2026 – Grace, Freely Given

February 22, 2026February 22, 2026 / 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 02/15/2026 – An End to Myth

February 15, 2026February 17, 2026 / 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

February 8, 2026February 17, 2026 / 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

February 1, 2026February 17, 2026 / 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

January 18, 2026January 16, 2026 / 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

January 11, 2026January 6, 2026 / 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 12/21/2025 – Joseph and Epimetheus

December 21, 2025 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

Sermon Text

Long ago, in the legends of Ancient Greece, there emerged the story of Prometheus. Prometheus was a titan, one of the first divine beings (so the Greeks said.) He loved humanity and strove to make sure they had an advantage over the immense power of the Olympian Gods. First, he tricked the Gods into taking the worse deal in animal sacrifices. Two bags were prepared, one with choice meat placed on top of a pile of bones, skin, and fat, another with a worse cuts placed over the majority of the animal. The Gods chose the better cuts and bones, not knowing they had been tricked.

Later, Prometheus orchestrated his most famous exploit. He stole fire from Heaven and brought it down to earth. This allowed for humans to develop society, to forge metal and cook food. Now, through his work, humanity would grow and thrive upon the face of the earth. For stealing this divine secret, however, he was punished to be tied to a rock and tortured for the rest of eternity. A vicious punishment, but still a better outcome than his brother.

Prometheus had a brother you see, and his name was Epimetheus. He was not as clever as his brother, in fact their names meant “Forethought,” and “Afterthought,” you can guess which he was. The Gods, upset that fire had been stolen from them, devised a way to get back at humanity. They gave Epimetheus a beautiful wife named “Pandora,” and entrusted her to him. He loved her deeply and so when the Gods offered him a box, with the stipulation it must never be opened, he of course entrusted it to her. Pandora, the witless pawn in this adventure, opened the box and from it sprang every evil in the world. Last to exit was the greatest evil of them all, and yet also the one thing that might sustain human life… Hope.

So, why do I begin our meditation on this, the final Sunday of Advent, with a pagan myth about the origin of evil in the world? Well, I am not exactly sure myself. As I was working on planning this season, the story of Joseph learning of Mary’s pregnancy mingled in my head with this old myth, and I think its because I see in Joseph a bit of Epimetheus’s charm. Jospeh was a good man, who loved his wife-to-be, but did not think through his actions very far.

You see, Joseph learned that his fiancé Mary was pregnant, and so he decided he should break off the marriage. If it was his kid, or if he thought it could be, they would just move up the date of the marriage. Even in Judea, babies were born a few months shy of nine months after the wedding fairly often. We know that the baby could not be Joseph’s, because he hears of the pregnancy and immediately knows he is not the father. So, to avoid shaming her, he decides to break off the marriage privately, so no one need know why he did it.

There is, of course, a problem. Joseph and Mary are living in a village. If there are five hundred people living there than it would be a surprise. Among five hundred people, everyone knows everyone else’s business pretty quickly. Joseph, if he followed through with his plan, would save Mary none of the difficulty of her pregnancy. He would, however, avoid having to deal with the fallout himself. I do not think this is selfishness, but lack of planning that leads him to this idea. Joseph, for love of his fiancé, believes breaking off the marriage will fix her problems. He is wrong.

An unmarried woman faces enough trouble today, imagine in a world where she could be stoned to death for adultery. For the rest of her life Mary would be treated as a pariah, her child as worse than that. Mary had no place in this world, not if Joseph followed through with his plan. She and her child would be abandoned… God knows what that would have done if it had been allowed to continue. Thankfully, God had other plans.

An angel visited Joseph in his dreams and explained the situation. Joseph accepted this divine message and married his fiancé. Mary had her child, the child who was not Joseph’s, and yet the child became his own child, through his willingness to abandon his own bad idea. Now Joseph is acknowledged for his incredible love and commitment to a child he could have easily thrown aside. Joseph was willing to turn away from what he thought he knew about life, about the world, and in the process bring life into it, not just through a literal birth, but through supporting our savior as he grew into the ministry he had ahead of him.

What I hope we can take from Joseph’s story, and his shortsighted, knee-jerk reaction to Mary’s pregnancy, is the realization that a bad idea is not the end of our story. When we come into a situation we are not prepared for, we may have all kinds of ideas for how to deal with them. A calm mind will let us see that many of those reactions are not good, and if we take time to think through their repercussions we might be pleasantly surprised with what God can do with a person who thinks ahead. Joseph needed divine intervention to change his mind, and honestly I think we often need that exact same spark to change our ways.

Our faith is built off of Christ’s work within it. When we meet Christ, we should constantly be reorienting ourselves to be more like him. That reorientation requires us to abandon some of the ideas we have about ourselves, about the world, about our conduct. In my own life, I have seldom regretted a decision I made thoughtfully, but have regretted plenty that I made impulsively. When we take the time to think of how our actions impact others, when we are willing to accept a different perspective, when we are open to what God is doing… Then the hope of Christ’s reign is made plain to us. Go forward then, willing to change your mind in the face of God’s work in your life. Think before you act, not just living reactively. Then you will see God’s salvation, and truly know what it means to welcome Christ into your life. – Amen.

Sermon 09/07/2025 – Two Paths

September 7, 2025October 20, 2025 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] Matthew 7:14

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

Sermon 08/17/2025 – Craving Falsehood

August 17, 2025July 29, 2025 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Jeremiah 23:23-29

Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed! I have dreamed!” How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord. Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

Sermon Text

I am a strong advocate for truth. As obvious as that can seem, it often falls to the wayside in the rush of daily life in our world. All of us are prone, whether we want to admit it or not, to finding a version of reality that is more palatable than the one in which we live. We talked just two weeks ago about the fact that the cycles of life can exhaust us. In the midst of that exhaustion we can choose to chase after true hope or manufactured hope. Do we find our hope in the truth or do we create a false reality that offers its own false hope?

Despite my commitment to truth, I do acknowledge that many so-called “warriors,” of truth are just bullies. Growing up, I was blessed to have people on my television like Carl Sagan who explained concepts of science in terms that my five-year-old self could not quite understand, but which nonetheless opened me to the wonders of this universe. Now the people who are trying to educate people about deep truths of the universe are usually people who are trying to make money or build clout more so than people who truly wish to educate. We are a culture that is dependent upon bombasticity and upon people fighting each other for engagement, and so we do not often find people educating or revealing truth, so much as selling a narrative or offering confirmation of our own ideas.

As I’ve already said, the tactic of bullies is to take hold of this idea of an objective truth and then to beat people with what their perspective is. However, truth is separate from what we may have as a concept of what is right or wrong. A true situation can be good, or a true situation can be bad, the duty we have as interpreters of this world is to decide how we react to the truth. Truth, nonetheless, sits separate from our impression of it. A true thing might be good, or it might be bad, but it remains true.

What we read today out of the book of Jeremiah comes after a period of time in which Jeremiah has said some of his most devastating prophecies. If you read the book of Jeremiah, you will see a man who is constantly given the chance to advocate for his people and who constantly decides they weren’t worth the time. He stands in front of God and pleads saying that there must be righteous people in Jerusalem, there must be righteous people in Judah, and in the next chapter every time that he does this he is shown that there is in fact very little hope for the people he knows. The prophet is beaten down by the words that he has been given. He describes his bones as cracking, his stomach as boiling, his mouth as pouring out fire, even as his eyes are running out of tears to shed. Still, the whole time he is suffering under the weight of truth, there are other prophets selling a more convenient message.

We get a direct interaction with one of these prophets in Jeremiah 28. Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke around his neck to symbolize the oppression his people suffered under Babylon. A fellow prophet came in one day and broke that wooden yoke. He promises the people that, rather than suffering, they are going to be liberated through the work of their king. Jeremiah looks this prophet in the eye and says “Oh, that that would be true! However, the truth is that God has forecasted an even darker day for the people of Judah. I will be replacing this wooden yoke with one made of iron.” Jeremiah is proven right as the people are taken into exile and some of them forced to flee into Egypt rather than to face their annihilation. The prophet is not happy that he is correct, the message he brings is not a good one, but it is true.

I wish to put forward that there are two things we do to explain the state of the world that are harmful to truth. The first is that we deny when there are problems in this world and the second is that we create easy answers to explain the ones we do acknowledge. On one hand we look out at the broken things of the world and say, “They aren’t really that bad!” On the other hand, we say, “They are that bad! And its all because of those folks over there!” When we simplify the world and its problems, erasing them or making them someone else’s problem, we deny the truth that is plainly laid out around us.

When I was serving in Clarksburg, there was a fairly significant population of homeless folk. If you talked to people in authority in the city, they would tell you they were bussed in regularly by outside forces. They were people who were unwanted in the cities they came from and were sent to Clarksburg to become the city’s problem. This is a storyline many cities adopt, and it comes from a shred of truth. Some cities do choose not to help folk and instead move inconvenient populations in their midst. However, the truth in Clarksburg was harder to stomach. Of those surveyed during the shelter season, some 200 souls, a vast majority were locals. People who fell into a bad habit, or lost a job, or had rent raised above their means, and ended up on the street. The people out on the street were not someone else’s problem – they were our literal neighbors, pushed onto the streets.

Here we see a systemic denial of the truth and simultaneously an easy answer. “If we make it hard for these folks to live here, then they’ll just get on another bus!” That works if you assume people are maliciously being transited, but the reality that people fall into homelessness and poverty within our own community… That opens up responsibility on our part, on the community’s part, in order to make sure we’re doing all we can to care for one another.

The wider the circle, the more complicated the narrative becomes. When a Pandemic ravages the world it is easy to say, “It isn’t that bad!” or “I bet those people caused it!” When floods wipe out communities it is easier to say, “Those folks deserved it!” or “The planes caused it!” than to accept that disasters happen, and in preparation and execution to counter them, mistakes happen.

We are all participants in narratives: national, local, and personal. We will always pick narratives that make us have the least amount of culpability and discomfort with the way the world works around us is. At least, we will until we choose to pursue truth. Without a commitment to truth I will always assume that I was in the right in an argument, that my worldview is unimpeachable, that the people I disagree with are the root of every problem and the people I agree with have all the easy answers in the world… Unless I choose to search for truth, I will settle for something lesser.

Truth is made up of data and stories. It requires finding accurate reporting and reading through more than one article or report to understand a larger context. It requires meeting people from different groups, places, and perspectives rather than trusting stereotypes or assumptions. Truth is a gestalt of many pieces of life, and not just the pieces we decide are most palatable.

As Christians, we hold the most important truth in the universe in our hands. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is yours to reveal to the world. If we are left at the mercy of the tides of narratives, and not rooted in a true pursuit of truth… Why should anyone believe us? We are just selling another perspective, another narrative, not dealing with truth in the absolute sense of the word.

Truth is furtive. It’s hard to keep alive because it constantly is shifting under our own pressure for it to look more like this or more like that. Worse still, in falsehood we find none of the ambiguity of doubt that truth can cause. Yet, we must remember, “no matter how tender, how exquisite… A lie will remain a lie.”[1] If we wish to serve the God of truth, we must commit ourselves to truly be people of truth. Abandon the notions you have created to prop up your own desires, egos, and worldviews – embrace the messy things of this life, and find that God is holding a mop and bucket for those who wish to acknowledge the mess. – amen.

[1] Toshifumi Nabeshima. Dark Souls II. V. 1.10. Bandai Namco. PC. 2011

Sermon 08/10/2025 – That Better Country

August 10, 2025July 29, 2025 / John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible…

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Sermon Text

Faith and Hope are two sides of the same coin. Through our faith in God, we are convinced that the things we do not presently see are nonetheless real and forthcoming. When we believe that God is active and that salvation is real, then we naturally believe that its benefits and consequences are likewise real and active. Faith is not a basic admittance of belief in something, but a firm stance we come through convincement – by God and through other faithful people – to the truth of our religion.

While some people are squeamish about the use of the term “religion,”, I am not. Religion is, broadly speaking, any of the ways that we conduct ourselves in this life toward something bigger than ourselves. Whether we express our religious convictions in a legalistic way or with an eye toward a faith that frees us is a matter of choice. Religion is, therefore, not the end of our faith, but the way in which we express faith. The outpouring of what we believe into what we do, that is the essence of Christianity.

Faith is inseparably linked to hope, the anticipation of something unseen and yet promised. When we live out a life of faith, we do so because we believe that God is honest in projecting a future for us that is better than our current one. This “better country,” is not a temporal reality, but a spiritual and eschatological one. In the present age we are given assurance and strength to face the broken world around us. In the age to come all promises are fulfilled and all troubles cease. In the time between we live a life that makes the hope that our faith points toward break out in intermittent flashes. In our honoring of God’s covenant through faith in and Christ and our service to one another, we make the Kingdom of Heaven exist in the now, even as we wait for its fulfillment at the end of time.

As we talked about last week, the cycles of life can make it difficult to have hope. We get lost in the day-to-day hustle and bustle as well as the legitimate hardships that come from disease, and death, and greed. The systemic and personal evils of this world are such that I never begrudge a person who says they have struggled to find or keep it because of questions about the problem of evil. If I did not have a personal experience of Christ, I do not think that I would be able to come to faith naturally. Not raised in the Church, not brought up with a full understanding of who God is and what Christ reveals about God, I would have easily let my cynicism take me down the road of unbelief.

The thing that allows us to exist as people of faith is simply that we have met God. In our worship and our sacrament in our scripture and in our prayer, we have come again and again to the well of eternal life and found that its waters do not dry up. The only reason we can have faith is because of an act of God, through the person of Christ, and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Apart from these gifts of grace, we would not be able to look at this world with the hope that we carry. Faith is a belief, begun by convincement, that God means what God says. Without the blessing of God’s presence at the outset, we would never find our way to faith at all.

The stories in Genesis, which the author of Hebrews pulls upon in describing faith, shed light upon the messiness of belief and the foundational need for God’s presence to produce it. Abraham went into Canaan after God called him to do so. He also fled into Egypt at the first sign of danger. Isaac was born to Sarah and Abraham, but only after they got tired of waiting and forced a slave to carry a child in her place. They answered the call in faith, but they also frequently ran into a situation that challenged that faith. Most importantly for our own stumbling walk toward God’s promises, they frequently met that challenge and failed to act as they ought.

Whether in fleeing Canaan, or in first involving and then chasing away Hagar and her child, Abraham sinned abundantly in his pursuit of God’s covenant. Yet, through him a blessing was shared with the earth. The culmination of Abraham’s work was the person of Christ born from his descendants and out of Heaven. The savior of the whole earth, even of the whole creation, was at the end of a long road of mistake after mistake, and yet Abraham held on in the midst of his failings, trusting that something better was coming down the road.

In our own life, there are many times we encounter challenges that make us question our faith. I think we would be delusional if we did not look at the suffering in this world and not have the question of, “Why?” creep into our mouths. Someday we’ll look at Job and how God blessed his interrogation of divine mercy, but that book gives us a clear message – faith is not diminished through questions, but enhanced. We cannot be convinced of God’s goodness unless we look at God in the face, unless we ask “Why?” and “How long?” and “What are you doing?” To meet God is to meet with the known and the unknowable. To know God is to grow in understanding the hope that hides beyond the horizon of each dark day.

I find it hard to talk about Hope without quoting Emily Dickinson:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
– That perches in the soul
– And sings the tune without the words
– And never stops – at all,

When we find our hope in Christ, it is not always a loud and triumphant thing. Like Abraham, it meets us in the midst of deep darkness and unknowing. It sings a tune we do not know the words of, but that we can follow faithfully as the beat echoes in our chest. We go forward to live the life we do, so that we might teach the tune to those we meet. In kindness shown to others and in hard lessons of love we have learned and in an endless march toward that better country we have seen only in dreams and deepest prayers, in all these things we proclaim our hope through faith. Listen to the song of Hope within you today and let that song bring you closer to home. – Amen.

Teach us to Number our Days

A Walk through the Lectionary

bible

Sermon 02/22/2026 – Grace, Freely Given

Sermon 02/15/2026 – An End to Myth

Sermon 02/08/2026 – Wisdom, not Words

Sermon 02/01/2026 – The Foolishness of God

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

Sermon 01/11/2026 – The Beloved

Sermon 12/21/2025 – Joseph and Epimetheus

Sermon 09/07/2025 – Two Paths

Sermon 08/17/2025 – Craving Falsehood

Sermon 08/10/2025 – That Better Country