​The Message
 
Last week, I preached on a passage from the Book of Job. In that sermon, I talked about the fact that Job expresses deep and bitter anger toward God, but he maintains a deep faith in God despite that anger.
 
In fact, I argued that Job could not be angry with God if he did not have a deep faith in God. If he did not have faith in God, what use would there be in being angry toward a God he didn’t believe in?
 
I spoke to many of you who said that sermon really resonated for you, and I also had several unrelated conversations with people about anger this past week.
 
So, as I was preparing for today’s service, I thought that perhaps God was prodding me to go a little deeper on this topic of anger.
 
We are living in a world where anger is rampant – anger with governments, anger with the church, anger with family members, and yes, a lot of anger toward God.
 
I encounter tons of people in my daily life who express either deep apathy toward God, or deep anger toward God (or toward the church).
 
Many people question the notion of a loving God who would allow so many bad things to happen. And this questioning often causes deep-rooted anger toward God.
 
And, because bad things happen in our world (and throughout history), people wonder whether a loving God even exists.
 
And because of these conversations that I have often with people (especially once they discover I’m a pastor), I began to wonder about Biblical stories of people who express anger toward God.
 
So, I did some research and compiled some short scripture passages for us to look at today.
 
I think it’s worth beginning with a few of the most well-known Biblical figures who express anger toward God throughout the Bible.
 
Perhaps the most obvious expression of direct anger toward God is Job, who we of course talked at length about last week.
 
But another example from the Hebrew Bible is Moses. Moses is one of the most beloved prophets from the Hebrew Bible.
 
And, despite his prominence in the Hebrew Bible, he expresses anger and frustration toward God multiple times throughout his story.
 
In Numbers 11: 10-15, for example, Moses asks, “why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight?”
 
Moses had become frustrated with God, and he felt like he was trying to take care of his people, but it had become too much of a burden for him, and he no longer really wanted to deal with it.
 
In Exodus 5: 22-23, Moses blames God for doing nothing to help free his people from Pharaoh.
 
Some other examples include:
 
In Jonah 4:9, Jonah says he’s angry enough with God that he could die.
 
In Jeremiah 20:7, Jeremiah feels deceived by God and cries out in anger.
 
Throughout the Psalms, David cries out in anger. “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (22)
“How long will you hide your face from me?” (13)
 
In Habakkuk 1:2, he begins his story with anger: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?”
 
In Ruth 1: 20-21, Naomi bitterly resents God’s harsh treatment toward her.
 
And, in 1 Kings 19, Elijah complains that God left him alone and then asks to die.
 
All of these examples demonstrate that, at least throughout the Hebrew Bible, honest expressions of emotion and anger are not condemned.
 
In fact, throughout their stories, all of these figures maintain their relationships with God and maintain a deep faith in God through their anger, their lament, and their frustrations.
 
Furthermore, it is often the case that these moments of anger end up being a turning point on their spiritual journeys.
 
We saw that in the story of Job last week. Job finally gets his wish – to confront God – and in doing so, he’s taught a lesson in humility.
 
Job is reminded that the universe is complex and there are so many moving parts and facets that God is responsible for that Job cannot possibly understand.
 
Job can only understand his own circumstances, and he thinks his situation is unfair. But God reminds him that he is not the only living thing in the universe that God is responsible for.
 
Many of the other figures in the Hebrew Bible also move along their spiritual paths after expressing their anger or frustration with God.
 
But what about expressions of anger in the New Testament?
 
Jesus himself expresses anger often throughout the Gospels. His anger is not always at God – it is often anger with his disciples, with the Pharisees, or with injustice in general.
 
While he may not be blaming God for these things directly, he is still not condemned for expressing anger. In fact, often it’s a catalyst for a lesson or a parable that leads to a teaching moment.
 
Perhaps the most well-known of Jesus’ expressions of anger toward God is an echo Psalm 22 in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 when Jesus cries, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
 
It’s possible that this is not always read as anger explicitly, but it is an expression of deep anguish and protest, and he is directly addressing God as he cries out from the cross.
 
And then, of course, there are expressions of anger toward Jesus as well.
 
John the Baptist, when he is in prison, wonders if Jesus truly is the Messiah, and seems frustrated or angry that his expectations of what the Messiah came to accomplish have not been met. (Matthew 11: 2-3)
 
Martha and Mary express anger and disappointment at Jesus after Lazarus died, saying “if you had been here, he would not have died.” (John 11: 21, 32)
 
In Mark 4:38, the disciples say “teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?”
 
While the examples from the New Testament tend to be shorter and are often posed as questions or expressions of grief or lament rather than outright anger, they still demonstrate for us that we can feel less than thrilled with how God or Jesus responds to something we ask of them, and we can still maintain our faith through that anger.
 
But the key takeaway from this exploration is that God responds to all of these different expressions of anger and frustration with gentleness rather than punishment.
 
God may not always respond immediately or in the way the person expects (in fact, that is often the root cause of the anger toward God in the first place), but God still loves these figures anyway.
 
And God loves us, too. God can handle our anger as well.
 
These stories are also examples of anger speaking to deeper needs and desires that aren’t being met.
 
In other words, anger is often telling these figures something.
 
And our anger tells us something, too.
 
I once had a beautiful conversation with someone who felt a tremendous amount of guilt about the anger that he felt.
 
This person had gone his whole life thinking that God was condemning his anger and that God desperately wanted him to change.
 
But through conversation, he began to wonder if perhaps it was God’s way of telling him something about himself that he was not acknowledging.
 
If these Biblical stories tell us anything, it’s that God never asks these figures to shove their anger deeper down. God never makes them feel guilty for feeling their feelings of anger. And God never asks them to change or stop being angry.
 
God continues loving them even as they begin to learn what it is their anger is telling them.
 
Anger is a normal human emotion. And God has always been big enough to handle our anger.
 
Other people may struggle with it sometimes because humans all have emotions, and some of us are better at facing them, expressing them, or dealing with them than others are.
 
But God can handle all of it.
 
So, if you ever feel angry with God, there’s nothing wrong with letting God know. You don’t have to feel guilty about it. In fact, let’s be honest – if you feel angry toward God, whether you explicitly tell God or not doesn’t matter – God already knows.
 
So name it. Name your anger. Lift it to God.
 
And then, let it speak to you. Wonder with God what that anger might be trying to tell you.
 
This same thing applies to anger you might be feeling toward someone else in your life, too, or toward general life circumstances.
 
Lift that to God, and let it speak to you. Let it give you some insight about yourself that you may not be noticing on your own.
 
And remember that there are tons of examples throughout scripture of expressions of anger toward God and toward Jesus.
 
It is normal, and it’s not something to feel guilty about. Though, if you struggle with anger regularly, it might be telling you that there’s something going on within you that you aren’t aware of.
 
And that is worth exploring, whether that’s with a friend, a counsellor, a support group, a pastor, or another trusted person.
 
And my hope in continuing this conversation from last week is that it gives you hope if you need it.
 
So, if you are struggling with anger in general or anger toward God specifically, know that God can handle that, and it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your faith.
 
It just may be that it would be worth exploring what your anger might be telling you.
 
And if you aren’t struggling with anger right now, when you do, I hope you remember this message.
 
If you are a lucky person who never struggles with anger, know that many other people do struggle with anger, so perhaps you could gently honour this fact by wondering with them what their anger might be trying to tell them.
 
And lastly, may we all remember that God can handle whatever we lift up in prayer, whether we do that intentionally or not.
 
May you leave here today filled with hope, knowing that God has demonstrated to us time and time again that questions, frustration, anger, and spiritual anguish are nothing for us to feel ashamed or guilty about.
 
God loves every part of us – even those parts that we don’t always love in ourselves.
 
Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
God of joy and God of love, we humble ourselves before you and acknowledge our emotions, including our anger. We lift these things to you, knowing that you will gladly carry them for us, loving us through it all. We pray that you would help us learn to be self-reflective, wondering with you what our emotions might be telling us, or how you might be guiding us through our experiences. In your holy and loving name, we pray. Amen.

​The Message
 
It isn’t very often that I choose to preach on passages from the Hebrew Bible.
 
That isn’t because there is anything wrong with the scriptures from the Hebrew Bible. It’s just that I tend to focus my sermons more on the story and words of Jesus.
 
But today, we’re going to talk about Job because his story is fascinating, and also a bit weird.
 
Because you may or may not be familiar with the story of Job, I think it’s worth taking a few minutes to summarize it.
 
Job is a relatively wealthy man in his era. He has a family, some property, he has money, and he has flocks of animals.
 
He also has a deep faith in God.
 
In the story, Satan and God are talking, and God basically says “look at this incredibly faithful person! No matter what happens, his faith will remain strong.”
 
Satan essentially says “yeah, sure, God. But it’s easy for his faith to remain strong when everything is going well for him! I bet his faith would waver if he didn’t have everything he has.”
 
God and Satan go back and forth like this for a while. God allows Satan to take away all the good things in Job’s life in order to show that Job will remain faithful through it all.
 
It’s a bit of an odd conversation, and it’s not really how most of us envision God these days.
 
It’s quite difficult to imagine a God who would play with people’s lives so flippantly.
 
But, the truth of the story isn’t as important as the overall moral of the story.
 
Satan ends up taking everything from Job – his home, his flocks, his children, and eventually, his health.
He ended up as a shell of his former self.
 
His wife essentially tells him to give up on God. If God is going to allow all of this to happen to you, why don’t you just give up on God?
 
His friends wonder what Job is doing to bring this chaos and wrath of God upon himself. His friends admittedly aren’t the most supportive people in this story.
 
And in the end, Job ends up crying out to God – asking to confront God face to face. He wants God to answer for the treatment he has received.
 
Now, the interesting thing about this is of course that Job doesn’t know about God’s conversations with Satan.
 
The general understanding of theology at the time was that when bad things happened in life, either God was punishing you, or Satan had snuck in and was wreaking havoc.
 
The story assumes that God allows Satan to destroy Job’s life.
 
With this understanding of God, Job does wonder for a while what he did to deserve this treatment. But he quickly begins to feel like he could not have possibly done enough bad stuff to deserve the losses he experiences.
 
So he becomes angry with God for allowing his life to essentially be taken from him.
 
But the key part of the story is that despite all of the hardships, and the assumption that God is allowing these things to happen, Job does remain faithful to God.
 
Yes, he’s angry with God!
 
But how can one be angry with God if that person has lost faith in God?
 
Anger at God necessitates a deep faith in God.
 
Job is angry at God, and he starts to demand that God answer to Job directly. He wants to talk to God face-to-face.
 
He wants to accuse God.
 
In fact, it’s almost like he wants to throw a temper tantrum at God.
 
Imagine he’s a toddler in a tantrum, kicking and screaming, punching and howling, wailing and crying.
 
He wants to stand before God, kicking and screaming and punching and howling and wailing, and he wants God to give him answers.
 
He believes he deserves this much.
 
And finally, Job encounters God. God finally shows face.
 
And Job starts kicking and screaming and punching (metaphorically), but God calmly stops him and basically says “look around. Do you see all that has been created? Who did that? Oh, I did? Mmmm hmmmm. That’s what I thought.”
 
God maybe isn’t as snarky as I made God sound, but God is pretty real with Job.
 
God wonders if Job would like to be in charge of everything.
 
In Job 38:2, God says, Why do you talk so much when you know so little?
 
God then asks Job a series of questions like: Job, have you ever made the sun rise? Or walked on the ocean floor? Can you arrange the stars? Can you help a lion hunt when it is hungry?
 
God goes on like this for a while. It humbles Job.
 
God essentially says “hey, do you want my job, or do you want to let me keep doing it?”
 
Job realizes through this conversation with God that whatever he is going through in life, there is an entire universe that also exists and must be cared for.
 
Part of the lesson in the story of Job is that he got comfortable in his cushy life. If he had been born into a different social class, his life might have looked much worse from the start.
 
He realizes that even people who are born into very different situations can remain faithful to God.
 
And that is the beauty of today’s scripture passage.
 
Job 19 is toward the middle of the book. Job is still mentally in a place where he feels like he can maintain his faith in God despite the setbacks he has experienced.
As the book goes on, we know that this becomes harder for him.
 
And yet, despite the hardships he has faced, Job holds onto hope throughout the book.
 
Yes, what his hope looks like changes over the course of the book. 
 
But it speaks volumes about his faith in God that he allows his anger toward God to bubble up to the surface, and yet he continues to desire a personal encounter with God.
 
And in the end, isn’t that all any of us really wants?
 
Those of us who believe in God desire a personal relationship with God.
 
Job wants to be able to look God in the face and say “what the heck, God?!”
 
And most of us want that opportunity, too. Perhaps not literally, but spiritually, we desire a deeply personal relationship with God.
 
That’s why we pray. That’s why we come to church. That’s why we surround ourselves with our community of faith.
 
We desire a personal relationship with God.
 
And what that looks like for each of us might be very different.
 
But like Job, when things get hard, we look to God. We might find we are angry with God at times, but that anger reminds us that we still have a deep faith in God.
 
God proved to Job that God could handle his anger. And Job received the gift of this knowing.
 
And God can handle whatever we might throw God’s way, too.
 
Sometimes, it’s easy for us to blame God for our hardships. It’s easy for us to throw our anger in God’s face.
 
And God loves us anyway.
 
Ultimately, what Job desires above all else is a personal relationship with God.
 
And I suspect that’s true for most of us, too.
I know that I get frustrated sometimes with God. I pray to God and often, I am not sure that I get anything in return.
 
I desire a personal relationship with God, too. Sometimes I just want God to give me an answer.
 
But, in my life anyway, God doesn’t usually work that way.
 
God speaks, but I have to be paying attention. God doesn’t come in storm clouds or burning bushes.
 
God comes to me through other people. Through my community. Through nature. Through prayer.
 
And most often, God comes through silence. God sometimes has to hit me over the head when I’m least expecting it.
 
I wonder if God is like that for you, too?
 
As we leave here today, let us wonder together.
 
Let us enjoy the amazing way that God works in our lives as a faith community. Let us continue to desire a personal relationship with God, and may we come to that relationship through this community of faith.
 
May you deeply know God’s love, and may you allow God to work in your life in ways you least expect.
 
As we come to the communion table today, allow God’s grace and love to wash over you, and know that through communion, we receive the deeply personal connection with God that we desire.
 
And may we remember: in all things, love – always. Amen.
 
God of grace, we lift our eyes to you today in humble prayer. We know we are not always perfect, and we are grateful for stories like Job’s to remind us that even the prophets and the people in scripture struggle with their relationship with you, too. We desire a deeply personal relationship with you, and we ask that you help us to see You all around us. Be near to us, always, O God. In your loving name, we pray. Amen.

The Message
 
Today, I want to share with you one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned so far in my life.
 
And that lesson is this:
 
Life is like a ladder. We can move up or down – sometimes very slowly, and sometimes quite quickly.
 
When I was running my dog daycare and training facility, I learned not to allow myself to get too self-confident.
 
Inevitably, every time I would feel like life moved me up a rung or two on the ladder, something would happen that would knock me down three or four rungs.
 
For example, I might come in to work one morning and see that we had three days in a row of excellent sales. Hooray! Maybe we can post a profit this month!
 
And then, next thing you know, the grooming tub is leaking and I need to call the plumber.
 
Or, I might start to feel like my staff are working well together and I’m so lucky to have them, and then two of them quit, leaving me short-handed.
 
Or maybe, it’s been two months straight of no significant issues and I accidentally think to myself “wow, it’s been two months and things are running smoothly” and all the sudden a dog fight happens with injuries, an owner leaves us a bad review, and my groomer cuts her hand and needs stitches.
 
One rung up, two or three rungs back down.
 
The point is, I learned that no matter how well things were going, it was always possible that things could turn downhill just as easily.
 
And, actually, it was often the case that if I even allowed myself to think for a minute that nothing bad had happened recently, before I knew it, something bad would happen.
 
It was a strange dynamic. And I don’t say this to sound negative. I say it because it is the reality of life.
 
It’s the reality of everyday life, but in that industry, particularly bad things could happen that would make my life as an owner extremely difficult.
 
And it’s an important lesson to learn in life because it keeps us humble. Everyday life isn’t always puppies and rainbows and sunshine.
 
Sometimes, it rains, or thunder snows, or worse. Sometimes it can feel like life is just beating you down.
 
So, when I read the Luke passage for today, I thought of this lesson because Jesus is reminding us that life has ups and downs.
 
Luke’s Gospel contains three beatitudes, compared to Matthew’s eight. These three beatitudes are accompanied by three woes.
 
The woes are here to remind us that God’s justice is not all loveliness and light. The lowly are raised up, and the mighty are brought down.
 
Up a rung, down a rung.
 
And most of us can spend time both as “lowly” and “mighty.”
 
When I was running my business, I wouldn’t have ever considered myself “mighty,” but those times when I started to feel a little arrogant that I was really getting the hang of “this whole running a business thing” are the times when I would suddenly be humbled.
 
That’s when I realized how lowly I actually was. I might have thought I was becoming mighty, but God just chuckled and reminded me I had more to learn.
 
The woes that Jesus mentions are not curses or punishments from God.
 
They are not retribution for the “sins of the mighty.”
 
These woes are merely observations about the way that life works.
 
Woe to the rich, not because they are evil but because they have spent their lives seeking riches and attempting to move up the ladder.
 
When life gets tough for those who have sought only riches, they will have the money that they built up, but they won’t necessarily be aware of God’s love.
 
Not because they aren’t deserving of God’s love, but because they have chosen to seek money rather than seeking God’s love.
 
Jesus isn’t saying that the rich can’t access God’s love, but in order to do so, they must humble themselves and begin to seek something beyond riches – something beyond themselves.
 
It’s also a woe because the nature of life is that it can turn around in an instant, as I learned when I was running my business. Woe to you who are rich, because tomorrow you may find yourself poor.
 
Woe to you who laugh or are full, not because it’s bad to be happy but because, again, life will turn.
 
It always does at some point, and we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that fact.
 
Up a rung, down a rung.
 
The important thing to remember in Jesus’s words is that when life does inevitably knock us down a rung or two or three, we will all need to know and trust that those who weep, or who are hungry, or who are poor are blessed.
 
So when Jesus offers these woes, it’s not a judgment. It’s an observation.
 
It’s great that life is great right now – we can be rich, or full, or laughing. But we also need to remember who we belong to when things change.
 
God knows us and loves us on our best days and our worst days.
 
These beatitudes could easily say “blessed are you who are grumpy,” “blessed are you who are anxious and depressed,” “blessed are you who struggle with addiction,” or “blessed are you who feel unworthy and unloved.”
 
And, likewise, woe to you who are happy, or mentally well, or free of addiction, or fully aware of how loved you are.
 
Woe, not because you aren’t deserving of feeling happy, mentally well, or fully loved, but because we all have good days and tough days.
 
And God loves us through all of them.
 
God doesn’t withhold love, even when we have allowed ourselves to get overly confident. And, God continues to love us when we are discouraged or feeling like we’ve been knocked down a few rungs on the ladder.
 
Jesus spends time on the blessings and the woes, and then he drops an even bigger truth: love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.

This often gets preached as the golden rule, but I think on a much deeper level, this is a reminder that we all go through periods in our lives when we are among the “mighty,” and periods when we are among the “lowly.”
 
And, so does everyone else. Including our enemies.
 
We have good days and bad, and God loves us on our best and worst days.
 
But if that is true for us, it’s also true for our enemies.
 
And this is the difficult truth that Jesus is trying to convey. As difficult as it may be to take the higher road, we are called to do so to the best of our ability.
 
At the end of the day, we have good and bad days. We have rich days and poor days. Full days and hungry days. Days filled with laughter and with tears.
 
And our enemies experience similar ups and downs. They move up and down their ladder just like we do on our ladder.
 
We are all just living out our human existence, doing the best we can with a life that is uncertain.
 
So, in the uncertainty of life, remember that life can change in an instant.
 
And when it does, God is right there with you, and you are loved and blessed in the hard moments just as much as you are loved in the easy moments.
 
God gives love freely, whether we feel deserving of that love or not. God is not a fair-weather lover – only extending love on our best days when everything is going well for us. God is a “die-hard fan,” loving us each and every day.
 
And we are called to share that love that is given to us so freely.
 
Jesus is calling us to extend that love to everyone – even our enemies.
 
He knows it isn’t easy, but he also knows we can do it.
 
So, let us leave here receiving God’s love, and readying ourselves to give the love that we receive freely to our friends, family, neighbours, and yes, even our enemies. Amen.

Let us pray:

Eternal God, hope of all who trust in you, in Christ you weep with those who mourn even as you cry out in triumph over the grave. Unbind us from sin, release us from captivity, and raise us from death to life, so that we may join that great crowd of saints who forever sing praise to your holy name; through Christ, the resurrection and the life. Amen.

~ Prayer modified from the PCUSA website. https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/prayers_for_all_saints_day.pdf

​Young at Heart Message
 
I was planning to have two balloons with me today, but when I got into the office today I realized I used the balloons that were in my office for another sermon a while back.
 
So, instead, I have a picture of two balloons! (Better for the environment anyway, right?)

​As you can see, one balloon is already pretty full, and the other one is deflated.
 
Which balloon has more space for air?
 
Of course, the deflated balloon does.
 
What would happen if I blew more air into the inflated balloon?
 
Eventually, it would burst!
 
But what would happen if I blew air into the deflated balloon?
 
That one still has lots of space for air in it.
 
Now, what if I told you that the inflated balloon represents the Pharisee’s heart from our scripture passages today, and the deflated balloon represents the tax collector’s heart?
 
What if the air that’s already in the balloons represents all the external distractions that we tend to fill our hearts with, while the air that can still be blown into the balloons represents God?
 
The Pharisee (inflated balloon) doesn’t have a whole lot of room left for God, does he?
 
On the other hand, the tax collector (deflated balloon) has plenty of room for God. The tax collector has emptied himself of external distractions such that he can seek God.
 
The Pharisee has filled himself with his own arrogance, believing that he doesn’t actually need God, because he already does everything perfectly.
 
But, God knows differently, and that’s what Jesus is trying to tell us using this story.
 
At first glance, it might be assumed that the Pharisee is the “better” person, but we soon realize that the tax collector is the one who finds favour with God.
 
The Message
 
Today’s scripture passage is such a great example of the ways that Jesus turns our assumptions upside down.
 
A Pharisee is a member of a Jewish religious sect in the time of Second Temple Judaism. They are known for their strict adherence to the written Law of Moses as well unwritten oral traditions.
 
In other words, Pharisees are deeply religious people who strictly follow religious law.
 
Because they follow the religious law so strictly, Jesus often uses them as examples to demonstrate that while religious law is important, people who are directly in front of us with their own stories are important, too.
 
Of course, we see this in the story of healing on the Sabbath, we see it when Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites, and we see it in today’s scripture passage.
 
Today, Jesus uses a hypothetical Pharisee and a hypothetical tax collector to demonstrate that even those who strictly follow the Law can stray from God’s path.
 
Meanwhile, those we might traditionally consider “sinners” can be exalted by God.
 
The Pharisee that Jesus uses as an example is inflated with self-importance. He assumes that he is better than others because he so strictly follows the Law.
 
But in boasting about his strict adherence to religious law, he allows his own arrogance to fill him up so there is no room for humility and no room for God.
 
On the other hand, the tax collector comes to God with utter humility. He is completely deflated and open to God’s leading.
 
He is so deflated that he believes he is not even worthy of God’s love. And that’s when God says “of course you are.”
 
Jesus is trying to convey that no matter how great we think we are at following God’s path, we still have room to do better.
 
And believing that we are the best, or better than others, actually makes us sinful.
 
The Pharisee believed he did everything perfectly. In fact, he believed this so strongly that he actually made a point of thanking God that he wasn’t like all the other sinners in the Temple.
 
But in doing that, he became just as much of a sinner as those he pointed fingers at.
 
And that’s the point here. Maybe the tax collector was defined as a sinner in that time period, but he was aware of his sins.
 
Not only was he aware of them, but he felt tremendous guilt about them. He felt unworthy of God’s love because of them.
 
But Jesus says when the two men went home, it was the tax collector and not the Pharisee who was pleasing to God.
 
Why?
 
Jesus has an answer for that, too: “if you put yourself above others, you will be put down. But if you humble yourself, you will be honored.”
 
The NRSVUE version of the Bible says it this way: all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
 
And, perhaps most helpfully, The Message version states it this way:
 
If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
 
It’s helpful sometimes to read multiple versions of scripture because we may get something a little bit different from each version.
 
If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re inevitably going to trip over something.
 
But, if you are content to be who you are and not worry about others, you will become more than yourself.
 
The whole point here is this:
 
When we worry so much about what others are or aren’t doing and we forget to consider the things we are or aren’t doing, we are filling our hearts with distractions that leave less room for God.
 
We are essentially inflated balloons – full of stuff that leaves us bloated and unhappy.
 
When we stop worrying so much about what others are or aren’t doing, we clear out some of the distractions and allow more space for God.
 
We end up more like the deflated balloon.
 
And the beauty of this message is that if we do realize that we have become more like the inflated balloon, we aren’t stuck that way forever.
 
That’s what Jesus is trying to tell us.
 
We can make changes to let go of some of the unnecessary distractions. We can release some of our worries about what others are or aren’t doing that have no effect on us.
 
We can humble ourselves, look inwardly and start thinking more about how we present ourselves to the world.
 
What impact are we making, and what room do we have in our hearts for God to lead us?
 
As we start focusing more on the paths we walk and less on standing in the paths of others, we can begin to deflate and humble ourselves.
 
And in doing so, we leave more space for God to fill us. We leave space for us to ask God “what is it that you are up to in my life today? This week? This month? This year? This one life that I have to live on Earth?”
 
And we can allow God to move within us instead of allowing worldly distractions to inflate our sense of self-importance.
 
So, as you leave this space today, are you leaving already full, or are you leaving with plenty of room for God to fill you?
 
May we all humble ourselves before God, choosing to release ourselves from our concerns about what others are or aren’t doing, and wondering instead what God might choose to fill us with if we were empty and open to receiving God’s grace.
 
Empty us, oh God, so that we are prepared to receive what You have to give. Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
Loving and gracious God, help us to empty ourselves - to deflate our over-inflated sense of self-importance just a little bit to allow more room for your guidance and leading. Jesus taught us to humble ourselves, but we need help doing that. That’s why you sent us Jesus. So today we kneel before you in humility - deflated and ready to be filled. In your holy name, we pray. Amen.

The Message

When I was young, accumulating “stuff” was important to me.

I wanted to keep up with everything my friends had! When I earned an allowance, I was inclined to want to spend it right away on things.

Who here remembers the Beanie Baby craze?
​
The more Beanie Babies you had, the wealthier you were. It was like a currency all its own.
 
This guy is the epitome of wealth!

​I also collected CD’s, I just had to have a Tamagotchi, and, even though I didn’t ever play with dolls, I needed an American Girl doll because every other girl my age had one.
 
I did not grow up in a rich family, and yet the reality was, I was wealthy.
 
And, for a kid, accumulating the best “things” was a way to demonstrate my wealth, even if I would not have known that at the time.
 
Like everyone else at that time, I wanted more and better Beanie Babies because I thought that someday, they’d be worth something.
 
Turns out, that really never ended up being the case, except maybe briefly during the craze.
 
But the point is, it got to the point where I was only buying them because I thought they would have value in the future. I even bought some that I didn’t necessarily like, and eventually, these [cute] stuffed bean bags just sat on a shelf in my bedroom.
 
When I went away to university, they sat and collected dust.
 
Eventually, I came home at some point and threw them all into a plastic garbage bag and hauled them off to Goodwill for some other kid to enjoy.
 
Essentially, they were worthless. They weren’t worth actual money, and they didn’t bring me joy.
 
It was around this point in my life when I began to realize that very few “things” do, in fact, bring me joy.
 
Leaving for university was, more or less, a “rite of passage” into adulthood for me.
 
It also kicked off a lifetime of regular moves from one dwelling to another.
 
Sometimes, a move would involve changing cities, and once I even moved out of state. And of course you know that more recently, I moved countries!
 
I have moved almost every single year of my adult life.
 
With a rare exception here or there when I have stayed in a dwelling for two years, I have moved many, many times.
 
And, as most of you know, I am moving again, though I did not expect that to be the case.
 
Moving so frequently in my life helped me realize how little joy I actually get from “things.”
 
Sure, there is some joy when I buy something new, at least initially.
 
But guess what?
 
When you go to move, all the sudden, if you don’t need that thing, it has become a burden, not a joy.
 
You also learn quickly that the joy that things bring is fleeting. More often than not, when I go to move, I’ve forgotten I even have things that I don’t use regularly.
 
I will remember why I thought I just had to have the things.
 
But I quickly realize that after my initial purchase, the joy dissipated quickly and that thing, whatever it is, has likely not brought me any joy or served any other purpose since I bought it.
 
I have lived in Calgary for two years. When I moved here, I came with almost nothing.
 
Some of you may remember that other than the essentials I needed for my travel, the only things I came here with all fit into one U-Haul moving pod.
 
And yet, despite arriving here with almost nothing, I still took an entire carload of stuff to Goodwill the other day in preparation for my next move.
 
The point here is this: we live in a world in which accumulating things is a measure of status and wealth, and of course, accumulating money is too.
 
It is nearly impossible today not to fall into this trap.
 
We are surrounded by easily accessible and affordable “stuff” we don’t always actually need.
 
In fact, even the poorest of the poor in this country have access to resources to provide them with everything they need as long as they are willing to utilize the resources available to them.
 
I’m not saying that life isn’t hard for people – it is.
 
But in comparison to how the poor have lived throughout history, in our world, life is significantly better than it once was.
 
We all fall into the traps that 1 Timothy warns about because we cannot avoid them in today’s society.
 
1 Timothy says, “we didn’t bring anything into this world, and won’t take anything with us when we leave. So we should be satisfied just to have food and clothes. People who want to be rich fall into all sorts of temptations and traps. They are caught by foolish and harmful desires that drag them down and destroy them.”
 
I know I fall into this trap on a regular basis.
 
I have everything I need. I have access to far more than I need!
 
I’m leaving on vacation tomorrow. I had the means to access plane tickets, hotels, and a rental car.
 
I will be able to pay for food, likely at many restaurants while I am away.
 
I could pay for a variety of event tickets.
 
Now, don’t get me wrong – I do save for these things. And I don’t consider myself a wealthy person, especially compared to many other people in this world.
 
But my point is that I am wealthy, when you think of it this way.
 
Our culture causes us to believe that we are always living in scarcity mode – we never have enough.
 
We are constantly striving for more, no matter how much we have.
 
I have been “poor” before – far poorer than I am now. My younger self would be thrilled to be where I am now.
 
And yet, even now, I find myself wishing I just had just a little bit more.
 
It’s always this way.
 
I just finished listening to an audiobook, and actually I enjoyed it so much and felt like I got so much out of it that I bought the actual book and started reading it.
 
The book is called “Everything Is Never Enough,” and it is an exploration of the Book of Ecclesiastes.
 
The ultimate point of the book is because we are constantly striving – always desiring more – we are never happy.
 
Let’s say, for example, that I desperately want to be able to buy a house, and I don’t feel like I’ll truly be happy until I can do that.
 
What happens when I finally get to a point where I can buy a house?
 
I’ll be happy for a little while, for sure.
 
But, inevitably, when I settle into home ownership, I will desire something else.
 
Maybe now, I want to remodel my kitchen, and I think if I can just do that, I’ll be happy.
 
And the cycle continues on and on forever.
 
No matter how much we have – no matter how much wealth, power, money, food and drink, friends, stuff, etc that we accumulate – we are always striving for more.
 
These are the traps that 1 Timothy warns about.
 
And Luke 16 brings the point home with a demonstration of the consequences that these traps bring upon us if we allow ourselves to fall too deeply into them.
 
The rich man in this story has become so consumed by his own life and this striving for more that he has lost empathy and compassion for the other.
 
When he died, he was caught in a miserable place, and when he asked to warn his family about it, Abraham basically said “look, this is all written in scripture and available for everyone. It is up to you to pay attention and learn from it.”
 
Oof – what a lesson for all of us. How often do we get so caught up in our own lives that we don’t even realize we are always striving for more and forgetting about the other?
 
Quite often, I’d say.
 
Before I end this sermon today, I want us to think as a congregation about these ideas and ask ourselves if it’s possible we are falling into these very same traps.
 
With my announcement last week about moving out of the parsonage, it will very likely mean we will be selling the parsonage.
 
Doing so will mean that our endowment fund will increase to over $1 million dollars again.
 
I don’t want to get into this conversation too much right now, but it does beg the questions:
 
At what point do we have enough?
 
Are we falling into this trap of constantly striving for more, accumulating wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth?
 
Do we need to think hard about how that money should be used to serve others beyond the walls of our own church?
 
There is much more that could be said about this, but for now, I would ask that we just mull it over.
 
And, I think the most important question we need to be asking is where God fits into the equation.
 
What does God think about if and how we should be utilizing our funds, and does God have any thoughts about how much wealth we should be holding onto?
 
I can’t answer these questions for the congregation.
 
But I would ask you each to be in prayer and conversation about it.
 
As you are, bring God in and lift it to God. What would happen if we let go of some control and asked God what God wants us to be doing?
 
These are difficult questions. But, our readings today remind us of the importance of asking these questions on a regular basis.
 
And, these are questions we should be asking of ourselves, too.
 
So, as we leave this space today, let us lift these questions to God and really begin wondering how we might involve God more deeply in questions of finances and stewardship.
 
May we give God the pleasure of knowing that we trust God in all things, and we surrender completely to God’s leading, both on matters of the heart and on matters of wealth and money.
 
As you go from here today, mull it over.
 
What is God asking of us? Where is God leading, and what do we see God doing here?
 
I hate to use this cliché, but “What Would Jesus Do?”
 
Let us wonder together with open hearts and open minds, and with grace, kindness, love and compassion. Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
God of love, God who IS love, we thank you for your generosity and for your ongoing commitment to our care. Thank you for the blessings you have bestowed upon us, and thank you for guiding us to use those blessings according to your will. We ask that you continue to lead us as individuals and as a church. In your holy name, we pray. Amen.

​Young at Heart Message
 
Every year, Moravian Clergy celebrate Cup of Covenant. It is an opportunity for us to recommit to ministry and remember our ordination vows to study, pray, care for souls, preach, teach, and administer the sacraments.
 
In the Canadian District, because our clergy are spread out between Edmonton and Calgary and aren’t able to connect in person very often, we have an annual Cup of Covenant retreat at King’s Fold Retreat Centre.
 
That retreat happened this past week, so I had the opportunity to be with my colleagues, and, importantly, I had the opportunity to rest, read, and be present with myself and with God.
 
One of the things I intended to do while I was at the retreat was a read a book called Divinanimality in preparation for this sermon. I hoped the book would give me some insights into the relationships we have with animals who walk the Earth and journey with us throughout our lives.
 
However, I began reading the book, and it was DENSE. It was deeply philosophical, it used big academic words that I found unnecessary for this topic, and it really didn’t resonate with me for this purpose.
 
And then, as I was sitting on a bench overlooking the river, listening to it babble as a bird sung its song nearby, I realized I don’t need a deep philosophical or academic discussion to help tell you what I already know about the divinity of animals.
 
I began thinking about my own relationship to animals in my life, and a flood of memories came rushing back – so quickly, in fact, that I felt an immediate need to start writing my sermon so I didn’t forget what I wanted to say about it, even though I was supposed to be on retreat!
 
My experience with animals began at a young age. In fact, I think it’s likely that animals have been a part of my life since the day I was born. And actually, it’s deeply, generationally ingrained in my family’s history.
 
Both my Mom and my Dad’s families were farmers in Wisconsin. By the time I was born, my Dad’s family was no longer actively farming so I never experienced their farm.
 
But my Mom’s family was still actively farming. As a matter of fact, my parents - and therefore my little helpless baby self – all lived together in the house my Mom grew up in on their family farm.
 
My Dad was an active partner in the farm for the first few years of my life, so being around animals – not just dogs and cats but livestock like cows and pigs – was natural for me and I felt at home in their presence.
 
I got to experience the disgusting joy of allowing a calf to suck on my fingers, creating a beautifully sticky, sloppy mess that you didn’t want to wipe on your clothes because if you did, you’d just transfer the sticky mess to another spot on your body later.
 
I got to walk through the stanchions in the barn, and I was strangely mesmerized by the milking process, the smell of the cattle, and the way their tails would flick around. Touching a cow’s nose is wet, but oddly satisfying.
 
I was also simultaneously fascinated by and fearful of the bull in the cage in the corner. I was told from a young age that bulls can be dangerous, and I shouldn’t get too close. But the poor guy just seemed so lonely!
 
When I was around three years old, my parents had to move on from farming for a variety of reasons, so we moved into town. My grandparents continued farming until I was in my early teens, so I still have tons of memories and joys of farm life, but my daily routine no longer included livestock.
 
Instead, my family eventually got cats, and then a dog. My young life was formed by these relationships to some extent, but it wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I decided to get my very first dog who was completely mine and not a family dog.
 
And that dog – a beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog named Kodiak – was the dog that needled his way deep in my heart and really ignited my physical and spiritual journey with animals. Kodiak helped me see God in new ways through his joy and zest for life, his steady calm, his ability to love all people and all other animals he encountered, his stoic demeanor, and his adaptability to the chaos of my life at that time.
 
Kodiak moved with me every single year of his life to a new dwelling. He saw other dogs come and go from my life, he was integral in my learning process, and he lovingly supported me as I worked to become a professional dog trainer and, eventually, as I bought and ran a dog daycare.
 
Kodiak also helped me understand the beauty and the divinity of other animals.
 
I began to notice the squirrels, rabbits, birds, and other critters that somehow managed to survive city life.
 
I started to notice deer, opossum, raccoons, skunks, cows, and horses not as simply parts of the landscape, but as individual members of God’s creation that had purpose, joy, and beauty that was all their own.
 
I also began to notice when animals would appear in my life, and I started to resonate with a deeper meaning behind their presence.
 
I used to be an avid road biker, and one time I decided to bike from my home out toward the area where my grandparent’s farm was. As I biked past one farm, I saw out of the corner of my eye a large animal running alongside me.
 
I turned to look, and a cow was running the fence line, not unlike a dog that might joyfully bound alongside their human. This cow was just living its best life, happily galivanting along the fence in sync with my riding.
 
That cow brought me so much joy in that moment, and it was like a little “wink from God” – a reminder that God is not some far-off entity, but is in fact right there with us, bounding along playfully, joyfully, and with a presence that we too often forget to notice.
 
Similarly, I lived in the country shortly before I moved to Canada, and one of my dogs – Lyra, who is no longer with me – would ALWAYS have a line of cows following her when we walked past a nearby farm. The group of cows that lived in that pasture changed each season, but each new group of cows loved her just the same.
 
I had four dogs in my home at the time, and Lyra was the only one the cows would follow like this. There was just something about her that they seemed to connect to. And, if I’m being honest, I connected to that same part of her, and she connected in a similar way to me.
 
Lyra just had a way of reading my emotions and empathizing with me that no other dog I’ve ever lived with has been able to do. And I think those cows saw that in her, too.
 
I could go on and on about the animals that I have shared my life with, and the animals that I have encountered in the natural world, and I am sure you all have stories about them too.
 
We seem to know intuitively that animals were created by God for a purpose, and that purpose is not simply to serve humans.
 
The Message
 
God loves animals as he loves humans, and animals are deeply grounded in God’s love and care. There must be truth to this statement because we see it over and over again if we pay close enough attention.
 
Job 12 states, “if you want to learn, then go and ask the wild animals and the birds, the flowers and the fish.”
 
This text is ancient, and yet there is incredible wisdom in this statement. If you want to learn what God has done, any of the animals can tell you, probably in a deeper and more complete way than any human can.
 
So why wouldn’t we trust the experience of animals with regard to God? I believe that they actually know more about God than we can know. Why?
 
Animals don’t overthink God. In fact, they don’t think about God like we do at all. They don’t analyze what scholarly articles or theologians say about God. They don’t listen to what pastors with degrees say about God. They don’t philosophize so much about their own relationship to God that their words become incomprehensible, like the book I tried to read.
 
Animals experience God. Animals know God in a deep, profound, rich way that we often struggle with. But there are some people who have been able to tap into this energy.
 
Jane Goodall is a common example. She knows what most of us could hardly imagine about the relationship of animals to God and our own spirituality. In 2021, she received the Templeton Prize, and in her speech, she said, “In the rainforest I learned about the interconnection of all species, each with a role to play. I felt a strong spiritual connection with the natural world.”
 
Those of us who share our lives with pets often know about a deeper connection to the divine that occurs when we are present with our pets.
 
One of my favorite books is part of the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle called A Swiftly Tilting Planet. In the book, there is a threat of nuclear war, and the family is essentially fighting the powers of evil to prevent the nuclear war from happening.
 
The family had recently lost their dog from the two prior books, Fortinbras, and one of the main characters, Meg, explains in the book that the dogs in their family just seem to show up on their doorstep. In that fashion, a dog shows up on their doorstep in the midst of the nuclear war chaos.
 
The dog’s name, they decide, is Ananda, which another main character, Charles Wallace, explains is Sanskit and means “That joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse.”
 
This family knows the importance of animals to life, to spirituality, to joy, and to our continued existence as a species on this Earth.
 
Ananda becomes an important conduit for Meg as Meg and Charles Wallace stay connected across space and time via a form of telepathy. Ananda strengthens their connection through touch and through her warmth, her breath, her beauty, and her Spirit.
 
L’Engle, the book’s author, was deeply Spiritual and also a devoted Christian. The beauty with which she is able to relay the significance of animals to human spirituality is profound.
 
Those of us who have experienced this type of relationship with our pets or with other animals know the truth of her writing. Scripture knows the truth of these relationships, too.
 
Animals are mentioned throughout the Bible so many times that I own a book which documents every instance of a mention of animals in Scripture. And, it is a thick book.
 
Jesus himself is referred to as the "Lion" and the "Lamb,” which symbolizes His dual nature. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah represents Jesus’ power, sovereignty, and victory over evil. The Lamb of God signifies Jesus’ humility, gentleness, and sacrificial atonement for humanity's sins.
 
Even in the time of Jesus, there was an awareness of the significance of animals to our lives and to the existence of the world. Just recently, we heard a passage in which Jesus talks about Sabbath rest and ensuring that the oxen are watered, even on the Sabbath.
 
Humans throughout history have recognized the importance of animals in service to humans, but there is also often a deeper connection that goes beyond service to humans.
 
We can see and understand that animals have feelings and emotions, though they are often expressed differently than ours.
 
For example, I know Kanyon well enough to know that he’s fearful of new people and can be stressed in new situations. We thrive in life together because I respect his feelings and his behaviour, and we have come to an agreement about how we will live together in this life.
 
And many of you who share your lives with animals likely have come to know a similar relationship with your pets. There is a richness that comes from learning to speak a language that is foreign to us.
 
For verbal humans, we can struggle to speak in ways that do not use words, and yet animals require exactly this from us. We must learn to observe and communicate differently than what we are naturally inclined to do.
 
And in that learning there comes deeper understanding. And there is also a spiritual richness of experience that comes from this understanding.
 
We are raised in a culture that insists that we learn about God. We are more unfamiliar with the concept of experiencing God. Animals, on the other hand, are completely experiential.
 
We can learn from them as much as they can learn from us. Tapping into the nature of animals and learning to experience God and spirituality instead of trying to wrap our heads around it can be freeing and fruitful.
 
So, as we move into our time of blessing the animals who are present here today, may we seek to experience our faith, our spirituality, and our relationship with God differently.
 
May we come to know God through experiencing God, through the experience of Jesus Christ on Earth, and through the animals that God created to share the beauty of the Earth with us.
 
As we go from here, may we open our eyes to God’s beauty in all its forms and rest in God’s Love and Joy. Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
Faithful God, help us to experience Your love, Your grace, and Your joy through new and different ways of being in the world. Thank you for the gift of each and every creature on this earth, from ants to zebras and everything in between. Thank you for gifting us with the responsibility to care for, protect, and learn from the creatures that inhabit our world. In humility and love, we pray. Amen.

Young at Heart Message

Imagine, for a moment, that our sanctuary has been transformed.

Instead of sitting in comfortable seats, we are standing in the Garden of Eden.

If we take a look around, we can imagine that we see beauty and wonder all around us – trees, plants, flowers, butterflies… maybe even a rainbow in the distance.
​
The instructions we’ve been given are simply to care for this amazing world.
 
Looking around, however, you realize that in order to do that, you’re going to need to dig into the earth with your hands.
 
That’s OK, it sounds like a wonderful way to ground yourself and be one with God and God’s creation.
 
So you begin to harvest seeds from the plants around you, and dig holes with your bare hands.
 
This works well – you’re able to plant enough seeds to sustain yourself and your partner.
 
Imagine, now, that it’s no longer just you and your partner here in the Garden. You now have a family – let’s say, six kids.
 
You need to plant a lot more seeds to grow enough food for yourselves and six children.
 
The grounding you felt when you first started planting and harvesting now feels onerous in between caring for and raising children, sheltering, and trying to survive.
 
Looking around again, you see that there are some things you could use for tools to help dig and then harvest faster and more efficiently.
 
Yes, you lose that grounding connection to God’s earth, but you gain time to care for your family.
 
Now let’s fast-forward in time. Imagine you are Noah, and you’ve been asked to build an ark so that you can weather a mighty storm. You certainly can’t do that with just your bare hands.
 
Luckily, humans have developed tools since Adam and Eve were alone in the Garden of Eden, so you have hammers, nails, tables, saws, and a myriad other tools at your disposal to help you build such a large ark.

​Let’s fast-forward once more to the era of Christian history when John Hus and Martin Luther were living.
 
Individual, non-clergy people were not allowed to have their own Bible, and especially not one written in their own language.
 
These reformers were intent on changing that. And, with the development of the printing press, the Bible was rapidly made available to average people in their own language.
 
Church leaders were not able to keep up with how quickly people were able to get access to the Bible. I can only imagine how many of them thought the world was going to be destroyed.
 
Likewise, with the development of steamboats, steam engines, airplanes, and other vehicular technologies, Christians were suddenly able to travel far and wide preaching the Word of God as missionaries.
 
Similarly, medical and public health technologies have since made it possible for faith-based organizations like the Moravian mission in Ahuas, Honduras to provide life-saving medical care.
 
And, of course, in our own sanctuary today, we have access to screens that allow our worship services to be more accessible to those with hearing or visual impairments.
 
Additionally, we have access to microphones and musical instruments to amplify our worship services. We have a coffee maker that makes fellowship time more enjoyable.
 
We have a contraption that easily boils water so we don’t need to use pots for hot water for tea.
 
I could go on and on about the technological developments that have propelled ministries around the world forward into our current time.
 
And, of course, it is hard to imagine going back to a world which doesn’t have all of the technology that we have today.
 
At the same time, we all acknowledge that all of these technologies that we have access to are simultaneously helpful, but also leave complicated legacies.
 
I preach every Sunday using my cell phone as my “index cards.” It would take me much longer to prepare for Sunday worship if I had to write out actual index cards every week.
 
I mention all of this because, “from antiquity, Christianity has provided a theological framework that embraces the complexity of technology.” (Timothy Dalrymple, “Made in Our Image,” Christianity Today, July/August 2025)
 
Two weeks ago, those of you who were here got to listen to two short sermons – one written by me, and one written by ChatGPT.
 
I asked those of you who were present to fill out a feedback form stating which sermon I wrote, and which one ChatGPT wrote.
 
We talked a little bit about Artificial Intelligence (AI) last week, but I think it’s worth discussing the results of that experiment and exploring these concepts a little more deeply, especially as they relate to our faith and our daily lives.
 
So, without further ado, here are the results of the experiment:
 
The Message
 
14 people, or 39% believed that I wrote the first sermon on Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16.
 
21 people, or 58% believed that I wrote the second sermon on Luke 14: 1, 7-14.
 
And one person couldn’t tell the difference and checked both sermon 1 and 2.
 
Interestingly, the people who believed that I wrote the first sermon mostly weren’t really sure which one to choose – they couldn’t really tell for sure.
 
Some people said they just thought the first one reflected my style more. These people also were, in general, more gracious about the use of AI for worship services.
 
Several believed there are useful applications for it, and some of these people expressed that they in fact have used it themselves on occasion.
 
The people who believed I wrote the second sermon were FAR more certain that AI wrote the first one, and had far stronger opinions and assumptions about the use of AI in sermon writing and worship services.
 
Some people in this group said they prefer the more personal, human touch that AI can’t provide.
 
Some in this group were gracious about the use of AI as well, but most were pretty adamant it should not be used.
 
The people in this group chose sermon number two as the one I wrote because it felt like it went deeper, it was more geared toward the congregation or your individual needs, and because it seemed to have a more distinct message.
 
A few people simply said they don’t believe AI is appropriate for a sermon. Sermon number two was more compassionate from this group’s perspective.
 
So, which one did I write?
 
I wrote the first sermon on Hebrews 13, and AI wrote the second one.
 
This experiment was incredibly interesting to me. I’ll share my own experience and thoughts on it with you because I think this is an extremely important conversation.
 
First of all, it was hard for me to write a shortened sermon that felt complete and got to the heart of the matter.
Secondly, I did have to eliminate any personal stories that might give away which one I wrote.
 
Third, it was frustrating that I spent probably an hour writing my short sermon, and ChapGPT took 30 seconds to write its sermon.
 
As I mentioned last week, I didn’t change anything about the ChatGPT sermon. I copied and pasted it directly.
 
So, all of that said, it produced what seems to have been an actually quite well-written, applicable, even compassionate sermon in 30 seconds with no editing, and the majority of people believed I wrote it.
 
Mine took significantly longer, wasn’t perhaps as robust or “compassionate” feeling, and to many people, it felt disjointed.
 
And truthfully, it felt disjointed to me, too, especially compared to the one AI wrote. But I wasn’t sure how to fix it. And, I was surprised at how well-written the AI sermon was.
 
Peaching each of these sermons was also hard. The first one was easier for me to preach because I had written it. The second one was harder because it used verbiage I wouldn’t normally use.
 
And because I didn’t write it myself, I had to focus harder on the words I was saying so I didn’t lose track or make mistakes.
 
But, that’s still the sermon most of you thought I wrote. And those of you who said sermon 1 weren’t really sure, which tells me that the ChatGPT sermon was not all that bad of a sermon.
 
Now, that said, if I were to use ChatGPT to write a sermon again, I would do some editing to make it fit with my own style, to add my own flourishes, etc.
 
But, I can understand the appeal of using it at least as a starting point. It could save tremendous amounts of time, leaving pastors open to do more of the human-facing work that we never seem to have enough time to do.
 
I’m admittedly surprised by my own experience using this. I’m not going to say I’ll use it all the time, or perhaps even ever again. I did not use it at all today, for example.
 
But, what if I actually am doing you a disservice by not at least considering the possibilities?
 
How is using AI to research and compile data for a sermon different than the sometimes hours or even days that I spend reading, researching, and looking for information that’s on the internet or in books so that I can create an informed sermon?
 
I am still using information created by other people, but I have to do the leg work of finding the information, reading it, compiling it, sifting it, etc. What if AI could do that for me, saving me hours of work each week?
 
Is it not a disservice to you all to potentially create more time to do the human-facing work that I need to do and love to do as a pastor?
 
In the same article by Timothy Dalrymple that I referenced earlier, he states, “As with many other technologies, the power [AI] possesses for good is proportionate to the power it possesses for destruction.”
 
As with any tool or new technology, we have a responsibility to learn how to use it responsibly.
 
As Christians, we must factor this responsibility into everything we use.
 
Social media, as we know, can be destructive, but it can also help connect people across the world. Families that have moved cross-country or globally can easily stay connected through social media.
 
Zoom allowed us to connect during COVID when people were mostly staying at home.
 
For my part, I think I need to continue to better understand this new technology.
 
I think that like all new technology, it has the potential to do some amazing things. And it also has the potential to be incredibly harmful.
 
It is up to us to determine if and how we might use it responsibly.
 
In our reading today, Paul acknowledges our very human tendency to assume things, confirm our own biases, and dig our heels in on certain issues only to realize later that perhaps we were mistaken, or didn’t fully understand.
 
Paul, as we know, before he became “Paul” was “Saul,” a passionate and even aggressive opposer of Jesus Christ and the movement he was part of.
 
Paul could have hidden this fact from people. He could have been ashamed of his prior behavior or embarrassed that he had denied Jesus previously.
 
But instead he says “I used to say terrible and insulting things about him, and I was cruel.”
 
He admitted that he was wrong – as difficult and painful as that is.
 
Paul modeled for us incredible humility. And, more importantly, he reminds us of the grace that Christ offers all of us.
 
That grace that Christ offers is with us no matter what.
 
We receive Christ’s grace whether we are aggressively, staunchly opposed to something, or whether we are open to embracing something.
 
Paul says, “God had mercy on me and let me be an example of the endless patience of Christ Jesus.”
 
Based on the results of this experiment, I wonder how many of us need to re-evaluate our assumptions about AI’s ability, or even its potential value in contributing to a decent sermon?
 
Many of us, myself included, have clear biases and assumptions that AI is bad, or that a sermon written by AI could not possibly be compassionate, individualized, or flow well.
 
I suspect that most of you who thought I wrote the second sermon had these biases going into the experiment, thus causing you to assume that AI’s sermon would sound robotic, unfeeling, or uncaring.
 
In reality, the one I actually wrote is the one that many of you thought was less compassionate, more disjointed, and less cohesive.
 
I went into this experiment with the exact same biases and assumptions. I assumed that AI’s would have a less “human” feel, too.
 
So when it produced that sermon, I was surprised, too. And humbled, because I realized that it was likely people would guess the wrong sermon.
 
In what ways do we need to humble ourselves like Paul? In what ways do we need to gently open ourselves to possibilities?
 
These questions apply to me as much as to any of you.
 
I am not sure how I feel about this new technology. I have my own hesitations, my own uncertainties, and, clearly, my own negative biases.
 
And yet, I am willing to humble myself and open myself to Spirit’s movement, in all the ways that happens.
 
So, may we humble ourselves before God.
 
May we avoid assumptions and certainties and instead soften, bow, and let God lead.
 
The only way to move forward in any aspect of life – whether that’s new technology, educational opportunities, embracing new spiritual practices, or any number of other things – is to humble ourselves and trust that God will lead.
 
We acknowledge that this is true in other ways, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t also be true now.
 
May we move forward together in community, in loving kindness, with open hearts and open minds, and with cautious optimism.
 
And may we continue to help each other see new ways of thinking and being in the world, as Christians throughout history have always done and will continue to do in perpetuity.
 
Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
God, forgive us when, like Paul, we dig our heels in when we are faced with something we do not yet understand, or something that is pushing against our own assumptions and biases. Help us to open our hearts and minds to new possibilities and evaluate these things in an open and honest way. Perhaps we will come to the same conclusion, but help us do it in prayer so we can listen for your guidance and support. In your holy name, we pray. Amen.

Introduction

I am sure I am not the only one here who has been hearing, almost daily, new and different news about Artificial Intelligence (AI).

And I am probably not the only one here who is concerned about both the speed at which it is changing, and the sudden pervasiveness of AI into our ever-changing world.
​
AI is not just something happening online – it has become a part of life in many other ways as well.
 
I have not dabbled in AI much myself – I have not succumbed to using ChatGPT, for example.
 
But, I do know that some of my pastoral colleagues have begun using it to aid in writing their sermons.
 
I was at dinner with two of my friends and I mentioned that I was invited to write an article for the Canada Lutheran monthly newsletter.
 
My friends suggested I start by putting the prompt into ChatGPT and seeing what it said, and then editing it from there.
 
That made me uneasy.
 
I asked how they felt knowing that so many things could so easily be written using AI, up to and including full length novels.
 
Neither of them seemed to be bothered by that. One friend said that when you go to publish something, you have to state to what extent you used AI.
 
This concerns me, and I’m not sure if I am just resistant, or if I have good reasons to be concerned.
 
I feel like my reasons are pretty good. The primary reason it concerns me is because it gives me a bad gut feeling.
 
I could make all kinds of logical arguments based on articles I’ve read and studies that have been done thus far, but at the end of the day, my gut just tells me I should feel uneasy about this new technology.
 
This isn’t even something I can really wonder what Jesus would have thought about it, because he could not have even conceptualized what we are talking about.
 
How could we possibly know how Jesus might feel about the pervasiveness of AI?
 
I suspect that we will, very soon (and I’m sure it’s happening already), be having deep conversations on a global level about the ethics, safety, and potential damage that AI could cause.
 
My inclination thus far has been to mostly ignore its existence. Yes, I’ve used the AI feature that Google now has when I look something up online.
 
But, I have not used AI to create anything yet.
 
As we move forward with this technology, however, I feel like I need to stop ignoring it and at least start educating myself a bit on it.
 
So today, I thought we would try an experiment.
 
I have composed two short sermons.
 
One of them I wrote myself as I usually do. And the other one, I used ChatGPT.
 
Here is the deal though.
 
On the one I wrote myself, I did my best to write as I usually do. However, I left out any personal stories that would easily clue you in that I wrote it.
 
On the one I asked ChatGPT to write, I made NO changes. I am preaching it exactly as it was written.
 
Your task is to determine which sermon I wrote, and which one AI wrote.
 
There are feedback forms and pens in the baskets at the end of each row.
 
After the service is over, please note on a piece of paper which sermon you think I wrote, and which sermon you think ChatGPT wrote. You may also wish to offer feedback about the sermons or a reason why you think I wrote one or didn’t write one.
 
Next week, I will not be here. David Jones will be preaching in my place.
 
But the following week, I would like to follow up on this week’s experiment. So, bear with me as we hear two short sermons, one on each of the readings for today.
 
Message #1 on Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16
 
“Keep being concerned about each other.”
 
That’s how Hebrews 13 starts out. Everything after that line is essentially a set of reminders about what that might mean.
 
First, the passage reminds us to welcome strangers into our home.
 
Interestingly though, the reason is not out of charity, pity, or even motivation to get into heaven.
 
The reason is even simpler than that. By welcoming strangers into your home, you may end up meeting an angel, without even knowing it.
 
In other words, by offering the stranger a gift, you may end up receiving a gift yourself in that other person.
 
There are many times in our lives when we meet someone who unexpectedly changes our life, even if that chance encounter is very brief.
 
I am sure many of you could think of examples of people who have impacted your own life in this way.
 
The second reminder offered in Hebrews 13 is to “remember the Lord’s people who are in jail and be concerned for them.”
 
In fact, “imagine you are there with them.”
 
Rather than pitying them, judging them, or blaming them, be in solidarity with them. Take on the suffering of others as your own.
 
This reminder goes beyond the hospitality of welcoming the stranger. It is, indeed, the most radical kind of sharing and hospitality.
 
Another reminder from this passage is arguably the most important.
 
“Don’t fall in love with money. Be satisfied with what you have.”
 
It seems the more money we have, the harder we work to protect it.
 
Instead of inviting the stranger into our home, we may decline because we are concerned that they might steal from us, for example.
 
Instead of being concerned for others, we may become more concerned for ourselves and the things we have.
 
And of course, the more money we have, the more we seem to want.
 
It’s no longer hoping to have enough to get by, survive, or even thrive. It becomes a question of accumulating more.
 
And it’s not just money. It’s more often the things money can buy.
 
This becomes harder to avoid in our current world.
 
In the world of Jesus, many people had very little money. Life looked quite different.
 
But today, our society is set up such that we are not only encouraged but we are almost forced to accumulate more money and more wealth.
 
We are told in many ways that we must have money to be something in this world. And we believe it.
 
But Hebrews goes on to remind us that “Jesus Christ never changes! He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
 
So even in a changing and evolving world where money and power are “king,” Jesus remains steady, constant, reliable, and available to us.
 
The sacrifice we must make is to “keep offering gratitude and praise to God in the name of Jesus.” Help others and share your possessions with them, but don’t forget the role of Jesus in our lives.
 
Jesus never changes.
 
Whether we are welcoming a stranger, in jail ourselves, or in solidarity with those who are, Jesus remains constant.
 
Whether we have fallen in love with money or we are satisfied with what we have, Jesus remains constant.
 
Jesus is available to us and loves us day in and day out, forever.
 
So, are we ready to make the sacrifice?
 
Are we ready to keep offering praise to God in the name of Jesus?
 
Perhaps more importantly, are we ready to help others and share our possessions with them, or does that still make us a little uncomfortable?
 
These are the questions this passage is asking us to reflect on.
 
As we leave today, may we consider these questions and wonder together if we are ready to do what is being asked of us.
 
And in doing so, we are called to remember that Jesus is right there with us. Jesus never changes, even as we do. Amen.
 
And, our second sermon today will be on our second reading from Luke 14. Let’s begin:
 
Message #2 on Luke 14: 1, 7-14
 
There’s a powerful lesson in our passage from Luke 14 that speaks not only about the heart of God but also about how we are to live our lives—about humility, hospitality, and grace.
 
Let’s dive in.
 
In Luke 14, we find Jesus at a banquet. But this wasn’t just any ordinary dinner.
 
Jesus had been invited to the house of a Pharisee. 
 
Now, banquets in those days weren’t like the casual gatherings we’re used to. They were social events—chances for people to show off their status and influence.
 
They were often attended by those with wealth and power, and the seating arrangements?
 
Oh, those were carefully arranged. Everyone had a place that spoke to their rank in society.
 
In verse 7, Jesus observes something about the guests: “When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable...”
 
You see, these people were all vying for the best seat in the house. And it’s not hard to understand why.
 
In their culture, the seat closest to the host was the seat of honor. It meant you were valued, respected, and probably on the winning side of life. It was a sign that you mattered.
 
But Jesus, ever the teacher, used this moment to flip the whole idea on its head.
 
He tells them, “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.”
 
I can just imagine the guests sitting there, a bit uncomfortable.
 
Jesus was talking about something deep—something more than table manners.
 
He was challenging their pride and their preoccupation with status.
 
Now, let’s pause for a moment and think about our own lives. We live in a world where we are constantly told that status matters.
 
Who are you connected to? How much do you have? How high can you climb the social ladder? 
 
These are the questions we’re faced with every day, whether we’re conscious of it or not.
 
But Jesus doesn’t stop at pointing out the issue.
 
He offers a radical solution: “But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’”
 
Now, this isn’t about false humility or pretending to be less than we are. It’s about understanding that in the kingdom of God, things don’t work the way they do in the world.
 
In God’s kingdom, honor doesn’t come from our achievements or our status—it comes from humility.
 
And here’s the kicker: “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
 
Jesus is telling us that the true way up is the way down.
 
If we want to be great in God’s eyes, we have to be willing to serve, to love, and to put others before ourselves.
 
Now, let’s talk about hospitality for a moment because Jesus doesn’t stop with the guests.
 
In verses 12-14, he turns to the host and says, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.”
 
This is an invitation to radically rethink who we welcome into our lives and our homes.
 
It’s so easy to love those who love us, right? It’s easy to be kind to those who can return the favor. 
 
But Jesus challenges us to go further—invite those who can’t repay us, those who are marginalized or forgotten. The ones who need grace the most.
 
It’s like Jesus is saying, “Don’t just love the ones who can help you climb the ladder. Love the ones at the bottom. That’s where you’ll find the heart of God.”
 
And that’s what we’re called to do as followers of Christ.
 
We’re called to a radical hospitality that goes beyond social norms and expectations.
 
We’re called to humility that doesn’t seek the best seat, but instead, is content with the lowest, the one that serves others, the one that says, “It’s not about me.”
 
So, as we reflect on this passage, I want us to ask ourselves some hard questions today.
 
Who are we inviting to our table?
 
Who are we elevating in our lives?
 
Is it just the people who can do something for us, or are we willing to look beyond that and show love to those who can’t return the favor?
 
How do we approach status in our own lives?
 
Are we willing to humble ourselves and take the low place, knowing that our worth doesn’t come from what others think of us but from the love of God?
 
And finally, how can we live with humility and compassion in our everyday relationships—whether at work, at home, or with strangers?
 
We are called to reflect the heart of Christ, who humbled himself, took the lowly place, and invited us to the table.
 
In conclusion, the table that Jesus invites us to isn’t about seeking glory for ourselves.
 
It’s a table where we humbly serve, where we extend grace to others, and where we learn that true greatness comes from serving those around us.
 
Let us be a people who, like Jesus, turn the world’s values upside down.
 
Let’s be the kind of people who sit at the lowest seat, lift others up, and make room at the table for all who need it. Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
God of abundance, we invite you to walk with us as we encounter a world that is ever-changing, sometimes faster than we can keep up with. We ask that you would humble us before you and before others such that we can offer grace to our neighbours, friends, family, and strangers we meet. In your holy and loving name we pray, Amen.

Young at Heart Message
 
Imagine for a moment that you are sharing a Christmas Day meal with your family.
Suddenly, you start to feel your chest tightening. Your left arm starts to tingle, and you begin sweating.
Someone in your family recognizes the signs of a heart attack, so they call 911.
 
But when the line connects, there’s simply a voice message that says “we’re sorry, all of our operators are enjoying the Christmas holiday with their families. If you need an ambulance, please call the nearest ambulance service directly.”
 
Annoyed, and slightly panicked, your family member quickly googles the nearest ambulance and phones them directly. Once again, the message states that they are taking the day off to enjoy the holiday.
 
So, a family member ushers you quickly to their own vehicle and rushes you to the hospital themselves.
 
But… you guessed it. You arrive, and there’s a sign on the emergency room door saying that it’s a holiday, and no one should have to work on Christmas Day. Please come back tomorrow.
 
Obviously, if you are having a heart attack, waiting until tomorrow isn’t a great plan.
 
And, of course, this scenario isn’t realistic today.
 
But, on the other hand, if we took the Law of Moses as seriously as the man in charge of the synagogue did, this would be the expectation.
 
Today, we live in a world that has become quite lax on the “rules” around Sabbath days.
 
Christmas Day may be the only day of the year when nearly everything is closed.
 
But even then, you can still get emergency services if you need them.
 
You can still fly, or go to the movies, and some grocery stores and gas stations are still open for the essentials.
 
On any other day of the year, you can access pretty much anything you need.
 
Some people adhere pretty strictly to a Sabbath day, but most are willing and able to be flexible, and many people don’t even take a regular “Sabbath” day.
 
Nowadays, what qualifies as “work” can even be called into question.
 
Parents who work all week still have to parent on the weekends. They can’t just take Sunday off from the work of parenting.
 
Pastors don’t ever get Sundays off of work. Most of us try to take another regular day for Sabbath rest, but even then, it is harder than you might think.
 
A day “off” from work, for many people, still looks like work.
 
Instead of going to the office, though, people get all the errands and chores done that they don’t have time for during the week.
 
Even Jesus recognized that when he said “won’t any one of you untie your ox or donkey and lead it out to drink on a Sabbath?”
 
Jesus is being a bit snarky there, because he’s begging the question, “how do you define work?”
 
Most of the people he was talking with wouldn’t have considered leading the ox to water to be work.
 
It’s just something that must be done for survival.
 
Much like getting water from the well, washing dishes after using them, eating, or even, one could argue, getting out of bed.
 
Yesterday, I got up relatively early for a Saturday, made breakfast, packed a bag, and drove to Bragg Creek to hike.
 
While I enjoy that tremendously, there is still a level of work that must be done to accomplish that.
 
The point here is this: in the mind of the leader of the synagogue, the definition of Sabbath and work is very clear-cut – it’s very black and white. There is no grey area.
 
But Jesus, as we see in this passage, muddies the water by demonstrating very clearly that it is not as black and white as everyone thinks it should be.
 
The Message
​
Jesus isn’t making a statement saying that Sabbath is unimportant.
 
He also isn’t saying that the rules are unimportant or should never be followed. He isn’t implying that the Law of Moses should be completely thrown out.
 
But he is making it clear that there is often grey area and room for flexibility within the rulebook.
 
And part of Jesus’ ability to understand the world in shades of grey is because of his ability to empathize with people.
 
Jesus couldn’t imagine letting this woman who had already suffered for 18 years suffer a moment longer.
 
He could have said “I’m sorry, I can see that you are in pain, but today is the Sabbath. I can heal you, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Since you’ve dealt with this for 18 years already, one more day won’t kill you.”
 
In the time it would have taken to say that to her, he could have just healed her.
 
So why wouldn’t he? Because the Law of Moses says no work can be done on the Sabbath?
 
Jesus couldn’t look her in the face and deny her healing simply because it was the Sabbath.
 
The leader of the synagogue pushed back on Jesus, though. He became angry and tried to get the crowd on his side.
 
The man believed with his entire being that he was right, and Jesus was wrong.
 
That’s what he’d been taught his entire life. And, as the leader of the synagogue, it was his job – his livelihood and his life’s work – to uphold the Law of Moses.
 
How could he do his work and live his life if he was constantly questioning the Law? His faith depended on wholeheartedly believing he was right to uphold the Law.
 
And I can understand where he’s coming from, at least in part.
 
There have been times in my life when I knew, categorically, that I was right.
 
In my younger years, as is often true for many of us, I had a set of beliefs that I am sure involved me being right and everyone who didn’t agree with me being wrong.
 
There is an element of survival that comes along with this mentality.
 
Father Richard Rohr argues that there are two halves to our lives. The first half is the part that we spend building the container for our life.
 
We hold very solid, black and white beliefs during the first half of life because we must have a solid foundation to build the container.
 
And then, we spend the second half of our lives searching for the contents to fill the container. This process of searching often means we discover that things were not as black and white as we spent the first half of life believing.
 
Similarly, Cynthia Bourgeault describes the concept by saying, “the journey toward full selfhood is more than just awakening; it involves a letting go that is also a dying.”
 
In both cases, we are talking about letting go of at least some of our black and white thinking to allow for more grey areas.
 
The longer I do the work of being a pastor, the more I see how grey the world really is.
 
Unfortunately, this often involves meeting people who have very different experiences than I do before I will change my mind or expand my thinking.
 
As an example, I know multiple pastors who really struggled with the idea that we should be open in our churches to members of the LGBTQ+ community.
 
And those same pastors became more open to the idea when they were pushed by their very own children.
 
Several of those pastors ended up with children who experienced the world very differently than their parents.
 
These pastors were then faced with a choice: continue their black and white thinking and disown their children, or expand their thinking to accept grey areas and continue to love their children and grow with them into something new.
 
This, I believe, is the dying that Cynthia Bourgeault was talking about.
 
This passage today gives us insights that go far beyond the face value of the scenario Jesus encountered.
 
Jesus heals the woman who was stooped over, allowing her to both physically and metaphorically see the world in an entirely new way.
 
She can physically stand taller, but she also recognizes the grace that Jesus offered her that day.
 
At the same time, the synagogue leader is humbled by Jesus.
 
He physically and metaphorically stood tall, and Jesus humbled him enough that he was, at least metaphorically, stooped over a bit after this interaction.
 
And the reality is that we, too, are always being simultaneously stooped down and lifted up.
 
But what does it mean for us to be both uplifted in glory and stooped down in humility?
 
It may mean letting go of our deeply held convictions about the right way to worship or vote or live.
 
It may mean that we instead listen for the whisperings of the Spirit—even if that whispering comes in the voice of someone we don’t like or don’t understand.
 
It may mean changing our perspective so that the person we regarded as an enemy now looks like a child of God.
 
It may mean putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes before we are forced to because it’s someone we personally know.
 
Too often, we don’t change our minds or open ourselves to the possibility of grey areas until someone forces us to.
 
The pastors I know who weren’t truly confronted with trying to understand the LGBTQ+ community until their own children forced them to confront their biases fall into this category.
 
But Jesus is asking us to look within and question our own biases – our own ideas of how the world works and our own notions of black and white, right and wrong.
 
And, he’s suggesting we do this on an ongoing basis – before we are forced to because we directly encounter someone who calls our biases out.
 
He’s not suggesting we throw out the rule book completely. But he is suggesting that when we are confronted with a greyness that we do not fully understand, we take a step back and wonder with God about it.
 
Is there some growing we need to do? Do we need to open our mind to new possibilities?
 
Do we need to look someone in the eye and say, “I see you, even though the world tells me I should not?”
 
Jesus is pushing us a little bit with this passage, just like he was pushing the leader of the synagogue, and indeed the crowd of people watching him.
 
What if we let him push us beyond our own current understanding?
 
Perhaps, instead of holding fast to our biases, we could allow Jesus to help us recognize our biases as opportunities for growth and deeper understanding of other people and the world around us.
 
So, as we leave here today, may we allow ourselves to be simultaneously stooped down in humility and lifted up in grace.
 
May we question our black and white thinking, and be open to the beauty of the spectrum of shades of grey. Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
Healing God, thank you for your loving kindness and your gentle nudges that encourage us to grow and lean into newness and wholeness. Thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to guide us and help us learn the lessons you wish us to better understand. We are often simultaneously stooped down in humility and lifted up in grace. Open our hearts to better humble ourselves and open us to your grace. In your loving name we pray. Amen.

​Young at Heart Message
 
When I created this week’s bulletin, I thought I would preach on the passage from Luke.
 
But, as the week went on and I began working on my sermon, I changed my mind and decided instead to continue our topic from last week on faith.
 
Today we heard a continuation of the “Hall of Faith” passage from Hebrews, and I think it’s worth continuing that discussion.
 
Earlier this week, I had my monthly Zoom call with my Spiritual Companioning group.
 
This month, it was my turn to lead the group, and I decided to do a Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) of one of my favorite prayers.
 
I’m sure I’ve shared the prayer with you before, but just so we are all on the same page, I’ll read the prayer for you now.
 
This is called “Patient Trust” by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
 
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability--
and that it may take a very long time.
 
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
 
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete. Amen.
 
The process for the Lectio Divina that we used was that I would read the prayer through twice, and then we took 10 minutes of silence to ponder the prayer, re-read it ourselves, and journal any thoughts that came to mind.
 
Now, I have read this prayer many times since I began seminary.
 
In fact, I used the prayer as the basis for my Credo that I had to write for ordination.
 
And yet, this opportunity to re-read the prayer and do the Lectio Divina allowed me to gain something new from the prayer that I had never thought about before.
 
In the past, I was more focused on the patience piece.
 
I read the prayer as a reminder that I needed to slow down, be patient with God, and recognize that many things I wanted in life came in time.
 
But this time when I read it, I really felt compelled to think about these lines specifically:
 
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -
And that it may take a very long time.
 
I realized as I read these lines that this is an incredibly deep insight about human nature.
 
How often do we want to just get to the end result without having to go through the intermediate stages?
 
And yet, we also often learn the most from those very same intermediate stages we hope to skip.
 
I’ll give you an example, which I think is also a very useful metaphor for this concept.
 
As most of you know, I ran a full marathon back in May.
And, I crossed the finish line! Yay!
 
It was an amazing experience to be able to cross that finish line. But, the entire time I was training, even though I knew the training was what would ultimately get me over that finish line, all I really wanted was to cross the finish line.
 
I was impatient to get to that exact point.
 
But, do you know what I will remember more than crossing the finish line?
 
I will never forget the amount of work and training it took to get me there.
 
And, from the moment I crossed that finish line, I have been working on how I could improve for the next one.
 
I have been fiddling with my running schedule, my nutrition plan, the time of day I run, and I’ve been reading a ton of training advice.
 
And this time, even though I’m looking forward to crossing the finish line again next year, I am not as impatient to get there, because I now know that the best part of running a marathon is actually the determination, the grit, the motivation, the pain, the endurance, and the journey that happens before I ever reach race day.
 
I learned a lot about myself, what my body could and couldn’t handle, and, perhaps more importantly, what my mind could and couldn’t handle during the training journey.
 
And, while the training was a journey in itself, I also realized that I forgot to enjoy the intermediate stages of the race itself on race day.
 
I started that race, and immediately just wanted to be done.
 
5 hours and 11 minutes is a long time to be running, and I was so concerned with finishing that I forgot to appreciate and enjoy some of the elements of the race itself that were important.
 
The comradery of other runners, the volunteers that made that race happen, the police officers that ensured a safe race, and all the other elements that went into the race were things I never even considered on the day of the event.
 
There were so many people who were there simply to cheer runners on.
 
Someone handed me a popsicle at one point, which was an incredible gift.
Near the end of the race, a woman put a bracelet on my arm which I’ve worn every day since the race.
 
The bracelet says “You Got This,” which helped me get through the run, but it also applies to many other aspects of life.
 
The point here is that I was so concerned about getting to the finish line that I forgot, at least in the moment, to enjoy the race itself.
 
And, truthfully, I forgot to appreciate and enjoy the training leading up to the race too, even though it was months of work.
 
Unfortunately, this has happened more often that I would like to admit.
 
This same thing can be said about almost every other big thing I have accomplished in my life.
 
Teilhard de Chardin knew this, and he wasn’t wrong:
 
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -
And that it may take a very long time.
 
The Message

So where does that leave us with regard to today’s scripture?

Well, I think the marathon example actually tells us an awful lot about faith.

Without faith that I would actually be able to cross the finish line, I would not have spent the countless hours training, I can tell you that.

It’s insane to run over 21 kilometers in one go every week!

And yet, I had faith that doing so would ultimately get me to that finish line.

I cannot tell you how many times I asked myself what the point was, or how many times I had to remind myself to trust the process.

It would have been easier to quit, but that would have meant giving up faith in myself that I could in fact do it.

We see something very similar in our “Hall of Faith” reading today.

The Hebrew people crossing the Red Sea had tremendous faith in God that God would help them get across that sea safely.

I guarantee they were impatient to get to the other side.

But they could not possibly have accomplished that end without a deep faith and trust in God, and without going through the “intermediate stages” of putting one foot in front of the other as the walls of water rose on either side of them, ready to drown them at any moment.

Likewise, the passage talks about people who went through some horribly difficult things – torture, mocking, flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.

They wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.

And I guarantee they were impatient to reach the end – but for some of them, they weren’t sure what that end would be. Perhaps simply an end to the struggle would have been sufficient in some cases.

But they had to go through those stages of difficulty in order to ultimately reach the goal.

The Hebrews passage ends by saying “let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.”

Even this passage likes the metaphor of running a race to demonstrate that we must endure the race itself, including all of the preparation leading up to it, as part of the journey before we can reach the end.

The author knew that enduring the race often means enduring physical, emotional, or mental pain and anguish.

It means experiencing fear, uncertainty, doubt, anger, frustration, hopelessness, and perhaps even a lack of faith.

But it also means putting one foot in front of the other, continuing to move forward, and overcoming all those challenging emotions if we want to progress past that stage of the journey.

So there is no use in being impatient as we endure the hard parts of the journey.

We forget that crossing that finish line is so much more than the few seconds at the very end.

This applies to almost everything we do in life.

In order to reach the goal – the end result or the finish line – of whatever it is we are impatient for, we must journey through the intermediate stages.

And in doing so, we learn a lot about ourselves, about those we love, about life, and about God.

Our faith is often tested in the intermediate stages, and so is our patience.

But persevering and slowing down to look around as we embark on the journey is just as important, if not more important, than reaching the final destination.

As is often said, life is a marathon, not a sprint!

So, may you carry a deep faith with you in all you do, and may you practice patience and enjoy the journey.

May you have end goals in mind, but may you invite God to journey with you to get there, and may you become more aware of the lessons you can learn from the intermediate stages.

And, as Teilhard de Chardin so eloquently and accurately states, may you “accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”

Amen.
​
Let us pray:
 
Loving and gracious God, you are always patient with us, and yet we often forget that we must also be patient with you. Help us not only to be patient, but also help us to appreciate the journey. Whether it’s a short-term journey toward an end goal, or the journey of life, help us to slow down, be grateful, and perhaps even appreciate the challenges and joys of the “intermediate stages” along our paths. Above all, help us to trust in your slow work in our lives. In your holy and gracious name we pray. Amen.