2025

Sermon 12/21/2025 – Joseph and Epimetheus

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

Sermon Text

 Long ago, in the legends of Ancient Greece, there emerged the story of Prometheus. Prometheus was a titan, one of the first divine beings (so the Greeks said.) He loved humanity and strove to make sure they had an advantage over the immense power of the Olympian Gods. First, he tricked the Gods into taking the worse deal in animal sacrifices. Two bags were prepared, one with choice meat placed on top of a pile of bones, skin, and fat, another with a worse cuts placed over the majority of the animal. The Gods chose the better cuts and bones, not knowing they had been tricked.

Later, Prometheus orchestrated his most famous exploit. He stole fire from Heaven and brought it down to earth. This allowed for humans to develop society, to forge metal and cook food. Now, through his work, humanity would grow and thrive upon the face of the earth. For stealing this divine secret, however, he was punished to be tied to a rock and tortured for the rest of eternity. A vicious punishment, but still a better outcome than his brother.

Prometheus had a brother you see, and his name was Epimetheus. He was not as clever as his brother, in fact their names meant “Forethought,” and “Afterthought,” you can guess which he was. The Gods, upset that fire had been stolen from them, devised a way to get back at humanity. They gave Epimetheus a beautiful wife named “Pandora,” and entrusted her to him. He loved her deeply and so when the Gods offered him a box, with the stipulation it must never be opened, he of course entrusted it to her. Pandora, the witless pawn in this adventure, opened the box and from it sprang every evil in the world. Last to exit was the greatest evil of them all, and yet also the one thing that might sustain human life… Hope.

So, why do I begin our meditation on this, the final Sunday of Advent, with a pagan myth about the origin of evil in the world? Well, I am not exactly sure myself. As I was working on planning this season, the story of Joseph learning of Mary’s pregnancy mingled in my head with this old myth, and I think its because I see in Joseph a bit of Epimetheus’s charm. Jospeh was a good man, who loved his wife-to-be, but did not think through his actions very far.

You see, Joseph learned that his fiancé Mary was pregnant, and so he decided he should break off the marriage. If it was his kid, or if he thought it could be, they would just move up the date of the marriage. Even in Judea, babies were born a few months shy of nine months after the wedding fairly often. We know that the baby could not be Joseph’s, because he hears of the pregnancy and immediately knows he is not the father. So, to avoid shaming her, he decides to break off the marriage privately, so no one need know why he did it.

There is, of course, a problem. Joseph and Mary are living in a village. If there are five hundred people living there than it would be a surprise. Among five hundred people, everyone knows everyone else’s business pretty quickly. Joseph, if he followed through with his plan, would save Mary none of the difficulty of her pregnancy. He would, however, avoid having to deal with the fallout himself. I do not think this is selfishness, but lack of planning that leads him to this idea. Joseph, for love of his fiancé, believes breaking off the marriage will fix her problems. He is wrong.

An unmarried woman faces enough trouble today, imagine in a world where she could be stoned to death for adultery. For the rest of her life Mary would be treated as a pariah, her child as worse than that. Mary had no place in this world, not if Joseph followed through with his plan. She and her child would be abandoned… God knows what that would have done if it had been allowed to continue. Thankfully, God had other plans.

An angel visited Joseph in his dreams and explained the situation. Joseph accepted this divine message and married his fiancé. Mary had her child, the child who was not Joseph’s, and yet the child became his own child, through his willingness to abandon his own bad idea. Now Joseph is acknowledged for his incredible love and commitment to a child he could have easily thrown aside. Joseph was willing to turn away from what he thought he knew about life, about the world, and in the process bring life into it, not just through a literal birth, but through supporting our savior as he grew into the ministry he had ahead of him.

What I hope we can take from Joseph’s story, and his shortsighted, knee-jerk reaction to Mary’s pregnancy, is the realization that a bad idea is not the end of our story. When we come into a situation we are not prepared for, we may have all kinds of ideas for how to deal with them. A calm mind will let us see that many of those reactions are not good, and if we take time to think through their repercussions we might be pleasantly surprised with what God can do with a person who thinks ahead. Joseph needed divine intervention to change his mind, and honestly I think we often need that exact same spark to change our ways.

Our faith is built off of Christ’s work within it. When we meet Christ, we should constantly be reorienting ourselves to be more like him. That reorientation requires us to abandon some of the ideas we have about ourselves, about the world, about our conduct. In my own life, I have seldom regretted a decision I made thoughtfully, but have regretted plenty that I made impulsively. When we take the time to think of how our actions impact others, when we are willing to accept a different perspective, when we are open to what God is doing… Then the hope of Christ’s reign is made plain to us. Go forward then, willing to change your mind in the face of God’s work in your life. Think before you act, not just living reactively. Then you will see God’s salvation, and truly know what it means to welcome Christ into your life. – Amen.

Sermon 11/23/2025 – Eternal Wanderers

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

“When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God:

‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’

You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

Sermon Text

Where do we come from? It’s a question that some of us can answer with complete certainty, others of us are less likely to know what history brought our ancestors to the places that their children would be from. Unless you have a dedicated genealogist, and, on top of that, existing documents to trace your family back, there is bound to be ambiguity. In some ways, I think the slow movement away from obsession with descent is good – it lets us be our own person, not just who we happen to be related to. However, I think that a lack of understanding about how we got here will also open us up to misunderstanding how this world really works.

My family history is muddled. My dad was adopted as an infant. His parents were friends of the family who adopted him and so when he was an adult and started seeking answers he began to find them. Still, in terms of biological descent we are not entirely sure what our lineage looks like. My mother’s family is also full of question marks. We do not have a good idea about who my grandmother’s family were, and it is very likely we will never know anything about my grandfather’s. Genetic testing tells us we’re almost exclusively descended from people in the British Isles, but that still only tells us so much. Our past, in this way, is a mystery.

Yet, perhaps more importantly for my dad’s side of things, we do know how his adopted family came to be in the Hagerstown area. A few decades ahead of World War I, a family left Saxony-Anhalt, leaving behind their home village of Langenstein for the United States. We are not exactly sure what motivated the move. Maybe they saw the writing on the wall in terms of unrest, maybe their industry had dried up, but this little group made their way across the ocean and eventually settled in Maryland. From that line, my dad’s adoptive family came. From them come all the lessons and raising my father took into his life and passed on to me.

The scripture we read today is a favorite of mine. It is simple in its intent, just a prayer meant to be prayed when the first fruit offerings were given at the temple. Yet, they allowed the Israelites to participate in something they would not be able to otherwise – it let them remember where they came from. Every year as the grain and other produce was given to the Temple, the people would recite this story of how they came to live in the land and would be made to give thanks for their current life and to acknowledge that history that allowed for it to be.

The prayer begins by recalling the journey of Abraham out of Chaldea and into Canaan. “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor,” refers both to Abraham and his descendants. The people of God moved into Egypt to escape a famine, and there they lived for many years. After their oppression under Pharoah was too great, they fled with God’s help back into Canaan, the area they had once wandered in generations past. It was here that they were finally able to settle, here that they were able to give thanks, here that God asked them to give from their excess back to God. The final part of this ritual was to celebrate with the priests and with any foreigners who were wandering as they had once done. To bring all people together to celebrate God’s goodness.

That final step was tied to the first. In order to truly celebrate with their foreign guests, the people of God had to remember that they were foreigners for generations. Abraham’s family had left Ur, and settled for a time in Charan. However, Abraham went down to Canaan, then to Egypt, then back to Canaan. He never really stopped moving, even after he took possession of land. His children were likewise always on the move. They were always guests, or intruders, or strangers in the lands that they lived in. In remembering this, God’s people were given a direct reason to relate to the strangers in their midst. These foreign folk, trying to find a home, are not our enemies, they are not different from us, they are just like we were a few generations ago.

Of course, the story they recounted before the altar skips some important parts of the story. When the Israelites return from Egypt, they did not peacefully settle in the land. They ran a program of extermination that wiped out entire cities. The return to the land was not a bloodless migration. The Israelites displaced the native Canaanites and then claimed the land as their possession into antiquity. They claimed to have a divine right, and few survived who could argue with them. The settling of Canaan, the memory of their ancestors as strangers in strange lands, all were a more complicated story than people would be willing to tell.

In our own pasts, we will likewise find complicated narrative. Some of us have genealogy going back to the foundations of this country. The story of colonization in America is messy. People fleeing persecution or seeking a new chance at life came to the Americas in droves. However, to make room for themselves they displaced the native people. As time went on, government programs sought to actively eradicate indigenous populations. We said, “The buffalo must be hunted to extinction, the savages brought into boarding schools to be shown how to be “civilized,” their language must be cut off, and their lands must be claimed for our own uses.”

Likewise, if you know anyone who is black, chances are their ancestors did not come here seeking a new lease on life. They were brought in chains, they were forced to work and to bear children and to be sold off again and again. Chattel, no longer regarded as human, to fuel the industrial landscape of a country that desired the competitive edge that free labor could afford them. If our families are old enough, like my wife’s family is, then digging into our past might just reveal folks who oppressed and who fought for liberation, in the tangled mess of American slavery.

The reason I think that genealogy is important, why we should tell our stories to our children about how our family came to be, is that there is often a context for how we got here, that can color our understanding of how we treat folks in our modern day. My mother-in-law, a minister in Parkersburg, wrote a whole study on the Book of Ruth that asks the reader to do research into their own family. To understand how our ancestors came to settle in the land we now call home, is to understand why people are still moving and migrating around the world today.

As we stand here today, one in every sixty-seven people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes. 73.5 million are displaced domestically within their home country and 42.7 million are living as refugees forced into other countries by conflict. Of all these people, only 8.4 million are actively living in asylum. Still more, 4.4 million people are citizens of countries that no longer exist.[1] If you are out of your country when its government collapses, you no longer belong anywhere or to anyone. You are a non-person, existing only in the paperwork you happen to have.

This week, as we gather around our tables to celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you will think of your ancestors. Did they come to the U.S. to escape persecution? To avoid a war? Was their home destroyed in disaster? Or were their farms destroyed by drought or blight? Think on these things, and let them color the thanks you give. God has led your family through hardship that they might be able to sit, and give thanks for the meal you now share with your loved ones.

Also think, though, of the darker parts of history. Perhaps we have blemishes in our family history. Perhaps there are folks who actively made life worse for others. Who claimed to own other humans or who worked in exterminating others. These too are memories we should not neglect, for they color our world as well, and give us pause.

Most importantly, pray for displaced people. For those who have been forced from their homelands, who seek shelter in other nations or in overcrowded camps. Think of the refugees that have been saved through hard working people who have come alongside them to help, and those who have been forced into prison cells and thrown back into countries they may die in. Migrants, asylum seekers, immigrants, and wanderers are all our kith and kin, whether we want to admit it or not, for we were once wanderers too.

As I sit with my wife’s family this Thursday, as we sing our grace over the meal and we hear stories of her mother’s long dead ancestors, I will sit and recount the little history I know of my people. Christian Gottlieb fleeing Germany ahead of a World War, taking his life only a few years later due to his own struggles. His widow raising up her children, who would raise up my great-grandfather, Pap. Pap who would work the railroad and serve in the Army Corps of Engineers. Pap, who sewed diapers and cooked and cleaned for all his babies. Who raised my grandfather, who raised my father, who raised me, who now raises my son. I exist because someone long ago sojourned in this land, and I count myself as an eternal wanderer for that reason. Let us see in our neighbors, in the strangers we meet only briefly, and in the foreigners who live among us for a season or a lifetime, a family that we are called to care for. – Amen.

[1]The United Nations Refugee Agency. Refugee Data Finder. Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics

Sermon 11/16/2025 – Eternal Care

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Now we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from every brother or sister living irresponsibly and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.

Sermon Text

I am guilty of being a busy body. I constantly search out things that I can get involved with. Sometimes this is a helpful impulse but sometimes it is to my great detriment. I’ve shared before how my wife and I had one of our few true arguments over me, deciding to put together a play pen instead of just playing with our kid like I had said I would. However, beyond that one particular problem there is a larger one that looms in the background of many people’s lives. Many of us will engage in the wrong kind of work to get out of doing the work that needs to be done.

When people come to your house for a visit, it is a good time to clean and get things ready for their time with you. However, sometimes we see them coming to our house differently. “If I do not do this other project before they get here, I will have to wait till they leave, so I should do that now instead of clean.” In households of two or more people, this mindset leads to one person doing all the prep for the incoming guests, and another suddenly disappearing to hang shelves or trim hedges. They are still working, but the work that they are doing is not necessarily the work that needs to be done, it is work for the sake of being busy.

Sometimes it is important to note that there is an actual hierarchy to work that gets done in the world. That hierarchy is not based on the amount of money you make for it, the time it takes to do it, or any other temporal metric. The hierarchy of importance in the work we do comes down to whether the work we are doing is relevant to the moment in which we are doing it. Is this the time to do what we are doing? Is this the best use of my time? Am I really working to an end, or so I can say that I did some amount of work?

In the early Church, there were several problems that largely came from the sudden influx of people from different cultures and social groups into one untied community. The rich who had never worked a day in their life were now sitting next to day laborers who did backbreaking work for pennies. At their combined gatherings they would share meals, distribute food to those in need, and worship together. The differences in class and background caused friction between folks in the group.

The Corinthian church had more definite problems surrounding abuse of the Lord’s Supper by wealthy members. Here in Thessalonica, we are not told what the exact transgression is that has angered the apostle. What is clear is that it revolves around taking from the communal meal without having contributed in some way toward it. We know this because Paul uses himself and his companions as a counter example. Specifically, he says that he worked to fund his own stay in the city rather than depending on the generosity of the community. Whether this was by contributing to the common pot or paying his own way is unclear, but Paul is clearly setting up his point. “… anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

This verse is a Rorschach test for anyone reading it. Some readers will see this and have their minds flooded with visions of unemployed folk in welfare programs. Others will read it and envision the wealthy CEOs who profit off of other people’s work without doing anything themselves. As challenging as this verse is, we usually choose to read it so that it challenges someone other than ourselves. Like much of scripture, we read the tone of judgment it takes and decide that it must, therefore, be for someone else. The people Paul is upset with; must be the people I also take issue with.

In truth, I’m not sure what the specific infraction in Thessalonica Paul is addressing might have been. I think that it is more likely that Paul is critiquing the wealthy in the congregation rather than the poor, but without the specific citation of the issue we cannot be sure. In truth, Paul may be addressing a situation which is not intrinsically tied to class, a more universal ethic may be being violated here.

The issue at hand in Thessalonica is that there are members of the community who are refusing to contribute to the common good, but doing their best to pretend otherwise. Some of them are doing this by wasting their resources, coming to the congregation and saying, “I have nothing!” When they’ve really just wasted what they had. Others have plenty but are contributing something else instead of what is needed. These folks are working hard to look busy, but when the time comes for something that really needs doing, they fall short. Going to our opening parable, these folks see that guests are coming and hang up shelves. They are “doing work,” but none of that work contributes to anyone’s actual good.

Once when I was working in a church, I once got a call from a fellow. “God put it on my heart to help the church that raised me. So, is there anything I can do for you all?” I was happy, because I actually had something we needed. “We have been working to raise money to fix up our building, and any amount toward that can make a difference.” The man sat quietly for a time… Then he replied… “Have you all tried having a fundraiser?” He was ready to help, so long as that help did not ask anything of him beyond prayer or advice.

There is no bad work in the Church. There are times things need cleaned or built, times that prayers need lifted up or dinners cooked, but there is timely work and there is busy work. Many a church has died because the folks in the pews were not concerned with doing the work they needed to get done, but the work they would rather be busy with. We are called to do our work “quietly,” not so that people notice it and praise us. We are to do it tirelessly, because the work we do should be “what is right.”

This verse, like all of scripture, is not the tool of ideology. It should not be used to berate the poor who depend on welfare. It is, likewise, not a very helpful tool to call the idle rich to repentance. Instead, I would invite us to read it as a personal challenge. Take this scripture in your hand and hold it close to your heart. What does it speak against you? Do you hear God calling to your idleness? To you busy work? Is there work that you know you should do for the good of God’s people that you’ve been putting off? Search your heart, find the work you have left undone, and go forth in silence to get it done. God has called us to change this world, not in appearance, but in reality. Do what is right, do not tire, and let your contribution to God’s work really matter. – Amen.

Sermon 11/09/2025 – Eternal Love

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

Sermon Text

There are few things I cherish more in life than my marriage. My wife and I fell in love almost accidentally. We did not know that we were crazy about each other, at least not to the degree we were, until suddenly we could not deny it. We were engaged almost exactly a year after we started dating and married just a few months after that. We had been friends for years ahead of that time, so we were not strangers by any means, but when we fell, we both fell hard and quickly.

Our marriage is not perfect, like any relationship we have our problems. I’m grumpy and stubborn, she’s forgetful and stubborn, but we love each other and love our kid enough that we can work through anything that comes our way. Even if it means one of us has to sit the other down periodically and work through the mess that we have made. We aspire to really live our life so that we can be “flesh of flesh,” and “bone of bone,” one body in two persons, as much as possible. Yet, one day we will be parted by death, and this magnificent thing we call marriage will end.

Jesus gives many teachings that you do not usually hear ministers preach on, sometimes because they are complicated and sometimes because they’re unpleasant. Here, we have the latter. For many of us, the idea that marriage is something only for now, something that has a definite endpoint on this side of eternity, can be depressing. We spend our lives with our partners, we devote so much of who we are to them, growing alongside and into who they are. How can it be said that someday that amazing bond… is just severed?

I am not going to pretend to have a full answer, but I nonetheless want to try and give us some ideas to work with as we understand the way that our life continues from one end of eternity to the next. If we fall in love, if we devote ourselves to our family, and then we die… Does that connection cease to exist? I think the obvious answer here has to be no.

The people we love and who we live alongside shape our personality in ways that cannot be denied or diminished. This goes beyond who we choose to spend our life with, it bleeds into every relationship we have. I look like and share a (terrible,) sense of humor with my father. I talk and gesticulate like my mother. My personality grew up alongside my best friends Rose and Tara. My theology was shaped by dozens of teachers and colleagues, and the great enigmatic friend/foil in my life whom I call, “Tater.” We are the culmination of not only the entirety of our own life, but the life we live alongside other people.

When we die, if those relationships were suddenly voided, then we would cease to be who we are. “John,” cannot exist outside of the aspects of who I am that have been formed specifically because of the people in my life I have loved and who have loved me. I am not “me,” in isolation, I am only “me,” because of what has brought me here to the present moment. If in death, in the presence of God, I was suddenly turned into some kind of blank slate, then God has not saved “John,” God has only saved something vaguely “John,”-shaped.

When we enter into eternity, having died physically, we are not reset. There is no system of cosmic return that requires us to be broken into our constituent parts, we keep all the bits of us that we lived with. The difference which death makes, through God’s salvation, is that the bits of us that are rooted in sin are removed. The loves we feel, therefore, are transformed not such that they cease to exist, but so that they are now in their “perfect,” state. In the world to come, we are told that there is no marriage, and that those who are married in life will not be married in the resurrection – but that does not make their marriage unimportant, or erase its significance.

I am who I am in large part because of who my wife is. Likewise, knowing me has changed a great deal about her… Some things for the better even! When the day comes that we enter into eternity, we will not shed that reality of ourselves. Yes, we are told that we will no longer be “married,” and that our relationship will not continue on in the way it presently does. However, that does not mean that we will mean nothing to each other. When the present age ends, we will be perfected fully, and our love will likewise become perfect. We will have the capability to universally and fully love all people, with the same love that Christ felt. It will be different, it will be lived out differently, but it will be a definite improvement nonetheless.

When people ask me, “Pastor, do we get to see our family in Heaven?” I always tell them yes. Yes, you will see them, and yes, they will still be special to you. Yet, somehow, your definition of “family,” will be much larger. As you meet Christians from every era of history and every race and nation and creed, you will run into folks you never knew, and that you still love entirely. Whether our loved ones form a welcome party into glory, or we stumble upon them as we wander through perfection, as we meet again and as we reminisce once again, the path ahead of us is guaranteed to be better than the one behind us.

I love my wife, more than just about anything. Yet, I do not fear this teaching of Jesus. I do not fear it because I know that in the resurrection I will love as Jesus has loved, and Jesus has loved all people perfectly for all time. Just because I am told I will not be married to my wife forever, does not mean that she will not always be eternally important to me. God has better things in store for us than we can possibly imagine. Still, how blessed are we that we are given the gift of sharing our life with others. Whether that is through marriage, or friendships, or any number of other relationships we might have. God has given us each other, for this moment, and for eternity. Praise God, who gives us an eternal love. – Amen.

Sermon 11/02/2025 – Eternal Hope

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Ephesians 1:11-23

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Sermon Text

All Saints’ Day marks a time when the Church acknowledges that its membership is larger than just who sits in the pews. The Church is not just those baptized members that work and walk on the face of the earth, but all those who are present with God beyond the veil of death. As the Church on Earth awaits the resurrection, so those present with God await the same, looking for the day where heaven and earth, physical and spiritual, new and old are all mixed together into a new, perfected creation.

There is, surprisingly, very little within the scope of scripture that describes what sort of life the dead participate in. We know that faithful people, upon their death, are present with God in some meaningful way.[1] We know that they are conscious and that they are actively worshipping God and awaiting Christ’s final victory at the end of the age.[2] Beyond this, however, we do not know exactly what it is like to be physically dead, yet spiritually alive and present with Christ. The time between our physical death and the future resurrection is not something the early church seemed very concerned with. Later writers would develop all sorts of concepts of the “intermediate state,” and of “the beatific vision,” granted to the dead. However, from a standpoint of scripture, very little is revealed to us about the nature of our afterlife.

I think it is intentional that scripture does not fixate on the nature of our existence between death and resurrection. Our duty is to do what is right now, to worship God as we live, and to go into the world to proclaim the good news of Christ in all that we do. To focus on something that we cannot participate in until we actually get there would be to miss the point of the here and the now. We do not get an exact guide to what death brings.

Yet, we are given an abundance of assurance. Christ’s immediate presence with us in death means that, not only is death nothing to fear, it is a gift. Paul says in Philippians that, if he had a say in the matter, he wished he could die sooner rather than later. Yet, he did not see his life as a burden either. He says, “To live is Christ,” meaning it gives us the opportunity to imitate and better know the savior, “to die is gain,” meaning that we get to be present with Christ in a fuller, more direct way.[3] The Christian is not meant to crave death, but we are not to see it as something great and terrible either. For us, death is just a transition from one state to another, a changing of the self from the physical to the spiritual, until the day we rejoin our physical self once again in perfection.

It seems to me that the Church has lost some of its ability to be fearless in the face of death. The process of dying is hard, it does not always go smoothly, but it is not the end of us. There are many things death robs us of – opportunities we could have taken but did not, time with family on this side of eternity we cannot get back – but death is still only a temporary separation. If we believe that, then it should hold no sting for us. While we can, and should, mourn that the people we love die and that they are no longer beside us, we should not “mourn as those without hope.”[4] We believe Christ has marked us, that our faith has confirmed us, that we have a future even beyond death.

Still, I believe people hope that they might be immortal. On one hand this manifests in recklessness, but on the other, and just as dangerously, it manifests as a obsessive pursuit of wellness. New vitamins, new supplements, new exercise regiments, new procedures, new this that and the other, just to deny that one day this life must end. Why are we fearful of growing old? Of wrinkles and stretch marks and grey hair? Why do we chase after youth that has already passed by? It is ok to be as old as we are, to enjoy the benefits and to face the hardships every era of life brings. There is no shame in aging, in frailty or in strength we are all of us significant, all of us still beloved by God. Death comes to everyone, and there is no shame in it.

It can seem a grim topic, to address death so straight on. Yet, it is an important part of life. Christ came and lived and died, in large part so that we would have a companion in every step of life. When we come to the end of this life, we die. Born into eternity in that moment, we see things in a new way. We are present with God, with all the saints who went before us, and we join them in something new. We wait for God’s redemption of the world as people who have seen it closer than anyone else. We behold Christ face to face, we see the power of the resurrection right in front of us. We pray for the day all people can know its power.

On All Saints’ Day, we acknowledge that the Church consists of both the living and the dead. We also acknowledge that we too shall someday die. We will be a name in an obituary, a carving on a grave stone, a face on a poster. Yet, that is not the end of us. In dying we join the feast which Christ set long ago, and we eat and drink and celebrate God’s glory with people from all of space and time. Even today, as we take bread and cup and declare Christ’s salvation through these elements, we do so in the presence of the many witnesses who have gone before us.

Let us find God’s glory at work in every part of our lives. Those of us who are young, rejoice in your youth and vitality! Those who are old, let every achy joint and grey hair testify to the good things that have brought you thus far. Those of us in between, do not mourn the transition from one era to another. For in all times, and all places, in life and in death, God is with us. Praise God, all you people, for God is with us forever more. – Amen.

[1] Luke 23:43

[2]  Revelation 6:9

[3] Philippians 1:21

[4] 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

Sermon 10/26/2025 – God of Abundance

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Joel 2:23-32

O children of Zion, be glad, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication; he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. The threshing floors shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.

I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army that I sent against you.

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.

Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my spirit.

I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

Sermon Text

Disasters happen regardless of any preparation that goes into preventing them. The terrible fact of life is that, even if everyone does what they’re supposed to, there will still be problems. Mitigation in the face of floods, hurricanes, or tsunamis can save countless lives, but the destruction wrought will never be non-existent. With the increasingly complex climate we find ourselves living in – seasons not lining up properly, hundred-year floods happening yearly, and so many other troubles – the reality of disaster cannot escape our minds.

One of the most disappointing things that came out of the catastrophic flooding in Texas this year, alongside the raw pain of those displaced and suffering, was that not everything had been done to help people escape these troubles. Institutions from local, state, and federal levels had all remapped flood zones, cut funding, and generally created an environment where these disasters did more damage than was necessary. We allowed ourselves to believe that disaster was only a possibility, not an inevitability. Likewise, after the disaster struck, some sought to explain the flooding itself as being caused by bad actors. The idea that this kind of thing can just… happen, seemed foreign to us, despite the fact it frequently does – just not to us.

Moralizing disaster is a dangerous thing. The difficult balance we face as a society comes from acknowledging that a drop of prevention is worth an ounce of cure, but that no amount of prevention can eliminate all possible harm. Fire will burn, floods will wash away, and diseases will ravage – bad things can happen even if everyone does everything they’re supposed to. Sometimes we have to admit that the troubles we face in life are nobody’s fault, they are simply a consequence of living in a world where disaster is possible. Sometimes an outcome will be bad, and sometimes not much can be done to avoid it.

Joel writes to the people of God after a series of disasters had devastated Judea. An incursion of locusts had decimated the crops in the region. An ongoing drought had dried up all but a few water sources. In the midst of that dry weather a fire had begun, destroying entire stretches of farmland. The scene is not unlike some of what we have seen in our own lives. The fires that burn in California, the floods that ravage our state, destruction that wipes out entire communities. Into this horror show the prophet steps and seeks to interpret it to his community.

Joel spells out the disaster as a consequence of the people’s sin. He lacks some of the specificity of other prophets. He seems generally upset with the conduct of his people and so calls on them to repent. The horn of alarm is transformed into a horn calling the people to repentance. They must change how they act if they hope to escape the disaster. The dark days of the past will come to an end, but only when all God’s people know what they ought to do and do it. With urgency he calls all to repent, all to change, all to see the way forward in their life.

I am unwilling to say that the disasters we see today are divine punishment. I am no prophet, and no such word has been given to me by the Spirit. Certainly, our impact on the climate and upon our intervention programs has caused some of these disasters to be worse – poor administration of forests that allow fires to spread, aforementioned redefining of flood zones, and climate change that pushes hotter oceans to produce worse hurricanes. However, I am not convinced God divinely punishes in the way the prophets once forecast God to. If so, it is a mystery that can only be answered in eternity.

What I do know is that Joel’s words at the end of our lection today, where he speaks of the Spirit of God falling on all flesh, is something that we as Christians believe has happened. The Pentecost long ago saw the people of God receiving the ability to speak in other languages, a miracle unseen before or since. The end of human misery is therefore in sight, but is not yet complete.

The promise of Joel is that abundance returns where disaster takes over. The fire that burns cannot prevent crops from growing again. The floods that wash a community away, cannot stop them from being rebuilt. The good earth produces more than enough, if only God’s people could find a way to share it appropriately. There is a great deal of suffering in this world, a great many disasters that happen almost constantly, but the thing that truly would mitigate them is if we could just find it within ourselves to band together, to advocate for one another, to stand up to the evils around us.

It’s difficult to say which message is more important – the hope that plenty can follow emptiness or that such a blessing is only truly fulfilled when we share in that work together… Perhaps both need to be proclaimed. It goes beyond national disasters, beyond flood or fire, it cuts into our own lives. The little disasters that dry up any trace of hope within us, that make a desert of our souls, they too pass into abundance. They pass into abundance when we share our struggles and our triumphs, when we all are able to take what we need, and not a mite more. When we lift one another up, when we stand side by side. When God’s people act like God’s people, something changes in the fabric of this world, and it becomes just that little more holy. Take with you today the knowledge that God will bring life to the desert places of your life. That even in the face of overwhelming disaster, there is still hope. Somehow, in ways we cannot begin to comprehend, a day dawns in the presence of God’s Spirit. As the world awaits rebirth, looks for portents above and below, it still knows the grace of God. There is hope, even as devastation seems to reign. Hold onto that hope, that comes from our Abundant God. – Amen

Sermon 10/19/25 – Wrestle with God

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Genesis 32:22-31

The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Sermon Text

If you’ve read the story of Jacob in scripture you read the story of somebody who really  is not a hero. When we’re introduced to Jacob he is fighting his brother in the womb. Later on he defrauds his brother not once but twice, taking everything from him in the process.  His brother is angry enough at this to chase him from his home. Jacob flees to his uncle Laban in the distant city of Charan, and there begins to learn his lesson when his uncle actively defrauds him. When he leaves to return to Canaan he has two wives, a large flock of animals, plentiful slaves, and a collection of his uncle’s household gods that he and his wife stole as they fled the city.

Jacob literally means, “heel-grabber,” evidently a term for someone who usurps power from others. His life was dedicated to taking advantage of those around him for his own gain. Whether it was in convincing them to sell their inheritance for a bowl of soup or stealing their blessing in disguise, he was willing to do what it took to get what he wanted. He was a cheat, a thief, and all around a troublesome person. Yet, he was also a descendant of Abraham, a recipient of his covenant with God. Through Jacob, it was promised, all people would be blessed, and yet he showed none of the signs that he would ever conform to such a high calling.

As he returned to Canaan, he knew that he would be coming face to face with his brother Esau. His brother had grown in power since their parting. He had a veritable army at his disposal, as well as a multitude of his own flocks and slaves. To Jacob, the march to Canaan was not a simple walk to return home, but a very real risk. If he ran into his brother, he was fully expecting that his life would be forfeit. He needed a way to distract him, a way to win him over.

He sends his family ahead of him. Firstly, across the river, and then on the day of their confrontation. Does he send them ahead as decoys? As offerings in his place? Or out of a desire his brother will see his dependents and be merciful? No one can say, because we never hear his rationale.

The night before the confrontation, Jacob sends his family and his possessions ahead of him and sits alone. We do not know how long he sat there in silence, but eventually a man suddenly rushes onto the scene and begins to grapple with him. While the man should have been able to take Jacob down in mere minutes, somehow the struggle continues for hours. At daybreak the specter decides it must flee, so it dislocates Jacob’s hip bone and blesses him in exchange for freedom. The blessing is strange, “You shall be named Israel, for you have wrestled with God and humans and have prevailed.” The being refuses to give its name, and yet when it leaves Jacob knows it was God who met him that night, as he names the place “Peniel,” “God’s face,” in remembrance of the event.

It’s a strange story. Why does God need to leave before sunrise? Why can Jacob successfully wrestle God for hours? What does it mean that God has, once again, appeared in a human – but definitely not incarnate – form for the second time in the book of Genesis? These questions naturally come to mind reading the story, but they are ultimately unhelpful for us as interpreters in understanding why we are given this story.

We are inheritors of Jacob’s struggle and that is what we have to understand behind all of this. Though we are not as comically devious as he was, we are all of us still people who have tried again and again to get our way in life, and have sometimes resorted to backward methods to get there.

Sure, we try to do right, but I doubt seriously that attempt to do right always succeeds to overcome our more selfish inclinations. We are all recipients of God’s gifts, inheritors of the covenant, and yet somehow the kind of folks who might smuggle some other gods out of our uncle’s house if we were given the chance, just in case things do not quite work out. We don’t have the literal idols to hide in our wife’s saddlebag, that’s true, but who knows what we’re turning to other than God.

Jacob was where he was precisely because he was good at ripping people off. His journey to Charan was an exercise in being humbled by force. His uncle tricked him into acting with propriety, asserted that he should start acting like a civilized person and not just a thief. When he fled, he came to his brother’s territory with the ever increasing sense that he was not strong enough to face him head on. He could not fight him, could not trick him, he would have to be far more humble in his reunion. Finally, when God came to him, the struggle against him was more than he could overcome. God met him at his level, and only when his hip was out of place would Jacob relent to let go. Jacob was someone who needed humbled by external forces before he could do right.

Jacob walked the long walk from Penuel to his family across the Jabbok. He met up with them and sent them ahead to meet his brother. He had sent his property ahead as an offering to his brother, but his wives and children were sent directly ahead of him. Two groups, split up in case Esau chose to kill one of them, were sent ahead.

His favorite wife and son, Rachel and Jospeh, were directly in front of him. As he walked toward Esau, only the noise of the animals would have risen above the field. Jacob limped across the distance between them, as his brother broke into a sprint. When the two met, Jacob no doubt expected the worst, but Esau fell on him with love and not hatred.

Those years that humbled Jacob had also softened the heart of Esau. Esau saw the riches of his brother, his large family, and saw a reason to rejoice – not to be angry. Esau accepted the gifts from his brother only after Jacob pleaded with him, and when the two parted ways Esau left some of his best behind to make sure Jacob’s family had enough. Jacob would return to Canaan, and settle just a little ways from where his father had settled in Hebron, settling in Shechem with his family.

If we walk with God, we will find ourselves humbled – either of our own choice or through God’s intervention. Looking at my life, short though it has been, I know that the closer I come to God, the more I realize my smallness. It is not that my self-concept has diminished entirely, I know that I am better today than I was a year ago, but its more that my self-concept is being compared to the appropriate scale. I am better than I was, but I am nothing without the God who got me here. I am dependent on God, on the people who have loved me into being, and the circumstances that have brought me to where I am.

In my life, truthfully in all our lives, we wrestle with God. We want to say that we know better, or see more clearly than God does what is really going on. We kick and fight and push and pull, but we cannot get away from God. The struggle lasts throughout our life and only in the moments we stop and we let God win, do we truly see things for what they are.

At the Jabbok, long ago, Jacob was given the name Israel to remember his fight alongside that river, but it is a name with dual meaning. Israel can mean, “He who wrestles God,” but it can also mean, “God who prevails.”[1] We fight with God, but God wins – one way or the other.

An element I have grown to love in this story is that God refuses to give Jacob his name. Yet, when the stranger leaves, Jacob knows that he has seen the face of God in fighting alongside that river. Something we often do in life is look back on a difficult time and suddenly see that God was alongside us the whole time. Sometimes shepherding us through, sometimes dragging us kicking and screaming, but never relenting. To wrestle with God, to be humbled in the practice, is to learn who God truly is. As Charles Wesley notes in his hymn based upon this text, our entry into humility is our entry into this truth, “Pure, universal love thou art; To me, to all thy passions move; Thy nature and thy name is love.”[2] Wrestle God, be made humble, and learn the love of the same. – Amen

[1] Robert Alter gives the most succinct argument for this in his translation of the text, but the exact etymology of the name “Israel,” continues to be a matter of academic debate.

[2] Come O Thou Traveler Unknown UMH #386

Sermon 10/12/2025 – Skipping the Best Part

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Jeremiah 29: 1-11

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the artisans, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It said: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.

For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

Sermon Text

Jeremiah 29:11is probably one of the most quoted scriptures in American Christianity. The promise of God’s foreknowledge in our lives is comforting. That the plans God lays out ahead of us are good, all the better. It is on walls of churches and house decorations and many a twitter bio… The problem is that it is not a very good verse to style your life around.

If you look at it, it’s a specific verse for a specific people. God is not making a sweeping statement about plans for everyone’s life, though I am sure God has them. It is a promise to God’s people in exile, to trust that while things are currently bad for them, keeping to the counterintuitive instructions God has given them will be for their own good. The promise of the “plans,” being good is given not as a vague allusion to God having influence over their lives, but as a specific message about something God has already told them to do.

While I do not disagree with people’s desires to use this verse to reassure themselves that God cares about their wellbeing, I also believe that we do ourselves a disservice in ignoring what specific plans God is laying out for the people. As we have seen on other Sundays, Jeremiah is a book that consists largely of horrible news for the people of God – that this section takes such a sharp turn toward something positive should tell us that every word of it matters. We cannot just take Jeremiah 29:11, or any part of scripture, out of its fuller context and expect to really understand what it is telling us. Most of us, I have to say, have been skipping the best part of this chapter.

As a reminder of our Biblical History, the book of Jeremiah takes place during the Babylonian Conquest. Israel existed as a sovereign nation for a relatively short time during the reigns of King Saul, and then David and Solomon. After Solomon’s death, the country split in half between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Israel would later fall to the Assyrian Empire, with Judah becoming a vassal-state. In time, Assyria would fall to the Neo-Babylonian empire, who would take over all their land.

The Babylonians first made a vassal-state of Judah, then destroyed it entirely after a failed coup. Jeremiah 29 captures the moment after the initial conquest and deportation of many Judahites to Babylon, but before the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the larger second deportation. Jeremiah has two goals – firstly to reassure the now scattered people of God that God is still caring for them, and secondly to chastise the leaders of the people and their prophets. The latter part of the chapter captures the prophecies against the kings and false prophets and spells out the destruction of the city and the removal of its people. The first section, however, the one we are talking about today, lays out something of how God works within a broken world.

The deportees in Babylon are living in a mixture of situations. Some, those who are literate or artisans, have been placed into jobs within the imperial machine. Those who make specific goods are now making them for Babylon, those who recorded legal matters are now doing it for the empire. These folks are not “free,” but they are granted certain benefits that come from their skills. They are being used by empire and have been inserted into the existing middle and ruling classes as the empire sees fit. Poorer folk were sent in as slaves and field workers, feeding the empire with their labor. Both faced troubles, both were uprooted from their home and their religious life, their unique circumstances only changed the severity and flavor of their torment.

To these people, Jeremiah writes the words we have plastered all over our lives. The plan of God to redeem them after their time in Babylon comes with specific instructions for how to live in the meantime. The instructions are revolutionary, they change the way God’s people are to live forever, and yet they are something that, within a few generations, God’s people would throw away for their own purposes.

God gives them the instruction to marry and give in marriage. The people are to put down roots! More than this, the implication comes that they are to marry into the people of Babylon.

At different stages in its history, Judah had different concepts of how intermarriage between ethnic groups could be done, but here we see a full endorsement of it. God also asks that the people support the cities that they have found themselves in, to labor for the good of their neighbors, for doing so will ultimately help them as well.

For we today, as American Christians, we do not suffer from displacement. Many people in this world do, and for them these teachings are immediately relevant. However, as citizens of Heaven who sojourn on the earth, as we all hope to be, then we must see a parallel. We are not called as Christians to distance ourselves from other people, to see them as something apart from ourselves. While I do think Christianity makes unique demands upon our lives, those demands are open to all people. Racial divides, for example, have no place in the Church. Despite our long history of segregation and our contribution to anti-miscegenation and integration throughout history, the Church is meant to be a place where all people become part of the same family.

Likewise, we are not truly citizens of this world, and yet we are meant to contribute to the good of the place where we live. I think Jeremiah is intentional in saying the people are to support the “city,” in which they live and not Babylon as a larger entity. The delicate support of upholding the laws and welfare of the place you live, while not absorbing the evils practiced within, is a tale as old as time within the Church. Christians lived, worked, and paid taxes to Rome while Rome was hunting and killing them. Today, our culture commits many evils, targets many vulnerable people, and often times with the sanction of those in power. We can support Keyser, West Virginia, even the United States, without blindly aligning ourselves to any evil which society perpetrates through them.

The biblical ethic of seeing all people as our “neighbor,” demands that we do some literal work for our literal neighbors. We are commanded to care for each other, because our mutual welfare is part of God’s plan.

We cannot despise the people around us and expect that any good will come of that. So many cities, towns, even smaller communities like churches, become lost in a deep sense of distrust with each other. We lose sight of the idea that we are meant to love one another, because it is far easier to fear each other. Everyone is seen as a potential threat, an obstacle to be overcome, and not as fellow human beings walking this earth together.

God does indeed have plans to prosper people, but that plan includes the simple act of working together for the general welfare. Today in our hyper partisan world, that is hard to imagine being possible. We have people who legitimately hate each other. Every problem is sourced to people groups – the republicans, the democrats, immigrants, trans people, gay people – anyone really, as long as the label can stick to an accusation. It is harder than ever to live a full life – costs are up, companies are getting record profits, jobs are down as AI and automation replaces humans – in a world where more and more people are suffering, more and more will be looking for people to blame.

There is blame of course. Tools of industry, businesses founded on stochastic incitement, and rampant consumption are just a few sources of our troubles. Nation uses each trouble against nation, and none have clean hands in the fight. However, the most powerful thing we can do to counter these forces, those who benefit from division and who want us to distrust one another, is to do the radical thing that sits in front of us at all times. Embrace God’s plan, see those around you as a neighbor, and live accordingly. That sort of plan, that can truly be for our good. – Amen.

Sermon 10/05/2025 – On Supererogation

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Luke 17:5-10

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ ”

Sermon Text

One of the ways that I know that people do not often actually read scripture is that I do not, as a pastor, get more questions about slavery. When you read through the scriptures, you see that throughout the Old Testament, the New Testament, and, if you’re feeling especially exotic, the Apocrypha, there is a lot of talk about slavery and very little discussion of how it is a bad thing. There’s a lot of reasons for this, entire books about it even, and we sadly do not have time to go into it today.

I am not going to spend a lot of time explaining, or explaining away, the Bible’s treatment of slavery. Obviously, as people who live in the modern era, we acknowledge the fact that slavery in any form is despicable. Yet. as people who have never in their lives suffered a loss of freedom because of this institution it can be easy for us to not take a moment to acknowledge its presence throughout scripture. Others in this world are not so lucky, whether they live in an area of the world where slavery is still very real or they are descendants of those who had lost their freedom, or been born into a system that never allowed them to have it. Today, we are discussing a parable of Jesus within its context and from it I hope we can understand a little bit more of how we interact with the world and if you’re interested, we can come back another time and talk about why that context makes us bristle as much as it does.

In our scripture, Jesus is talking to his disciples. Firstly, he looks at the group of them and says in response to their demand that he increases their faith, “If you all had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would be able to do, intense, but still basic gardening with it.” Something that is lost in the English translation is that Jesus is not saying if each individual had faith the size of a mustard seed they could do this, he is saying that if all of them together could muster up even that much faith it would be sufficient to rip up a single tree.

 This is very different from what Jesus tells us in Matthew. There we read that faith the size of a mustard seed would be able to move mountains.[1] In truth, I think Jesus probably gave his disciples both of these teachings at different times. Matthew’s version captures a moment of Jesus delivering this message out of hope for his disciples. After spending years with these people and seeing them grow very little, the messaging necessarily changes to a call for action on their part. Jesus, having faced his disciples constantly arguing with each other over who is the greatest and who is best at doing this or that, finally seems to have a moment where he looks them in the eye and calls their bluff about why they are doing what they’re doing.

Jesus looks at them and gives them a parable that for our modern eyes is uncomfortable and was probably equally so for his disciples, just in different ways. “Who among you,” Jesus asks, “would be willing to have your slave come into your house, set the table, and then pull up a seat next to you.” Jesus knows his disciples are more likely to be slaves than own them, but still he expects them to answer like any good Roman subject would. “A slave’s place is not at the dinner table. They eat only after the master is done eating and they eat in their own quarters.” Perhaps they are hoping Jesus is about to subvert their expectations, and so they remain silent. Jesus does not though, and instead tells them they should be like slaves, and not expect to be praised for doing what is expected of them.

Within theology there is a concept called supererogation. It means, “to work above,” and refers to the belief that a Christian can do something above and beyond what is asked of them by God. We in the United Methodist Church actually have a specific belief about supererogation within our Articles of Religion.[2] The language comes from the 1600s so it’s a little antiquated, so allow me to modernize it. “It is impossible for a Christian to work beyond what is asked of them by God because God asks for everything from a Christian. Therefore, no amount of work or devotion can exceed what is expected of them when God expects everything.”

Jesus’s parable of the worthless slave is not without irony. When we read through his other teachings, we know that Christ is actually the kind of person who sets a table for slaves. Reading through Jesus’s teachings, we know that when we enter Heaven, we will receive the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”[3] However, Jesus’s harsher words here are necessary for us to understand something that we often forget about faith. We are not doing anything special by responding to Christ’s words with obedience and a desire to be good. Yes, it may not be everyone’s response to do these things, and yes, it may make us a far happier and holier person because we have done them, but in doing what we are supposed to do we have not earned ourselves any special favor.

If Christ was the kind of teacher, the kind of God, who looked at his disciples and lavished them with praise for each thing they did, I don’t think that we would exist as a Church today. The life that the disciples had to live, one in which they were constantly persecuted, denied basic human rights, sent out into the world to suffer the way they did, that kind of life can only happen because they did not expect anything for the work which they did. They were following the example of their savior after all, “who took on the form of a slave,” to save them.[4]

I often tell the story of my great uncle. He was an atheist. One day he was helping repair a roof on a church. As he was up on the ladder a Deacon of that church came out and told him to come down and talk to him for a while. The Deacon asked him how much the church was paying him to do the work and my uncle said, “I like what you all do, I’m doing this for free.” The Deacon looked at him and said, “Now you really ought to get some money out of this, I would never do this kind of work for free.” My uncle looked at him put his hand on his shoulder and said, “Sir, I don’t know how you Christians work, but I’m an atheist and we believe in doing things just cause they’re right.”

I tell that story because my uncle had a better understanding of what it means to do the right thing than most Christians. I do think that it’s important that we as individuals and as a church show people appreciation for the work they do. I think it would be very easy to abuse this teaching of Jesus to say that you should never give anyone a positive word because that’s not why they’re doing what they’re doing. However, as with so many things, we can’t throw out this teaching because it could be abused. The teaching is still good even if people have used it for evil. It is important to ask, what would the church be like if it took the attitude my uncle did more often? If we did good work, because it was right to do it, and asked for nothing else?

Today as the church celebrates World Communion Sunday, we acknowledge the fact that we are not the only Christians to exist. So often, we assume the only “good,” Christians are the ones just like us. The truth is more complicated than that. At this table, to all who earnestly seek it, there is more than enough grace, if only we can acknowledge how freely it is given, and how little we can contribute toward it. The worst thing we can do at this table, is presume that our seat at it has been earned, or that the grace we receive is something due to us.

I always find myself remembering the words of the old communion liturgy. Before the merger of ’68, Methodist and EUB churches would pray each Sunday before we took communion, saying, “We do not presume to come to this, Your Table, O Merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your many and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table but you are the same Lord whose mercy is unfailing.”[5]

Today this table, for those who truly wish to take it in earnest, is a chance to start over. If we can humble ourselves and acknowledge the fact that we are not special, not in the way we often want to be, it will bless us richly. We must acknowledge we are as dependent upon God’s grace as any other person in the world and just as liable to sin and as likely to fail. True freedom comes from the acknowledgement of our dependency, and when we can remove that presumption of righteousness from ourselves, then we find our faith producing fruit. The fruit of righteousness, the fruit of mercy, and the fruit of grace that we have earnestly received.

We are not special, not even one of us, but that does not mean that we are not beloved. It does not mean that we do not still have a place in this world that needs us. It simply means that we do not have a privilege over any other human being. For we are sinners all and all of us are dependent upon the feast which is set before us by a God who welcomes every humble heart with grace upon grace, joy upon joy, at the seat we never thought we could sit down at. – Amen.

[1] Matthew 17:20

[2] Articles of Faith of the Methodist Church. Article XI

[3] Matthew 25:21

[4] Philippians 2:7

[5] Adapted from “The Rite of The Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion” in The Methodist Hymnal. 1964

Sermon 09/28/2025 – Real Treasures

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Sermon Text

Money truly makes the world go round. Don’t believe me, don’t believe Joel Grey, believe the writ of scripture itself. “Money answers all things,” is a lesson straight out of Ecclesiastes.[1] Are you hungry? Tired? Need friends? For a little bit of money, these and more can be yours! Money cannot buy happiness, but it should not surprise us that people’s happiness is usually correlated to their income.[2] When you have money, you have few things to worry about, but when you don’t life can be a struggle even just to keep a roof over your head.

There’s a story, Greek in origin, of a slave who longed for his master’s wealth. The master decided to allow him to have his wish for a day. The man enjoyed the lavish food and drink that his master had every day. He celebrated in the midst of it all… Until he looked up. Dangling on a small thread above him was a sword, spinning slightly in the draft of the room. The lesson of this parable, “The Sword of Damocles,” is that the wealthy constantly have to fear thieves and traitors, and so it is wrong to desire what they have, because it is so hard to have it… The Sword of Damocles is a piece of propaganda that has lodged deep into our psyche.

The simple fact is that money makes life easier. The more of it you have, the more likely you are to have your problems taken care of. A rich person has the time, the ability, and the power to exert their will on the world in a way that the average person would never have. Their children get access to better schools, better equipment, better chances compared to anyone else. The cycle carries from one generation to the next, the rich beget the rich, and they take and they take until there is nothing left for those beneath them. There are far more Dives in this world than there are repentant Scrooges.

Money, the messy thing that it is, is described as the “root of all kinds of evil,” in today’s scripture. Truthfully, the way it is usually quoted, “The root of all evil,” is also a fine translation. In Greek it is rendered “ ‘ριζα γαρ παντων των κακων” (hriza gar panton ton kakon.) This can mean, “Money is the root of all kinds of evil,” or “Money is the root of all evils.” Though I do endorse the traditional reading as valid, I think the idea that money can, and often is the source of every kind of evil is more accurate.

Evil predates the existence of money by hundreds of thousands of years. In the Garden, humanity did not disobey God because cash was offered to us. Evil predates money, so it cannot be its true source. However, I believe that wealth, whether monetary or otherwise, is indeed a nutritive source – a root – of every kind of evil there is. An evil-minded person, given the resources that wealth allows, can commit all manner of evil with very little effort. To have is to have opportunity, and to have opportunity is to face temptation. A heart that is not prepared for that temptation will live out a life of selfishness when given access to sufficient means to do so.

People say “power corrupts,” but monetary or social power does not truly corrupt – it enables. A good person, given the means to do good, will do more good. A person who is primarily invested in themself will spend their resources toward that goal of self-aggrandizement. We are meant to work on our goodness, our thriftiness, our gregariousness, at all times simply because we do not know what tomorrow may bring. Whether we are poor, rich, or thoroughly stuck in the middle, we are all of us at the whims of chance. Tomorrow we could have everything change for us, one direction or the other, and we must be prepared to do right regardless.

The “great gain,” which Paul describes in Timothy comes from “godliness combined with contentment.” The one aspect, Godliness, is meant to reflect that when we have excess resources in life, we use them according to godly principles. We do not waste our money, we save what we can when we can, but never to a point that we neglect to be charitable. The other aspect, contentment, means that we do not chase after more money regardless of where we are at. While money makes life easier, we are not made to accumulate it, we are made to live – and money is the tool by which we live our lives.

Now, here comes the kicker. Pretty much all of us in this room are wealthy. Now, give me a second here. I’m not saying all of us, but I am saying most of us have more money at our disposal than most people in the world, and a good chunk in this country. Who here owns their house? You have more square footage and more equity than most people could ever dream of. Who here has more than five thousand dollars in savings? You have more money than some people make in a year, just sitting there in case you need it. How many people here have no debt? How do you exist in the year 2025?

As we all have some amount of wealth, we are expected to contribute some of it to the good of others, especially those most in need. St. John Chrysostom, a fifth century preacher, put this idea quite well in several of his sermons. The shorter quote from Chrysostom is simple, “[N]ot to share our own riches with the poor is a robbery of the poor, and a depriving them of their livelihood; and that which we possess is not only our own, but also theirs.”[3] His longer quote is built off of the Gospel of Matthew, but it says in better words than I can muster exactly what I mean.
            “Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise him when he is naked. Do not honor him in church with silk vestments while outside he is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.

…It is such a slight thing I beg…nothing very expensive…bread, a roof, words of comfort. [If the rewards I promised hold no appeal for you] then show at least a natural compassion when you see me naked, and remember the nakedness I endured for you on the cross…I fasted for you then, and I suffer for you now; I was thirsty when I hung on the cross, and I thirst still in the poor, in both ways to draw you to myself to make you humane for your own salvation.”[4]

For the Christian, we have only one true treasure – salvation given freely by Christ. All other treasures are distractions. We must not cling to wealth, but willingly give as often as we can. We must not seek after money no matter the amount, because our fortune is not in dollars and cents, but in Heaven. We must not cling to worldly things, but know that real treasures come only from God. Look out on the world, see how broken it is. You can help with that brokenness, but only if you are of a generous spirit. Give richly to people in need, to charities that serve them, and find that you are less weighed down by the false wealth of this life. Find true freedom, through trusting in Christ, and contentment that comes from living without covetousness or greed.

People of God, count your blessings, and see that your wealth testifies against you. Find ways to expand your care for this world, at the expense of luxuries for yourself. In doing so, perhaps we all can find ourselves a little closer to the vision God has for us all. – Amen.

[1] Ecclesiastes 10:19

[2] Killingsworth, Matthew A., Daniel Kahneman, and Barbara Mellers. “Income and Emotional Well-Being: A Conflict Resolved.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 10 (March 1, 2023). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208661120.

[3] John Chrysostom. Discourse 2 on the Rich Man and Lazarus.

[4] John Chrysostom. Homily 50 on Matthew.