faith

Sermon 06/07/2026 – Who is Invited?

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Sermon Text

Who is invited to sit at God’s table? Who makes the guest list for the grace of God? Is it you or me? The Magisterium of the Church? Who has authority to pull up a seat and say, “Tuck in!” Our lips may immediately say, “Only God! Christ alone! Whoever the Spirit calls!” but I am skeptical that we are committed to that truth. I am skeptical because I’m sure if I ask a different question we would probably have different answers. “Who isn’t invited?”

“Who isn’t invited?” That is a question that tantalizes more than any other. At first we may, again with a pious heart, say “All people are invited! None are barred!” Yet, our actions suggest differently. Look around this room and ask yourself how diverse a body we truly are in this congregation. I’m not just speaking in terms of race or place of origin, I mean in dress or attitude or disposition. Our incomes are not so varied as to shock, our manner of dress is comparable if nothing else, and we all have our Ps and Qs so aligned as not to distress our neighbors with too great a varied response to worship.

We are not alone in our homogeneity. The most segregated hour in America, along all lines, is a Sunday Morning. Churches attract their own little niche of people and they do so subconsciously. In the mode of worship they employ, in the time they offer it, and in the way they act throughout it. Some of this is inevitable. Though we wish to “be all things to all people,” at the end of the day there is only so much we can do in the bounds of our order of worship and within an hour and change on a single day of the week. There are different churches because there are different people and sometimes God needs us to employ our differences to save people with different needs. Yet, I feel, if we take that line of thought too far then Church becomes a place you have to shop around for, a thing you consume rather than are consumed by, it becomes a place we go to receive and not a place we become a symbiotic whole with.

Our Scripture today captures the scandalous nature of Jesus’s ministry well. Calling his disciples as he goes, he finds Matthew the Tax Collector. We do not know if Matthew was a Roman transplant into Judea or a native Judean who took on a Roman job but either way we know what his reputation was. Tax collectors in his day were seen as traitors and crooks – taking money to support the soldiers and empire that would throw you in the gutter for fun and crucify you for talking back. Matthew, Judean or Roman, was seen as someone working against the people of God, robbing them for his own health and for the good of their enemies.

Yet, when Jesus sees him, he knows what Matthew is to become and not what he is. He does not see a Roman traitor, he sees an Apostle, or someone who will become one at least. He calls for Matthew to follow him and Matthew follows immediately. Then, either at Matthew’s house or someone else’s, Jesus has dinner. People are coming to hear him speak anyway, so a crowd begins to gather. Yet, the people who are invited to be at Jesus’s table, those who he wants closest to him, are the rejects. He has the tax collectors and “sinners,” a catch-all term here meaning, “those people,” sit down right beside him.

As Jesus breaks bread and eats, some of the crowd gathered around the house leans in to ask his disciples a question. These are the local pastors of the area, the Pharisees and Teachers, and they’re concerned about this traveling miracle worker. “He does these wonderful things, teaches these wonderful teachings, but now he is sitting and eating with these people? Make that make sense to me.” The disciples do not get a chance to answer for Jesus, because he publicly answers their private accusation disguised as a question – “A doctor does not attend to people who are well, a doctor is called to heal the sick!”

Here enters in the contradiction that Jesus always leaves in the midst of his teachings. Jesus is saying that the folks he is sitting with need him more than the people coming in and criticizing him. Does that mean that the Pharisees and Teachers aren’t sinners in need of salvation? Of course not! They are, however, people who should know better. They have received God’s grace through the established means of the Temple and the fellowship provided by the Synagogue and the tutelage of the law. They are folks who are not “cured,” of sin, if such a thing is possible, but they are folks on their way to recovery.

They have, however, forgotten that they are only where they are by the grace of God. Only the accidents of how they were born and how the cards have fallen in their life to this point has allowed them to be Pharisees and Teachers rather than tax collectors and publicly known profligates. They have allowed themselves to forget that anything they do right they were taught and supported into doing and all they do wrong has left their mind is a sea of perceived righteousness. They may not break the rules as readily or as often as those they now criticize, but they have not been transformed by God’s grace – they have let their hearts harden if anything.

There are two main things that keep people from coming into Church, and neither of them have anything to do with Jesus. The first is past hurt from the Church, ways that the people of God have actively harmed them – that is a talk for another time. The second, however, is still tied to the failing of the Church. We stand on a hill of perceived holiness, we spread our arms out to the world and say, “We’re here if you want us!” Then we shake our head at all the people who don’t waltz into our sanctuary. We do not go out into the world and bring the Gospel with us, if we did that we’d lose control. We do not invite folks in with a wild and uncompromising invitation, because it would ask too much of us and our habits and expectations.

Christ our Lord not only sat with sinners when he found them, but actively sought them out. He did not ask them to get clean and perfect immediately. The Pharisees were not shocked by their sudden repentance or holiness, they still viewed them as sinners and thieves. It is unlikely that the people gathered around Jesus that night, sin sick their whole life long, were suddenly and permanently changed in that one night… Yet I’m willing to believe that several of them started the long, hard road of discipleship after coming close to Jesus that night.

The Disciples that night were serving a role that we often neglect in our role as Christians. They were standing around the table, letting people come to Jesus, and answering the questions of the people who would doubt the validity of the people coming to eat with him. They were not interrogating people to see if they were worthy of God’s grace, but refuting those who questioned it. The Pharisees could not get close enough to browbeat those seeking Jesus, because the Disciples stood in the way. What would it look like for us to do that? To be the sort of people who kept the judgmental eye off of those seeking Christ, and spared no expense in bringing his table to those who most earnestly wanted to eat from it.

People of God, the table of Grace is set before us. As we approach to take part in Christ’s passion, let us let this grace transform us. Let us become defenders and advocates for folks to make their way to this place of grace. Christ has come to save sinners, and that definitely includes us. Are we willing to let it stop with us? – Amen.

Sermon 05/31/2026 – In the Beginning

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”

 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude. On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens…

Sermon Text

 Trinity Sunday is one of the more difficult Sundays of the year. Every day that we gather together as the Church, we are celebrating a triune God. This means that God is three persons but still one complete entity. God the Father is distinct from the Son and the Spirit, but all three are still one God. This is complicated and mystical and generally not something we often try to put into words as a Church because there are several million ways of teaching it incorrectly and only a handful of ways that begin to approach the truth.

Yet, across the history of the Church, there has been a repeated call by ill informed people to do away with the concept of the Trinity. They will point to the fact that the word does not appear in scripture and then find ways to formulate a world where God exists in all sorts of inferior ways to the truth of the trinity. Some say God the Father became Jesus Christ who, upon his ascension became the Spirit. Others say Jesus was merely adopted by God and given a special place in creation, but is not actually God in the same way God is. And so on and so forth, the truth of the Trintiy is lessened until God is broken apart and diminished into something far different than what scripture reveals.

Scripture is clear that Christ is God, having full equality with God since before creation.[1] Scripture is likewise clear that the Holy Spirit is God, revered and honored in equal measure.[2] If we believe that these two are treated as God, and we believe that there is only one God, then God must exist as three persons – Father, Son, and Spirit – and still remain the singular God who we worship and adore. To be united as one, while remaining distinct, is not something that we can picture in our own human existence, but it is fully possible for God.

Our scripture today does not provide a view of the Trinity, except through the lens of our Christian faith. No person reading this scripture before Jesus walked the earth would believe God was a Trinity just by reading Genesis 1. Yet, for the Christian, our faith gives another reading.

In the Creation of the world, all three persons of God were fully present, active, and in sync with one another. God the Father, who exists in Spirit above and beyond all things, breathes the Holy Spirit onto the uncreated universe. The movement of the Spirit causes the waters to be troubled, the uncreated mass suddenly begins to contemplate the potential of order. When God speaks, the Word of God is sent forward, the only and eternally begotten Son creates at the behest of the Father’s words. “Let there be,” is followed immediately by “Here it is.” The Father sends, the Son creates, the Spirit enlivens. Across Genesis 1 and 2, nothing becomes something at the behest of the Trinity which forever existed in isolation.

The reason for the creation is never given in scripture. The closest we come is to the general theme expressed in several places – all things exist to glorify God, and so all of creation exists to glorify its creator. I would add to this a second, more relational note. As all things exist to glorify God, so all things exist to glory within what God has done, is doing, and will do. In other words, the existence we have with God is reciprocal. God does not stand on high and demand worship, building a universe for Divine Adulation, without making the creation benefit from the arrangement. The universe is created for God and God offers the fullness of the Divine Being for the creation to enjoy.

Scripture has a word that is used to describe the three persons of the Trinity, they are all participants in Θεοτης  (theotēs,) a word that is usually defined as “Godhood,” “Divinity,” or “The Godhead.” Personally, I like to describe it as God’s “God-ness.” To be a being of theotēs is to be equally part of the thing which is called “God,” to participate in that unique existence.

We are then pleased to see that, throughout all of scripture and all of history, God has made this “God-ness,” available to those who seek after it. When Adam and Eve are thrown from the Garden, God does not leave them behind, but allows them to continue worship. When Cain kills Abel, God shows him love and spares him. Across centuries of violence, the Ark is built. God the Father exists in covenant with this world, through Noah and from the time of Noah until today, always working toward reconciling the world back to its creator. In due time, God sent the Spirit to rest upon certain people called, “Prophets,” and ensured that through them the eternal Word of God was made known.

All this would be sufficient and good, but God is not one to settle for “Good Enough.” In a backwater part of the world, in a strange confluence of history, God sent the Word to become flesh and dwell among us. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the fullness of God-ness dwelt. Jesus was fully God and fully human, his human-ness and his God-ness in perfect harmony despite being distinct. Christ lived, died, rose again, and ascended all so that we could receive the Spirit into ourselves. To this day, we are houses for the Holy Spirit, and through Christ’s participation in humanity, we are able to participate in the unity of God. Though we are never recipients of the “God-ness,” that defines God apart form creation, we are able to enter into the perfected, divine, humanity of Christ but being subsumed into his body, the Church.

The Trinity is complicated, the celebration of it ever incomplete as we struggle to imagine the kind of unity that can exist perfectly across three persons. Yet, gathered here as the people of God, we are likewise participating in a strange contradiction. You and I are distinct, you are distinct from the people around you, and yet we together are the Church, and therefore we are made into the Body of Christ. If Christ’s body was raised, the we too can be lifted from our current state. Because God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are together lifting us up. – Amen

[1]

[2]

Sermon 05/24/2026 – Abundant Prophecy

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Numbers 11:24-30

So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered seventy of the elders of the people and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders, and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Sermon Text

Pentecost! The day we celebrate as the “Birth of the Church,” when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples and blessed them with a multitude of languages, allowing them to communicate the gospel to any and all people who came near to them. Folks looked at them like they were drunk, some accused them of general indecency, but the truth was all the more fantastic. Christ, who had ascended some days earlier, had kept his promise and sent the Spirit down to rest on the disciples. The men and women in the upper room were out in the streets telling the story of Christ’s death and resurrection and the whole of Jerusalem was amazed.

The Spirit is something that we in the mainline churches are often accused of lacking. We do not often engage in ecstatic worship – we aren’t dancing in the aisles or speaking in tongues. We do not do much extemporaneously, “in the present moment,” instead leaning on our liturgies and hymnals. To many in the modern milieu of American Religion, we are placed at odds with our Denominational Descendants in the Holiness and Nondenominational churches and a line is drawn between us. In one corner there are the staunch and boring traditional folk and in the other the ecstatic and lively contemporary worshippers.

These are not new distinction, every period of history has shown worship taking these forms. One the formalized and measured, the other the spontaneous and free. The difficult thing that we must assess as Christians, people practicing our faith now, is how we need to apply these broad categories to our life. Is it better to be free completely? Or is it better to do what we know works and guarantee our presence before God through ordinary means of grace? Today I want to offer a far more true to life option, one that is complicated as only truth can be. The Spirit of God is not constrained to one method of worship or the other, it is above, beyond, and through them all.

We have already addressed that people responded to God’s Spirit being poured out on Pentecost with skepticism. “What are these drunk fishermen yelling about? And why are they yelling it in Latin, Gallic, and Persian?” The people were gathered in Jerusalem that day to celebrate “The Feast of Weeks,” which commemorates God’s gift of the Torah to the people of God and the yearly harvest. This dual celebration ended the festive season that followed Passover, much like how Pentecost ends our celebration of Easter today. They were worshipping God as God had commanded, and in so doing received God’s goodness, yet God was also at work through those who were receiving the Spirit in a new and different way, the Church.

This mirrors the story told in our scripture for the day. The Sanhedrin, the seventy elders of Israel, had gone to meet with God and received the Holy Spirit. They prophesied before God, speaking deep spiritual truths in a way they never would again. They did so at God’s command, in the God sanctioned way of approaching the Tent of Meeting which housed God’s throne – the Ark of the Covenant. Yet, as they proclaimed truth by gathering around the Tent, God was not limited by the “sanctioned,” way of doing things. While the Elders gathered there, the Spirit rested on two men, Eldad and Medad, who spoke God’s truth without the metrics and means the Elders had used. Yet, Moses assures us both means are valid, true, and fully under God’s control.

As is obvious to most anyone who sees me, I am a huge proponent for the “ordinary,” means of God’s grace. Gathering in churches, receiving the sacraments, and praying as we read the scriptures are sure ways to come close to God. I go further in my personal application of them, trying to steep what we do here in the traditions and methods of the Church which stretch back, in some cases, to Christ’s disciples themselves. In this ancient ways, and in my gift of them to the congregations I serve, I seek to give us a sure path to God’s grace. I consider it one of my duties as an elder to relate, preserve, and innovate upon the ancient work of the Church.

Yet, God is never limited by the ordinary. I knew a godly woman (and mucked out her horse stalls once a year,) who could pray like nobody else I knew. More than that, she also prayed in a way I had never seen, speaking in a language only she and God knew. In this conference I know someone who, though he has now begun the process of ordination, did more work as a lay person and a licensed minister than most any ordained elder I have ever seen. Truth is spoken, miracles performed, and good work down outside of the hierarchy and usual means of the Church every day.

The problem comes, inevitably, that we prioritize one thing over the other. We look at people doing things in fresh and new ways, and so neglect the foundation that makes those new things possible. Likewise, we get so caught up in the way things are, we fail to see what God is]’ doing beyond our walls and outside the usual way things are done. Pentecost is the day God tore down the separation between old and new forever, creating a kingdom that is eternal and that simply “is.” In this new world, we are constantly bringing out treasures “old and new,” to God’s glory.[1]

We are blessed this Pentecost to baptize young people into this world. We are likewise blessed to welcome a family into our Church. As they grow, they will challenge us to do new and different and better things. As we welcome them into our family of faith we will offer a foundation that makes these new works possible. The Spirit, alive and moving, seeks to make prophets of us all – people who speak the word of God as if it were our own. Let us follow that Spirit, to the font which was poured out centuries ago, and to the springs that appear without warning. Old and new, planned and unplanned, God is at work. Let us be at work too. – Amen

[1] Matthew 13:52

Sermon 04/02/2026 – Taking Unworthily

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Romans 7:21-8:8

So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Sermon Text

 Today, we gather to remember Christ’s final meal with his disciples. As he sat in their midst, in a room prepared by hands that did not know who the table was even meant for, he worked a wonderful thing. There, with friends and with foe, Christ celebrated God’s deliverance one last time.

This meal was not the only time this meal would be celebrated. With and through the Spirit, Christ sits down with all who take the time to remember his story. In breaking bread, in taking up a cup, we declare Christ’s deliverance until we see it fully perfect through his physical, and not just real, presence.

Yet, as we remember this eal, we will be joining in another rite of the Church. We will eat and enjoy fellowship, we will thank God for the true abundance set before us. In this way, we remember that we, having been delivered by Christ, are his presence in this world.

This meal sits before us, all the same, alongside the words of Paul. A reminder that as we gather for food and fellowship, not just in this meal but all our gatherings, we do so with an eye toward service. We should not feast and give thanks without also thinking of the hungry. We should not celebrate communion without thinking of those who do not know the taste of God’s deliverance and who have drank deep of his presence.

We are warned not to take of God’s feast unworthily, but the definition of “unworthy,” is not left to our imagination. Sin and failure are cured by this table, and so are not obstacles to it. Fitness to receive God’s grace is a fond fantasy. No, Paul is clear, to take unworthily is to lock away access to food people need to live. It is to bar them from the table of Grace. To say God’s deliverance is ours, and his presence reserved only for our table.

What are we to do with a God who came to serve, except to serve him in return? The presence of Christ is revealed to us in two ordinary ways. The first is in the eucharist, the bread and cup which we break and bless. The second is in the people we see around us in need. Those who we are called to walk alongside and to serve. Every hungry, addicted, marginalized, or forgotten person is Christ here with us. They cry out for deliverance, that we may be the presence of Christ to them and they to us.

The table of our Lord is set, with both bodily and spiritual sustenance. Let it show us the road toward right action, toward service, toward the full embrace of God’s presence in all its forms. Let us be delivered by our God, who brought us here today to remember. – Amen.

Sermon 03/29/2026 – Amazing Grace

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Romans 7:21-8:8

So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Sermon Text

 This month has been a lot. We’ve looked at how Jesus’s death, the sufficiency of that death to cleanse of our sins, and the need for us to truly put away sin to live our life in Christ to its fullest. Grace, it turns out, is not just something that we say before a meal or write on our sign. Grace is the lifegiving gift of God that invigorates every aspect of who we are. To be a Christian is to be a recipient of Christ’s goodness, and in the goodness that God has given us, we have a great deal to give praise for.

As we gather today for Palm Sunday, we do not tell the story of people gathered outside Jerusalem, as we usually do. We do not recount our humble Lord riding into the city on a donkey. Instead, we gather to be that crowd. We who have seen Christ’s salvation, having been reminded over the course of Lent what it means to receive grace upon grace, have a prerogative toward singing of God’s goodness. We declare, today and always, that there is power in what Jesus did two thousand years ago precisely because Jesus is still saving us today.

The Church year begins with Advent, just a month ahead of the secular calendar. In that season we await Christ to be born into our hearts once again. Christ, living in the flesh, is an inspiration to us across our walk through January until the end of Lent. Those forty days of preparation begin with the reminder that we are just ash given life for a time. They conclude today with the cheers we raise to our one true savior who has never stopped saving us. Today as we sing “Hosannah!” I hope you are not just doing it because it is in the hymnal or written on the bulletin, but because you truly feel that call in your Heart. “Save us, O God!”

Today, though we are in Keyser and not Jerusalem, we remember the truth that Paul restates in our scripture for today. “There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” We are rescued from our “body of death,” which chooses sin over righteousness again and again, not through anything we do, but through the all sufficient and wonderful sacrifice of Christ. We see, with the benefit of hindsight, what the crowd gathered that day never could. We know that Christ’s crucifixion waits on the horizon. It is a dark and cruel day on which the price of our salvation must be paid. We celebrate today more fully than they ever could have, and yet we also are bound up with the weight of Good Friday’s terrible cost.

We ought to wave the palm branches we have, because we are alive and more than that made fully alive by what Christ has done. Sin has no power over us, nor does death keep its sting. For even as our flesh fails, we have the promise of a future resurrection. The wonder of God is not limited only to the three score and ten of a human life – it stretches into eternity through the wonderful work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today is a day to praise God for all God has done.

We end our series on grace with a simple declaration. Grace is truly amazing. Whether it is the grace which calls us to be part of God’s church, or the grace that allows us to get rid of sin, it is that grace which makes this life we live in Christ possible. The same grace equips us to move from evil and into good, a move we would never make on our own. Grace, the blessing of God delivered to us through the work of Jesus Christ, is always available and always at work. All things are reconciled to God through this force of good and all good is made possible through the same.

As we wave our palm branches, especially here in a moment as we bring forward the elements for Holy Communion, I hope you will be able to reflect on God’s grace in your own life. Maybe you have just started a serious walk in faith, God’s grace just now bringing you into understanding what it means to be saved. Maybe you have faith, but have not yet chased off the lingering sin you hate in yourself. Maybe the next step of developing goodness is where you are. Maybe your somewhere in between any and all of these stages of life. Wherever you are, as we gather to celebrate our coming salvation, the grace that God offers us is here, ready for you to receive.

We read through the book of Romans throughout Lent. A book written by a man who devoted his life, at one point, to the persecution of Christians. It was written to Roman citizens who had celebrated the expulsion of Jews from the city, and now were being asked to welcome them back into the congregation. It remains for us today as a book that tries to make sense of God’s grace by specifically looking at how it interacts with the real lives of God’s people. The righteous, the wicked, Gentile and Jew, killer and healer, all are invited to a table that can set all things right… If only we can take seriously our call to make use of it.

If God’s grace is sufficient for all people, then it is certainly sufficient for us individually. If we are so saved by so amazing a God, then I hope that we can truly celebrate the work of God today. Let those palms wave, let your voice rise up, let your praise be true! For God’s grace is amazing, and it is given freely to you and to me, to all flesh that we may be saved. – Amen.

Sermon 02/22/2026 – Grace, Freely Given

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 02/18/2026 – Piety, not Pity

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 6:1-21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 02/15/2026 – An End to Myth

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

2 Peter 1:16-21

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 02/08/2026 – Wisdom, not Words

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

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

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

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

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

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

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

But we have the mind of Christ.

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon 02/01/2026 – The Foolishness of God

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

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

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

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

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

Sermon Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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