"A Note to God's People in Exile"

 

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

October 12, 2025

 

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

 

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So, picture this.  All of this happens over the space of two to three generations.

Things get even weirder than they are now, and Brazil starts to expand north.  They take over the countries along the Caribbean coast of South America, then Panama announces that they won’t fight them.  They settle into an uneasy peace with Central America and the people there decide it would be a good idea to start learning Portuguese.  About a decade later, the U.S. government opens quiet talks with Buenos Aires and when the Brazilians move on the smaller Central American countries, they give them permission to move straight on through into southern Mexico while the U.S. attacks through Texas and Arizona.  The Mexicans hold onto the north, while losing the south. 

Ten years later, it looks like war again and about half of the political and cultural leaders throughout the states, but especially from the northeast, pack up and move to Canada.  Without many experienced hands left, the Brazilian coalition has no problem spreading across the Midwest, then turning east all the way to the Atlantic as far north as New York.  In D.C., they take as many congresspeople as they can find and ship them and their families back to Buenos Aires.  They do the same with stockbrokers in New York.  In Philadelphia and Baltimore, they aren’t sure who the influencers are, so they just kill random people and burn the cities.

            The Brazilians miss at least one important person, though.  He’s someone who’s been around a long time, who has advised U.S. governments for decades, with almost everything he’s ever said being ignored.  Nevertheless, he has always refused to be quiet or to give up hope.  He’s they type who buys up land in occupied territory, saying that the occupation will be over someday and that he wants to establish clear ownership to it now, when he can buy it cheap.

            The Yankees down in Buenos Aires write to him and ask what to do.  He writes back and says, “Settle in.  Your grandchildren may return but you yourselves aren’t coming back.”

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” [Jeremiah 29:5-7]

            That’s basically what happened when the Babylonian Empire overran the whole Middle East for decades and under Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 B.C. captured Jerusalem and took the leaders of Judah as prisoners to Babylon, hostages for the “good behavior” of those left behind.  The exiles were bitter.

By the rivers of Babylon—
    there we sat down, and there we wept
    when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
    we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
    asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
    the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!
    Down to its foundations!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
    Happy shall they be who pay you back
    what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
    and dash them against the rock!  [Psalm 137]

And Jeremiah the prophet of God was telling them to learn to live among these people?  He wanted them to pray for its welfare?  Really?

            Yes.

            In the midst of catastrophic events a lot of things happen.  One is that people’s faith in God is severed from the culture in which they learned that faith.  Times of massive change force us to make distinctions that might not have been needed in other times.  We discover that Christmas is about Jesus, not Rudolph and Frosty.  That is a good thing.  In the long run it is also a good thing for us to realize that we cannot rely on the culture to do our work for us.  We have to realize that if we don’t teach the children to pray, they aren’t going to pick it up anywhere else.  We discover that if the Ten Commandments aren’t written on their hearts (and on our own), putting them on a poster at the back of a classroom isn’t going to make a bit of difference. 

            I admit I have jumped from Jeremiah’s time to ours pretty quickly, but it’s hard not to do that.  The circumstances differ, but not his witness to God’s will for his people.

            What absolutely must happen in such times is that the mindset of individuals and even of institutions that have undergone deep loss absolutely has to turn to the future. Admittedly, grief is real and doesn’t simply go away with time.  It needs to be expressed and owned, even honored.  Yet dwelling solely on the past is the way to lose sight of the future, and of missing out on what must be done in the present to secure the spiritual life of those who never knew the former reality.  That’s why Jeremiah told

“the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” [Jeremiah 29:1]

to pick up and move on within the new situation.  Even the name “Jeremiah” means “God raises up”.  God does raise up. 

The life of God’s people has never been about going back to an ideal time or place.  It has always been about hearing God’s call to faithfulness and mercy here and now.  It has always been about how God led the Israelites through the desert when they wanted to turn back to Egypt.  It has been about remaining faithful witnesses to the one, almighty God in a land whose inhabitants invited God’s people to join in the worship of idols.  It has been about trusting God while in exile, finding ways to sing his song in a strange land, even if some days you just want to hang your harp on a tree and forget it. 

Those days do come.  Part of what’s going through my mind in this sermon has to do with an interchange with one of my friends, a colleague and a brother in faith who lives in Appalachia in an area that has been struggling in many ways for a long, long time but is just feeling the first brunt of the kind of secularism that we’ve been dealing with for a generation.  He wrote,

“It’s almost Brunswick Stew making time, man.  You know this is important to our mission.  Without it we’d have to eat that store-bought stuff.  Hey, I’ve given up on confirmation class.  [I had mentioned confirmation earlier in the discussion.]  I don’t think there’ll be another generation of Christians.  We’re a dead sect.” 

That hit like a lightning bolt.  If he had stopped there, I would have jumped into the car and driven two days into the mountains to find him, but he went on,

“But things are ok.  We’re expecting a fourth grandchild in January.” 

That’s how I know he’ll come through.  He’s looking ahead, the way that Jeremiah said to do.  What’s more, I also know one of this guy’s favorite hymns says,

“How sweet to hold a newborn baby

and feel the pride and joy he gives,

but better still the calm assurance ,

this child can face uncertain times because he lives. 

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. 

Because he lives, all fear is gone. 

Because I know he holds the future

and life is worth the living just because he lives.”

 

Faith grows with challenge. Faith hears the voice of Jesus, risen from the dead, telling his disciples to leave Jerusalem and Judea, to see the journey not as exile but as seeking new horizons, telling them to take good news to the whole world, loving that world as they go, seeking the good of everyone in it, friend or foe or stranger.

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” [Matthew 28:18-20]

 

"Setting the Children's Teeth on Edge"

 

Jeremiah 31:27-34

October 19, 2025

 

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall no longer say:

“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
    and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of the one who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

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            Let me be very clear.  Not only does this passage from Jeremiah say this, but Jesus himself addresses the same issue: God does not impose punishment or guilt on someone for their parents’ or grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ sins; nor does God punish somebody by taking it out on their children.

            Yes, there are places in the Bible where that belief is indeed expressed.  Right there in Exodus, in the second of the Ten Commandments, it says,

“I the Lord am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” [Exodus 20:5b-6]

But what I hear there is that the Lord is 250 times more ready to love than to condemn. 

            If you want to push it even further, it isn’t even safe to say that when someone is struck by tragedy that they have somehow brought it on themselves – unless, of course, you are ready to say that somebody born with a disability or suffers an injury in the cradle somehow deserves it.  Jesus certainly did not go along with that.  John’s gospel tells us how

“As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” [John 9:1-2]

The want to assign blame or at the very least identify some cause for his suffering and his parents are obvious suspects.

“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
    and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” [Jeremiah 31:29]

Jesus wouldn’t go for that, either.

Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.”  [John 9:3-7]

Jesus is more interested in relieving the man’s suffering than explaining it.  He’s more determined to heal and to help than to make sense of it.  Even if it takes stuff as grimy as spit and mud, he will get his own hands dirty to do it.

            Okay, now let’s confuse matters again.  Jeremiah does speak in future tense.

“In those days they shall no longer say:

‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,
    and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of the one who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.” [Jeremiah 31:29-30]

There are ways that the evils of the past reach out and poison the present.  I don’t even have to take that as a metaphor.  Toxic waste dumps tend to encourage cancer in people living near them, even when they were officially closed long ago.  The pollution we ourselves pour into the atmosphere will still be causing destruction centuries from now.  Broadening the meaning, though, one sin or one injustice can open the door to cycles of hurt and anger that turn into cycles of revenge that infect the lives of generations.  Just ask the Indians and the Pakistanis.  The day that Jeremiah foresaw, where (and he announces it as good news)

“all shall die for their own sins” [Jeremiah 31:30a]

still lies far off.  We bear responsibility for ourselves along, yes.  But we endure the consequences of the past.

            So how are we to sort out where the line is where our responsibility begins or ends?  I’m not sure we ever could figure that one out.  A few years ago it became at least an occasional practice to open public events with a “land acknowledgement”.  For instance, where we now sit is on the land of the Lenni-Lenape, and that means (for some of us) recognizing that our own direct ancestors pushed them out.  Yet other ancestors arrived here afterward, many forced out of their own native land, with no awareness of the people here for 12,000 years previous to their arrival.  With no intention to commit harm, they benefited from harm done by someone else.  Stephanie Perdew, who is on the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary (one of our United Methodist schools) out in Illinois, looks at the situation and how at a community Thanksgiving service “…often a Native American from the community is asked to give a land acknowledgement or read a poem.”  She says, 

“I’ve been asked to be that person more than once, because I’m a tribal citizen who is also a Christian minister.  And more than once, I’ve declined.  Inviting a Native person helps perpetuate the myth of the first Thanksgiving, of a happy harvest meal shared between the tribal people of the Eastern Seaboard and the settlers of the Plymouth Colony.  The Native person is invited to participate in a performance of shared gratitude, glossing over the question of whether the arrival of the Pilgrims was entirely innocent.”[1]

Ouch.  I just want to eat my turkey in peace and enjoy my cranberry sauce without it setting my teeth on edge.  Can’t we just talk about reparations for slavery instead?

            More and more I can hear the wisdom in the words, “I don’t know.”  Yet more and more I find myself relying on the way that having the answers to everything is not what we are here for anyway.  What sets us right with God, with the world, and with ourselves is never going to be anything we do or some kind of magic formula we say.  It hasn’t got anything to do with understanding or making sense of things.  What sets us right is letting God love us, as he has done in his Son, who took on our limitations himself, and as he does when the Holy Spirit that they share reaches out to stir us up to seek righteousness but also to know God as merciful and kind.  He is a God who says,

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” [Jeremiah 31:33b-34]

 

 

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[1] Stephanie Perdew, “A Day of Mourning Each November” (The Christian Century, vol. 142:11, November 2025), 32.

"Don't Be That Guy"

 

Luke 16:19-31

September 28, 2025

 

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.

In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.'

But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.'

He said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house--

for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

He said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

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            Some passages from the Bible are hard to preach on because they are complicated.  This one is hard to preach on because it’s straightforward and – to add to that – Jesus says at the end of the parable that a lot of people aren’t going to take it to heart anyway.

            In the parable, the rich man says to Abraham,

“'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house--

for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

He said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

By the way, there are two Lazaruses (Lazari?) in the New Testament.  One of them was Jesus’ friend, whom he raises from the dead.  The other is the man in this parable, the only parable where anyone is given a name.  (I once heard a sermon where the preacher observed that “Lazarus” is the Greek version of the Hebrew “Eleazar”, which means “God is my help”.) 

And, of course, there is one other person in all of this who was telling the story and who himself would rise from the dead, and he is the one who is telling us, his sisters and brothers, “Don’t be like the rich man!”  Anything anyone else adds to that is just commentary.  The message itself is not to ignore the person in need who is lying right there on your doorstep.

Of course, we’ve already heard it from the Old Testament – the Law and the Prophets.  Deuteronomy 24:17-21 says,

“You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

 When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.  When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.  Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.”

When people failed to do things like this, the prophets had a few things to say.  Amos, for instance, was especially upset about people who could sit back (like the rich man and his brothers in the parable) and forget or ignore the fact that their own people had been carried off into slavery.

“Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.

Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall,

who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David improvise on instruments of music,

who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.” [Amos 6:1a, 4-7]

How much clearer can that be?

            No, it is not possible to do something about every single injustice or every single need in the world.  It is not possible even within our own families or the circle of our closest friends to hold every hardship, illness, or heartache at bay.  That can hurt.  That should hurt, which is part of what Jesus is getting at in this story.  He layers on the details so that we see things from the perspective of the person whose experience we want to hold at arm’s length, in this case

“a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.”  [Luke 16:20]

I had a beagle named Rosie.  One time I had a really bad cold that had taken everything out of me, and I laid down on the floor to watch TV.  She came over and laid down beside me.  I fell asleep there on the floor and only woke up hours and hours later, and there she was, wide awake and facing the door to make sure no predator or danger would sneak up on me while I slept.  Lazarus was being cared for not even by a pet but by sympathetic animals who saw him and offered him comfort even when they didn’t understand the whole situation.  Meanwhile the party went on on the other side of the gate.

            Don’t be that guy inside, Jesus teaches.  It’s better to be a dog on the street who has a heart than a human being who has closed their heart to the people they see every day and even (as the rich man did) know them by name.

            And, to complicate the story in a way, maybe someone like that has closed themself off for reasons that no one ever knows.  Maybe they need some sort of compassion, too.  It’s not the Bible, but it’s a good story – remember in A Christmas Carol, that starts with Marley rising from the grave to warn Scrooge not to be such a Scrooge, how everyone is ready to write the old grouch off except for two people?  One is Bob Cratchit and the other is Scrooge’s nephew Fred, who insists on inviting his uncle to Christmas dinner every year even though he knows he’s going to say, “No.”  He couldn’t force help on him, especially when life had led him to insist he didn’t need it.  But he could and did let him know the door was open when he was ready. It’s to those two men’s households that Scrooge goes when he sees the light, and there is nobody happier to see him.  Who is the rich man and who is the poor man?  We don’t always know.  We’re probably all a little bit of each.

            What we do know, however, is another incident in Jesus’ ministry that Luke tells us about:

“An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’  He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.’  And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’” [Luke 10:25-28]

 

"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.’”

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            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.”

 

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            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.