"One Tune, Two Songs"

 

I Timothy 1:12-17

September 14, 2025

 

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost.  But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.  To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.  Amen.

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            A lot of people use their own lives to tell other people what not to do.  For example, even though we have no idea who wrote this song, a lot of singers have recorded it and we’ve all heard it:

“There is a house in New Orleans

they call the Rising Sun;

It’s been the ruin of many poor boys,

and, God, I know I’m one.

 

My mother was a tailor;

she sewed my new blue jeans.

My father was a gambling man

down in New Orleans.

 

Now the only thing a gambler needs

is a suitcase and a trunk.

And the only time he’s satisfied

is when he’s on a drunk.

 

Mothers, tell your children

not to do what I have done,

Spend your lives in sin and misery

in the House of the Rising Sun.

 

Well, I’ve got one foot on the platform,

the other foot on the train,

And I’m going back to New Orleans

to wear that ball and chain.

 

There is a house in New Orleans

they call the Rising Sun;

It’s been the ruin of many poor boys,

and, God, I know I’m one.”

 

The first Letter to Timothy, whether written by Paul himself or by someone close to him, took for granted that people had heard him tell of the way that he persecuted the believers before he became one of them:

“though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” [I Timothy 1:13-14]

Paul was not the first to do that, nor the last.  There is nothing more compelling than the telling and the hearing of personal experience to convey what is most important and to invite others to the rich feast that is life in the kingdom of God.

            In the books of the prophets, you have someone like Isaiah recalling his shock and confusion when God revealed himself as a mighty ruler and named Isaiah to act as his ambassador:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.  The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”  Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” [Isaiah 6:1-8]

There’s that same awareness of God’s holiness, human sin and weakness, God’s forgiveness, and the commission to go and share the message.  All of those appear, in different combinations and degrees, in any faithful witness.

            It doesn’t mean we all have to dwell on whatever skeletons we may have in our closets.  Sometimes, in fact, there are people who, as they tell their own stories, recall them in such detail that you begin to wonder whether they are missing the things they have turned away from.  There can be a kind of pride that attaches to how bad they once were.  It’s the shadow side of “Look how good I am now!”  Or it can become that.

            On the other hand, it’s possible to be honest about the difference that Jesus makes in our lives and about how the Holy Spirit works on us every day to bring us into better alignment with God’s will.  The English novelist Evelyn Waugh was well known for being kind of a crank and for having a sharp tongue.  Nevertheless, after he had a conversion experience he became an unofficial advocate for his faith, and especially for the Roman Catholic version.  That set up a situation where an interviewer once asked him about how he could put those two sides of himself together.  The best defense against charges of hypocrisy is honesty.  Waugh’s response has to be one of the most honest that anybody has ever given.  He said, “You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic.  Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.”[1] 

            Very few people I know fit the profile of having formerly been (or being currently)

“a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.”

Plenty of people I know, and one I see in the mirror on a regular basis, can say they’ve done and said plenty of things they regret, and have thought of a lot more that they would have regretted if God had not stepped in and said, “Don’t be stupid.”  That, too, can be an honest witness even if it is not as spectacular or newsworthy.

            In small ways as well as large ways, we need and we know God’s mercy.  In all our ways, God is there for us.  Even before we are aware of what lies ahead, God prepares the way, so the apostle could look back and say of his darkest time,

“I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” [I Timothy 1:13-14]

The key word there is “grace”.

            There are some alternative words to “The House of the Rising Sun”, by the way, just as there’s an alternative story to the one it tells:

“Amazing grace!  How sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me. 

I once was lost, but now am found;

was blind but now I see.

 

 

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

and grace my fears relieved. 

How precious did that grace appear

the hour I first believed!

 

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come. 

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

and grace will lead me home.

 

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

 bright shining as the sun,

we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

than when we’d first begun.

 

Amazing grace!  How sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me. 

I once was lost, but now am found;

was blind but now I see.”

 

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[1] TOP 25 QUOTES BY EVELYN WAUGH (of 198) | A-Z Quotes

"Pull Up a Seat"

 

Luke 15:1-7

September 7, 2025

 

“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable: ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.’”

*********************************

            Next year will be this church’s 200^th anniversary.  There was a group of Methodists meeting off and on in Valley Forge by around 1811, but it was in 1826 that they formally organized in Phoenixville.  So I was reading through a book published by Howard Peters (of 47 Nutt Rd.) in 1926: “100 Years of Methodism in Phoenixville”.  He describes a furor caused by one of my predecessors.  It’s a little unclear as written, but it seems to me that the preacher one Sunday spoke out against naming people who refused to endorse the temperance movement.  (What we would today call “doxing”.)  Mind you, alcohol abuse was a severe problem then.  It still is, but the scale was wider at the time, and the churches were trying to get a handle on things, even going so far as to start using unfermented grape juice at communion – a controversial step, but one that allowed people addicted to alcohol to take the sacrament without either shaming them or endangering their sobriety.  That’s why we still do that.

            This is how Mr. Peters tells the story:

“In the case of Wythes, in “Pennypacker’s Annals of Phoenixville,” several pages are devoted to a controversy which was caused by a sermon which was preached on June 14, 1845, by Rev. Jos. Wythes, on the evils of intemperance [so far, so good: our guy is preaching against substance abuse], in which he condemned the habit indulged in by opponents of the cause [the anti-temperance people], of using opprobious [sic] language in referring to individuals by name.”

In other words, he wasn’t going to get down to the level of personal attacks on specific people, even if the other folks were doing that.  Apparently there were enough temperance people in the congregation who wanted him to do that, or who took not calling people out individually for not supporting the Temperance Movement itself, that the service got out of hand.  Peters continues,

“A clergyman of another denomination being present was called upon at the close of the meeting who argued against the position taken by Wythes.”

So Wythes tried to demonstrate he wasn’t arguing for drunkenness by calling for people to sign onto a public pledge of abstinence, which many did, but he became a target nonetheless.

“On the 23^rd of August a temperance meeting was held in the neighborhood, addressed by Rev. John Chambers, a noted Philadelphia preacher, who spoke of Wythes as an opponent of the cause and a ‘fit minister of Hell.’”

Then there were peacemaking moves over the next month or two, but Peters was still writing about it 76 years later, during Prohibition.

            Now, I’m not here to open old wounds or to inflict new ones.  I will say, though, that I can hear in all of this the voice of people murmuring behind Jesus back, and saying,

“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

When the tax collectors and sinners were seeking Jesus out to hear what he had to say, why would you want to turn them away?  People were coming to him to find a way out of the smoke and haze and bleariness of troubled lives into the fresh air of God’s love.  Why create an atmosphere so empty of grace that no one can breathe without choking on accusation? 

            It’s hard enough for anybody to turn around and admit they have traveled far down a road that is not God’s road and to start back in the other direction.  That’s called “repentance” and it’s not easy to begin with, let alone with people looking on and pointing fingers and naming names.  There is a deep courage that is needed for anyone to say, “I have been wrong and have hurt others,” and the fear of a response – especially when totally justified – the fear of a response that expresses the deep hurt that they have inflicted can keep someone from taking that first step back toward where they should have been all along.  So they stay in a terrible place where their conscience burns within them or in pride they double down on the destructive ways, and the devastation takes them down in the end.

            Who are we, too, if we make it any harder for someone who has been wrong to stay wrong?  (Assuming here that we are right, and setting aside the words in Romans 3:23 that say, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”)  Or have we also become so hardened that we cannot see the possibility of renewal through the work of Jesus on the cross and of his Spirit in the human heart?  It’s only one step from saying, “Even God cannot save you,” to saying, “Even God cannot save me.”  That’s just another dead-end not worth going down.

            When God steps in to soften the hardened heart, not to recognize that or at the very least allow it as a possibility, puts us all at risk.  Do not get drawn into that.  I saw a video clip recently that showed a man sitting down on a couch, rubbing his eyes and wringing his hands.  His wife walked into the room and quietly set a coffee cup on the table next to him and turned away without saying anything.  As she was leaving the room he said, “I need to tell you that I am sorry I spoke so harshly yesterday.  I didn’t need to do that and it shouldn’t have happened.”

“Do you really mean that?” she said.

He answered, “Yes,” and she leaned over and picked up the untouched coffee cup.

“I need to get you a different cup of coffee.”

Somewhere there must be an ancient document with a version of Luke’s gospel that says, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yeah, no kidding.  Pull up a seat.’”

 

"Banquet Etiquette"

 

Luke 14:7-14

August 31, 2025

 

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.  For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

 

*******************************

            So much gets wrapped up in our evaluations of where we and others might be on the status charts that it can become an embarrassment when we get it wrong.

“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.” [Luke 14:8-10]

            Jesus seems to have been very familiar with the kind of setting he describes.  The gospels talk about him having supper at the home of Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary.  They mention him eating at the house of somebody named Simon the Leper.  He invited himself to dinner at Zacchaeus’s house.  There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee where he saved the day by turning water into wine.  And his very last gathering with all of his disciples together was a holiday meal, a Passover seder, where he was not a guest, but the host.

            Formal occasions, public events, and even a lot less formal get-togethers where people don’t necessarily know everyone well, are full of those embarrassing moments.  Weddings, funerals, even fundraising dinners, all have their goof-ups.  Luncheons or banquets put all kinds of social interactions on display.  In Jesus’ time, especially, people paid a lot of attention to the seating as a reflection of people’s social standing – and a lot of things played into those calculations.  What was your relation to the host?  Did you hold some sort of religious or political office?  Could you be expected to return the invitation sometime?  Were you on good terms with the other guests?

            One of my friends, who is a lawyer, was at a dinner for some group or another in Washington, where he was living, and didn’t really know anybody yet.  So he walked in and tried to find a seat right away because the tables were filling up, and he saw a table with an open spot. He went over and did the proper, “Is this seat taken?” thing.  A man was sitting there who gestured to an empty chair and my friend sat down and they began talking.  They actually kind of hit it off, which is not guaranteed in that kind of setting.  After awhile they realized they hadn’t exchanged names and he said, “By the way, I’m Marty.”  “And I’m Pete.” The table filled up and the dinner went on and then came the speeches.  The main speaker began with the usual acknowledgements.  For one of those Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (the notorious RBG herself) pointed out into the hall and thanked her husband Marty Ginsberg for being there.  At the end of the evening, Pete said something like, “I’m sorry I didn’t know who you were,” to which Marty replied, “If you did, neither of us would have had a real conversation.  Thanks.”

            There’s an underlying sense of deference that is capable of getting in the way of simple friendliness if we let it.  And we do.  For the most part, it’s just something to shake our heads over with regret.  “Too bad people can’t just be themselves.”  Some people find a way to work around it, at least sometimes, like Marty Ginsberg.

            There is a darker side to this, however, that Jesus also addresses.  That is that if you give into that deference, knowingly or unknowingly, you block people out.  In a book called Rediscover Jesus that the “Fitting Room” group is going to discuss on Sunday mornings this fall, the author, Matthew Kelly, says a few words about how our tendency to rank people plays out beyond the reception hall.

“The problem,” he says, “is that we value some people more than other people.  Jesus doesn’t do that.  If a hundred people died in a natural disaster in our city, this would capture our attention for days, weeks, months, or even years.  If a thousand people died on the other side of the world, we might barely think of it again after watching the story on the news.

Why do we value American lives more than African lives?  Why are we comfortable with Asian children sewing our running shoes in horrific conditions for wages that are barely enough to buy food?  What is so important?  Cheap shoes.  Cheap clothes.  Cheap drill bits.  Cheap stuff.

Would you be willing to pay a little more?  How much more?”[1]

That’s a problem far deeper than trade policy.

            Jesus knows that.  He goes right to the heart of it and lays out this crazy, radical concept of asking his followers to get out of the practice of evaluating other people generally, and specifically confronts the practice of relating to people on the basis of what we somehow get out of one another.  Forget about reciprocity.  If any kind of reward or benefit comes out of it, leave that to God to determine.  Just concentrate on people as people.

“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” [Luke 14:12-13]

            Back to the banquet hall again.  One time I was invited to say grace at an event, and was seated at the front, next to the speaker, who was the governor.  This wasn’t in Pennsylvania but I still won’t give his name, because of what I’m about to say:  He was boring.  I tried to make small talk and I tried to touch on big subjects, and the man had no thoughts on anything and no opinions on any topic – not an observation, not an anecdote, not a knock-knock joke.  It was excruciating.  Then they brought dessert and it became worse.  The governor started talking and wouldn’t or couldn’t stop. He went on for what felt like the next half-hour between spoonfuls of his dessert about how good this pudding was, how he liked pudding, how it was probably his favorite thing in the world even though a lot of chefs never learn to make it right. This stuff, he would say, waving his spoon, for once was decent pudding, not like the cup of pudding that he ate at a similar banquet the previous week.  Did he mention how much he liked pudding?  Rice pudding, chocolate pudding, tapioca pudding, banana pudding; he liked them all except vanilla, which was too bland for him unless they were going to top it off with something that had real flavor – because he liked pudding you could really taste.  I was relieved when it was time for him to give his speech, but I was also afraid he was going to tell everybody how much pistachio pudding had changed his life or propose a ban on Jello.

            How I wished that day to be seated way at the back, near the kitchen or maybe even the exit.  What a relief it would have been to sit next to someone who could talk intelligently about the weather. 

Then again, maybe in his way he was emotionally or socially one of

“the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,”

and I myself was too blind to see it, all because of where the two of us were both seated next to each other on the dais.

            Sometimes Jesus knows us all too well.

 

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[1] Matthew Kelly, Rediscover Jesus: An Invitation (North Palm Beach, Florida: Blue Sparrow Press, 2019), 85.

"Burn on, not Out"

 Revelation 3:14-22

August 24, 2025

 

¹⁴ “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation:

¹⁵ “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. ¹⁶ So, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷ For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. ¹⁸ Therefore I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white robes to clothe yourself and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. ¹⁹ I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. ²⁰ Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me. ²¹ To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. ²² Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

 

 

            I used to be part of a clergy study group that included a Moravian, a Lutheran, two Presbyterians, and a United Methodist.  It was a sort of stereotypical version of what is called “Mainline Protestantism” and even though we had our theological differences, one of the participants referred to the group as “a bunch of radical moderates” and the name stuck.

            When I come to this last letter sent from John in exile on the island of Patmos, and read his warning to the Laodiceans, I think of what he said:

“I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot.  So, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” [Revelation 3:15-16]

It troubles me that I have heard that applied to us “radical moderates” by people who fail to recognize the deep commitment to faith as a way of life that does not need to prove itself to anyone but God, nor to call attention to itself when the spotlight should be on God’s grace given to us by the work of his Son, urged upon us daily by the Holy Spirit.

            I had a little time last week to scan the internet for items that had nothing to do with the news, and watched a few episodes of a series called “Atheist Church Audit”.  It’s done by a North Carolina man in his thirties who grew up in a conservative, Pentecostal Christian environment who now considers himself an atheist but who regularly visits a whole lot of churches of all sorts (and the occasional mosque or Mormon gathering).  He reviews his experiences, which include in-depth conversations and interactions with the people he meets there and honest, wide-ranging discussions about faith and life.

            Across the series he shares little bits and pieces of his own spiritual biography, which becomes the most moving part.  I hesitate to describe it because the story is complex and I don’t want it to come out as a cartoon version.  In this one episode about his visit to a church that was neither fundamentalist nor especially liberal, he compares the people he meets to the people among whom he spent his teenage years who left their faith, about whom he says,

“They were known as ‘Crispies’ because fire burnt them.  And I don’t think there are many people like that here.”

That was kind of a snide remark.  He went on, though, and it felt like he was going off-script.

“Also I want to tack this on as a postscript because this always happens.  If your immediate response to everything I just said is to type in the comments, ‘Well, it sounds a lot like you had a works-based religion, but did you ever have a real relationship with Jesus?’  Respectfully, shut up.

Jesus was my everything.”

[Then he choked up for a few seconds.]

“And I hope you never have to experience the pain of losing him.”

[More silence.] 

Then he finished the way he finishes all of his videos:

“My name is Jared; I’m an atheist.  Go to church.”[1]

Do I myself want to be on fire for Christ?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Do I want the same for others?  No question.  What I don’t want to see is someone burn out.  There is a time and a place for bonfires.  More often, though, there is a need for something steady.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew recounts Jesus’ words:

“You are the light of the world.  A city built on a hill cannot be hid.  No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” [Matthew 5:14-16]

To maintain a constant witness to the love of God in Christ requires a constant reliance on him that is like regularly refilling the oil in a lamp.

 

“For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” [Revelation 3:17]

 

Instead of thinking you are self-sufficient, look to him.

 

“Therefore I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white robes to clothe yourself and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.” [Revelation 3:18]

 

That is what keeps up the steady kind of faith that lasts through both the highs and lows of lifelong discipleship.

            I do not offer the following story as marital advice.  It is not a good model to follow, but take it for what it is worth, for God hides his wisdom everywhere:  There was once one of those game shows where they take a couple and separate them, then ask questions of one spouse to see how the other will answer.  So they sent a husband offstage and asked his wife a series of questions, one of which was, “How long has it been since he said, ‘I love you’?” and she answered, “Fifty-four years.”  Everybody laughed, but she insisted that was her answer.  Then they brought the man in and asked all the other questions before they came to “How long has it been since you told your wife, ‘I love you’?” and he said, “Fifty-four years.  I’m not good with that kind of thing, but when I said it I promised I would let her know if it ever changed, and it never has.”

 

“Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” [Revelation 3:22]

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[1]  Jared Smith,  Why I HATE Episcopalians - Christ Church on Capitol Square - Atheist Church Audit

"Endurance"

 

Revelation 3:7-13

August 10, 2025

 

⁷ “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:

These are the words of the Holy One, the True One,
    who has the key of David,
    who opens and no one will shut,
        who shuts and no one opens:

⁸ “I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door that no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. ⁹ I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not but are lying—I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you. ¹⁰ Because you have kept my word of endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. ¹¹ I am coming soon; hold fast to what you have, so that no one takes away your crown. ¹² If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. ¹³ Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

 

*********************************************************

 

“If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

 

That’s by Rudyard Kipling, and it goes for the women as well as for the men -- with appropriate adjustments.        

            Strength.  Dependability.  Consistency.  Reliability.  Put into practice, all of those become what the book of Revelation calls “endurance”.

“Because you have kept my word of endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.”  [Revelation 3:10]

It means more than putting up with the winds of events or stoically shrugging off all suffering and every tragedy with, “This, too, shall pass,” or, “It is what it is.”  It means not getting blown off course by every wind.  It means not chasing every shiny new trend just for its shininess or its polish.

“All that is gold does not glitter. 

Not all who wander are lost.  

The old that is strong does not wither. 

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

 

Endurance.  Above all, it means to love God, who first loved us, and never to lose track of what that.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” [I Corinthians 13:4-7]

            The Bible has a lot of tales of endurance, and they’re almost always tales of love.  Genesis 29 tells how, when Jacob was on the run from his brother Esau, who wanted to kill him, he went to stay with his uncle Laban.

“Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Jacob loved Rachel, so he said, ‘I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.’ Laban said, ‘It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.’  So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” [Genesis 29:16-20]

That was patience, and it was beautiful.

“Then Jacob said to Laban, ‘Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.’ So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.)  When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, ‘What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?’ Laban said, “This is not done in our country—giving the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.’ Jacob did so and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.  (Laban gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her maid.) So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. He served Laban for another seven years.” [Genesis 29:21-30]

That was endurance, and it was more than patience, and it had both love and integrity built into it.

            Endurance is an aspect of love that persists and does not let go.  Endurance is the love of the Prodigal Son’s father, watching and waiting for his return so persistently that he saw him coming down the road on his way home, long after everybody else had given up on his return. 

Endurance is an essential aspect of Christian discipleship because it is an essential aspect of the redemptive love of Jesus that we depend on to lead us, as it led him, through whatever troubles we face toward the future that God holds in store for his beloved children. 

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,”

says the book of Hebrews [12:1-2],

“let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

 

"Wake up What Remains"

 

Revelation 3:1-6

August 3, 2025

 

¹‘And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars:

‘I know your works; you have a name for being alive, but you are dead. ²Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is at the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. ³Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. ⁴Yet you have still a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes; they will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. ⁵If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes, and I will not blot your name out of the book of life; I will confess your name before my Father and before his angels. ⁶Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

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            I’ve decided to add a new place to my bucket list.  It’s the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California.  For the most part, it looks like this:

As gray as it is, you can spot a few yellow dots in this picture and some pale green.  The website for the park says a few things about rattlesnakes that I skipped over and then that the park has “92 different plant families, 346 genera and hundreds of flowering species”. 

            A lot of them are going to be cactuses or grasses adapted to a desert environment, but there will also be species like this desert lily:

 

That isn’t, strictly speaking, a lily.  It is from a similar family, though, and grows from a bulb.  The lily bulbs we are used to stay underground all winter and wait until it warms up enough in the spring to emerge and flower.  These stay underground all summer and come out when it is cool enough to appear above ground.

            The two major factors in this environment are, obviously, the heat and the scarcity of water.  Every so often, though, there are the torrential rains that southern California gets, the kind that cause flash floods and mudslides in Los Angeles.  Further out in the desert, if the winds are just right and various conditions permit, like in 2024, there may be a rare rainstorm and then this happens:

 

            When John wrote from exile to the church in Sardis, he sent a word to them on behalf of Jesus saying that there was a kind of desert dryness to them that could send them either way.  On one hand, they might look good, but that appearance isn’t everything. 

“You have a name for being alive, but you are dead.” [Revelation 3:1]

Then again, the Lord doesn’t just give up, and neither should his people.  Even a desert can bloom if the right conditions are met.  A place may have a name for being dead, but come alive.

“Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is at the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent.” [Revelation 3:2-3]

The challenge of living in a time or place of spiritual aridity, a time or place that cannot truly gauge the signs of when real faithfulness and discipleship are present is a time to lean even more on Jesus’ promises and to trust him more certainly when he says,

“I will not blot your name out of the book of life; I will confess your name before my Father and before his angels.” [Revelation 3:5] 

            Since Revelation sends this message to a church, it’s right to put it into the context of a church in our day.  Thom Rainer wrote in 2020,

“Western culture has shifted; and it has shifted largely against churches. …I can only imagine how the first-century Christians felt as they were trying to reach a world that needed to hear the good news of the resurrected Savior.  I can only imagine their excitement and their fear.  They knew the path ahead would be both difficult and dangerous.  But they also knew their efforts would be worth the cost.

As we enter this unknown era, we’re uncertain about the specifics of what will unfold, but we remain certain that the God of all wisdom and power will be with us every step of the way.”[1]

            The same message applies across the board in all sorts of situations for people who are doing their best just to be faithful followers of Jesus but who feel unsupported in that for whatever reason.  One writer, Kenneth Leech, points to and applauds a kind of Christian courage that is heroic exactly because it recognizes how upside-down the world’s judgments of success are.  His main focus is on what goes on inside people when they pray and he writes,

“All spirituality must learn to cope with doubt and confusion, and prayer which is true can never be cosy [sic] and secure. …Yet we do not pray in order to provide ourselves with defenses against danger, but in order to face the danger through the power of the God who has been there first, who has cleansed the waters and harrowed hell.”[2]

Or, as Jesus himself put things:

“In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!” [John 16:33]

 

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[1] Thom S. Rainer, The Post-Quarantine Church (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2020), 110-111.

[2] Kenneth Leech, True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 160.