September 2025

Sermon 09/28/2025 – Real Treasures

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

1 Timothy 6:6-19

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] Ecclesiastes 10:19

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

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

[4] John Chrysostom. Homily 50 on Matthew.

Sermon 09/21/2025 – Consequence is Coming

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Amos 8:4-14

This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of summer fruit. He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me,

“The end has come upon my people Israel; I will spare them no longer. The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,” says the Lord God; “the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!”

Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?

On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

On that day the beautiful young women and the young men shall faint for thirst. Those who swear by Ashimah of Samaria and say, “As your god lives, O Dan,” and, “As the way of Beer-sheba lives”— they shall fall and never rise again.

Sermon Text

The threat of punishment is considered to be one of the least effective means to prevent bad behavior. Teaching people to do something only because they might get punished for it tends to teach the wrong lesson. Instead of learning “Do not do this thing,” they learn, “Be good at hiding the fact you did.” The resulting ethics that this mindset creates is that anything is permissible as long as we can, “Get away with it.”

In our daily life we live this out constantly. “No one saw me leave the empty gallon of milk in the fridge, so there’s plausible deniability I did it.” “The road was empty when I was going 90 in a 50, so as long as a cop isn’t hiding behind the next turn, I’ll be fine.” Et cetera, et cetera, and so it goes. This kind of thinking is tied intrinsically to “Obligationism,” the idea that we do something because we are told to do it, and if we do not we are punished for our disobedience. In religious circles, Obligationism is one of the most common ways of understanding the way we are to live in this world, and I would argue it also grows most easily into legalism.

As I have already said, if I do the right thing so as to not break a rule, I will spend most of my time finding ways to do it that are technically correct. God says to honor the sabbath and keep it Holy, so I decide that that includes exceptions for the work I choose to do on the sabbath. Scripture says not to loan money for interest, but our economy is based upon interest so for the good of everyone within that economy, I cannot oppose usury, clearly. I find the ways to wiggle and worm out of every listed rule and as a result I create a patchwork ethical code. I become more invested in the appearance of holiness rather than its execution. The things I do are not for good or for love or for God, but for adherence to the rules set before me.

Counter to this idea of morality is the idea that a things ethical value is defined by its proximity to the absolute Good. As Christians we believe that the absolute standard for good is God, and that God and the Good are therefore synonymous. To be like God is to be Good, and to be Good is to be like God. For this reason, I think the best way to talk about “moral teachings,” in scripture, is always to talk about morality as the cultivation of virtue. The more we practice goodness, the better we are at being good. Rules help us to cultivate that goodness, but they are simply a means toward that good.

Ok, enough philosophy, let’s get to the meat of the issue. Our scripture is a long and scary list of all the different, fatal punishments that the people of God faced in the Babylonian conquest. More than that, it is a list of specific infractions that led to their punishment. Are we to believe then that God is an obligationist? That God sits and metes out punitive measures to enforce an ethical code, thereby encouraging people to sneak around those codes in an attempt to escape punishment?

Scripture seems to suggest this is not the case. God often expresses dissatisfaction with this simplistic idea of morality. Yes, there are commandments that God has given are violated and God points to them as reasons for the troubles God’s people face, but the focus is seldom on the rules themselves. A good example is in our scripture which we have read here today. Let’s look at this section again.

Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”

            The first thing highlighted in the sins of God’s people is that they “trample the needy,” and the following offenses build on that theme. In other words, the individual offenses are less important than the virtue that has been violated. “I gave you laws to ensure you would care for each other,” God seems to say, “You have failed to care for each other, because you have kept the letter but not the spirit of my law.” The people keep the festivals and Sabbaths they are commanded, but only because they would be punished if they did not. “When will the [Sabbath,] be over so that we may offer wheat for sale?” The Sabbath is not being kept for the sake of devotion to God or care for their own health, but out of reluctant obligation.

            The corruption of God’s people was found in their abandoning the truth God gave them for a sense of righteousness that comes from following the rules in the strictest sense of the word. At the same time, they skirted any kind of regulation regarding the price of goods by changing the definition of their weights and measures. To put it in modern terms, the dollar kept being worth less, and the bags of flour kept weighing less, even though the bag still said “one pound,” on the corner. More than this, we’re told what was sold was poor quality, basically dust off the floor of the storehouse. Workers were treated as slaves, and those with the least were treated the absolute worst.

            God was not content that the people kept the Law, because the law was not an end to itself. The obligation of the Sabbath was to allow people to rest, the rules surrounding care of the poor to ensure everyone had what they needed to live. All of God’s teachings had a point and a purpose that pointed to something that nurtured goodness in the people. By being given guidelines for charity, they could learn to be charitable. By being given guidelines for rest, they could learn to be restful. God did not demand obedience simply out of an exercise of power and authority, but for the good of those who pursued that kind of faithful obedience.

            There is, nonetheless, a consequence for failing to be obedient to the deeper truths of what God instructs us to do. This idea is easily abused, but it remains true even if it is often taken to a harmful extreme. When we fail to take care of the poor, we court not only the degradation of society, but the wrath of God. When we live a life of legalism, devoted to the letter and not the spirit of the law, we break down our own hearts until we are left with only the image of propriety, and none of the substance of holiness.

            Scripture, both the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, are clear that a failure to pursue goodness in a life of faith has consequences. Out of fear of suggesting we are saved by works, we in the Church often downplay that fact. We do not talk about Christ describing the road to Heaven as narrow and straight, because it suggests more than just lip service is necessary for our salvation. When we read the prophets, we focus on idolatry as a sin, because it is far harder to imagine ourselves committing that than failing to care for the needy. We hope for a faith that allows us to dig only just deep enough, only just safe enough.

            It is also important to note that scripture does not direct these messages of doom to people outside the faith. Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God as opening doors for folks who do not yet know God’s redemption, but for the people who are within the circle of the faith already his words are harsher. Failure to meet the expectation laid by Christ is expected of those who do not know them, but for those who have heard them, and yet chosen to pursue another road… Doom is inevitable.

            We are under an obligation to pursue goodness, because outside of goodness we will destroy ourselves. If we chase after evil, evil will consume us. If we chase after good, we will know growth and abundant life. We must care for those around us, we must care for ourselves, we must pursue a true and social holiness in all things. Consequence is coming, every second it draws near, if we do not cling to goodness, we will drown within falsehood. Do right, train yourself in virtue, and be the people of God for this world. – Amen.

Sermon 09/14/2025 – A Mind Toward Mercy

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Exodus 32:7-14

The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”

But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Sermon Text

Our scripture today is something I alluded to back in July when we talked about the time that Abraham requested that God be merciful toward the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses, in the face of God’s anger toward the Hebrew people, asks that God spare them. Specifically, Moses appeals to God’s reputation, saying that it would look bad for God to kill his people after bringing them out of Egypt. As an episode in the history of God’s people and as a presentation of divine will and theodicy and other theological questions, it’s a bit strange.

We did not talk about this too much with our previous discussion of prophets asking for God to be merciful, but the ability to convince God of anything opens up a lot of questions. If we believe that God is “that beyond which nothing greater can be conceived,” and that this manifests in God being all good, all powerful, and all knowing, then it is strange to imagine that God can just… change God’s own mind.[1] If God is perfect, and that includes a perfect cognition, then this should be outright impossible. Yet, repeatedly in scripture, we are told of God, relenting, or regretting, or turning away from a decision God had previously made.

Today, we are looking to understand the character of God’s mercy and how it can produce moments like this. While we are not going to uncover the mystery of God’s mind or the fullness of how moments like this can occur in the scriptures, we are going to establish some things we know about God, God’s actions, and ultimately the all-encompassing nature of God’s mercy.

To begin with this discussion of God’s retraction of a punishment, we must begin with the first prophecy of doom given in scripture. In Genesis 2 the first human is given specific instructions not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, lest they die. The human, later split into the first humans – Adam and Eve – fail in this prohibition. They do eat of the tree and are not, surprisingly, struck dead. While many interpreters, including John Wesley, point to the spiritual death they experienced as a consequence of this transgression, I think we can also see this as the first moment of mercy entering the story of God’s interactions with the world.

God denies the couple the Tree of Life because of their disobedience, establishing that they will some day face death. Sin naturally leads to death, this is echoed throughout scripture. However, God does not kill them outright, refusing to just restart this experiment in creation. God sends them out of the Garden, clothes them to keep them safe and warm, and then keeps close tabs on them. Their children still speak openly to God, God hears and knows their sorrow at the death of Abel, God does not abandon them – but loves them in the midst of their wrongdoing.

Despite God’s divine care, humanity continues to fall into deeper sin. We are told that the evil of humanity, especially their violence, was so great that God devises a flood to restart the entirety of creation. The description of God’s creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is reversed, water floods the earth, and God is ready to start all over again… Except that God did not make a clean sleight, God still loved what God made enough to preserve parts of the creation. Noah preserves humanity and other creatures along with him, allowing for a new start for the created order.

Again and again, God chooses to restrain the punishment that could be inflicted upon the world. The mercy of God in the face of legitimate evil is sometimes overwhelming. When we read the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – all of them do some downright awful things. Yet, God sustains them and gives them the chance to make things right. God wants to be merciful.

Whether scripture gives us these discussions as a narrative tool or God gives them as a lens into the divine nature, I could not really say. Either way, the moments when God expresses one emotion, only to act contrary to that emotion, seems to be a chance for us to see a different aspect of God than what we might have imagined God to have. I am talking in circles a bit, so let me steal an analogy from Paul.

Paul describes our faith as like looking, “Through a mirror, darkly.”[2] Mirrors in the Biblical period were made of polished brass, capable of producing surprisingly clear images. However, brass mirrors tarnish over time, when removed from light they lose their luster, in a thousand different ways the image can dim and distort. While we have unprecedented access to God through Christ, there is still an immensity to God’s character. In Scripture, in our life, and in our prayers we encounter moments of God, glimpses of the nature of something far beyond our comprehension.

Thus, in scripture, moments like this show us diverse aspects of God all at once. We can be shown God’s anger at idolatry, and God’s capacity toward mercy. That second aspect, the mercy, wins out because it is a more essential part of God’s character even than holiness. For in the midst of God’s holiness, the unapproachability of the numinous fire at the center of creation, there is the love of a God who desires to walk alongside that same creation. God who burns with a fire that cannot stand impurity, works time and time again to make pure the unclean things of this world. God has a mind toward mercy, and that is something expressed in tandem with and at the center of God’s desire for justice, holiness, and purity of Spirit.

Next week we will have an opportunity to look closer at the judgement of God, so do not take me for someone who does not think that God has the capacity or right to express anger or to punish it. However, I think that we need to ground all discussion of God in the reality of God’s gracious mercy. Even when anger, punishment, and consequences are deserved – God seeks a way to redeem rather than to wipe away. God wishes to wash rather than to burn. If we believe that, it should shape our walk in faith, because it reminds us that we do not worship a God who wishes to throw us away, but a God who has worked hard to bring us close.

Jonathan Edwards, a minister during the Colonial Era of the United (States and the grandfather of Aaron Burr,) famously wrote the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” This sermon focuses on the wrath of God, serving as the prototypical “Turn or Burn,” style sermon. Yet, Edwards gives us one of the most powerful images of God’s grace. God, Edwards says, is under no obligation to be merciful – God after all is the only truly, fully free entity – but God sustains even the wicked, “by [God’s] mere pleasure…” Edwards uses this to emphasize the precarious nature of God’s mercy, but I think it paints a far more enduring image.

God holds in hands larger than space, the fullness of creation. The creation yearns for rebirth, it seeks to enter into a new way of being. Yet, God does not hold onto it out of obligation or necessity, but out of love. Mercy is the most essential character of our God, and we know this because in the midst of holiness, otherness, impossible distance, God continually moves to close the gap between us and the divine. God has a mind toward mercy, and that ought to inspire us toward the same. God has a mind toward mercy, and that ought to reassure us in our failings. God has a mind toward mercy, and that is the foundation of our faith, our trust, our hope in this life. – Amen.

[1] I often use this definition of “God,” and it comes from Anselm of Canterbury’s “Ontological Argument.” More about that available here: https://iep.utm.edu/anselm-ontological-argument

[2] 1 Corinthians 13:12

Sermon 09/07/2025 – Two Paths

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall certainly perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him, for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

Sermon Text

As I have said many times, I am directionally challenged. While I can map out physical space fairly well, figuring out where North, South, East, and West are without issue, I am completely useless at figuring out where one road connects to another. It does not help that here is West Virginia, roads developed around hills – you cannot assume a grid layout for a town anymore than you can assume that a road that ends in one place does not start up several miles down the way.

If I can tell a story that will serve as our parable for the day, I would like to cast the vision of the road to Bridgeport – our metaphorical Heaven – and the road to Flemington – our metaphorical Hell (I do not feel strongly about either town, this is an appraisal of their respective roads.)

When I would go to visit the Bridgeport Nursing Home, I would inevitably come to a crossroad. At that crossroad, I could turn left toward Flemington, or drive straight ahead to Bridgeport. The road to Bridgeport would take me up to Emily Drive, where there were a bunch of stores and therefore a great deal of traffic. Going that route was never my ideal, and with the intense amount of roadwork happening at the time, I especially wanted to avoid it. Looking at the path I had ahead of me, I chose what I thought would be best – to drive down to Flemington and then cut across back into Clarksburg.

The problem is that, while Flemington did run parallel to Route 50, which was my goal to reach, it never actually connected to Route 50. I could drive for over an hour and I would only find myself on the interstate for my trouble, completely removed from my goal of reaching home. To follow the road to Flemington was to follow the road to being more lost than I ever could be if I just learned to deal with the road work.

In our walk of faith, we are also presented with two paths. One is the straight and narrow path that “few find.”[1] The other is broader, flatter, and much easier to saunter our way down. What I want us to understand, especially today as we launch our fall season here at Grace, is that the choice we make to follow one path or the other is not as simple as saying, “Yes,” once or “No,” once – but requires us to reevaluate our life again and again. For me on my way home I could go one way or the other, meanwhile we have a thousand roads that move us toward God or away from God, and sometimes we will drift slowly down the wrong path without even realizing it.

Every day we have thousands of interactions – digitally, physically, and even mentally – that shape our souls and the souls of people around us. When we stop into the gas station and look the attendant in the eye and treat them like a full person, that makes a difference. When we walk by the beggar on the street without even acknowledging they exist, that makes a difference. When we sit in our house and stew over something someone said or did, that makes a difference. Again and again and again, life gives us routes we can choose to take or not take, and the difference in the major ones are what we usually focus on. However, it is in those little byroads we get the most lost.

When I look back on my life, I see major departures I could have taken. If I accepted I was going to be a minister when I first felt that was my call, back in High School, what would have changed? If I had avoided the disastrous relationship I had in college that threatened to rip my family apart and that ended several key friendships in my life, what would that do? If I had known far earlier about my depression and had it treated, what might I have done?

These big turning points stand out to us, but they usually are more complicated than a “Good” or “Bad” choice. My call to ministry was put on hold by my unwillingness to accept it, but because I went into chemistry first, I was much better equipped to talk to folks throughout the pandemic because of my background in science – plus I have been able to tutor people! My disastrous relationship caused all kinds of trouble, but it also taught me an awful lot about myself, about forgiveness, about the need to be good to people and not accept when someone wants you to be something other than who you truly are. In every path that seems to me to be an obvious binary choice, I see that God took me down the road I needed to go down, that still led to the path I needed to take.

The key difference in the path that leads to life and death is that you can imperfectly do good, but there is never a good way to do something bad. Driving to Flemington would never bring me to Route 50, but going to Bridgeport I had two or three different roads to lead me home – some better than others. In the same way, we have to acknowledge which roads we take in life that lead us to greater life and fuller understanding of God, self, and neighbor – even imperfectly – and which ones only cause us harm.

Cruelty is the most obvious road that will not save us. If we ignore the needs of others, excuse injustice of any kind, and generally allow ourselves to hold onto disdain for our neighbors – even our enemies- we will destroy ourselves. Self-indulgence is another way to destroy the self. If we never tell ourselves “No,” then we will demand more and more and more. We do not always need a new phone, just cause an upgrade is available. We do not need to eat out every time we do not want to cook. We can spend our time, our money, our social battery a little better and suddenly find ourselves better at regulating our self and managing our world.

I do want to say that there are still obviously bad choices in life. If we struggle with addiction and refuse help, then we are setting ourselves up to continue to suffer. (The sin here I should say is not addiction, which is a medical issue, but denying the problem.) If we are edging our way toward infidelity – emotionally or otherwise – we will destroy our relationships. If we are actively working to harm people, to steal or defraud them, to do all manner of things we know to be wrong, then we are setting ourselves up for a fall.

The thing about our daily, incidental mistakes, is that we can usually recover from them. If I snap at my wife because I am frustrated about something, we can work that out after I apologize. However, if I feed into that decision to take things out on her, I will destroy our marriage given enough time. When we make mistakes habitually, such that they become conscious choices, we move away from detours and onto a deliberate and direct path toward oblivion. For some things the solution is just to turn around, to desist, to try something else.

The good news is that we are always able to turn around. Repentance in Hebrew is “Shuv,” which literally means to do an about-face. We go in the opposite direction and move back toward the right way of being. It is a long road back sometimes and repenting does not make us not have to face the consequences of our actions – in fact a true attitude of repentance will require us to make amends fully for the wrong we have caused. I was never going to get to my house by driving through Flemington, I had to turn back around, that is true for some things in our own life too.

Today, we are given the same choice that the Hebrews were given long ago. Take the path toward life and abundance, or the road that leads to destruction. The road toward life is a harder road, it requires honesty and repentance and all manner of goodness. The road to destruction will give you everything you want, when you want it, but leave you empty, for the “worm quenchest not.”[2] I pray we choose the right path, and turn from the ones we need to, which are leading us to destruction.

[1] Matthew 7:14

[2] This is a misquotation of “the worm diest not,” from Mark 9:48; combining the worm’s immortality with the unquenchable fire mentioned later in the verse. I find myself saying “the worm quenchest not,” more often, and so I have preserved my malapropism here.