April 2025

Sermon 04/27/2025 – An Eternal Testimony

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Torah Reading                                                                   Exodus 6:1-7

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

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

The New Testament Lesson                                                    Acts 5:27-32

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] 1 Corinthians 9:19

Sermon 04/20/2025 – A Risen Christ

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Gospel Lesson                                                                   Luke 24:1-12

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 04/13/2025 – Celebrating Emptiness

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Epistle Lesson                                                         Philippians 2:5-11

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

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] Isaiah 40:31

Sermon 04/06/2025 – Worship and Service

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 12:1-8

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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