone is willing to come together to do what needs to be done to help, and does so as much as they can.

In our scripture for today, Paul is writing to the Corinthians. This is after the passage we read a few weeks ago where he was telling them that though life may seem overwhelming, God will see them through their darkest days. Immediately before the section we read this morning, Paul tells the Corinthians about ministry he had been doing in Western Greece – or Macedonia. In Macedonia, the scattered Christians – though poor – had raised a large amount of money to help meet the needs of Christians in Jerusalem. Paul tells the story of their generosity, not to shame the Corinthians into giving to this fund, but to inspire them that they are capable of it. If the poor in Macedonia can raise this money, why not the middle class of Corinth?

For Paul, it is not a question whether someone will give to help others – they will give to help others because their Christian, he assumes that much. What he encourages them to do is to become people who give eagerly. He doesn’t tell them, “If you do not feel like giving, don’t.” He says, “it is right not only for you to do it, but to be eager to do it,” in other words the giving is assumed, he just asks them to do so willingly and with joy.

Paul also sets parameters for this giving. We do not give so that we become impoverished and another person becomes rich, but so that everyone has what they need. We are called to give based upon what we have, not what we do not. Therefore, if after all necessary expenses we have $5 to our name, we are called to give generously based upon that $5, not the theoretical hundreds we would have if we had a different job or a different life entirely. I point out I say, “necessary,” expenses here because we all have plenty that are not necessary at all, whatever our particular vices may be that take from our livelihood.

I want to be up front in saying that one of the most consistent ways that we can fund ministry is giving in this building, to the ministries not only of this building but to the conference and beyond through our connectional giving. Like the collection for the Jerusalem Church, we as a conference take up money as each individual church and send it on to do ministry across the state. This year, the conference has cut the mission budget of all mission sites by 25%, and our conference ministries have been cut by 50%. Hundreds of thousands of dollars that could go to help our communities and our college students cut. Why? Not for greed, but because there is just not enough money coming in. Not enough churches paying apportionments to see the good of the Church happen beyond their doors.

Domestically, we need help too. We are so close in both churches to meeting our budget for the year. We dream of the day we have the means to do more than just keep the lights on and keep our current ministries going, but that takes money I’m afraid. The shortfall is different in each church, but it is there. If we do not see a major turn around in the next six months, we will have to think about how we can cut our expense rather than expand our ministries. If we want to grow and flourish we need to be willing to put forward a little bit more toward the mission of the Church to see that the needs of our community are met.

I say a little bit, because it really is a little bit. I’d say it is a universal thing that if all people in a Church gave just a little bit more each month, major changes would happen. I cannot prescribe that amount, because I don’t have everyone’s financial records in my hand. Yet, I think that all of us might have a bit more we could put forward for the kingdom. Maybe that means mailing a check even if you’re not here on a Sunday, maybe that means giving one hundred more dollars a month, maybe that means putting an extra dollar forward than you did before.

No one likes money talks, but we need to be honest about it all the same. Scripture is not neutral on matters of money. We are called to give to the ministries of the Church and to live a life that is based – not on us accumulating as much comfort as possible – but on working to make more equal the disparity between the rich and the poor among us. I am guilty as anyone of not contributing as fully as I could, except maybe abstractly in the form of my time. Yet, time cannot keep the lights on, sadly that is just not the way of the world.

For the next year, I go down to a single income household. I also will be welcoming a child into my life. I’ll be eligible for the food pantry and make use of it to make sure we have what we need. Yet, I have told Grace that as we plan ahead, we will be working to expand how much we can give in the midst of this sudden drop in income. We must be more generous, even in the midst of harder times, because the work of the Church does not stop no matter what we are doing. Maybe that just means I don’t turn in a receipt now and again to provide more cushion in our budget here at the church, maybe it means I drop some money in the plate now and again, maybe it means I keep a few twenties in my wallet for those I meet who need it. No matter what it is, I must follow the example of Christ – who became poor for my sake, though rich, and in so doing gave the model for generosity.

We are Christians, that we give to the cause of God’s mission is a given. Let us develop a willing and eager spirit for that generosity the only way there is to do so… By practicing our generosity. Let us give not to impoverish ourselves, but to fund the work of the Church, and let us do so with joy, that through our meager means some may know the goodness of God who did not know it before. – Amen.

[1] Though generally reported, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness gives the statistic at its most stark. “In effect, more than half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and one crisis away from homelessness.”
Available at: https://www.usich.gov/guidance-reports-data/data-trends

Sermon 06/23/24 – Words without Knowledge

June 23, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Job 38:1-11

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

Sermon Text

I really like to book of Job, but I am also really afraid of the book of Job. Afraid of a book in the Bible?! What could I possibly mean by that?! Well, let me tell you. The problem with Job is that about three fifths of it is a trap. Job has a bunch of friends that speak a lot about God and about why Job is suffering. If you read through their speeches, you may even agree with them! Yet, we are told, they are all of them wrong, all of them misguided, and all of them in their own ways misrepresented who God was.

The problem they faced was that their friend was in pain, he had lost everything, and they wanted to do something to help him. As he sat in that Ash Pile, calling for God to answer him about what he could have done to deserve what he suffered, his friends made a mistake that so many of us make when comforting a friend. They tried to answer the question that only God would be capable of answering. They reached out a hand to their grieving friend and, rather than showing him comfort in the face of adversity, they tried to pull him up before he was ready. In doing so, they ended up stepping into God’s place – explaining things they had no understanding of.

God eventually enters in at the end of the story, thundering from the midst of a storm cloud. God does not address Job initially, instead calling to his friends. “Who darkens counsel with words without knowledge?” What follows is something like God’s bona fides, a long list of the wonders God has worked.

God looks to around and starts pointing. “See the earth? I formed it from dust! See the Heavens, I placed every star and planet in their orbits! See the sea and its creatures? I can fish up the biggest of them! See the giant beasts of the savannah? They are mere pets to me!” God establishes that all things, natural and otherwise, are God’s domain. God alone can speak to Job’s pain.

Oddly though, God does not. Job never gets an explanation for why Satan was pulled in to test his faith. Why did his children die when a house collapsed on them? Why did his riches get stolen away by thieves? Why did fire burn the rest of his possessions? Why? Why? Why?

The work of explaining God’s response to evil in the world is known as “Theodicy.” It is any attempt at answering the question, “How does a good God allow bad things to happen? Millions of pages have been written about this and millions more have been lost to time. Worst of all, the work that these writings set out to accomplish can never be done… The answers we write will always be insufficient. Like Job’s friends we step up to the plate, we ready ourselves to all at once answer the most significant question in the universe, and we whiff, we foul, and often times strike out in the attempt.

The fact is, we are simply unable to provide a sufficient answer. We cannot conceive of why pain exists the way it does. We could lean on the idea that God gives us freedom, and that freedom necessitates that we might suffer, but no one chooses to face natural disasters or disease. We could lean on the idea that God allows some evil for greater good, but then we have to decide if we are willing to be collateral for someone else’s good day. We could lean on a million compromises to who God is and how God works, but that will always land us in the same place Job’s friends were. God looking down on us, asking why we would make things worse by opening our mouths.

There is only one answer to pain in this world, one answer to the problems that we face. I have a feeling you could guess what it might be. The answer I give you to all these problems, in all sincerity, and without glib of any kind… is Jesus Christ. The person of Jesus Christ, and the revelation God’s character through Jesus Christ, gives what I consider to be the only acceptable answer to evil in this world. If we are to derive any sense of why the universe is the way it is, Christ alone will give us an answer that does not frustrate, confuse, or demean us.

Usually when we talk about Job we take a hold of God’s words to Job’s friends and make them an answer to Job himself. We cast God as working in mysterious ways beyond ourself, and say that any amount of trouble that comes against us in life is just a part of that higher understanding. God doesn’t seem to be content with that answer though and I do not think we usually are either. See, Job understood God throughout the book, what he didn’t understand was his pain.

When Job sat on the Ash Heap he did so in a way that balanced two realities – God is good, and God would vindicate the oppressed of the world and his pain was real, it was unwarranted, and it was brutal. It was this dual reality that made Job shout at one time, “I know my redeemer lives!” And in another, “If only I had a lawyer, I’d win my case against God!” He knew God was good, and that is why pain seemed to be so strange, “Why would the God I know do this?!” I’m sure there are people in this room that have felt this way before. You are not alone, plenty of people have, and yet… We still know God is good, even as we struggle through.

We know this because Christ showed us God’s love. God was not content to sit in Heaven and watch us struggle, God took on flesh and suffered alongside us. The mystery of pain was not theoretical to God, it was felt in God’s own flesh and bones. God knew sorrow and anger and fear and doubt… God felt all of this, so that God could stand beside us on our hardest days and on our greatest ones. Christ’s life, Christ’s Death, and Christ’s Resurrection, those are an answer enough to pain and suffering, because they show that God is invested in all parts of life.

We can never answer the question of why bad things happen the way they do. Maybe the particular causes of specific events, but if we want to explain away evil, we will never find something that will satisfy every potential situation we find ourselves in. It is not admitting defeat to say a problem is too big to explain all at once – it is a declaration of honesty and of humility. More than that… Would we want an answer to our question or our experience more?

If God came to me and gave me a reason why cancer is as painful as it is, why war is allowed to become atrocity, why people go hungry or hurt or struggle… would I be happy with the answer I was given? I’m not sure I could be… I am just not sure any “answer,” would be enough. Like Job, in the face of God’s enormity and knowledge and strength, all I can do is say, “I don’t know…” and focus on what I do.

I know that God is good, I know that God has shown me love again and again in this life. I know that Christ chose to enter the mess of this world in every way he could, and facing all pain and strife he went on to die a criminal’s death so that in all things he might share in our experiences. After he had accomplished all things, he rose from the dead as a promise that death would not rule in the end, the pain was not the only thing we had to look forward to, and that life blossoms in unexpected and wonderful ways. I do not have an answer for why bad things happen, but I have an answer to all evil – and that answer is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We embrace this truth, this answer, not so that we become complacent in the face of suffering and pain, but so that we have a model of how to move forward, even as we acknowledge the present depravity of things. Scripture asks, “Why do you spend money for that which is not bread?” In a similar way I ask, “Why seek answers for the question that will not bring life?” Christ is with us, in all things, may that be sufficient in the face of evil. – Amen.

Sermon 06/16/2024 – Spread Wide the Branches

June 16, 2024June 6, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Ezekiel 17:22-24

Thus says the Lord God:

I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender shoot from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will transplant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will transplant it, and it will produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar.

Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree; I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it.

Sermon Text

Prophet’s have the impossible job of relating the reality of God to the reality of humanity. God is significantly more substantive than we are. There is more of God than there is of anything in existence and, since God is the source of all things, God exists in a deeper way than we as humans are capable of. If that sounds confusing, then I have done my job in making clear just what the prophet has to do. Besides speaking to the future of God’s people, the alternative to what their own thoughts and desires would produce, they are also speaking the greater reality of God into our lesser one.

Ezekiel is a prophet who has some of the most grandiose visions of God in scripture. When God appears in Ezekiel, the prophet struggles to describe any part of the scene. In the opening of the book, Ezekiel is walking by the rivers of Babylon and suddenly sees heavenly beings that his mind can barely comprehend. He describes them as best he can – creatures with faces in each direction, their skin seemingly made of brass, and their wings motionless even as they fly around. These move in tandem with wheels set within wheels covered in eyes. Both creatures herald the arrival of God’s throne and of the “Son of Man,” another miraculous figure Ezekiel can barely begin to describe.

God seems to be aware of the limited vocabulary that we human beings have, because each encounter is given a healthy dose of explanation or analogy to help make the divine message a bit more mundane. Our scripture today is in the midst of a lengthy prophecy which uses the image of eagles, pines, vines, and rivers to get across a much wider narrative. In essence, what we are told before the scripture we read is that one king – Jehoichim – did what God wanted and the other – Zedekiah – did not. As a result one will be blessed and the other will be destroyed. A classic narrative of how following God’s will benefits the one who obeys and a practical warning not to rebel against an empire that is much bigger than you or your kingdom.

You and I, however, are not sixth century kings, so what do we do with this text? This is where we as interpreters have to ask ourselves a question. Is this a message for a time or for all time? Not all messages in scripture are for everyone, some are very specific. With rare exception, however, there is some element of the teaching that is relevant to us. This promise to God’s people in exile that they have a future and that this future will benefit others, that seems to sound familiar to me as a Christian. I remember that Abraham was promised he would bless all nations and I remember that Christ came to save the whole world. If this is true, maybe this vision of a tree connects to something tangible in our lives.

Scripture usually uses the image of a cedar and other large trees in reference to powerful empires. The formal term for this motif is a “cosmic tree,” and it was used in Assyrian and Babylonian imagery to describe their place as the pillar that held up the world.[1] Scripture usually twists this image, however, and shows that it is God – not any worldly power – that holds creation together. In Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar builds a great empire, but the “tree,” of that empire is torn down by God, its stump locked up so it may never grow again.[2] In Ezekiel, the tree is specifically tied to the two Judean kings that are placed in Babylon and in Judea. Out of the exiles in Babylon, we are told, God will make a mighty people that will shelter all nations.

As Christians, we profess that Christ established a kingdom for all people from all places on earth. There is no one who does not have a place in God’s kingdom and no people who cannot find a home within that kingdom. This is not a kingdom like other worldly kingdoms – dependent on successions of kings and military might. It is a kingdom with one eternal ruler, a nation who takes up tools to help rather than tools of war. It is an empire of spirit rather than matter.

We in the United States are poisoned by a concept of the political. Advocacy, voting, civic participation are all important and we must be active in these things to ensure democracy thrives. However, we taken the worst lessons of politicking and applied that to our faith and to our kingdom work. We campaign for one thing or another in our churches, we try to sway people to vote this way or that way, and we even try and blame leadership for the way things are… Instead of focusing on our own participation in the broken systems we choose again and again to take part in. On one hand, this is endemic to the specific systems we in the Methodist Church have – after all we are a democracy. On the other hand, it is more than Methodists who try to make the Kingdom of God come into being through political rather than spiritual thinking.

The cedar that our scripture speaks about is the plant that obeyed God, the plant that listened to the call to care for others and consented to be watered by God’s own hand. The world may fall apart in the coming years, but the Church cannot be allowed to do the same. We need to be a place that sets the example for inclusion, for kindness, and for mutuality. That means we all have to humble ourselves. Republicans! Repent of your sins! Democrats! Repent of your sins! Non-Affiliated Voters, we do not get out of this either! We too must repent of our sins! Our nation has done evil in this world, our parties have contributed to it, we as individuals have done the same. We must change if we wish to see the world around us change. Jesus spoke of a tree, more humble than the cedar, but equally important. A mustard seed, deposited in the ground, grows up to give shade to all the birds of the air. Have we faith sufficient to overcome our sins? Have we a desire to be different from the world around us enough to be genuinely good to one another? Have we the Spirit of God within us, to say that we can live with the people we disagree with? Can we accept that the image of God in them is more important than that thing we dislike about them? This only works if we all are willing to take part, if we are all able to mutually put down our weapons and take up the work of making this world a better place. People of God, I want to see us grow to be a cedar that gives shade to all people, are we willing to follow God and see that growth? May it be so, may it be s

[1] Margaret S. Odell. Ezekiel (Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys 2005.)

[2] Daniel 4

Sermon 06/09/2024 – An End in the Beginning

June 9, 2024June 3, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Genesis 3: 8-15

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,

cursed are you among all animals

and among all wild creatures;

upon your belly you shall go,

and dust you shall eat

all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman

and between your offspring and hers;

he will strike your head,

and you will strike his heel.”

Sermon Text

As you receive this I should be in Buckhannon for Annual Conference. This is one of the rare Sundays I get to write a sermon I do not actually end up preaching. For those who stumble upon this online or who receive it in our weekly mailers, may this word – though not spoken aloud – be a blessing however it find you.

The passage we read above is the start of all trouble. After humanity betrayed God’s trust and ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, they hid and tried to cover their shame. Their attempt to hide could not overcome the compelling nature of God’s presence. When God asked them, “Where are you?” they could not help but cry back, “I heard your voice!” Even when they had done wrong, they still could not help but hear God and answer. There’s something to that, I think. If we have known God and we love God then even when we do wrong, we desire to be back with God again. A call comes out for us to come home, and we can only resist it for so long.

The first people had erred all the same, and they would face consequences for the wrong they had done. Sin, definitionally, puts distance between us and God. If God is the source of all life then distance from God is distance from life itself. Humanity did not need to be punished to suffer after the Garden – they had done that all themselves. God spells out the punishment for every participant in the whole debacle. Humanity would struggle to scrape a living out of the dirt, children would no longer be guaranteed to see adulthood, and loss would define more of life than plenty would. Hard time had entered the world, and no one could be blamed except for our own sinful selves.

The one who had initiated this deception, all the same, was a quite literal snake in the grass. This Primordial Serpent is described as being limbed and lingual, speaking and walking in a way that no serpent ever would be again. The story seems to want to explain how snakes came to slither rather than to wander and to leave tracks in the dirt wherever they go. In our Genesis study we recently looked at this story and how there is nothing in the text that actually calls the snake “the Devil,” or “Satan.” Where do we get this idea of the serpent as the source of all evil then?

I could here go into a history of the interpretation of the text, the way that Greco-Roman and Mesopotamian stories came together to make an understanding that fallen angels took the form of snakes to tempt humanity. That isn’t the question that is really being asked though. Why do we see the serpent as the source of all evil in Eden? Because it speaks to us on a personal and spiritual level. We as people know what it is to fight sin, to face temptation and not always win, to meet evil face to face, and struggle against it. We see the snake and its machinations against the first couple and in that we see a reflection of our own life.

We often treat Eden like something that happened once a long time ago. If we are more earnest in our reading, however, I think we can see it play out time and time again. We often know what we should do and yet do something else. We know what we should not do and yet we do it willingly and with relish. We who love God do not always reflect that love in our actions. We fail, we give-in, we sin – again and again and again. Eden is not a far-flung history, it is a reality we play out every day.

It is not wonder then that the story became for us a fight with primordial evil as an external force as much as an internal reality. If we can see sin as something solid, something outside ourselves, it is easier to imagine that we could overcome it. The sin of the first humans was in their unwillingness to follow God’s commands, an internal reality, but it was realized by the temptation of the serpent, and external reality.

The promise of Genesis 3 is not just that the Serpent will be reduced to a crawling beast and enemy of humanity, but that God will allow humanity a way to escape sin’s control. The internal reality of our sin can be conquered with God’s help and the external manifestations of it can be put down. The curse of the serpent makes clear that Sin will not have the last word. The serpent is made into a stupid animal rather than a clever beast and the descendants of Eve are given victory over it. The skull of the serpent, of sin, will be crushed, and the heel of humanity will only ever be bruised.

On a grand scale this promise is called the “proto-evangelion,” the first instance of the Gospel. Christ will come and crush evil and allow us to escape from sin. Yet, God did not wait for Christ’s incarnation to begin this work. From Noah’s reception of the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” to Moses’s full reception of the Law, to the judges, to the prophets, and even till today – God is constantly working to empower people to conquer sin. We are not helpless in the face of the world’s evils. We are constantly being equipped to take counter wickedness with righteousness, love, and holiness.

I will close this unspoken sermon with a quote directly from John Wesley, his vocalization of what it means to be saved is one of the best I have seen, and it captures what kind of victory over sin – over the Serpent – we are promised in Genesis 3.

“By salvation I mean, not barely, according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven: but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recover of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth.” – A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion.

Sermon 06/02/2024 – Sustaining Grace

June 2, 2024May 28, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’s sake. For it is the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For we who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us but life in you.

Sermon Text

Fragility is a real part of life. We are born fragile and we spend our entire lives as fragile human beings. Despite the incredible resiliency we display as a species – nothing can change the limited nature of our existence. We are prone to injury, to sickness, and, yes, to death. We are born into this world and we are small and helpless, and we only grow a little beyond this across our life. We are, as the scripture says, dust that soon returns to dust.

We do not like to acknowledge our fragility. We would rather look at our ability to overcome trouble than our tendency toward it. Why wouldn’t we? It is not pleasant to hurt or to fall ill. It is not pleasant to suffer or to die. Life can be overwhelming and life, it must be said, can be hard. We live a life where everyday could be our last – that is not a cynical outlook, it is simply a realistic one.

Bummer of a start for sermon, isn’t it? We like to ignore this aspect of life, but in scripture and in our own lives we cannot escape it. We know plenty of people who died long before their time and who did so suddenly. We know people who suffer with chronic conditions and pain. We know that there is trouble upon trouble that fills this earth. It is hard, people of God, to be a human beings – because to be a human being is to know sorrow upon sorrow. The author of Ecclesiastes tells us two truths – our life is like “a vapor within vapor,” (הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים, hevel hevelim,) and “life is wearisome, more than anyone can name.”[1] It is tough to make it through.

Our scripture today captures a moment in Paul’s life where the number of negative things far outnumber the positive. This letter to the Corinthians was written after Paul had suffered beatings on the hands of Jews and Gentiles. He had been pushed again and again to and beyond the edge of his ability. He spent time and energy and his own sweat and blood to spread the Gospel, even to the point of describing a recent attack as “having received a death sentence.”[2] Worse than all of this, his beloved Corinthian church seemed to have abandoned him.

We are not given the details of what happened, but sometime after writing 1 Corinthians, a letter calling the people of God to stand as one – not making factions based on who they thought was a better teacher or leader – he visited them. While there, one of the church people made a speech against Paul, publicly shaming him and attacking him. The Church did nothing to defend Paul in this moment and he left with a broken heart. A letter was written, lost to time, where he spoke his full frustration, anger, and betrayal down, but we do not know what it said.[3] 2 Corinthians was written after he was told to give them another chance, to attempt to reconcile with the Church he had loved so dearly.

For Paul, these troubles were offshoots of his ministry. He worked to spread the Gospel and so suffered persecution under the powers of his day. He lived and worked with a community and so was vulnerable to the kind of personal attack he saw in Corinth. For those of us here, blessed with a country and a culture that allows us to practice our faith freely, we do not have to fear persecution often. We do, however, know something about hardships. As I already said, we have all faced illness, fear, betrayal, and generally know the kind of pain that comes with life. While I do not think many of us in this room can associate directly with what Paul faced as an apostle, we all can relate to the message he gives us in the section we read today.

“We have this treasure in clay jar,” that is how Paul describes our life. There is something within these fragile bodies of ours that is much more precious than the container itself. As amazing and wonderful as the human body is, as important as it is to care for, Paul tells us that there is something imperishable within the perishing aspects of ourselves. The Spirit of God works within us, it awakens our soul and creates something the persists beyond ourselves and despite ourselves. Our soul, though a part of our complete being, is the means by which we know resurrection and the way that we can survive life’s troubles.

The promise of faith is not always in deliverance but in perseverance. We are not always delivered out of circumstances so much as through them. Paul was not always saved from the situations he found himself in, but he was able to make it to the other side of them. Even in his death, we are told in his farewell letter to the Philippians that he sees even this as a way to become closer to Christ. Faith does not always eliminate our troubles, but it does give us something deeper and stronger than those troubles.

Paul lists a rapid fire set of ways God cares for our fragile beings and enriches our soul. We are “afflicted… but not crushed,” literally, “We are pressed, but not compressed,” in other words though we are forced into a single reality – the trouble that we are facing in a moment, we are not made less of a person because we suffer. He says that even when we are lost, we have a way ahead of us, even if we cannot see where it leads. In the face of violence, we are not left to suffer alone, God who suffered for us suffers alongside us. If our fragile vessel is thrown to the ground, it is not destroyed, even if it shatters.

Paul’s description of suffering is from the perspective of someone who is purposefully taking on trouble for the sake of other people. So when he says, “death is at work in us but life in you,” the comparisons we can make between our earthly struggles and Paul’s specific apostolic hardships do become more limited than they might otherwise be.

Yet, in the hardships specific to faith and the hardships ubiquitous among all people, there is one thing that allows us to carry on. That is Christ at work within us. In the following chapter, Paul moves from pottery to tents as an image of our lives. He says that as we live in this world, suffering as we sometimes must, God does not abandon us to the “tent,” we presently inhabit, but builds up an eternal home in Heaven. This eternal home is not an escape for our Spirit at the end of all things, but the perfect and incorruptible body that awaits us in the resurrection – when Heaven and Earth meet and life never ends.

Until we see this completion of God’s work, we have God’s grace within us. When we pray for God to strengthen us and we feel consolation from God – we have received grace. When we read scripture and find our hearts given words to express our joys and sorrows – we receive grace. When we gather as believers and support one another as the Church – we have received grace. Most visibly and obviously, when we take bread and cup and celebrate the work Christ has done in saving us, we receive grace. We are sustained only by God’s gift of grace to us and we depend upon God in all things.

I ask us all to take Paul’s words later in the letter to heart. “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” We are not big and strong because we are Christians, no we are more often shown to be small and weak in the face of life’s trouble. It is God who is mighty, God who is able to overcome pain and death and suffering. God is the source of our life and it is from God that we receive strength, peace, and power enough to overcome the troubles of this world. Let us praise our God who has given us this gift, and boast in our weakness, that we may be made strong through God’s sustaining grace. – Amen.

[1] Ecclesiastes 1:1-8

[2] 2 Cor 1:8-9

[3] 2 Cor. 2:4

Sermon 05/26/2024 – The New Birth

May 26, 2024May 16, 2024 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Romans 8:12-17

So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Sermon Text

We worship a God of liberation. Every act of God is a act that brings freedom to the soul, freedom from the captivity of Sin and Death, and freedom for the joyful obedience that defines a life of faith. Christ described our entry into this new reality as a “new birth,” a transformation of who we are into who we can be. The New Birth is rarely given those exact terms, Christ uses it when he speaks to Nicodemus and scarcely elsewhere, yet the concept is discussed in a few different terms throughout scripture. For Paul, the author or Romans whom we read from this morning, the concept of New Birth is described in terms of our “adoption,” into Christ’s family.

For Paul the transformation that comes in the life of a Christian begins with our receiving the Holy Spirit and that reception is the moment of our “adoption,” or our “birth.” Here’s a question for those gathered here though… When is it that a person receives the Holy Spirit and is born again? What signs are there that this transformative process has begun?

Some people are likely to say “Baptism!” This moment where water is poured on the head or immersed around us, is a declaration of faith overseen by a minister of the Church, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and in this sacrament we join the Church and are given a special dose of God’s grace… Yet this is not the moment of the New Birth. We baptize infants after all, and baptism as an infant does not guarantee a life of faith – although it is an important start to one.

Other people expect some outward and physical sign of the Spirit’s reception. For those who have had exposure to the Pentecostal movement they look for “glossolalia,” an outpouring of seemingly nonsensical speech. Others, again tied to holiness churches, may look for fits of dancing, or spontaneous singing, or shaking! All of these could be a sign of the Spirit, I will not deny that they could be, but unless more lasting signs remain with them, they are just for show.

The Spirit arrives on its own time and in its own terms and so there is no rubric we can write to define when exactly the Spirit will arrive or how exactly it will manifest. Some people will have the Spirit come to them before they are baptized with water, other people the moment the water touches them, and still others years and years after they have found themselves in the Church. There are, however, only three definite things that define someone who has experienced the New Birth, and I admit wholeheartedly that I am taking these categories from a sermon by John Wesley – he just said it best, and who am I to perfect on perfection?[1] The three things that define a person who is born again are the virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Faith is the thing that undergirds our entire lives. In Greek the word for “faith,” (πιστις,) means “to be convinced.” We are convinced that God is good and active and present in our life and from that convincement we go forward to let ever aspect of our life be colored by our understanding of who God is. Yet, faith is not just saying you believe in all the right things in all the right ways, it is a change in the deepest parts of our soul and a reworking of our minds. Faith changes our mindset and allows us to see that God follows through on God’s promises – that the grace that has transformed other people’s lives is for us too! We can be free and we will be free!

Free from what though? Well, from sin and death! The hardest call in the Christian life is to abandon sin and to chase after righteousness. Again, this is a place we try hard to come up with lists of specific actions that define what is sinful and what is good. While there are obvious candidates – murder is bad and feeding people is good – there is a better way to address this. When we grow in faith, we grow in all virtues alongside them. Sin are those things motivated by anger and fear, by greed and lust, by cruelty and apathy. We know that we are being transformed by God’s grace when we are no longer acting based on these instincts, but on the greater virtues of humanity – love, joy, peace, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We do not need long rubrics of dos and do nots, we only need to know if we are acting on one instinct or the other.

The second sign of the New Birth is Hope. Hope is a hard thing to hold in our hearts. Emily Dickinson gives my favorite definition of Hope, “Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all…”[2] Hope has been described in similar terms throughout history, something that is frail and that is always in danger of being snuffed out – but that does, and must persist. Hope for the person of faith carries a more definite form – we are hopeful because we have faith, and that faith feeds the fires of Hope. To go back to Dickinson, we truly believe that Hope never stops singing in our hearts, and we get better and better at listening to its song in the midst of life’s troubles.

The final sign of the New Birth is love – an authentic outpouring of care for those around us. It shouldn’t surprise us that the crowning virtue of all virtues comes from our acceptance of the others. As we grow in faith and escape the cycle of our own selfish sin because of it, we naturally grow better at caring for others. As we grow in hope, we do not give into the cynical dismissals of our fellow human beings and instead reach out to them with more and more love in our hearts. This love should not just be doing things for people, but actually changing how we see each other. In his Sermon, “On a Catholic Spirit,” Wesley put it this way,

“Love me… with the love that is long-suffering and kind; that is patient, –if I am ignorant or out of the way, bearing and not increasing my burden; and is tender, soft, and compassionate still; that envieth not, if at any time it please God to prosper me in his work even more than thee. Love me with the love that is not provoked, either at my follies or infirmities; or even at my acting (if it should sometimes so appear to thee) not according to the will of God. Love me so as to think no evil of me; to put away all jealousy and evil-surmising. Love me with the love that covereth all things; that never reveals either my faults or infirmities, –that believeth all things; is always willing to think the best, to put the fairest construction on all my words and actions, –that hopeth all things; either that the thing related was never done; or not done with such circumstances as are related; or, at least, that it was done with a good-intention, or in a sudden stress of temptation.”[3]

Love is something that is above all and through all, it is something we cannot escape in any interaction we have with one another. Love should be more than just something we say or do, it must be something that transforms us in our deepest parts. I am someone for whom love comes easily, I do not need much reason to care for another human beings, and for that I am thankful. Yet, I am also someone for whom faith is a hard won reality, and so someone for whom hope can sometimes feel quite fleeting… What I hope we can understand is that none of these three fruits are always one giving birth to the other in a straight line, nor are they constant.

We have peaks and valleys in our faith and sometimes the difference between one and the other can be extreme. Our hope in life is that we are constantly closing the gap between our highest highs and our lowest lows, constantly moving upward toward something better. Yet, the reality is sometimes we are hit by something that can demolish everything we thought we knew about God and about life… In those times it is hard to build back without a lot of help.

Yet, we worship a God who never stops moving and is always willing to build us back up. You may find yourself today in a place where you feel like you’ve never really known faith, hope, and love like the Spirit brings, or you may feel like it has been a long time since the Spirit worked all of them in you. There is good news for all of us… The God who gives the Spirit of Adoption, the New Birth that transforms us, gives it freely and fully. If we have cast off that gift, let us receive it once again. Let us chase forward to the goal, and find ourselves transformed by the work of the Spirit. – Amen.

[1] This sermon is an adaptation of John Wesley’s Sermon 18 – the Marks of the New Birth. Available at: https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/sermon-18-the-marks-of-the-new-birth

[2] Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Tomas H. Johnson. (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachucetts. 1951) Available at: https://poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314

[3] John Wesley. “Sermon 39 – On a Catholic Spirit” available at: https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/sermon-39-catholic-spirit

Teach us to Number our Days

A Walk through the Lectionary

2024

Sermon 07/28/24 – The Life of the Prophets

Sermon 07/21/24 – The Hope of the Prophets

Sermon 07/14/2024 – The End of the Prophets

Sermon 07/07/2024 – They will Know there is a Prophet

Sermon 06/30/24 – Mutual Aid held in Balance

Sermon 06/23/24 – Words without Knowledge

Sermon 06/16/2024 – Spread Wide the Branches

Sermon 06/09/2024 – An End in the Beginning

Sermon 06/02/2024 – Sustaining Grace

Sermon 05/26/2024 – The New Birth