2026

Sermon 02/22/2026 – Grace, Freely Given

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness…

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

Sermon Text

 Welcome to a Lenten series in which we try to make sense of God’s grace. Now, at the end of all this I do not think we are going to understand every aspect of God’s grace. You cannot look at something infinitely wide and deep and then say that you somehow understand every part of it. Yet, when we look to our scripture, we are able to see in its words the fullness of what God has to offer. There is something more to God than a divine vending machine dispensing good gifts, and the full depth of God’s goodness is only seen when we really reflect on the grace of God.

Today, we look to the free way that God has given grace to this world. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of that in a second but let us look to two definitions first. Firstly, we have to consider, “What is grace?” Secondly, “What is free about grace?” The first one is best defined in John Wesley’s words. Grace is, “the mere mercy of God, through the merits of his well-beloved Son.”[1] It is any gift of God, given in mercy, to the people through the Son. This means that every good gift is an act of grace, every blessing ever received that relieves the painful parts of existence. It is more specifically a force that accounts for our sins – the impulse to commit them as well as the consequences from them. All of this, according to the merit of Jesus Christ.

This second condition is the one we begin our discussion of grace with. While the exact way Jesus saves us will be discussed next week during our Communion Service, it is important for us to identify our salvation as coming from Jesus, and not from ourselves. Not one thing about our salvation is because of what we have done, except insomuch as we agree to follow God’s guidance. From top to bottom, we are saved by Christ and not ourselves.

Reading our scripture today, Paul discusses the life of Abraham. Abraham was a mess of a man. He frequently fled from God’s call and ruined the lives of several of his children and wives in the process. Yet, God was good to Abraham and to his family. He had two. One son, Isaac, would have two more sons. One of those sons, Jacob, would have twelve sons! The generations would proceed until an entire nation was descended from him. Yet, the full promise to Abraham to, “inherit the world,” was not fulfilled in his lifetime, nor his children’s, nor even fully to this day. God had a more long term plan that required something more than just blood relation to achieve.

Paul is clear that Abraham was able to receive this blessing – incomplete though it was – because he had “faith.” This is that word in Greek we’ve talked about before, “Πιστις,” (Pistis.) It refers, not just to a blind belief but to a fully convinced trust in a thing. Abraham was shown God’s goodness and strength throughout his life and his belief in God’s goodness is what gave him faith to endure all of life’s troubles (especially the ones he inflicted on himself.) His trust, based in evidence of God’s goodness, was more than enough to secure the reality of his blessing and of his children.

Paul spends a good bit of time in Romans balancing the reality of saving faith with the reality of “law.” God’s teachings throughout the books of Moses and the Prophets are not a negative force in the world, but Paul sees them as insufficient in themselves. Moses, Abraham, the Prophets, every faithful person in history was not saved through adherence to the law but through their faith in God. The salvation they received through faith is the thing that allowed them to adhere to any part of the law. Apart from God’s grace, given to those who cling to faith, it would not be possible to complete any aspect of what God asks of us. Faith leads to doing the right thing, not the other way around.

We are inheritors of Abraham’s promise, not individually, but as the Church. Through faith, people of every race, nation, and creed have been given the chance to be children of God. This promise is where we derive our claim to “the world,” not as a conquering army, but as the meek who were promised it by Christ. This is not given to us because of what we do, but because we have faith built out of trust. God gives this saving grace freely in order to allow our response to grace to be motivated only out of love. When we have received something freely, our reaction is also a free gift. In freedom we are moved to be “joyfully obedient,” to the God who has saved us.

I look at my life and I know that I did not earn any of the good things that are in it. I only have my wife and my child because things happened only just so to let us meet. While I chose to follow the path that I was shown, it was only ever given to me through God’s grace. My call into the ministry, my family, every good gift I have received has been freely given by God, because I could never do enough to earn it. In the same way, my personal salvation, the goodness that has grown in my soul, and the ability to follow God’s commands, is not a product of anything I have done, but the free gift of God given to allow me to take action.

As we dig into our series on grace, we will see that there are many things asked of us because of our faith in God. I hope, however, that this serves as the foundation for anything else that follows. We are saved, by faith, through the grace which God has freely given to us. That is the most important lesson we can receive about God’s grace. From there we can build up an understanding of what grace is, what it does for us, and how we are meant to respond to it. Today we affirm, God has given us this free gift to our health, and from this we shall move forward into God’s goodness together. – Amen.

[1] John Welsey. “The Means of Grace.” In The Sermons of John Wesley. From the Wesley Center Online, available at: https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-16-the-means-of-grace/

Sermon 02/18/2026 – Piety, not Pity

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 6:1-21

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him…

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

“And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Sermon Text

Every Lent we gather to declare our intent to devote ourselves to God. To take these forty days to devote ourselves to prayer and study and abstention. Each year as we gather to declare our intent to be holier, we are given a choice between two outcomes. We can take this intentional time to truly develop virtue and discipline and live holier lives, or we can take this time to feel holier and feel like we’ve done something, and afterward have nothing to show for it but a few weeks we lived a little differently. In Lent, we have the chance to make a change, to grow, and make a difference in our life, or just look like we have.

Jesus is clear in his teachings that true faith is quiet and humble while inauthentic faith is loud and showy. In our scripture we’ve read today, we see example after example of how faith can become a display. Prayer can become a way we say loudly how devoted we are to God, fasting (something we rarely even do today,) is a chance to show how much we are willing to give up, and even charitable giving is a way we can hold up our cheque book and show that we are willing to give more than other people. That last one stands out to me because in churches with a lot of online giving, they print out little cards you can put in the plate, just so your neighbor knows that you’re not skipping out on throwing something into the plate.

Lenten devotion is something we need to weigh carefully before we actually begin to participate in it. It’s easy to throw out something we would like to give up. Chocolate isn’t essential for life, nor is soda, nor is meat. Yet, giving those things up is not in itself going to produce any good in our souls. We need more than just a checklist of things we plan to do or not do over the course of these few weeks if we want to really come out the other side with a new and better understanding of God, of ourselves, and of our place in the world. We need to see this season as a chance to develop true piety, works of love toward God and others, and not self-pity.

If you plan to give up some kind of food for Lent, I would ask you to consider giving away the one that is most expensive for you. Do you have a coffee habit? Energy drinks? Those few dollars here and there add up. Giving up something like that might teach you how much money you could be giving to those in need, not to the pet comforts we want but do not require. If you are giving up social media or television, then you should consciously use the time you would spend on those things on something productive. Spend time with loved ones, create something beautiful, or spend that time in prayer and study instead.

If your plan for Lent is to add something to your life, to choose to pray and read scripture each day – then stick to it and let it be a priority and not just a thing to do if you have time. If you plan to volunteer throughout the season, then be prepared to stick to volunteering after Easter. The things we do in Lent are meant to develop habits within us that go far beyond these forty days, they are meant to set a foundation for the new life that Easter brings to really flourish. Lent is not a thing to be entered into lightly, our discipline is not meant to be an afterthought, this is a season to make serious changes and develop better discipline.

Here in a few moments, I will read out the formal invitation to the Lenten season. We as a congregation will bless these ashes, made from palms once held up in celebration. Then, we will all receive a mark on our forehead, black ash that asks us to remember that time is short in our mortal lives. If we want to be better, to more resemble Christ, then we must be willing to live like him now. To serve like him, now. To be like him, now. Let the cross that is marked on our foreheads today, be imprinted far deeper than our skin. Let us wrap our hearts in sackcloth, and truly mourn where we have failed. Let our Lenten Discipline, whatever it is we take on for ourselves, pave the way for us to truly be transformed. Otherwise, it’s all just for show. I pray that we are people who can move beyond appearances, to true and complete righteousness. – Amen.

Sermon 02/15/2026 – An End to Myth

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Peter 1:16-21

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Sermon Text

“Myth,” is a complicated word. We often use it to talk about something that is false. If I talk about the “Mythical,” event which is buying a perfectly ripe pear from the store, you know I am saying that a perfectly ripe pear is such a fleeting reality it might as well not exist. Likewise, urban “myths,” refer to the stories that are told that are obviously false, but that persist despite evidence. Things like razorblades in apples or fentanyl on dollar bills – stories shared without evidence but believed because they sound like they could be true. A “myth,” is a falsehood… Except when it isn’t.

“Myth,” is also a technical term. Myth refers to stories about interactions between gods and humanity that explain natural phenomena. In this usage, “myth,” does not mean false, it means not scientific or historical. It is a way of talking about the world that is not verifiable through usual means, but is true to the one telling it hrough faith. The first twelve chapters of Genesis are “myth,” insomuch as they are stories that describe interactions like this. They are not untrue, but they are non-scientific or historical. They reveal a truth that is not easily grasped by people outside the faith that proclaims them.

I go through this process of explaining myth because the passage we read today tells the people of God to avoid, “cleverly devised myths.” The myth in question cannot be the second usage of the word – explaining God’s work through a story – so it must be the former usage, a false story. The word in Greek is not overly helpful for us trying to understand its meaning. “Mythos,” can refer to a false story, a rumor, or gossip – it is all contextual what the term can mean. The point of it in our passage today is that God’s people are being tricked into false stories about God that they need to recuse themselves from. A thing that we are equally likely to do today, if we are honest about our own habits.

We have already talked about the need to keep our devotion simple and to be careful in the words we listen to and the words we say. Today, as we wrap up our short series on God’s truth, we come to a more general need. We must refute false myths about God as much as we refute false teachings or narratives. We as a Church are taken in by stories that sound good, but that have no basis in our doctrine, scripture, or faith. We are sold books, movies, and interviews that claim all kinds of things about God that simply are not true.

I begin with a simple example. Every year at Christmas, a story is told in pulpits and online that wows people. It tells of the special shepherds who lived in Bethlehem, and how they would swaddle lambs and place them in mangers to protect them for sacrifice. They then, when they heard the angels say there was an infant wrapped in swaddling cloth, would know he was the Lamb of God and seek him in the place they placed their own lambs – the manger.

It’s a beautiful story… But it’s all made up. We have no evidence of even one part of the story. Yet, it remains popular. Why is that? Because it sound nice. It makes the Christmas story have an element of magic to it that the regular story does not convey. The shepherds come to worship Jesus for an esoteric reason that, now that we know it, we can also share with people. This false knowledge makes us feel like insiders to a deeper truth, even though it pushes us further from understanding.

This is not the only kind of myth like this. I have heard many stories told at funerals that are completely made up, but presented as facts. Each year at Palm Sunday an imaginary parade held by Pilate is talked about from pulpits of well-meaning ministers. Stories of people who “died” and saw Heaven are shared constantly. In our era of AI Slop, stories of miracles and holy meetings of strangers are made up and shared out without pause. We are in love with myths, with false stories that can seriously mess up our view of God and scripture. Yet, we seek them out for the feeling of comfort they give – of secret knowledge and of clearer explanations.

This is also why conspiracy theories are so popular. They provide a clear explanation of the world, while simultaneously making us feel like we know something secret that other people are missing out on. Whether it’s about vaccines, pizza places, or red dye #40; to claim secret knowledge that explains the world as having just a few problems that could be easily dealt with is incredibly appealing. One of my favorite bands, They Might be Giants, has song that explains this now. The singer, being disappointed by life, by elected officials, by the general misfortunes that befall him, cries out, “Where’s the Shadow Government, when you need them.”[1] In other words, the world would be so much less chaotic if only conspiracies were true. The chaos and trouble of this world would not be so bad, if only there was someone to blame for it.

In faith and in life generally, we do not need this kind of myth making. Truth is complicated and messy, it asks an awful lot of us, but it is worth chasing after. It will give us life in a way the easy answers we invent never could. There is freedom in truth, and there is no more beautiful and freeing truth than what our faith reveals to us – not in myth – but in reality.

You see, in truth our life is full of beautiful real stories of God’s work. Scripture tells us about the wonderful things that God has done and they do not need to be embellished. Why do we tell a false story about shepherds and swaddling cloth, when the real story is so amazing! God was born as a human baby, with all the frailty and difficulties that come from such a birth. That is amazing! We meet monthly to come to God’s table and Christ is present in the meal we eat.

We meet God, face to face, at least once a month. That’s amazing! When we die, though we lack details on what exactly it is like, we are present with God and all the Saints. That’s amazing! We do not need to embellish the work of God, because it is amazing without our editorial voice.

We have talked this month about simple truth and the importance of words. I want to tell you now about the importance of story. You have your own stories of what God has done in your life. You may think that they are not important enough or that they do not have the nice narrative structure of the stories you hear online or on the radio. Well, the truth is very few stories are so nicely dressed up as the ones put out in print. Myth creeps in, exaggerations here or simplifications there. A well-polished testimony has been streamlined to make it seem a little more magical, because the rough edges are too real, and do not play to an audience as well.

Our scripture reminds us of the stories that were told in the early church. Eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s glory. Not myths, not blemishless narratives with smoothed out edges, but the full and unedited truth of what God has done. Read the Gospels and you do not get neat stories, they are not cleanly written. There are weird details added, situations that make disciples and sometimes Jesus seem different from what we would expect. Now, look at your own life, look at what God has done. It’s not a clean story, is it? It’s messy and weird and a little complicated. Yet, there is more truth and value in sharing your story, then in a hundred books written to sell a narrative about God. You are eyewitnesses to God’s glory. Share that out.-Amen

[1] “The Shadow Government,” track 8 on They Might Be Giants , The Else, Idlewild Recordings, 2007.

Sermon 02/08/2026 – Wisdom, not Words

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the testimony of God to you with superior speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed. But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”—

God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.

Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.

“For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

Sermon Text

Last week I talked about the need for us to embrace truth and for our faith to especially be rooted in Christ’s truth. This week we continue our run of services focusing on knowledge of Christ by looking at the next step in that. If we believe that the truth of Christ’s life is the foundation of our own ,then we need to come up with tools to evaluate information as we encounter it and our life as we live it. If Christ’s life, death, and resurrection changes everything, then how do we understand that change beyond merely saying “Lord, Lord!” in Church every once in a while.

Words are a powerful thing and the ones we choose can make a difference in how people respond to the thing we say. Put more simply, you can say something that is true in a way that makes people not want to believe it. You can also say something false in a way that people are immediately attracted to. You can dress up horrors unimaginable as a gift to be celebrated and you can take a wonderful thing and make it sound horrible. Words, and the words we choose to use, can make all the difference in the world.

Recently in Sunday School we talked about scripture’s insistence that we are responsible for our words more than just about anything we do. Words pour out from our heart, and if we can control them – not just the words we say but the thoughts and feelings that produce them – then we truly control every aspect of ourselves. Talk is cheap, but talk makes a difference. In it, and in our ability to speak properly of all things set before us, we are able to regulate much of our life.

Beyond what we speak, we have to think about what we hear, and the majority of people are not good at evaluating truth or worth in information. That is why advertising works, why our world is so divided on what is and is not true. It is because we as a species are not good at hearing something and evaluating its authenticity or helpfulness, outside of its presentation to us.

Paul, continuing his teachings to the Corinthians about how they must unite under shared truth rather than quibble over different teachers of that truth, doubles down on the idea that he preached a singular, simple message to them – Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of humanity. Paul adds that, in teaching this, he used as simple language as he could to express his ideas. This is not a criticism of learning or more complex conversations, Paul almost immediately says that more established Christians can have more difficult conversations, instead it is a reminder that words can often get in the way of truth and goodness. Words distract and obfuscate, even as much as they clarify and enable.

Let’s put this more simply with two examples of bad speech. If I stand up here and say, “Christ is the presence of God among us in the hypostatic perfection of deity, expressed in his shared “Theotes,” with the other members of the trinity, produced as the telos of God’s soteriological mission in the world which will be completed in the eschaton.” Then I am not failing to tell you the Gospel, but I am using words that make it infinitely harder to grasp what I mean. That translates, by the way, to “Christ is the presence of God, fully human and fully divine, in perfect unity of being and will with God the Father and the Spirit, who is both the purpose and means of God salvation, as will be completed at the end of time.” See, easier to understand if I choose better words.

The second example of speech is not something which is good being presented badly, but something bad which is presented well. Way back in the history of the world, of the Church, there came a desire to see the Levant – the space between modern day Syria and Egypt – placed under European rule. The reasons for this were part ideological, part religious, part economic. Ruling parties wanted to take the land the Eastern Roman Empire had struggled to hold onto. The result were several successive military campaigns we now call “The Crusades.”

Marching across Europe, groups began to form not only of trained militia men, but peasant soldiers persuaded by national and religious fervor that they should take part in the battles. Entire towns were sacked by these bands of soldiers, not even in their supposed enemy lands, but in their own kingdoms. Reaching the main object of their conquest, Jerusalem, armies tore through the city several times across the conflicts. Killing, indiscriminately, the people cowering within. Across the crusades, many European Christians shed the blood of their so-called enemies defending their home, but also many innocent civilians – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian blood mingled together in the shared brutality of centuries of war.

At the time, and even by some people today, these wars were regarded as holy. They were dressed as heroic attempts to reclaim the homeland of Jesus, as a chance to bring Christian rulers to Eastern World again, and to “liberate,” the people of the area. I will tell you now, no war is holy. I’ll double down on it and say, no war of aggression can be called, “right.” Yet, every war is written as necessary, good, and holy, by the people who will send other people to die for the conflict they began.

Lest we think only world shaking conflict is the source of this kind of deceit, let me tell you a smaller story. Growing up I had a youth minister who made clear to us that, to obey him was to obey God. Why? Because he listened to the Spirit, so any decision he made must be God wanting it, not him. In faith and a desire to be obedient to God, we often fell for it, hook-line-and-sinker. Many churches teach a kind of grace that sounds good, God giving us infinite chances to repent and start again, but that allows us to be critical of other people as though they are not given that chance. “If they would change X, Y, or Z, they’d be real Christians, but since they don’t they are not saved like you or me!” The argument goes, and it sounds good because it lets us be holy.”

I could go on and on, it is easy to talk about the bad parts of life. I can name a thousand different bad faith and badly argued ideas. Yet, we are not called to be better at naming the troubles of the world, although that does come with wisdom, we are called to name and live out the goodness and truth of God. So, what lessons do I have today to hep us discern truth and to speak it?

Firstly, in identifying truth. Check the way the person presenting the information is talking. Are they trying to get you angry? To upset you into turning off your critical thought, or are they asking you to receive information and do something with it? Emotional messages can convey truth, but being emotionally invested in something does not automatically make it correct. Secondly, do not react to any information immediately. Read it, listen to it, and then step away and think about it for a bit. Thirdly, do some additional research into its claims before making any sort of determination on the validity of it.

In matters of faith, there are two questions I think you can add to these steps. Firstly, does it align with a worldview founded on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Secondly, does this teaching contribute to my development of one or more fruits of the Spirit: peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control? If possible, ask two further questions – does it align with scripture? Does it align with the teachings of the Church? But those are harder to apply. Oftentimes bad ideas in the Church are steeped in scripture, and tradition is not automatically correct because it is old.

In our own lives, we must commit to the same pursuit of truth. When we speak, we ought to ask ourselves if we are speaking something true or good, or just something that feels true and good. When we share our faith, it helps to do so in simple terms, not because we cannot use more complicated terms or make more complicated claims, but because the truth of your experience of God, and of Christ crucified is the best witness you could ever offer. Finally, we should speak in a way that is peaceful, patient, kindle, gentle, and that exhibits control over ourselves.

Words, powerful, deceptive, healing, and revealing. Let us hear them, read them, and speak them well. That our words may proclaim the simplicity of our salvation. – Amen.

Sermon 02/01/2026 – The Foolishness of God

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. In contrast, God is why you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Sermon Text

I think that we live in an age that is fundamentally trapped in a contradiction. We live in  a post-truth a society. Before AI even entered the scene to produce fake stories, photos, and videos at an unprecedented rate, we had already begun to give up on seeking actual truth from the world around us. We can be sold, by multiple accounts and channels, pundits and Large Language Models, a version of the world that gives us everything we could possibly want. There is no bad news, except that proves what we already think about the world. There is no complicated balancing of different facets of the world, because we can have everything shaved down into an easily digestible pill.

It’s hard not to be cynical about the state of things. Everyday I log onto Facebook (my first mistake,) and see people sharing videos that I can tell are fake, that have a bouncing watermark to hide the “Made by AI,” indicator that most generators have, and yet people share them like they’re real. For year I’ve seen people pushing narratives about their neighbors, about vaccines, about all kinds of things in Heaven and on Earth, and none of them do so in pursuit of truth – but confirmation. Truth asks us to reflect, to change, to help one another. Falsehood invites us to confirm our thoughts and feelings, to distrust one another, and to take what we can for our own good.

Truth is often inconvenient. Truth is not something that serves us, it is something we must be in service to. It is so fragile, so easily broken in this world, that we have to find ways to cling to it whenever we can. Truth must be preserved, we cannot speak idly about anything for fear of harming it. We must understand that the world has real, objective features that cannot be changed for our convenience. We must see in the world around us, the things that transcend our whims and cut deep into reality itself.

Our scripture today focuses on “wisdom,” which is not always synonymous with truth. It typically refers to the practical knowledge necessary to live a good life. However, Paul seems to be directly talking about world views in this letter. The paragraph before today’s lection talks about how people in Corinth are fighting over which teacher in the Church is better. Some call themselves followers of Paul, others of a guy named Apollos, and still others unhelpfully say that they follow Christ alone. Paul looks to all these impulses of choosing worldviews, of defining ourselves by teachers or lack of teachers, and asks people to commit to a higher calling even than that.

The people that teach us are always secondary to the things they teach. The truth that they reveal surpasses the individual in most every circumstance. The people who claimed Paul was the true teacher of the Gospel missed the point as much as those who privileged Apollos, what mattered was not the teacher but the thing that was taught. The thing they taught was that Christ was crucified for the redemption of the world and that he was raised from the dead to prove the redemption was complete. That was what really mattered. Those who claimed to only receive their teachings from Christ missed the point because they denied their bias by claiming this singular authority in their life. They also still were not looking to furthering the truth of the Gospel, but establishing themselves as better than the sectarians.

Paul describes the message of Christ’s crucifixion as something rejected by all people, largely because it is not convenient. Paul sites Jewish demands for signs of Jesus’s truth, but those signs already happened and were rejected. Those signs asked them to accept God in human form and gentiles as children of God and shame as the greatest honor. It was not convenient to the culture they had gotten used to. Greeks, likewise, demanded well-reasoned philosophical arguments, and all they got was, again, the cross and the resurrection.

The cross was and is a foolish idea. God coming down into humanity and dying does not make sense. God dying in so horrific and painful a way is not befitting the eternal ruler of creation. That a dead man, regardless of his divinity, could rise from the dead is nonsense – the dead always stay dead. Yet, in the face of that absurdity there is a truth that cannot be denied. God did become human, that God-man did die, and that God-man did rise again. The reality of Jesus pushes against all logic and reason and yet it still remains true. That is the essence of the mystery of our faith.

Truth is always messy like this. We are made to find out the best response to situations where, with some notable and obvious exception, there is not always one “right,” thing to do. When we look at our family troubles, there are not villains and heroes, just people struggling to live and love together. When we look at our world, there might be a handful of mustache twirling villains, but there are many more people just trying to do right. The problem is, in our attempt for good, we get lost in our own version of truth, and that version can lead to us committing grave sins against one another in the name of what is “right.”

The reason Paul asks us to see our lives primarily through Christ and his crucifixion is not so we can live in denial of the many other truths in life. It is instead so that we can root ourselves in the most important truth that allows us to make sense of all others. A God who lives is one thing, but a God who is willing to die… Unthinkable. A God who loves is one thing, but a God who loves until it hurts… Unimaginable. A God who makes even death subservient to life… Simply amazing. Our life is built off of the truth of Christ’s life.

Because of this, we are to live as people who love till it hurts, that live with a mind toward the welfare of others, that sees nothing as truly catastrophic because even loss can be gain. We are to build our life off of a foundation of love, of sacrifice, and of service. That is the mystery we must proclaim and place all other truth upon. – Amen.

Sermon 01/18/2026 – Behold the Lamb of God

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 1:29-42

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.”

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

Sermon Text

When is the last time that you were filled with awe? I’m talking about the sort of thing that you see and suddenly have every thought in your head rush away as you are suddenly left looking at something beyond words. Was it nature? Was it something you saw in a person? Was it something altogether different, something that could only be explained as coming from God, straight out of heaven?

Awe is something we seem to lose track of in the modern world. Looking around at the rush that we are always in, I’m not terribly surprised. At any moment you can pick up your phone and see every piece of music, every bit of news, and every opinion flash in front of your eyes. Fast editing is made to keep your brain from wandering too far from the next big thing, and we are caught up in a loop of highs and lows of dopamine that mean that we are not people who wonder or who seek out more substantial encounters – only more numerous and more easily digested ones.

Awe, and the ability to be awestruck, is something we cannot afford to lose as a species. We are, in many ways, defined by our ability to engage with things larger than ourselves. Animals only seek to survive, to reproduce to another generation, but we are able to dream and wonder and see the majesty of God around us. Ovid, a Roman poet, describes humanity as the last thing that God created, and when they were created they were unique precisely because, “whereas other animals bend their looks downwards upon the Earth, to Man he gave a countenance to look on high and to behold the heavens, and to raise his face erect to the stars.”[1] We are a species defined by our ability to look, to behold, and to be filled with wonder.

In scripture, two words are used that are translated as “Behold!” “הִנֵּה” (Hineh,) in Hebrew and “ἰδού” (idou,) in Greek. Both of them literally mean, “Here!” but carry a deeper connotation. To shout either is to call special, almost divine attention to the thing being talked about. When Abraham tells God, “Here I am!” He is not just saying where he is, he is saying he is fully available for whatever God has to tell him. To “Behold!” or to be present is to offer up all of ourselves and our attention to the object of our declaration. It is to be in awe of the thing in front of us.

When John the Baptist sees Jesus, he sees more than just a cousin or a devotee. As Jesus makes his way across the banks of the Jordan into the water, John sees the salvation of the world. Christ is no longer, in his eyes, just a person, just a relative, the Spirit inspires John to proclaim who he really is. “Behold!” Means more than just to look at Jesus as he comes down into the water, it is an invitation to be in awe of who Jesus really is. “The lamb!” Born into the world to die for others. “Of God!” Not only of God, but from God, who is God. “Who takes away the sins of the world!” Not only in their consequence, but in their power and reality, in totality and not only partly.[2]

John made himself available to Jesus in his declaration. The baptism which we discussed last week was made possible because John submitted completely to God’s will, even if it was as unorthodox as baptizing God himself. The awe that John has regarding Jesus is not just for the moment of his baptism, but seemingly for each time that John saw him afterward. John not only cries out for people to “Behold!” Jesus when his realization of Christ’s divinity, but when Jesus walks by his disciples on a seemingly normal day.

I wonder, if we let ourselves, how often we might have a similar response to the moments we see God pass us closely by. How often are we in awe that we can kneel in prayer and find God is listening to us? How often do we come to the table of God’s grace and really feel in our heart what a wonder it is that God is present with us in that meal? How often do we notice what God has done, those coincidences that must be something more than mere happenstance, and take a moment to truly look in wonder at the God who made them happen?

For John, the presence of Christ that clued him into what God was doing was physical and obvious – Jesus was literally walking by. For us, we need to look a little harder, feel a little deeper, to catch sight of what God is doing. Moving back to our intro, to Ovid’s description of humanity as creatures that can “look up,” I recommend a simple means to see what God is doing: Look around! In a world full of distractions, take some time to remove yourself from the noise. Turn off the screens, in your hand and on the wall. Take time to drive without the radio or Spotify. Look around you as you walk through life and through the world!

Pray as well. Whenever you can, take time to pray. Prayer is a direct way that we call out to God, “Here I am!” Which, you will remember, is the same thing as yelling, “Behold!” We call to God to see us, and in the process we see God. The mutual moment of acknowledgement, the opportunity to be truly available to God and for God to be fully available to us… That is the promise of prayer.

In your life, I ask you to look for ways to be filled with awe. God is at work, Christ is with us, the Spirit has filled us fully. With all that presence of God in our lives, then we ought to be in awe every now and again, shouldn’t we? Let us go into the world, looking for God, and never shy away from declaring God’s salvation when we see it passing nearby. – Amen.

[1] Ovid. The Metamorphoses  tr. Horace Gregory. (New York, New York: Signet 2001) 33

[2] John Wesley. “A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion.” In The Works of the Rev. John Wesley. (New York, New York: J & J Harper 1827) 219

Sermon 01/11/2026 – The Beloved

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 3:13-17

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

Sermon Text

Baptism is a special gift of God. While we engage with God in many ways in life, baptism is a gift only given to us once in our life. For some of us that gift is given when we are infants and for others when we are old enough to choose it for ourselves. Yet, in either case we are given a special gift of grace through the simply element of water. We are shown that God’s grace has washed us clean of sin and that we, having been washed through faith, may start a new life. We are reborn, not only of the sign of water poured out upon us, but by the gift of the Spirit that comes from our faithful confession.

Baptism is a unique ritual, though similar washings can be found in various faiths and cultures. We believe that, through our being washed with water, we are no longer just people blown about by chance, nor do we belong to our earthly family alone. When we are washed in the waters of baptism, we are transformed into something new. We are made into the children of God, and in that new identity we are able to participate in our faith fully, be called “Christians,” in truth, and go forward in life in the fullness of the new birth which our faith and the Holy Spirit affords us.

Baptism as we know it was first practiced by John the Baptist, his baptism was a sign of transformation granted to Jewish faithful as a sign of their repentance. The baptism which John practiced marked the starting point of something new, but John was clear that his baptism was not the final form of the ritual. Someday, someone would come and initiate the final form of the sacrament. This person would baptize, not only with the outward sign of water but with and inward sign, the presence and gift of the Holy Spirit. The baptism which John promised is the baptism which was fulfilled by Christ, and which was enabled by Christ’s own baptism in the Jordan.

Our scripture today is short, but it tells us about all we need to know to understand Christ’s baptism and its relationship to ours. Baptism, as we have established, is an outward sign of the inward change a person receives through faith. It shows the Holy Spirit’s work in a person that facilitates their New Birth and the beginning of their true life through Christ. I think a natural question that follows this definition of baptism is, “Why was Jesus baptized then?” Jesus did not sin, and so had no need to repent or be changed. Likewise, Jesus was God and so always experienced a perfect union with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. How then did Jesus “receive,” the Spirit in any meaningful way through Baptism.

Christ was baptized, not so much for his own benefit, as he was for ours. Jesus did not ask anything of his disciples that he did not face himself. Why else would he be born as a child, when he could have simply appeared on earth one day? Because Christ needed to bless childhood with his experience of it. Why did Christ die on the cross? Not only to atone for our sins, but to cross the threshold of death ahead of us, that we might know the way. Likewise, Christ received baptism so that we might have an example and more than that a forerunner in our own baptismal journey.

Christ’s baptism revealed the nature of the sacrament by several signs.[1] Christ the Son was revealed in flesh when he came down into the water. God the Holy Spirit appeared visibly, “like a dove,” to rest upon Jesus. God the Father spoke aloud, “This is my son, the Beloved.” These three signs made clear that Christ was God, and that all three persons of God were equally involved in this ritual. The perfect example of Christ enabling us to pursue our own perfection, the power of the Spirit which facilitates this change, and the love of the Father which accepts us as children of God.

No matter when we are baptized, we receive the benefits of the sacrament. Some people, out of a well intentioned concern, will worry about baptizing infants. They think it is unfair to baptize a child before they can come to faith themselves. This was the logic behind the anabaptist reformers who would go on to found the Amish, the Mennonites, and our modern Baptist churches. They believed that baptism was only valid if an adult assented to be baptized, and so would rebaptize those baptized as infants. More extreme groups will baptize you as many times as you like, assuming that only one made truly in faith counts.

For its entire history, however, the Church has affirmed infant baptism. It is an exception rather than the rule that it is taught against. When we baptize infants, we are saying that they are welcomed into God’s family from birth. The logic goes, at least partially, that no other grace of God is forbidden to people based on age, so why should this one be locked away? An infant, being baptized, is given the gift of God’s regenerating grace, and when they reach maturity can choose to accept that gift or return it, but the gift is only ever given once. Though a person may leave the faith and return as many times as they like, their initial baptism is all that is necessary.

Why is this? Well, consider how our own families work. When you are born into a family, you are part of that family. You may leave them, you may disown them, you may walk away from a time, but you are part of that family regardless. If you are adopted, then your identity shifts. You are no longer part of one family, but another, and in the same way no matter how you wander personally, the family remains yours. The church is the same. When we are joined to the church in baptism, we are adopted into the family of faith, and so while we may choose for a time to leave that family, we do not need to be adopted again when we return to it.

Baptism is a necessary part of a faithful person’s walk with Christ. It is commanded that we be baptized as a sign of our faith and without baptism we cannot truly join the Church. Baptism is a necessary part of our initiation, and acknowledgement of God’s grace in our life that has brought us to where we are. In the sacrament we are made children of God and thus are made part of the church. It is not optional to be baptized, for any person who truly wishes to walk in obedience to Christ must be baptized in order to truly be obedient.

Does that mean that a person who comes to faith but dies before they are baptized is damned? No! Nor does it mean unbaptized children are left abandoned. Faith in one case and innocence in the other is sufficient cause not to worry for a person’s soul. However, when we are not in extreme circumstances, when we have ample time and ability, we are bound to do what is required of us. Christ asks that we are baptized, and so we must be baptized.

Baptism is the thing that marks us as God’s children, and in the same way that it shows us as children of God, it puts on us the responsibility of God’s children. We like Jesus are now God’s “beloved,” and that term has special meaning. In Genesis, when Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, God uses the same term to refer to him. “Take your son, your only son, your beloved…”[2] in baptism we are not just born into a new life, but we take up our cross as well. As children of God, we are no longer living for ourselves, but for something greater. We have a family to care for, the church. We have a God to live for, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Most of all, we have a duty to live sacrificially, as Christ once did for us. Baptism is a new start, and today I invite us all to remember our own baptism as we prepare to reenter the world. We who have been made children of God, have a duty to the world, and the waters we touch today are our reminder of that truth. – Amen.

[1] I build off of Aquinas’s perspective here, as stated in Summa III. Q.39

[2] Genesis 22:2

Sermon 01/04/2026 – Losing Christ

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Luke 2:41-52

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents were unaware of this. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends.

When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them, and his mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor.

Sermon Text

All the parent’s in the room, if you ever feel like you weren’t always the best at parenting your children, I present to you a scripture of vindication. You have not, at least you probably have not, lost your child for several days in the nation’s capital. (I apologize to anyone who left a child in the mummy exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute.) Here, we see Mary and Joseph, who raised a child who was perfect in every way, and they still managed to make a mistake like this. Take that as a sign that you can be a little less strict on your performance with your children.

Beyond this assurance offered to all parents, there is more to take out of this scripture. Today, I want us to look at this story beyond its literal reading. This is a story that takes place every day, in every part of the world, and probably happens to every person at least once in their life. This is the story of two people, as close as they possibly can be to Jesus, lose him in the crowd, and do not even notice it until they are a good ways away from the place where they lost him.

We usually talk about people losing Christ, or losing faith entirely, in terms of people who leave the Church. We know that someone has lost Christ when they cut off all ties from Christianity. The obvious moments where people publicly recant their faith or deny Christ are the stories we tell with a quiet fear. The people who once had all the faith in the world, seemingly overnight, just seem to lose it completely. I, however, think that there are many people in the pews who have lost sight of Jesus and the way that we do that is by doing exactly what his parents did in our scripture.

The story we’re told is simple. Jesus and his parents are part of a caravan going to celebrate Passover in the city. The twelve year old Jesus is constantly running, as twelve year olds do, from family to family, playing. They make the long journey, break bread and eat lamb, recalling the salvation that God worked centuries before for their ancestors. They made their way out of town, Jesus nowhere to be seen. They assumed, however, that he was just off with a friend somewhere else in the caravan.

It was not until they were a day’s journey away, probably when everyone was settling in for the night, that they realized what had happened.

They rush back to Jerusalem, probably taking another full day to get back. When they arrive they walk all around the city looking for Jesus. They ask all their relatives, they go through alleyways and city streets. They go everywhere they can before they finally decide to go to the Temple. Maybe they thought he might be there, maybe they were desperate enough that only prayer in front of God could give them hope. As they enter the Temple complex, along one of the porticos of the temple, they see their tween son seated among a group of Sadducees and Pharisees, listening to them and adding his own thoughts. When they grab ahold of him, asking how he could leave them, he told them that he never left, he was where he should have been – in his father’s house – it was they who left him behind.

We need to understand this is true in our own life as well. God never leaves us, but we frequently walk away from God. In the darkest moments of our life, though we may struggle to see or feel that God is with us, we are never left alone. Christ is never the one to leave a person behind, we are always the one who step away from Christ. That can feel harsh, it can feel like I am trying to blame people’s lack of faith on themselves, but I am just trying to establish a baseline of truth. God does not abandon us, but we can leave God behind.

I find it hard to blame people who fall away from the faith in the midst of tragedy. When we walk through “the valley of the shadow of death,” we are walking through chaos itself. When we are in the darkest moments of our life, it feels like we are walking through a place God must have never touched. Grief because of loss – of loved ones, of circumstances, of security – all of these things can obscure the presence of God in our life. Unless we are already rooted deeply in our faith, it is easy to get lost in the midst of all that. I think some people stay fully on the right path in the midst of grief.

The more common way of losing track of God, the one I am concerned with today, is what happens when we step away from God outside of tragedy or loss. In the midst of our faith journey, sometimes we can assume that Christ is standing next to us, and we continue walking until we look around and find that he’s been gone for a while. We have a moment when we realize that we have been going our own way for so long that we cannot see Christ in anything around us. We begin to despair, because we begin to see how empty a life we have made for ourselves.

For me, this realization happened in seminary. I had a lot going on in my life and I was in a low place anyway. I was studying to be a minister though, and I was constantly doing “church-stuff.” Yet, in between Greek and Methodist History I was faced with a terrible realization. Despite going through all the motions, I could not see Jesus anymore. I could not feel an ounce of faith within me. I had been drained of all that, left listless and lost, and I could barely hold on during those few horrible weeks where everything seemed lost.

I, like so many people, had lost Jesus. Had moved in my own direction and just assumed that because I was meeting the most basic expectations of faith, that I was perfectly fine. Yet, if I had been honest with myself the signs would have been there. I had no joy in life. I did not pray. I did not seek out chances to worship beyond what was expected of me. I believed in Christ intellectually, I lived out a Christian life in the most basic sense of the word, but here at the threshold of a live devoted to God, I realized my faith had gone completely awry.

Therapy was a big part of fixing my dysfunction in this part of my life, but I also realized that I had to find Jesus again, to backtrack until I found where I had gone wrong. Thank God that Christ is a loving and present God. I found Jesus right where I knew he would be. He was seated in the middle of the Seminary Chapel. I devoted myself to serving in the chapel, it became like a local church to me, and in that place

I found Jesus again, and we started walking forward together again. I was able to find my salvation again, but I had to admit I had lost track of Jesus to do so.

Reflect on your own faith now. Ask yourself the question, “Do I have faith in Christ?” Not just a belief, not just a feeling, do you really see Jesus as present in your life? Does that faith ask you to live sacrificially for others, or does it just approve of what you already want to be doing? Most importantly, is the object of your faith the Lord, Christ who lives in Heaven at the right hand of God the Father, and will someday return to set things right? Is your God alive, not just in words you say once a month, but in your earnest belief and practice of life?

Today, as we come to the Table of Grace, as we take bread and cup, I would encourage you to kneel at the altar and answer that question. If the answer is “Yes!” Then may you receive the bread and cup to strengthen you as you continue to walk in faith. If the answer is “No.” Then let this be the chance to dedicate yourself to the God who offers you eternal life and abundant life besides. If the answer is “I don’t know.” Then let this meal be your chance to come close to God and see for yourself where you stand.

Christ is lost, not because he ran away, but because we have run away. May we seek him earnestly, find him again, and walk beside him toward perfection itself. – Amen.