2025

Sermon 04/27/2025 – An Eternal Testimony

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Torah Reading                                                                   Exodus 6:1-7

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

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

The New Testament Lesson                                                    Acts 5:27-32

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] 1 Corinthians 9:19

Sermon 04/20/2025 – A Risen Christ

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Gospel Lesson                                                                   Luke 24:1-12

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 04/13/2025 – Celebrating Emptiness

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Epistle Lesson                                                         Philippians 2:5-11

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

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] Isaiah 40:31

Sermon 04/06/2025 – Worship and Service

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 12:1-8

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 03/30/2025 – An Icon of Sin

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

/ John Langenstein / 1 Comment

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

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

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

1 Kings 18:1-6

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 03/16/2025 – Enemies of the Cross

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Philippians 3:17-4:1

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

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

Sermon Text         

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] Philippians 3:10-11

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

[3] Luke 9:62

Sermon 03/09/2025 – To Give Thanks

/ 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

 “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food. By his hands we are fed, let us thank him for our bread.” This is one variant of a very common “grace,” prayer, offered before a meal. This is the standard way to pray over food in many cultures – before the meal we offer a short doxology praising God for the provision of the food, and asking God to bless our eating of it, and closing of course with a simple thanks. The offered praise, the gift of thanks given to the God who so rightly deserves it – the practice of prayer over a meal is something that is genuinely, simply, good for the soul.

The act of thanksgiving is not reserved for prayer, however, nor is the prayer only meant to be for the present goodness before us. When we gather together as the Church, like we did last week, and participate in the “Great Thanksgiving,” that is the Eucharist, we are not just thanking God for God’s present presence among us, but for all the good that God has done. Through birth, through life, through death, and in resurrection we proclaim a gospel that follows us from glory into glory and that testifies to the work that God has done, is doing, and will do in the future. Thanksgiving is not just a reaction to the present circumstances we find ourselves in, but a recollection of what God has done for us up to this point.

The re-hearsal of God’s goodness make us more aware of God’s current work around us. If we look to the patterns of scripture and of our own life, then we are able to see where God might be working now. The idea that, “God works in mysterious ways,” is often used to give words to the inexplicable aspects of God’s work in our lives, but I think we default to it too often. If we learn more, if we begin to acknowledge patterns of God’s work in the world and in our life, to become familiar with that divine rhythm, then we lose the security that not knowing can give us. If we are ignorant, perhaps we can be excused for missing out on God’s work – if we know better… Then we are much more responsible for our own actions.

Our scripture today captures a ritual in the life of the people of God. A commandment was given that, when they had made it through the wilderness, once Egypt was behind them they were to give thanks every harvest in a particular way. The first fruits of the harvest were to be given to the priests, and the person who gave them was asked to proclaim the faith they held in a very specific way. They were asked to recall the salvation history of God’s people, from Abraham to their present day, they were meant to tell a story as they gave thanks through the gift of their first fruits.

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor,” is a reference to every generation of the patriarchs. While Abraham in his flight from Chaldea represented the first migration of the people who would become the Israelites, it was not the last. Abraham fled to Egypt, and then returned to Canaan. Isaac fled Canaan into Ammon, and then returned. Jospeh was taken into Egypt by force, and then his family followed by choice. The people of God were migratory, but more than that they were “migrants,” moving from one nation to another to escape plague, or violence, or danger. A reality reflected in the life of Christ when his family fled Herod by escaping into Egypt. The history of God’s people, was the history of vulnerable, transitory people.

In Egypt God’s people grew, and through the fear and bigotry of Egypt they were put to hard labor and culled through infanticide. Following years of abuse, God freed them and led them through the wilderness. When they arrived in their new home, the home of their ancestors Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, they were finally given peace. In that peace, for generations to come, they were asked to offer the first fruits, to share them and to celebrate, and to tell once again the story of their salvation.

For ourselves, many of us do not have the exact story of descent or family legacy to bring us to our present place. However, we have a spiritual story to tell. When we come together, when we offer up our time or our money or our resources to God, we ought to tie it to the story of how we got to be here. When I lead worship, I separate out the prayer of thanksgiving from the offering – because I find it vulgar to only thank God in the context of having money in a plate. We offer the gifts we give, because we have a story to tell, and the story we have to tell we tell in thanksgiving. We take time every Sunday to offer our joys, and then to praise God for them, because that is the essence of thanksgiving, not the material gift itself – though it is important and though it does follow.

If I were to adapt the creed our scripture gives us today, my own salvation history would go like this: “I was born into a family without faith, a wanderer in the world. Through accidents of life, and through marriage of my father, I found my way to the people called Methodists. From the mouth of a minister, who would later be found wanting, God’s word broke through and brought life to my barren world. Through a thousand more chance meetings, with righteous and unrighteous, with the holy and the vulgar, God called me to take up the yoke of ordination and serve God’s people with word and table. So now I offer myself to you, Father Almighty, and give you thanks and praise.”

We all have a story to tell, a testimony to give. For all of us, for too long we have let our beliefs be only centered on whether we hold something to be true or not. We are not invested in the story that God has told for us, and with us. The creed of God’s people is not meant to be a list of ideas, but a story we tell proudly. Tell you story, give praise to God, and let thanksgiving rule your heart and mind. – Amen.

Sermon 03/02/2025 – Behold the Lord!

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Exodus 34:29-35

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face, but whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off until he came out, and when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining, and Moses would put the veil on his face again until he went in to speak with him.

Luke 9:28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but as they awoke they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not realizing what he was saying. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

Sermon Text

Transformation! To go from one thing to another. This is what we are pursuing as people of faith. We believe that God became human, that that God-man walked this earth to teach us the way we should walk, and then faced death and triumphed in resurrection so that we all might likewise be raised into glory and new life. We proclaim a gospel that is centered in God’s transformative power, but to be transformed we must do something – we must look upon the Lord, and find that the Lord looks back at us.

Each year the church takes a moment, before the austerity of Lent, to look up to God’s revelation of Jesus’s true glory on a mountain long ago. The human Christ was for a moment fully glorified as only his later resurrection would make possible, in the presence of his Father he was made into what he was always meant to be. The perfect human, the fullness of the Word of God’s divinity, the perfection of the body through the power of God’s Spirit and the will of the Divine Father. From glory into glory, Christ stood on that mountain as a testament to what God could do and would do with all flesh in the World to Come.

For the disciples who stood on that mountain, the scene was enough to inspire them to wish to build tabernacles to house the glorious visions in front of them. Yet, another person had seen the glory of God before they had. Moses, one of the three figures present on the mountain, would climb the mountain and receive God’s teachings to bring back to God’s people. That visitation did not just change Moses in his mind, but in his body as well. The flesh of his face, the uncovered portion of himself as he sat with God, had been transformed. Though it was a fleeting transformation, reverting to its normal matter within a few days, it was something that people made note of. More than that, they were afraid of it. To enter into God’s presence was to be changed, and that transformation was something the people were not ready for.

In our modern day life, I think we too are afraid of looking at God and being transformed. God offers transformation to anyone who would seek it, but so often we settle for things as they are. When the people of Israel escaped Egypt, they were barely out into the wilderness before they started wishing to go back into slavery. Why? Not because it was better – but because it was what they were used to. We would gladly take painful normalcy of liberating change. It’s true of institutions as well as people. The idea of change is so intolerable, that we will often never make a change until the pain of staying as we are consumes us.

We are not making nearly as large a journey physically – rarely does God’s call in most people’s life send them far from their home – yet we are often just as fearful of making a change. We know who we are now, we have created bounds to our individual selves and established just the right amount of walls around ourselves to make us feel comfortable. When God comes knocking at the door, asking us to open it so that God may enter in – we know that a renovation will follow that entry. When God enters the space, and when God starts making changes, then suddenly we lose our sense of self-ownership, we let ourselves be reshaped into something different – and even if that different self is better… Do we really want to find ourselves changed?

Moses would climb the mountain, but there’s always an implication that he wanted something else in his own life. When he brings the Word of God to the people, he describes it as being, “close to them,” as if him going up the mountain wasn’t necessary.[1] Had the people been truly looking for God, they might have found him, but instead they sent Moses, “to Heaven, that [he] might bring it down for them.” The journey was reluctant, it seems, on Moses part, but the results were obvious and beatific.

Coming off the mountain, from meeting Christ face to face, he could not help but be transformed. His face shone out with rays of light, a reflection of the glory he had been present with up on Sinai’s heights. The transformation was temporary, he needed to return to the mountaintop for it to return to his face, but this outward sign reflected an inward change as well. Every meeting with God shaped Moses to be more like the God he was beholding, and to behold the Lord is to take part in our life’s truest purpose – to know, and to be transformed by, our God.

How do we behold God? Where can we find God in our daily lives? As Moses said long ago,  “[The word of God,] is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” The scriptures are before us, this table is set so that we may encounter Christ in the moment of his sacrifice on our behalf, and the Spirit rests in your heart to guide you day after day. We can behold God, we can behold our Lord, and we can walk away from seeing God, transformed fully by the experience. We cannot cover our faces to hide from God’s light, we cannot suppress that light by locking away in a place of worship. It must be allowed to shine fully, as it did at the Mount of Transfiguration and at Sinai, that all the world may be changed by it.

Firstly, it must change us, and firstly we must allow ourselves to see God, and to have God see us. The wonders that follow, the change we allow to happen in our hearts, that is all a consequence of that first step. Look upon God, be transformed, may it be so. – Amen.

[1] Deuteronomy 30

Sermon 02/16/2025 – The Source of Life and Trouble

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.

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One of the first questions I was ever asked as a religious authority in someone’s life was about the human heart. Not the organ, the metaphysical concept. A cousin of mine was recently getting into their faith and so they would shoot me questions about different verses and ideas in Christianity. I only remember one of those questions though, and it was on a day I was doing yard work at the house I grew up in that they sent it. “How can it be that Proverbs calls the Heart the ‘wellspring of life,” but Jeremiah says it is, ‘devious above all else.’”[1] It’s a question that stuck with me for a few reasons.

Firstly, the one thing we all cannot escape is our own heart. That thing deep within ourselves, the seat not only of emotion but every affectation of the body. No matter what we do, body, mind, or soul – there will always be the center point of all of them, the heart that translates the ephemeral into the physical – broad concepts of emotion into physical sensation and action. Secondly, these two verses reveal something fundamental about scripture we all forget sometimes – it is meant to be read in conversation with itself. Proverbs is right to say that the wellspring of life is in the Heart and Jeremiah is right to call it deceitful about all else, but you can only know why if you’re willing to read both and see what they are saying when they say what they say.

Today we are practicing our exegetical skills, looking at two verses of scripture and understanding what lesson we can take away from them. Today we see what good gift God has given us in the form of our Heart, and how dangerous it can become if we do not take proper care of it.

Jeremiah wrote in a time of great moral degradation. Sounds sensationalist, but he was writing in hard times where everyone seemed to make the wrong choice in responding to that hardship. As the full text of Jeremiah 17 shows, the rich among God’s people had become greedy. Not content with their wealth, they exploited their workers and their neighbors, depriving them of the food and money they needed to survive. The conditions were so bad that the poor also began to become corrupt, stealing from one another rather than working together to oppose the rich or to care for each other. Jeremiah elsewhere says that walking from one end of the city to the other, he could not find one righteous person among the rich, the poor, or the palace.[2]

Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet, not just because of his sorrow at God’s judgment of his people, but the constant disappointment his people were to him. He would frequently tell God, “Lord, have mercy, surely the people aren’t that bad?!” And then immediately have his own people turn on him and reveal the truly broken nature of their Heart. How horrible a burden it must be, to proclaim the truth and the need for a better tomorrow, only to find that the people you defend are willing to throw you away.

Jeremiah looked out at the broken world around him and called for the people to realize that they were so far gone that unless they changed their ways, abandoning everything about themselves to follow God once again… they were lost completely. The rich who stole from the poor, the poor that abused one another, all of them needed to do away with the old self and embrace the new. The Heart, the confluence of all their constituent parts was no longer helping them, only hurting them, they needed to go beyond any thought or feeling to the reality of their brokenness.

Looking to Proverbs, the full context of the verse which calls the Heart the “springs of life,” is a teacher telling their student to remember the lessons they have been taught. “The wicked,” are prone to evil and become so consumed with it that they only seem to do what hurts other people. “They cannot sleep,” the teacher says, unless they do what is wrong. The student, however, will keep the lessons of their teacher close, will keep their eyes straight ahead toward the right, and in so doing keep their heart from becoming corrupted – from becoming the source of wrongdoing in the world that “the wicked,” represent.

Both passages, it seems, have very similar messages if we are willing to understand their fuller context. Jeremiah is not calling for us to distrust ourselves out of principle, but to acknowledge how easily we give in to the negative aspects of our humanity, and how hard it is to dig ourselves out of it. As God says later in Jeremiah 17, the people of God did not need to have deceitful Hearts, they did not need to cause one another pain, they could change at any time – but they had to admit that someone other than themselves might know something about what is right in the world.

The Church is meant to be a source of correction in the world. Not judgment, not prideful looks down our nose at the world, but a legitimate place where people can find God’s teachings lived out to the fullest. We have in our hands the teachings of two thousand years of people who have understood what holiness can be. What it is to love our neighbor, to care for the members of our church and our community. When we open up our mind, our soul, our entire being to God’s teachings and God’s ways, then we become a place where life is made available to all – a wellspring spilling out from us and filling the world around us.

The Church has to be different for this to be possible. We cannot follow every little inclination of our heart – cannot strike out in anger or dig too deep into despair, we cannot take something just because we want it or deprive other’s what they need just because it would be inconvenient to give it. Likewise, we must fight against these evils in the world. Not through the same tools as everyone else, but through a commitment to righteousness that calls for people to change their ways for their own good, and the good of the whole world.

Scripture is a broad and far reaching source of God’s instruction. Written across fourteen hundred years, it tells the story of God’s commitment to redeem the world. Reading scripture in its context and in conversation, we find deeper truths about the world than we would ever know otherwise. From the cynical Jeremiah, to the guarded writer of Proverbs, today we see that the Heart is truly an amazing – and dangerous – thing. If we embrace the goodness it offers, we can change this world… If only we can safeguard this amazing gift God has given us.

So, I leave you with these word’s from Proverbs, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Keep straight the path of your feet, and all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”[3]

And these from Jeremiah, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. Like the partridge hatching what it did not lay, so are all who amass wealth unjustly; in midlife it will leave them, and at their end they will prove to be fools.

O glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, shrine of our sanctuary! O hope of Israel! O Lord! All who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be recorded in the underworld, for they have forsaken the fountain of living water, the Lord.

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.”[4]

[1] C.f. Proverbs 4

[2] Jeremiah 5

[3] Proverbs 4:23-27

[4] Jeremiah 17:9-14