Genesis 18:20-33

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

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[1] Ezekiel 16:49-50

[2] Luke 23:34

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

Colossians 1:15-28

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[3]  Thessalonians 5:16

Deuteronomy 30:8-14

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[1] Matthew 5:48

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near…’

“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. Indeed, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Sermon Text

I am never sure what to do with my first sermon in a new church. Do I show a side of my preaching that’s a little out there, inoculate you folks to mu peculiarities? Maybe go for something to show off my doctrinal chops, a refresher of the Nicene Creed or something that shows that I have a few letters after your name, that could work… I can never really figure out a good way to prepare the first Sunday to be something incredible and self-revelatory, so today my regular old preaching will have to suffice.

I still want to be able to introduce myself and to touch upon my philosophy on ministry. What does it mean to serve God through the work of the Church? What form do we expect our ministries to take? More than that, what do we as participants in that ministry need to model, to become, to embody in our ministry to all the world? Our scripture out of Luke has given us a powerful image of what ministry looks like.

In the Gospel, Christ calls his disciples together and laments that there is so much work to be done and so little people to do it. Looking at the twelve, he sees that they cannot handle the ministry on their own. So, from the midst of Christ’s followers emerge seventy-two other capable ministers. Their instructions are specific: go in, preach the word, heal the sick, make no money and hoard no food, and move on when your time is done. That basic formula – do, subsist, and move on – can be a powerful lesson for ministry. Likewise, when the seventy-two return and are overjoyed that they have power, Christ’s warning for them to not celebrate power but instead their identity as God’s people, is a lesson we likewise should not forget.

Ministries are meant to be relevant, efficient, and transient. Each of these feed one into the other into the other. A relevant ministry will meet the needs of the people around it, when that need is met, it will ensure people wish to support it, and when the need or the support dries up, then a new ministry should begin off of the inertia of the first. Failure to acknowledge this triune relationship is bound to cause trouble. Each has there only pitfalls, and we can explore just a few.

A ministry that is not relevant does not seek to meet the needs of the people around it. Sometimes these kinds of ministries are born out of desires in the congregation, to meet their own needs rather than those of the people they’re meant to reach. Other times, ignorance – intentional or accidental – leads to the creation of ministries that just miss the point. I met a minister who worked on the Pine Ridge Reservation once. He told the nightmarish story of clothing drives churches would hold without talking to his mission center first. The well-meaning churches across the country would gather literal tons of clothes, dump them off at the reservation, and then leave him and his staff to sort, clean, and – given the quality of the donated clothing – dispose of, what had been sent in. The ministry failed to address the people it needed to serve, and so in assuming their needs, there was a yearly cycle of waste.

A ministry that does not work efficiently will also falter. I do not mean strict budgeting or regimented working hours, but general sense for acquiring, using, and sourcing resources. If you have a food pantry, but no way to get food, then you are not going to have a food pantry for long. If you have one person who is passionate about a ministry and they establish no successor, then when they move on for one reason or another, that ministry will probably die out too. Ministry must do as the seventy-two did – meet the people, help them in the midst of trouble, and not take more than it needs or meander between too many disparate ideas. To truly be in ministry to all the world, we have to find a niche and embrace our participation in it.

Finally, a ministry must be transient in the sense that it will have its time to exist, and its time to fade away and make way for something new. Many times, a ministry will linger long past the time it is doing its best work, because the people involved are attached to it. We remember when we had hundreds of people involved with it, and we believe that if we just can keep doing things the same way for a few more years, they will all suddenly appear again. The flow of time, of people, of circumstances, means that sometimes a ministry will run out of people to serve, resources to serve them, or just fizzle out. There is no shame in that, just the life cycle of things.

The final point Jesus makes to the seventy-two is that they should not rejoice that they have been given power from Heaven, and I think that touches upon our general love of ministry. We love to do God’s work, to serve the people of our community, but sometimes love of doing supplants love of people. I am a busy body, for sure, I need to be doing something constantly. This is dangerous and has gotten me in trouble at home. Cleaning the house, I throw away things my wife needs, because in my desire to get things done, I clean off her desk and mix up the trash pile for the important document pile. I sometimes get caught up in doing, so I forget that doing serves a higher purpose.

Let me put it another way. I take an anti-depressant. The anti-depressant helps me to function because it traps Serotonin in my brain for a little longer, helping my body actually use it. I need this pill to lead a normal life, but I do not actually have a particular affection for it. Someday, I will need to up the dosage or change the drug, or maybe take two instead of one… but that’s fine because the pill doesn’t matter, its outcome matters. In the same way, the ministries we form are a treatment for the troubles we see in the world around us. The ministry’s form, its composition, and its lifespan – all are in service to doing the good work of the Church to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I cannot fall in love with the ministry itself to the detriment of the good that it does.

As I come into this church, I am certain that there are ministries we have not done in ages. Perhaps, the time has come for them to be revived. Likewise, maybe there are some ministries we cling onto, that need to be retired. More amazingly, and exciting for all of us, I bet there is work in this community that is not being done. Things this church has not tried, that no other church has tried, that could really make a difference. Up and down the streets of Keyser, I am sure there is something that the people need… How can we bring it to them?

I get to learn, hopefully for a good many years, all about this church’s past, about the people of Keyser, and about the ministry we owe to them. The Spirit of the Lord is moving in this world, as they have been from before time began. If we follow that Spirit, we will find life and not only life, but abundant life. We are told in the gospels that the springs of eternal life never run dry.[1] If we believe that, let us find new ways to invite people to the font, to drink deep of God’s grace, and find ourselves restored in the process. – Amen.

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[1] John 4:13-14