faith

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

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 1:29-42

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 01/11/2026 – The Beloved

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 3:13-17

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2] Genesis 22:2

Sermon 12/21/2025 – Joseph and Epimetheus

/ 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

/ 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

/ 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 08/03/2025 – Real Exhaustion

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Ecclesiastes 1:2-14

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. All things are wearisome, more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in the ages before us. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.

I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to humans to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

Sermon Text

Mundanity is a killer. The sun comes up and goes down, the laundry always needs done, and the weekend ends just as soon as it begins. The ebb and flow of time leaves us reeling. How do we stop ourselves from being consumed by the endless repetition of the same old thing? Novelty is only temporary and the newest thing will always become old given enough time. The sunshine, the rain, the coming and going seasons, all can just be a bit overwhelming sometimes.

You may be saying that this is a strange way to look at the coming and going of things. If you read further in Ecclesiastes, for example, you come to a point in which the Teacher tells us that there is a season for everything under the sun. There’s a time to mourn and a time to dance, there’s a time to build and a time to tear down, a time to gather stones and a time to throw away stones. It’s all very poetic, all very beautiful, The Byrds even sang about it. However, at the end of it all, that passage is part of the ongoing theme in the book of Ecclesiastes. The succession of one season, to another, to another is an irritation, not a consolation.

This month I would like for us to take some time to look at several places in scripture that tell us about the world as it is – fundamentally broken – and also what they tell us about what the world can be. As we go through, I’m not going to hesitate to name the broken ways that we experience the world now. I’m not gonna leave you without hope each Sunday, don’t you worry, but I think we can only truly understand what the Gospel means to us if we look at the world now and draw conclusions from that about what work Christ is really undertaking in this world. Today we do that by looking at the book of Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite books in all of scripture, to talk about what this world can do to really exhaust us.

As we consider the book of Ecclesiastes, it reads as an honest assessments of ourselves and the world we live in. Admit it to yourself and find yourself freed by the admission that sometimes you’re tired of the way things are. It doesn’t have to be a profound realization, it doesn’t even have to be something that affects your life very often. The world is not the way it should be and it manifests in one-thousand tiny ways that makes us aware of that imperfection. The snide comment that we make towards the people we love that becomes a source of guilt in our heart. The offhanded comment someone else makes about us that we sit and think about and agonize over day after day wondering what they really meant. The seasonal bronchitis that rests in our lungs or the return from remission of one disease or another deep in our bones and in our flesh. The patterns of this life are not always a constant entering into something pleasant. Sometimes we take a step forward and find that our path is quite a rocky one.

Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher seeks to find some way to understand how to live in this imperfect world. We’re told that he tried literally everything he could think of. He tried womanizing, he tried drinking, he tried pouring himself into work. Any distraction, any vice, it was worth it in his mind to give it a go. Their conclusion is telling: every last bit of it was useless. “Vanity of vanities,” is the way that this is usually translated. Other translation put it as “Useless! Useless!” However, in my mind the best example of a translation comes out of Robert Alter, who puts forward the translation as “Merest Breath!” The Hebrew gives the impression of a breath breathed out early in the morning, the last bit of vapor fading away… That is how the Teacher viewed his journey for purpose.

 More than just dealing with the troubles of life in the present moment, the Teacher looks beyond his life. Everything he worked on will be handed down to a relative and he has no idea if they will do a good job. He could become rich and comfortable one hundred times over, but he would be unable to take it with him when he died. Everything terminated the same way for everyone, the evil who lived far too long, the good who die far too young, are all gathered together into the same ground. Death is the only ending to the long succession of exhausting cycles we are trapped in.

This, people of God, is the world as we know it. Now, here I could do a really easy thing and turn this around in a few words. “God shows us the world as it could be! The resurrection changes all that!” And I would be right to say it. However, I do not think that you or I would be completely satisfied with so quick an answer. We need better answers than, “mysterious ways,” and “it will be better by and bye,” we need to actually wrestle with the brokenness of the world. If we are going to say the Gospel makes a difference, we need to talk about what the Gospel does to change these things! There is hope for this world, and that hope is in Jesus Christ, but it will take us the rest of this month to even start to address just how Christ gives us freedom from the drudgery of this world.

If I can spoil the ending of Ecclesiastes for you, though, I can say that the Teacher comes to two simple conclusions. Firstly, that we should live each day in the knowledge that we only have today as a guarantee, and only have one life to live on this side of eternity. Do not focus on “legacy,” or career to the detriment of enjoying this life and the people you have around you in it. Do not chase a hedonistic lifestyle of getting whatever you want, whenever you want it either, extremes are usually bad. No, instead we should all be willing to say, “My time on earth is limited. I will take none of my money with me when I am gone, my resume shall not go before me in the grave. I have today to do what it right, to care for those around me… That is more than enough.

Secondly, the Teacher decides that of everything he did, only his commitment to God really mattered. We cannot regret time we spend in prayer or in worship. We cannot regret service to those around us done for love of God and neighbor. We cannot regret the things which God has placed in front of us, because those things alone have any true lasting power. Through God, the mundane is made into something holy. G.K. Chesterton puts it well, “God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.”[1]

As we speak of the mundane being made holy, we must turn our minds to the meal we are about to share. If you are like me and get tired of this world’s many problems and the relentless ebb and flow of time, then this table is here to give you strength. Christ came into the midst of this world’s mess, not standing from far off and yelling platitudes at us, but taking on the same troubles we faced. Christ drank deep of the mundane troubles of this world, took on the pain of disease and injury, lost friends and family, and even died at the convergence of all these struggles. In death, in the fullness of solidarity, Christ secured his right to rise again, and lift all of humanity with him.

Today, we have mostly stated a problem. We take up this spiritual food and drink to continue on in the midst of that problem. Yet, I believe, and I hope you do too, that by the end of this month, we will not find life to be “mere breath,” but so much fuller and worth living than that. – Amen.

[1] G.K. Chesteron. “The Ethics of Elfland,” in Orthodoxy. (John Lane ; The Bodley Head, Limited. 1926.) 107

Rewriting Babel – 06/08/2025

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The Torah Lesson                                                                    Genesis 11:1-9

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” 

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Sermon Text

Today is the day of the Pentecost. We commemorate when the church was truly born through the visitation of God’s spirit upon them and the emergence of different languages in their midst. Traditionally we would read the story out of Acts in which each of the disciples found themselves speaking in languages they did not know and proclaiming the gospel to a long list of very hard to pronounce peoples and nations. However, this year, I think it is necessary for us to look at the text that I believe Acts is inspired by. We look to the language and the narrativization of that event to truly understand what we are being told happened when God sent the Spirit into the Church.

Long, long ago, we are given two stories for how the languages of the world developed. In Genesis 10, we are told that after the flood, as Noah and his sons went to different corners of the earth, the people of the world naturally spread apart and over time developed different languages and ways of being. This is the kind of understanding of how culture and language developed that we see in the social sciences as well. Over time people scattered from their origins in sub-Saharan Africa, all across the earth, taking with them bits of culture that changed across the wide breadth of the earth. In Genesis 10, the Table of Nations that we are given tells a story of how large our human family is – all of us connected, all of us tied together by our shared lineage, and yet separated by space-time and language.

Like much of Genesis, however, there are two different versions of this story. While one tells a very natural story of how people grew apart over time, the other story puts much more intentionality to why God would choose that humanity needed to spread apart. As we read in Genesis 11, we are given an episode out of human history that makes the sudden spreading of people across the world a matter of morality. In the early parts of Genesis, we see again and again the way that people not only go foul of what God wishes, but actively seek to cause harm to God, and to God’s creation, and to each other.

As soon as humanity leaves the garden of Eden, Cain kills Abel and in that killing secures a legacy of violence within humanity. In the time of Noah, we’re told that humanity is so violent that God must send a flood to reset the world as it is known just so that there is a chance for the people to survive through Noah and his family. However, Noah and his family, being human, are still capable of sin. Ham, one of his children, sins against his father, resulting in his sons, Cannan being cursed. Humanity regardless of anything that happened before this point begins to develop their old habits again. Slowly, but surely, everyone comes together and works out this idea that if they can work together they could build a tower that could reach up to heaven.

In art and in our imagination, we imagine this as some great building, but from historical records we know that the largest of the ziggurats in the ancient world were no more than four or five stories. The massive ziggurat that would have been understood by the exilic community of Jews was only 10 stories tall, still not this massive building that would reach up to the heavens. The issue was not actually whether or not the building was giant, it wasn’t even really the intent of the people to reach up to heaven, instead it was simply the potential for these people to work together for any purpose that God decided was worth scattering their language and confounding their tongues.

Looking at the brokenness of humanity, God decided that it was better to separate us to keep us from conspiring again and again. The evil that we had perpetrated in the past and the time of Noah would only be made stronger by our newfound ability to build, to innovate, to keep reaching towards things beyond ourselves. Even in our modern world, the way that humanity comes together is often not for the good of one another but for evil. For every creation that comes about for the good of humanity there are two or three that are built only for greed or for death or for evil. In our own time, our own attempt to get into the heavens, the rocket technology that we continue to use for the limited space exploration that we are capable of, was all born out of a desire to create better rockets for weapons of war. Humanity in the modern age still comes together for evil. We are still is capable of so much destruction.

Yet, what we are given in the Pentecost is a promise that this does not need to be what we come together for. God gives, on the Pentecost, the ability for people to come together and hear of Christ. To come and to hear the instructions that God gives so that they are able to truly become part of a Kingdom that is bigger than the individual nations that they had been a part of. From the time of Babel to the time of Christ humanity, had come together again and again for the purposes of war and evil and trouble. Now in the Kingdom that Christ had initiated through his life death and resurrection a new era was promised, and in this era it was possible for people to come together not just to further their own selfish desire but to seek the good of one another.

The church was not immune from the troubles of becoming large and powerful and full of sin. Within just two chapters of this amazing Pentecost moment, we read about the fact that the church began to discriminate based on the language that people spoke forgetting the purpose of this Pentecost moment. Yet this Kingdom was not disturbed by the failure of its physical body from acting as it needed to. The Spirit still rose up leaders to correct this mistake to change the course of the church and to send it into a better future. We today, recipients of that same Spirit, can lean into or go against the work that God has put within us to send us forward into a better tomorrow.

As we will talk about more in these last two Sundays that I have with you, the Church is constantly discovering the ways that we put up barriers between ourselves and our neighbors. This impulse works against the core of what God’s Spirit is doing. While there was a day in which God said it was better for humanity to be scattered lest they commit evil, that was a punishment and not a goal. The goal of God’s work in the world has always been to reunite all of humanity under the banner of Christ and the pursuit of goodness. Yet, if we search our hearts today, I bet we would find that there is reticence within ourselves to embrace so broad a view of God’s Kingdom.

Maybe it’s the priority of your own country over others or of your own people over others. Maybe you have decided that everyone politically against you must be the absolute epitome of evil. Maybe you have cast aside anything and everything that goes against the worldview that you’ve created for yourself. Maybe you just have forgotten that you are meant to love and that that love has to manifest for every person created by God and not just the ones that fit into the box we have said is lovable. In the Pentecost, God wanted to make clear that Babel was a punishment and that punishment was not the goal.

God is actively rewriting Babel, we do not have to be people who are separate and who push against each other. Likewise, we do not have to come together only to do harm to further our wants above anyone else’s. We have the option through the spirit of God to create a world modeled after the Kingdom which was started before the foundations of the earth and sealed through the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God wants to take you and make you the pencil that will rewrite this world’s story and see things differently tomorrow than they are today. Let the Spirit fall upon you and let you know now and forever that God is the God of all peoples, nations, races, and creeds and that God wishes for all to sit and eat at the table which is prepared for them. Let us call together the people of this earth that our sin forced apart. – Amen.

Sermon 11/10/2024 – How Easily we Brag

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Mark 12:38-44

As [Jesus] taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Sermon Text

Pride is one of the most dangerous things that exists in this world. We’ve talked before about how our language does us a major disservice in not separating out, “pride,” as a sinful state of being from “pride,” as having high esteem for something good in our life. I think, however, that the two are more related than even I would like to admit. There is not a huge leap between legitimate feelings of happiness about something good in our lives and an unhealthy fixation on it. Sometimes even legitimate pride become an unwillingness to acknowledge our individual and corporate failings or even our to see our dependency on God.

Throughout scripture one of the most consistent opponents to God’s good work are prideful people of faith. The prophets were usually up against the priests and fellow prophets they had worked with their whole life. Ezra and Nehemiah were heroes and villains in their own time – butting up against other members of God’s people who they did not think had the right pedigree to be part of the exilic community. Jesus most of all is documented as fighting against some of the most important people in the religious community of his day. He opposed scribes, pharisees, and sadducees. These groups were not inherently evil, he did not oppose them out of principle, but because of what they so often let themselves become.

Scribes were the literate in society, and held power as legal recorders and lawyers. Pharisees were the pastors of their day, giving God’s word to the people and instructing them in daily life. Sadducees were tied to the Temple, and they provided a moderating presence – ensuring the Torah was respected and clung tightly too. Yet, in each of these positions, with power and influence on the line, people would often begin to sin simply by investing importance in themselves and their way of being and doing that ultimately only served their own interests. Pride snuck in, pride made them self-interested, and pride led them to destroy their community.

Jesus talks about the scribes in particular in our passage. He says they wear long robes – why does that matter? What do you think a long robe indicates? Besides having a lot of fabric, therefore being expensive to make – long robes make it impractical to do manual labor. To wear one in public makes it clear that you are not someone who has to dirty their hands. Long sleeves added to this affect, and it is widely believed that the “coat of many colors,” which Jospeh wore was meant to show his brothers that Joseph was too good for the maula labor they were made to do out in the fields.[1]

Scribes are also described as praying long prayers in public, seated with the best people in worship and at parties. This is a criticism levied at the Pharisees as well, who are also described as wearing large phylacteries known as tefillin. These boxes containing scripture tied to the wrists and forehead.[2] Jesus is not saying it is a sin to pray, or to dress in robes, or to wear outward signs of faith like the tefillin. The sin came in doing these things for the sake of appearances rather than faith. If you ask me, the average offender probably didn’t realize when the things they had done changed from something they were doing for God and what they were doing for themselves.

As Christians today, we often read these warnings with a quiet nod. We know what its like to meet those overblown, holier-than-thou types. They’re insufferable! There’s no way we would ever do anything like what they do… Unless, we already do it without thinking. Unless we’ve become so accustomed to our faith being a badge we wear to congratulate ourselves rather than a way of life we embody, that changes and challenges us.

Think though, of what Christian culture is so often about. We wear hats on our heads, bracelets on our wrist, loud and proud declarations of our faith. T-shirts convey messages that let people know that we are Good Christian folk. Everything we see on Facebook that tells us we need to share it or else we’re secretly ashamed of God has to be shared! We have to let people know we’re Christian and that we’re not like all those other people in the world! We’re better through our faith, we’re more proper and we believe exactly what we should.

Is it wrong to wear a Christian slogan on a hat, or a bracelet, or a shirt? No, of course not. As long as it’s an actual good sentiment and not something antagonistic or improper. Is it wrong to share a prayer you read on Facebook that moves you? Absolutely not. Like the Pharisees of old, a Christian who shows their faith publicly is doing exactly what they should… Until they switch to showing off to people and not showing up for God. The shift from one to the other can be simple, slow, and yet it consumes us entirely.

How do we prevent that? How do we know which box we fall into? Firstly, I would say that self-awareness is always the first step to proper action. If we are willing to ask ourselves why we do the things we do, we will have a good answer. I’ve written out long posts on Facebook about my strong conviction as a person of faith… and then deleted them. Sermons likewise that I’ve thrown out, because I realized that I was not writing them for the good of God, but out of some strange sense of pride. I wear very plain clothes, only breaking out my clergy outfit when it matters that people know who I am.

True faith, true piety, true holiness that a person can be rightly proud of is self-evident. Prayer in public that comes from a natural belief God listens to our prayers and acts on them will be different than something we do to let the people know at the other tables around us that we’re good Christian folk. Sharing our faith for the purpose of glorifying God will look different than chasing down people and beating them with scripture.

Finally, I think that anything that truly inconveniences us bears the mark of an action that is hard to do out of selfish pride. If you have to give of yourself, and in ways that you truly find unpleasant, but you persist out of love of God and neighbor than it is hard to do that work out of pride. Christ humbled himself to the point of dying on the cross, and did so while actively dreading the terror ahead of him. While we do not face a cross, when we give till it hurts, that is a mark of our true faith.

The widow is at the close of this story, not to give us an excuse to give less to initiatives the Church is working on, but to remind us that there is a proportionality in faith. The widow gives very little to the offering, but to her that offering was a huge part of her livelihood. She felt that coin dropping in the plate, it was a real sacrifice that meant she had to go without. The rich who gave lavishly still had plenty to live off of, they didn’t feel a thing when they cut the cheque. How often are we willing to give till it hurts? Of money, of time, of resources. To do that is to humble ourselves, and to establish that we are doing the kind of work that is without pride, that is rooted in what God would have us do.

Thankless and difficult, that is often what the work that God calls us to do looks like. It does not demand others to look and laud us for it. It is quiet and humble, it does not insist upon itself. While others may see it and praise it, true pious action is often kept quiet. Seek to live a life that is full of God, full of actions that you can be proud of. Yet, do not let your hand slip from the pulse of your work, the authenticity of it, the true reason why you are embarking upon it. Let your piety be true, let your heart be humble, and do away with the parts of you that demands the approval of others. You will find Christ closer than ever in this. – Amen.

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[2]