January 2025

Sermon 01/19/2025 – Endocrine Dreams

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Because of continued cold weather, this is actually the lection for next Sunday 01/26/2025, but for various reasons it needed to be moved to today.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work powerful deeds? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

Sermon Text

            There are a lot of different kinds of people in the world. Given the size of the globe, I don’t think we can be overly surprised about that. People speak different languages, come from different parts of the world, and practice cultures that are sometimes strikingly different from one another. Even in a single country, there are huge differences in the way people speak in one place as opposed to another – how they celebrate holidays and mark the year. Here in West (by God,) Virginia, we have plenty of our own practices that separate us from the rest of the United States.

            Our reverence for the Pepperoni Roll stands out, of course, but it is more than just the way we stuff bread. West Virginia has more folk tales than most places. I don’t just mean the famous cryptids the world has recently fallen in love with – Moth Man and the Flatwoods Monster and the like – I mean family Lore that is passed down generation to generation. Prayer practices that are passed down in families by a strict order of succession alongside tales that remind us there is still mystery in this world. My Great Uncle, I know, saw a black panther on the hills around his farm. Personal stories, recipes, traditions, all these things make this patch of land, just a little different from other parts of the United States.

            Even within the culture of our state, there are demarcations. You have people who move in, bringing their own traditions that mix and match and contrast with our own. You have people who left for a while and then came back, likewise syncretizing their experiences into a gestalt that shifts the larger culture, enforces it, and challenges it. People of different races and incomes and experiences come together and are not subsumed into one another, but instead form a contrast with one another that brings about something even more beautiful. In the presence of difference, the virtues of each person and way of life shine.

For Paul, a Roman citizen, a Greek Speaking Jew, and now Apostle of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, he sat upon the borderline of many different traditions and cultures. His parents wanted him to embrace his Jewishness, so they sent him off to Jerusalem where he changed his name to Saul and became a zealous defender of Judean faith practices. His parents had, however, understood the best way to protect their family was to become Roman Citizens, a practice that gave them privileges their neighbors would not have. Jesus, of course, changed everything. Paul was poised to persecute the Church, but Jesus called him to embrace his roots – to reclaim his Hellenist background – and to become an apostle to the Gentiles, bringing still more diversity into the body of Christ. Paul stood at the center of many cultures, and to many cultures he was sent.

Today, the Church does not reflect much diversity at all. While globally we can say people of all nations, languages, and cultures are in the Body of Christ, the local level just does not reflect that. The most segregated this country is in the modern era is on Sunday mornings – when black folk go to black churches and white folks to white church, Thai Baptists go to Thai Baptist Churches and the Orthodox Church separates out into dozens of ethno-religious offshoots. Sunday morning the body of Christ self-segregates and it shows something awful about us.

Likewise, we are separated by our politics and by our status. Most churches will have memberships of relatively similar incomes – maybe a few people with much more or much less – but almost always the church finds a median income and that is where most people will find themselves. The Church in particular is meant to be a shelter for those who society rejects – and few people are rejected like the poor – and yet few churches make room for poverty in their membership. The argument was not uncommon until recently, “who needs those people… Not like they can tithe.”

Paul’s vision of the Church has broken apart, and it is not entirely our fault. We are the inheritors of decisions made hundreds of years ago in some cases. However, we are responsible for the path we chart ahead of us. How do we embrace a future that is more expansive of the entire body of Christ? How is it that we go against the river of history rushing behind us and telling people they must find a path separate from one another? Where in a rapidly advancing culture of the individual, do we find an answer to all this mess? The answer, I believe, is in the humble thyroid.

Yes, the thyroid, but more especially the endocrine system on a large level. You see, of all the body parts there are, none are more integral than these glands placed throughout the body. They regulate our appetite, our weight, our development in our childhood, and most every other aspect of daily life. Yet, at the same time, these body parts are something you don’t usually think about. Not unless something goes horrible wrong with one of them. Unlike the eyes and the ears and the mouth, body parts we see everyday and esteem as important, these are silent participants in our wellbeing – they are rarely seen and yet always needed.

There has been a trend in all the history of the Church for people to find positions that guarantee they will be seen in what they do. People will proudly point to what they paid out of pocket for in a sanctuary. Windows and altar settings, furniture and classrooms. They will speak of how under their leadership so many people found their way into the Kingdom of Heaven, how such work was possible because they achieved it. They will speak to the wonders of their people and the work that they did, of the continued excellence of their tradition and of their lineage. And the narrative becomes so grand, that you would think they were the ones who saved our souls.

Among the many different problems in the Church is the tendency to seek to be better than other people. We are not concerned with simply doing what we do as well as we can, we want to win. Therefore, denominations have pushed out people they do not see as worthy of their work. The poor are not given privilege, and so do not feel at home in our sanctuaries. Racial minorities feel that they are regarded as different, and so self-segregate where they can feel like they belong. We fund the ministries we have taken part in and that we like best, but refuse to acknowledge the good work others do. We cut and cut at the body of Christ, until only the parts that look and sound and act like us remain.

Imagine if the human body tried to exist that way. Imagine if the noble pancreas dreamed of a day it was supreme. It removed itself from the eyes, the ears, the spleen, and the intestines. It moved from the constraints of the human stomach and went on to exist on its own… It would perish in a second. No blood to feed it, not eyes to guide it to the sugars it needs to have purpose and feed its work… It would fade away in an instant. Yet, in the midst of its final Endocrine Dreams, I’m sure it would think to itself, “How dare all those other body parts do this to me…”

Bizarre metaphors aside, I want us to do what Paul asks of the Corinthians here. Rather than being obsessed with getting things done our way, rather than privileging our own culture and traditions above those of others, let us resolve to do what we do well, the best we can do it. We’re a church that has many gifted people in it. Lean into that gift and do it to the best of your ability. Still though, there is a more excellent way for us all that we all can enjoy. It shouldn’t surprise you to know, 1 Corinthians 12 leads us into 1 Corinthians 13. The way we all must grow and the thing we all must perfect is and always will be love – the fruits of the Spirit living themselves out in our care for one another. If we perfect love, if we accept difference as strength and lean into our gifts together – then we will truly be the Body of Christ, redeemed by his blood. – Amen.

Sermon 12/12/2025 – All that God Requires

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Gospel Lesson                                                            Matthew 3:13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Sermon Text

Today we gather together to celebrate Christ’s Baptism in the River Jordan. Though we sometimes replace this celebration with an observance of Epiphany, remembering the visitation of the Magi, it is always important to take time to remember that Christ was Baptized. Why is it important? Well, we have to look at the text itself to find out.

As John the Baptist says, it is a strange scenario to see Jesus be baptized. Jesus, who is God, did not cease to be God in his incarnation – just to be fully human alongside his divinity. Yet, in Baptism Jesus receives the Holy Spirit from the Father. The Trinity is always acting in concert with each other, never making decisions without the participation and input of the other members of the union, so this has to be an intentional act. When Jesus comes and is washed, we have to see that Jesus was doing something important. The Spirit gives its power to the God-man, and that Father affirms he is blessed… But why?

Was it just an act? I do not believe so. God is not a showman, although Jesus is a powerful presence wherever he speaks. His power is not in being entertaining or in orchestrating a good scene, it is in his authentic authority. Jesus speaks and you know that Jesus is being true to himself, and therefore showing us the truth of who God is and how God is. To come here and receive baptism, Jesus is doing something that is truly and authentically good, as Jesus says here to John, “it is proper not to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus is doing something for the good of us in being baptized, and the specific good that this achieves is usually separated into two schools of thought.

The first, and the more general and mystical idea, is that Jesus made all water holy through his baptism. Rather than there being strict requirements for what kind of water someone should be baptized in, Christianity would allow all water to be used to bring people into the Church. One of the earliest texts we have in the Church The Didache, gives us a series of preferences for baptismal waters. The best is cold river water, the next best is warm river water, then a cold stream, then a warm stream, and so on and so forth. All water, even just a sprinkling of water, is sufficient to baptize a person, and availability of that water defines the mode of baptism used. I prefer affusion, dumping large handfuls of water onto people’s heads, but I don’t fault folks for choosing to sprinkle and save the mess.

We are also blessed by this to be able to give thanks for our baptism anytime we interact with water. In washing out face, in drinking a cup of water to start our day, in the rain that falls from the sky… All these thing give us an opportunity to reflect on God’s grace. Wherever there is water there is grace, and wherever there is grace there can be baptism.

The second thing that Jesus did in being baptized, the one that holds more water (heheh,) is that Jesus gives us an example of how to live. Jesus was not washed because he had to atone. The sinless son of God did not need to be washed to be part of God’s family. Yet, Jesus shows us how we are supposed to make our way home to God. Jesus “fulfills all righteousness,” by taking part in all aspects of life that we as sinful humanity must take part in. Jesus is technically exempt from the requirements of faith, being the author and perfector of faith itself, yet he gives it to us as a gift.

Baptism is the starting point of our faith. While many of us in our tradition will have received Communion before our Baptism, it is baptism that properly makes us part of God’s Church. When I gave my baby son the dripping juice off my finger when I took Communion, he received God’s grace in that sacrament, but when he is baptized in six months he will be properly joined to God’s church. It is a position he will affirm when he is older, deciding whether or not he will continue on in God’s family, but it is a gift received directly from God from beginning to end.

In Baptism we are reborn into God’s Kingdom, God’s family, and as such we in the Methodist Church only baptize once. We are born into life once from the womb and we are baptized into God’s Church once. Whether we receive that washing at birth, at six months, and eighty years old, or in the moment we leave this world – our baptism marks that we are part of what God is doing. Baptism reflects that God has been working with us our whole life ahead of our rebirth, that God’s grace is all over every part of our life. When we commit ourselves to the Church, or else our family makes the commitment to raise us in up the faith, we receive a special kind of grace.

Jesus showed us what Baptism means, by showing us that our work continues beyond being washed of our sins in the water. When we join the Church fully, whether in baptism for the first time or rededication of ourselves to God’s will at any point of our life. We like Christ need to take time, periodically, to go out into the wilderness of our lives and prepare for what God is doing. When we study, when we practice righteousness, when we “fulfill all righteousness,” then we do what God requires of us. Still more, it is important for us to show others what it means to live this life. To raise up children to know the love of God and neighbor, to teach them the doctrine of the faith, and to model faith such that they find joy in living within God’s family.

Today we celebrate Christ’s baptism, the washing that set in motion our own entry into God’s kingdom. Let us praise God for paving the way ahead of us, and let us live fully the life we are called to as member’s of God’s divine family. – Amen.

Sermon 01/05/2025 – To See God

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Gospel Lesson                                                                John 1:1-18

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

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

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

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

Sermon Text

            The dawn of a New Year asks that we reflect on the year we just saw pass. I challenged us all to wake up each day with the same goal in mind, “To be more Good today than I was yesterday.” Now, as the year dawns, we join together to pursue the righteousness together, through a rededication of ourselves to God in the form of a Covenant Prayer spoken in unison.

            Covenants are not something that we talk about much these days. We often talk about them in terms of legal agreements, contracts drafted between two interested parties. However, the concept as explained in Scripture is much more than signing a contract – it is devoting every part of one’s life to each other. The term in Hebrew is “בְּרִית” (Berith,) and this reflects every aspect of the relationship between the members of the relationship it represents. The terms which the relationship are founded upon are only part of the relationship. God speaking to the people gathered at the base of Sinai did not capture every aspect of their life together in that moment. Those of us who are married can attest, “I do,” is far from the complete story told by a marriage.

            [The Christian life is defined by the work of God. However, our enjoyment of the Christian life and our ability to grow is dependent on our willingness to take part in God’s work. We participate in God’s grace and are drawn into it. The gifts of God enable us to take more and more on. This does not mean that we get more and more work piled on us, but that we take on more of God’s goodness, hone our skills to act out what God has set us apart for. We do not live our Christian life by exhausting ourselves, we live it out by knowing ourselves and God enough to work to our fullest.

            That each of us take on particular calls in life is natural. Some of us are called to work in service industries, others in production, other to work directly in the work of the Church. Whatever the vocation that we choose in life is, we do so as Christians participating in God’s vision for the world. There is a lie that we choose to believe that we serve God only when we pray or only when we proclaim the Gospel. While both of these are aspects of the Christian life, simply pursuing excellence in what we do is a form of service to God. It shows that we wish to contribute to the goodness of others, to work earnestly to help others.

            Outside of working to the best of our abilities are the ways that we should serve one another. Helping one another by lovingly serving those we are community with – whether we know them through work, as part of the church, or as our friends and family. We serve those around us by doing what we can to further their good. This means helping them in times of need, supporting them in their pursuit of a good life, and meeting their emotional and spiritual needs. We should be a people that speak with one another, that pray for one another, that help one another. We cannot be passive participants in one another’s life.

            Our community is not limited to those we know, not even to those we like. The stranger, those who pass through our life for only a season or even a day, these people we have obligations to. While we can never truly treat someone we do not know with the same fullness as those who we know well, we can show them what God has put on our hearts. When we meet the eyes of those who are begging on the streets and in the medians. When we give to honest charities and to people we know need it. When we fight for the rights of people who are not like us, or who we will never meet. These are all expressions of our love of those we do not know, of hospitality for those outside our households.][1]

            Our Scripture may seem separate from these discussions of Covenant, but I think that if we think more closely about it, the Incarnation fulfills and expounds upon God’s Covenant in ways nothing else could. God, not content to remain in Heaven came and became a human being among us. This God-Man was not given a life of luxury, but lived in poverty and hardship. The creator of every person, the imprint of God’s image within every person, was now treated as a stranger wherever he went. Though the Light had entered the world, and though it was not snuffed out in becoming part of Humanity, Humanity did not recognize its presence among them.

            Christ chose to take on this life of obscurity for our Good. In doing so God made it clear that every stranger on Earth, more than ever, was now inextricably tied to God’s image. The basic imprint upon all people was now enhanced. To love God, to know God, to see God face to face, a person now had to seek out those society pushed away. More than that, those once known as enemies would soon become family. “Stranger,” began to erode away as a category of person and only “sibling,” would remain.

            The way that love should be carried out was reflected in the way Christ lived. Feeding the Hungry, praying constantly for Himself and Others, living alongside friend and enemy alike. Every part of the Incarnation shows us something more about who God is, and every part of our vows we take before God are meant to show us the way we can become more Godlike. Today as we gather to recommit our life to God, I pray that we will take seriously the words we are about to share together – for in them is life and life abundant, as long as we truly believe them and do all that God requires of us. Let our words be true, and our Covenant be renewed today and always. – Amen.

[1] Sections enclosed in brackets are revised from an earlier sermon, preached 12/29/2019 to the Shenandoah Junction Charge