The First and The Last

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, September 6, 2026

Good morning. As you have noticed, this month we are diving into the book of Revelation. We did a study back in June on the lectionary readings of Genesis and we talked about it through this lens of kind of family, complicated family dynamics, and we really enjoyed that and we heard from you that you did as well. So we thought that we would bookend the Bible by doing this series that we're calling Reading Revelation. So we're going to be preaching on this book all of the weeks and Sundays in September. And then, as Noah mentioned, on Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. for any of you that may have that time free, we are enjoying this lecture and video series by Reverend Travis Meyer about the book of Revelation. I explained it to someone: like, me and Margie are general practitioners or general physicians, and he is truly a specialist. This is definitely an area that he knows a lot about and can add some wonderful knowledge and information to that topic. And we're rediscovering this book, too. We're rediscovering this book that has been so influential in our faith and in our culture and in our lives, sometimes in ways that we may not even recognize or realize at the time. And I know for some of you, myself included, you might feel a little nervous about it or you might feel a little uneasy about it. After all, this book has been used and misused in order to control and to scare people, to ensure that people assimilate so that they can belong in a group. Some of the things that people have told me about this book when I was growing up kept me up at night. Perhaps the same is true for you as well. But what I hope happens in this next month is that there's a rediscovery of this text, a reclamation of this text, not as something that's meant to scare you into submission, but something that's meant to empower you and embolden you to bring heaven to earth here and now. Something that's not supposed to be about fear, but something that shows us the way to restoration over rapture and deliverance over dominance and faithfulness over fear. So, with that in mind, if you would, let's take a big deep breath together because I think we need it. [sighs] And would you pray with me?

Oh God, reveal yourself. Reveal yourself through us. Reveal yourself through this text. Show us how this book can be reclaimed for justice and mercy, for love and acceptance, and show us how this book can be rediscovered not as a tool of the empire, but as a tool for love. Amen. Okay. Who said this? You like me? You really like me? Sally. Sally Field. Except, did you know that's not what she said? She said something very familiar and similar to that. She said, "I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me." Did you know that? It's the Mandela effect. It's this idea that we have collectively believed something that is not true. As a society, we have accepted a version of the truth. The Mandela effect. Perhaps you're familiar with it. And most of the Mandela effect examples are pretty harmless. Words that aren't spelled how we remember them, like the Berenstain Bears, right?

Or phrases or movie quotes that we have collectively misremembered, like "Luke, I am your father." But he didn't say that, right? But then there's this other phenomena called the illusory truth effect. This refers to the human tendency to believe a claim or believe a piece of information to be true after being exposed to it multiple times. So when we hear or read something repeatedly, we are more likely to believe it even if it runs counter to our prior knowledge. There's also this thing called the consensus theory of truth: the view that a statement is true if it is widely accepted or agreed upon by a group or a society. In other words, truth is not necessarily tied to objective reality, but to the collective agreement of a community. So, I'm going to shift gears, but keep that in mind now. How many of you read the Left Behind series growing up? How many of you saw the books or the movies starring teenage heartthrob turned conspiracy theorist Kirk Cameron? Show of hands. Okay, some of you, some of you—we're going to trauma bond this month. For those of you who did not see it, let me explain it to you. Left Behind is this multimedia franchise of apocalyptic fiction written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins that depicts the ending of the world over the span of seven years. And the true believers in Jesus Christ have been raptured. They've been instantly taken away into heaven, leaving non-believers behind on earth in this shattered and chaotic world that remains. This is a series that ruled my childhood and maybe some of you as well. We read the books, we watched the videos, we played the pranks where we put our clothes on the couch so it looked like we got raptured.

And we stayed up late sometimes wondering when it was going to happen to us. The rapture, as it's often called, is this eschatological, which just means end times, concept held by some Christians, particularly those of American evangelicalism, that consists of an event when all dead Christians and believers will be resurrected and joined with Christians who are still alive together in the clouds as they meet the Lord Jesus in the air. It's often associated with the book of Revelation, but it isn't found in this book. In fact, the word rapture isn't even in the Bible at all. It comes from a theme found in First Thessalonians, and we'll talk about that later this month. But still, these conservative theologians have built an entire library of theology and school of thought around this concept. There is pre-tribulationalists, mid-tribulationalists, and post-tribulationalists. There is premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism. We're not going to get into all that, but we'll talk about it more this month. But I just want you to know that it absolutely has nothing to do with what John is writing about in this book. The book of Revelation was written by John of Patmos, also known as John the Revelator, not to be confused with John the Apostle, son of Zebedee, who wrote the Gospel text attributed to John. And that's because, as Reverend Travis Meyers mentioned this past week on Wednesday, that the book of Revelation is written at a third or fourth grade level, unlike the Gospel text of the same name. And John is considered to be exiled during this period to the island of Patmos, during this time of persecution under the Roman Empire when he wrote this text. He writes it in a Jewish apocalyptic genre. And here apocalypse just means revelation or unveiling, but essentially it's just a letter. In fact, the NIV titles this section that Dominic read as the prologue to Revelation. The NRSV calls it the introduction and salutation. And as you heard, he begins the letter with the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. And he made it known by sending his angel to the servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads the words of the prophecy, and blessed are the ones who hear and who keep what is written, for the time is near. He then addresses the seven churches in Asia Minor. And if you come on Wednesdays, you'll get to explore what they were. These are early Christian readers who lived in the Roman Empire where worship of the emperor was part of their social life, and many cities in Asia Minor held temples to the emperor and other gods as well. People often participated in imperial worship because Rome provided new levels of prosperity and opportunities for social advancement. In the years leading up to the time of Christ, Caesar Augustus created what New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan called Roman imperial theology. Caesar Augustus put his face on the currency and other government-issued items. He put his name on all these temples and all these buildings and he erected statues to himself. Does that sound familiar? He called and described himself as divine, the son of God, God incarnate, the redeemer and savior of the world. So this is language that existed before Jesus was even born. Roman imperial theology says that if you want peace, you must have victory. If you want victory, you must have war. And that war is bred by religion. So when language like prince of peace or redeemer or son of God, which is meant for the Roman emperor, is given instead to this small, poor, brown-skinned Palestinian-born Jewish baby named Jesus, you can see why the Roman Empire did not like that. John goes on and writes, "Grace to you and peace from him who is and was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom of priests, serving his God and father. To him be the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." John is drawing from this entire world of Jewish apocalyptic imagery. A genre that was familiar, beloved, and instantly recognizable to his first century audience. When he describes beasts rising from the sea and angels blowing trumpets and scrolls that are sealed with wax and cosmic battles between good and evil, he isn't trying to confuse us or scare us. He's using symbolic language of his own tradition to help people see this world differently. This is the same way that our modern fantasy writers use dragons and kingdoms and prophecies and epic battles to reveal deeper truths about justice and courage and hope. So to us it reads like high fantasy, like something out of Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. But to his audience, this was the normal way to talk about God's victory over empire, God's faithfulness in suffering, and God's promise to renew creation. They would have recognized these symbols and these metaphors and these dramatic scenes that he was telling. They would have understood that John wasn't giving them a literal play-by-play of the end of the world. He was giving them a theological imagination that was big enough to sustain them through persecution and fear and uncertainty. I think that's why Revelation still can speak to us today because we too need a bigger theological imagination. We need language that helps us see beyond the empires of our own time. We need imagery that reminds us that God is not distant or passive, but present and active. We need stories that pull back the curtain and show us that the world that we see is not the only world there is. John's imagery is not meant to frighten us. It's meant to wake us up. It's meant to help us see that heaven is not that far away. It's meant to help us see that God is already moving in our world. It's meant to help us see that we are a part of something bigger and deeper and more beautiful than the powers of the world. When John said that the time is near or "look, here he comes on the clouds," he wasn't giving the readers a literal countdown or a weather report. He was using this symbolic imaginative language of the Jewish apocalyptic literature, this genre that's designed to pull back that curtain to show people the deeper spiritual reality beneath their own political circumstances. For this audience, this imagery communicated urgency and hope, divine presence, not this prediction of Jesus parachuting down out of the sky. Saying the time is near meant that God's justice, God's reign, God's healing were already breaking into the world. Saying that he's coming on the clouds meant that the Christ authority and liberation were on the move even if the empire seemed overwhelming. John's language is meant to awaken the imagination and strengthen our courage and remind the church that God is actively at work right now calling us to participate in this work by bringing heaven to earth. His audience would have understood that. But it's clear that our world hasn't. Street preachers and politicians here in our own state capital in fact preach and make policy about this type of theology with this theology in mind. These self-proclaimed Christian nationalists believe that in order to usher in the end of the world, they must make America a Christian nation one way or another. I mentioned a few weeks ago failed gubernatorial candidate who called for a Christ first Tennessee where he would ban Islam. In fact, many of our Muslim brothers and sisters are constantly under attack today often because of this type of theology that leads and reads revelation as a playbook for the end of the world. But knowing how easy it is for our society to slip into a post-truth reality, like I mentioned earlier, it makes sense sometimes. Some of the loudest Christian voices have sold us this version of the end of the world that happened to be pretty profitable, too, to the tune of $50 million for the Left Behind series. And our society slips even further and further into a post-truth reality every day. Unfortunately, we are shoveled misinformation, ads, trends, and opinions. In fact, did you know that our own government allowed the state of Israel to purchase a plan which is on file currently at the US Department of Justice, by the way, that targeted over 300 black churches in the west and on the west coast. So, California, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. 300 black churches. And in these 300 black churches, they drew geo-fences around the churches so that anyone that entered that campus would be targeted with specific ads and information that quote increased positive associations with the nation of Israel while linking Palestinian populations with extremist factions. This is how we are being fed information. This is how we've been fed information for years. So, it makes sense that we don't always know what is truth anymore. These are the same tactics, by the way, that were used against the Jews in World War II, but at a much more frightening and digital and virtual rate. And it's a reminder that the powers of empire still exist and they are working hard to control the narrative. They are working hard to keep us in this state of fear and to make us think that like the Romans, if we want peace, we need victory. And if we want victory, we need war. And if we want war, we have to have violence and greed and power.

But John writes that he who was and is and is to come said, "Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am he who lives. I was dead and behold I am alive forever more. I have the keys of life and death." And I like to think that as a call back to the gospel text in which Jesus says, "In the world you may have tribulation, but fear not. Do not fear. I have overcome the world."

But knowing all of this, understanding all of this about how easily we can accept something as truth so much so that it becomes a part of our identity and our community and our message helps me release the anger and frustration that I have about what I was taught as a child. That someday Jesus was going to come back and rapture us to heaven. And I better be ready or else. Because despite the nights that I stayed up scared to death that it was happening then, despite the fear that it placed inside me, despite the years of deconstruction that I had to do after that, I realized that they were likely just doing their best that they could with what they had. They were also victims of this imperial theology that we've let control this narrative in America. They were reading it as a road map to escape this world. They're reading it as a road map to escape this world, not as a revelation of how God is transforming the world now here today. They're reading it as a threat, a threat, not a promise. And when you read Revelation that way, you end up with this faith that is always looking to leave. A faith that is always waiting for God to snatch us out of here instead of empowering us to live faithfully here and now. But John wasn't writing to a people who needed to escape. He was writing to a people who needed courage. He was writing to a people who were suffering under empire, who were being pressured to assimilate, who were wondering if God still saw them or still heard them or even still cared about them. And John's message to them and to us is not hold on until God evacuates you. Instead, it's do not be afraid because I'm the first and the last. I am the living one. His message is grace and peace to you. His message is look, Christ is coming, not coming to snatch us away. Coming to make all things new. Coming to heal what the empire has broken. Coming to reveal what has always been true. That God is with us and for us and already at work in our world. And that brings us to what I believe is the heart of Revelation's calling. That if Christ is the one who is and was and is to come, then our task is not to wait for heaven. Our task is to join Christ in bringing heaven to earth now. Because heaven is not this distant escape. Heaven is God's presence breaking into the world through ordinary people, through small, poor, brown-skinned Palestinian-born Jewish babies. Ordinary people who choose to love over fear, choose justice over domination, and compassion over cruelty, courage over silence. Heaven comes to earth when we refuse to bow to the empires of our day, the empires of greed, the empires of violence, of exclusion. The empires that tell us that some people matter more than others. Heaven comes to earth when we live as the kingdom of heaven now here, not in some life that comes after this. When we bless instead of curse. When we serve instead of dominate. When we lift up the vulnerable instead of protecting our own comfort. When we bear witness to the living one in a world that seems obsessed with death. Heaven comes to earth when we choose God's way over Caesar's way. When we choose humility over spectacle and truth over illusion and community over control and hope over fear. And heaven comes to earth every time that we remember that this book, this book of Revelation is not about escaping the world, but it's about transforming the world. It's a book about a God who refuses to abandon his creation. A God who walks among us and speaks to the exiled. A God who holds the keys to life and death. Who is already making all things new even as we speak. So this month as we begin this series, my prayer, my hope is that we reclaim Revelation not as a threat, but as a promise, not as a warning, but as a calling, not as this map of destruction, but as a vision of restoration. And may we be a people who bring heaven to earth in our worship and in our lives, in our work, in our neighborhoods, in our relationships, in our courage, and in our living and in our loving. I may be naive, but I think that we can do it. Amen. Amen. Amen.

The Gospel According to Dolly

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, August 30, 2026

We've been through it this week, haven't we, Nashville? And I reckon I'm going to preach about the Bible, but I'm going to preach about Dolly Parton, too. Is that okay with y'all? We've been through it this month in the Gospel of Matthew. In the beginning of this month, Jesus walked on water and stilled a storm. And then he had his heart and his mind transformed by a Canaanite woman, an unlikely soul who didn't back down, who begged for her blessing until her daughter was healed. And then he went on a few more healing tours. He saved a few thousands with food. He made Peter the very rock on which he would build his church. "You are the Messiah," Peter told him. "You're the son of the living God." Jesus handed him the keys to the kingdom. And then today, just as the disciples were hearing about this Messiah who brought good news, they get some bad news. I am going to Jerusalem. Jesus told his crew to suffer, not only to suffer, but to suffer at the hands of the elders, at the chief priests, at the scribes, and I'm going to be killed. As Caroline Lewis writes, this is what we call a passion prediction. He knows what's coming. We know what's coming. He's trying to prepare them for it. And Peter, the guy jingling the keys of faithfulness and trust, takes Jesus aside in what must have been pretty unimaginable pain. And Peter rebukes who he just called the Messiah. "God forbid it," Peter says. "This must not happen to you." And Jesus replies, "Get behind me, Satan." Professor Eugene Gibson points out that it's not that Jesus sees Peter with pointy horns and a tail, but rather Peter is in this moment an adversary of God's will. Peter, who has been jingling the keys, has forgotten that they are attached to his belt loop. That his confession of faith has made him the rock. And in this moment, the rock becomes the stumbling block. A saint to a sinner. Can anybody relate to that? How quickly we can change our minds and turn our hearts rather than remembering divine things like the one who is the creator and redeemer and sustainer and comforter, the God who is with us. So then Jesus looks around at his guys and he says this. If you want to follow me, you're going to have to carry a cross. And it's going to be heavy. You're going to have to carry it. Even as you stumble after me, tripping over your shoelaces. And if you want to save your life, you've got to lose it. But if you lose your life for my sake, guess what? You find it.

And this moment, as Jesus gives them yet another stern talking to, I hear in his voice a challenge. I reckon Jesus is telling them about outlaw Christianity. Will you say outlaw Christianity? I read about outlaw Christianity this week as I looked into the life of our Tennessee saint, our honky tonk angel, our Appalachian Jesus, as one article wrote. This piece in the New Yorker called Dolly Parton's Christianity outlaw Christianity. I think she might be one of the best examples of taking up a cross and following Jesus, our outlaw.

For those of you who don't know, her roots are really interesting. She grew up in, as Casey Kemp wrote, a sharecropper's cabin in a Smoky Mountain holler. Like a secret siloed missile built from blonde hair, hope, mascara, and the King James Bible. She grew up with 11 siblings in a one room log cabin just a few hours from us in a family of poverty, and is the granddaughter of a Pentecostal preacher. Who's the grandkid of a preacher? No, you are. Who else? Yeah. She was raised in struggle, but she was never embarrassed about it. Kind of reminds me of another guy born poor, raised in struggle, unashamed of his roots, who was focused on the kind of mission brought to the poor. She didn't like the kind of gospel her granddaddy was preaching. She said, "Hell, fire and brimstone." Anybody grew up with a gospel like that? So, she started sneaking away to this abandoned church on a hill where teenagers went to drink at night with broken windows. And there she felt the presence of God. Not as a chastising, bombastic bully, she said, but as a friend that she could talk to on a one-on-one basis. He is our father after all, she said. Y'all know anybody who went to temples and left some of them because they didn't hear a message of love and then snuck up to mountains to pray and feel a divine presence? Y'all know who I'm talking about. And from then on, she practiced this outlaw Christianity. Here's a definition that Casey Kemp gave. A kind of Christian for whom you can positively see the dust rising from the line that Christ would have drawn in the sand for her, daring the rest of us to cast stones. Y'all know about this outlaw Christian. She didn't shove her religion in anyone's face. And she said she didn't just practice her faith, she lived it. She didn't want to be worshiped. She said because that wasn't biblical. She knew she didn't want to be an idol. She just wanted to live like Christ, to lose her life for the sake of Jesus and in doing so to save her soul. And she lost a lot when she took up that cross. She lost a lot of money. She could have been a billionaire, but she decided to be an outlaw, starting the Imagination Library in which she mailed free books monthly to children and newborns. I'm not talking about a couple million books. I'm talking about over 300 million books have been mailed to people who don't necessarily have access to public libraries or resources to buy them. By 2024, one in seven American children under the age of five had received a book through the Imagination Library. Loaves and Fishes. Reminds me of somebody I know who said, "Let the children come to me for they will receive the kingdom of heaven. It actually belongs to the kids." Y'all know about that man. Could have been a billionaire, could have hoarded her wealth, could have hoarded her fame, her power, and her name. She didn't. She gave Vanderbilt University a million dollars during COVID to fund a vaccine. She created funds when the wildfires came through her county in Tennessee. She lowered the dropout rate in our state, 35% to 6%, giving $500 to anybody who completed seventh and eighth grade in certain counties. Y'all mind if I keep going? Our outlaw who said, "Of course, black lives matter. You think our white butts are the only ones that matter?" No. And I'm replacing the word butt with. Our outlaw who said, "I know trans people and I love them all. I don't judge. I see how brokenhearted they can get over certain things. I know how real they are. I know how important gender affirming care is to them. That's who they are. We are all God's children and how we are is who we are." The words of our country queen, our outlaw. She performed in Queens in 2016. That was a year of a lot of political upheaval and tension to a crowd. Listen to who this crowd was. Drag queens, evangelical Christians, hipsters, people whose lives otherwise would have never overlapped, all waiting to see the same woman. Y'all know somebody like that? A man who ate with and healed and traveled with and loved people whose lives didn't really overlap, did they? Collecting taxes and smelling like fish. And when Whitney Houston's iconic recording of "I Will Always Love You," a song that Dolly wrote in 1973, when that became a smash hit and Dolly started collecting royalties from that song, she gave all that money to a black neighborhood in Nashville. She bought a commercial complex there and she later jokingly called it the house that Whitney built. That wasn't a charity performed for applause. It acknowledged that a black woman with an extraordinary voice had created an enormous amount of wealth for a white woman who said, "I will empty myself out in order to support and empower and celebrate others." Y'all know somebody who emptied out his privilege to save lives. This outlaw Christian, she woke up at 3:00 a.m. every morning. Raise your hand if you woke up that early today. Sherry. Wow. Sherry, we're going to talk. She said, "I woke up at 3:00 a.m. to thank God for the night and to ask God to bless the day. How can you use me?" She asked every morning. "And what can I do today?" I'm writing that down. How can you use me? And what can I do today? Do y'all know a man who woke up early, who prayed at dawn or dusk? I know that man. She has shown me how to know that man. Can I tell you another story that's funny? She called a Nashville church, and it wasn't ours. I don't know why she didn't call us. I'll take it up with her. She called a Nashville church. She told the senior pastor she wanted him to come to her house for a baby dedication. So this senior pastor and a younger associate went. And when they arrived, she had something a little more than a dedication in mind. She wanted them to baptize her granddaughter. She even brought water from the Jordan River back to Nashville, Tennessee, while she had it shipped. So, she left the living room to go get her goddaughter. And the younger pastor looked at the senior pastor and he said, "What are we going to do?" Cuz this was a theological problem. This church didn't baptize babies. The senior pastor said, "Brother, we are in Dolly Parton's house." And Dolly Parton just went into another room to get her goddaughter and the water she shipped from the Jordan River to baptize her with. So, I tell you what we're going to do when Dolly Parton comes back into this living room. We're going to baptize that baby.

Y'all know an unlikely baptism story in which people were perplexed at who baptized whom in that Jordan River in those same waters. Y'all know about that man.

Y'all may think I'm getting a little off script because I know we're here to talk about the Bible, too. But I think, and I've been thinking all week, that in the heart of this passage is this woman's faith. In the heart of this passage in Matthew in which Jesus talks about carrying crosses and losing lives that don't speak of divine things, I think Dolly's faith is right in here. When I look at who's grieving her death, have y'all noticed who is grieving her death? Not just people who look a lot like most of us, but all kinds of kinds. Cuz when we talk about setting that table wide, we may never get to where she was. Pulling up chairs, bringing up picnic tables from the basement. Everybody was invited to that table. And I sure hope we can get there. Jesus's life. It can seem so daunting to try to emulate his obedience to God, his perfection, the way he loved. And yet here is a real life woman who showed us how to lose our power and our money and our fame and our privilege. She wasn't a people pleaser. She didn't care about popularity. She cared about loving all of humankind because she felt that same love from a divine presence in an abandoned church with broken windows. A life focused on divine things.

The disciples thought Jesus was going to be immortal. And how many of us thought Dolly might live forever?

And Jesus gave them a passion prediction. But he also gave them, did you notice, a resurrection prediction? He said, "I'm gonna be killed. I will suffer under the elders and the chief priests and the scribes. And then three days later, I'm coming back." Hope is coming back.

I went to the Brandi Carlile concert last night. Was anyone there? Sherry at that one. You're just up at 3:00 a.m. Okay. Brandi was a dear friend of Dolly's and she gave such a lovely tribute to her last night. She sang through some songs. She showed images of Dolly, and a lot of Dolly's family was there too. And Brandi said, "I think this is the most well-behaved Americans have been in a long time this week." She said, "Probably because Dolly can now see what all of us are doing." I think people are being a little kinder, a little nicer, a little more considerate of who is at this table and who's not. How do we get them there? I got a call from a buddy who was in Knoxville last night. He was at something called a Nitro Circus show. So, this is where guys ride dirt bikes and they do cool tricks as fire shoots out of thingies.

He said, "This crowd really grieved the loss of Dolly." And I said, "My crowd did too," listening to a gay woman from Washington State. We got Nitro Circus and we got Brandi Carlile. And we are all mourning the loss of an outlaw. A different kind of Christian. A Christian that I hope we could aspire to be like. The one who pointed us not toward what is human, not toward what shields us from the love of God, but what is divine.

What would it look like, church, if we lived a little more like our holy outlaws this week? If in our death we saw these unlikely overlaps of people come together to grieve who we are and who we loved. If we laid down our life for a savior who took up his own cross who asks us to do the same. Even when we trip over those shoelaces as we stumble up that hill toward Calvary. Even when our feet sink below the sea a little bit. Even when we misplace our keys to the kingdom,

we could choose comfort or we could choose commitment. We could choose grandeur and we could choose being known. We could choose money and privilege and sheltered. Away from the vulnerable things that scare us, away from the people that we call those people. But Dolly called herself a Jezebel, unashamed of what that word meant.

So I hope you share stories with me about her and what she meant to you as I share a prayer, a prayer from a song she wrote called "The Seeker." Will you pray with me? I am a seeker, a poor and sinful creature. There is no weaker than I am. I am a seeker and you are a teacher. You are a reacher. So reach down. Reach out and lead me. Guide me and keep me in the shelter of your care each day.

Amen.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, August 23, 2026

“Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.”

That is such a perplexing statement to me and perhaps to most Christians because here is the man that we believe to be God incarnate. The man who came to earth, became flesh, was born, lived, suffered, and died in our own human flesh. Died and rose again. He performed these miracles, and he stood up to the empire. He gave an occupied and oppressed people hope for a future that is better than their present reality. Why would he not want to tell them who he was or why he was here on earth or what he had come to do? To preach good news to the poor, the recovery of sight to the blind, and to set the captives free. Why not tell them? Why do you think he would not want anybody to know who he was? Well, I know that we're not the first ones to ponder this question, and we're definitely won't be the last, but I want us to keep that question close to ourselves this morning, and I want us to practice this holy practice of questioning today. Many of us may have grown up in traditions where you weren't supposed to question, right? Questioning was a sign of doubt. But I'm here to tell you that questioning the text, trying to get into the mind of the author and the audience and trying to discern what Christ was telling them then and what he might be telling us now is a holy act. So I encourage you to question this morning or wonder, be curious about this text. And we may leave this place with more questions than when we walked in. But I also know that we will also leave filled with wonder at who God is. Would you pray with me?

God, you reveal your word in scripture. You reveal your word among us and within us as well. Be with us now as we seek revelation from this passage in Matthew and guide us into a deeper understanding. Amen. I've been thinking about this question all week that Jesus asked Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" as I've been preparing for this sermon. And I was driving through Canada earlier this week. And when I was driving and encountering all these people, I was wondering, "How might these folks answer that question if I were to ask them? How might the flight attendant answer the question, who do you say that I am?" Would she answer too that he was a nomad, a traveler, a wanderer, going wherever he was needed? How might the Jehovah's Witnesses who were set up in the Detroit airport answer that question? Would they say that he had existed originally as Michael the Archangel before becoming Jehovah's first creation, fully divine in purpose, but not equal in who God is in status or nature? That's who they believe Jesus to be. How would the border patrol worker answer that question? Would he recognize that Jesus was also a refugee, an immigrant child seeking asylum in a foreign land with his parents to escape this dangerous tyrant? Would the person reading their Bible in the Tim Hortons answer as Peter did that he was the Messiah, the son of the living God? What about all these folks that aren't involved in church? Who would they say that he is? A teacher, a prophet, a mystic, a man who was maybe misunderstood, or would they point out that he's a man whose name is invoked a lot but his teachings and actions are not?

Earlier in this chapter, Jesus is approached by the Pharisees and the Sadducees and they tell him to show them a sign from heaven and seemingly frustrated, he illustrates this short lesson for them and they miss it completely. This is the beginning of the chapter and I like how the Message version puts this response by Jesus. He says, "You have a saying that goes, red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. You find it easy to forecast the weather, but you can't read the signs of the times." Of course, this is a paraphrase, a retelling, but I think it helps us kind of see what Jesus was trying to do here. He was telling these religious leaders that they were missing the forest for the trees. Then he leaves them and he and his disciples cross the lake in the next section of this chapter. And when they get to the other side, they realize that they didn't bring any food. They don't have any bread with them. And Jesus says, "Speaking of bread, watch out and beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." And they, just like the religious leaders that they had just spoken to, miss the point completely. They think he's speaking literally about bread. And so he scolds them, reminding them that he multiplied bread and loaves of loaves of bread and fish just a few chapters earlier to feed the multitudes. And he says to them, "How could you miss that? I wasn't talking about bread. Beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." And they finally understand that he's not talking about bread. He's talking about the teachings of these religious leaders. And then we get to the passage for today, chapter 16:3. And it has me wondering if these prior events has Jesus questioning his purpose, questioning why he's there. If he's feeling frustrated or nervous that they're not getting it. And so he asks them, "Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?" And to me, it feels like he's about to say, "Hey, I'm about to leave y'all, and I need y'all to make sure that you're on the same page as me before I go." In fact, in the next passage of this chapter, he's foretelling his own death. So, it seems like he's really making sure that his disciples, like the religious leaders, are not missing the forest for the trees. And it makes me think about how many times have Christians, how many times has the church hurt people? How many times have we been so concerned with the letter of the law and reading the text that we hurt people? We miss the point entirely. We read the text, we sing the songs, we go to the camps, we get the t-shirts, but we still don't get it. In the church of my upbringing, I remember us having this heated debate about whether or not divorced men could be deacons. There's this verse in First Timothy that says, "A deacon shall be the husband of one wife." And we were having this debate about whether or not that was about divorce or polygamy. And Reverend Stacy Rector, who preached here just a few weeks ago, told me about an old man from the church that she grew up in who lost his wife recently, a partner of 50-some years. And because of that, because he was now a widower, he could not be a deacon in their church anymore. Because a verse in First Timothy says that a deacon shall be the husband of one wife. How many people has the church hurt? Have Christians hurt because we're so concerned with trying to live literally by these lessons from 30 AD, nearly 2,000 years ago. So then Jesus, likely frustrated and perhaps nervous that his three years of ministry has been for nothing, asked them, "Who do people say that I am?" One commentator put it this way. Jesus says, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" And the answers reflect the crowd's confusion. John the Baptist, they say, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. And these aren't insulting guesses. After all, Matthew's audience is primarily Jewish. And these are really powerful Jewish figures, recognizable by any Jews of the time. But these answers fall short because the world recognized Jesus as special and powerful, but not divine. And so Jesus says, "But what about you? Who do you say that I am?" And Peter, whose spirit is being stirred in this moment, responds with clarity and with courage and says you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. I should note that the location of this story is equally important. Caesarea Philippi is no accident of geography as the location for this story. It was located at the foot of Mount Hermon in what is now northern Palestine. And this massive rock wall carved with niches for idols stood tall over this deep cave that many of that community believed to be the gate to Hades, the very threshold between the natural and supernatural world. So in this place that's known for dead idols, Peter speaks of this living God in a city where people worship gods made of stone. Peter speaks about the true rock, the one who will be the cornerstone of the church. And even more than that, so much of the language that we use such as son of God, son of man, savior of the world, he who forgives sins, all of this was a part of the Roman imperial theology. So when Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God, it is a direct challenge to the power of Rome and the empire. One commentator noted that Peter's confession wasn't whispered in a synagogue quietly. It was shouted spiritually speaking from enemy territory. Surrounded by all these altars to Caesar, Peter declares allegiance to the one true God. This is more than theology. This is the light confronting the darkness. This is the truth piercing this centuries of deception that these people were facing.

And when he says that, Jesus looks at him and calls him blessed because he finally gets it. Peter finally gets it. And I like to think in this moment that Jesus's nerves were calmed and he feels seen and he feels affirmed and he feels like he can actually do what he knows is coming next. So Jesus makes this powerful statement. On this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. And again, this reference isn't random, right? These people in this community believe that they were literally standing next to the gate of Hades. And here is Jesus declaring victory over the powers of evil, over the power of death, over hatred, over oppression and occupation and tyranny. And so Jesus says to Peter, "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." In other words, no more barriers between heaven and earth and earth and heaven. The New Century Version says, "Whatever you allow on earth, you allow in heaven. Whatever you don't allow on earth, you don't allow in heaven." This is a call back to me at least to the Lord's prayer and this reminder from Jesus that he has come to bring heaven to earth on earth as it is in heaven. He taught us to pray. And at the same time, it's this precursor to a little bit later in this book of Matthew in chapter 25 when he says that when you feed the hungry, you feed him. Or when you clothe the naked, you clothe him. When you set the captives free, you free him. It's this powerful moment, this beautiful, powerful message that Christ gives to his disciples. But then he tells them, "Don't tell anybody who I am." And I wonder why. Could it be because they were doing ministry under the thumb of this very dangerous empire that had slaughtered Jews, especially Jewish political leaders, and the cost of their ministry was very real and very dangerous? Could it be that he was already in hot water with the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees of that time, and he had to be careful and tread lightly around them for fear of betrayal or deceit or retribution? Or could it be that he was less interested in what people said with their words and more so he was interested in what they said with their actions?

Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith back in May said that Americans should be given permission to hate again. He said, "We are giving people permission to hate again. And I know that sounds a little harsh at first, but when we've seen this movement to eradicate hate in our culture, that's the worst thing we could do." He doubled down recently in a sermon going as far as to say that the cross teaches us how to hate. Failed gubernatorial candidate Monty Fritz distinctly said that he wanted a Christ first Tennessee. Christ first Tennessee. Then he explained that a Christ first Tennessee would include banning Islam and immigrants and outlawing same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ rights. The Crusades, the doctrine of discovery, the genocide of indigenous people, the boarding schools that we put them in later, those who supported the enslavement of human beings, those who supported segregation, the list goes on and on. All of these folks proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah and the son of the living God. Yet their actions,

their actions were anything but Christlike.

Will we as Christians speak with our words or will we speak with our actions? When will we quit using the name of Jesus as a social indicator of who's in and who's out? When will we as Christians stop witnessing with pious Facebook groups and pious Facebook posts and branding deals and start witnessing with our actions of love and mercy and forgiveness.

And maybe that's the point of this whole passage. Maybe Jesus wasn't looking for a perfect disciple and perfect answers and perfect theology. Maybe he was looking for people who were willing to keep showing up, keep trying, keep wondering, keep wrestling, keep trying to see the forest instead of the trees. Because here's the thing we cannot miss from this passage. The same man that Jesus said, "On you, I will build my church," is the same man who didn't have enough faith and sank into the water. The same man that Jesus said, "On you, I will build my church," is the same man that denied him three times. The same man that proclaimed, "You are the Messiah and the son of the living God," is the same man when pressure rose and the danger closed in, he said, "I don't know him." And I think Jesus knew that. I think Jesus knew that. Jesus knew Peter's courage and he knew his fear. Jesus knew Peter's clarity and his confusion. He knew his faith and his failures. And still he called him blessed,

which I think means Jesus calls us blessed, too. Not because we're perfect, not because we always get it right. Not because our actions always match our confessions, but because God's grace is bigger than our mistakes. God's love is greater than our failures. And God's calling is stronger than our fear. So when Jesus says, "Who do you say that I am?" He isn't looking for this flawless answer. He's looking for a faithful life. He's looking for people who will try, really try to live as if heaven is coming to earth. People who will feed the hungry and clothe the naked and welcome the stranger and free the captive and love your neighbor. People who will see these idols of empire and still proclaim that there is a living God. People who will refuse to let hatred and greed and power have the last word.

Because the good news of this passage, this is my favorite part of this entire sermon. The good news of this passage is not that Peter got it right. The good news of this passage is that Jesus stayed with him when he got it wrong.

And Jesus stays with us, too. So may we go from this place today, not striving for perfection, but striving for faithfulness. Not clinging to clarity or certainty, but clinging to Christ. Not fearing our questions, but trusting that God meets us in them. And may we live in this beautiful way that lets our actions speak louder than words. I really wanted to sing "Louder Than Words" from Tick, Tick... Boom, but I just couldn't put it together. Really quick. I would need two more people. If you know it, meet me after the service. But may we live in a way that our actions speak louder than words. So that when the world asks, "Who do you say that he is?" They will see our answer. They will see our answer in the way that we live and love.

Amen.

Not Some, But All

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, August 16, 2026

There are two kinds of tired. There is the first kind, which is when you just need to go to bed. You have been running around in the hot sun or studying for a test or crouching over your desk at work, and you just need a good night's sleep. And then there is the second kind of tired, one that we might call weariness. You are a new parent. You are up night after night for weeks or months trying to calm your screaming child. You are someone who is in and out of doctor's appointments and hospital appointments, trying to figure out a diagnosis, trying to sift through paperwork, trying to be seen and heard. You are a parent with the kid's calendar taped to the kitchen fridge, so busy that sometimes you're unable to look into the eyes of your spouse or check within yourself. You are weary from grief. How it hovers, how it depletes you. You are weary from studying for finals, for physics, and the Great Wall and the square root of something. Don't ask me. And that kind of weariness does not get resolved by a good night's sleep. It sits above the eyebrows for some of us. It shows up below the eyes. For some of us, it sits heavy on our chest. It makes our limbs heavy.

That's the kind of weariness that the son of David has today. Jesus has been so busy pouring out his compassion and mercy on all kinds of kinds, especially those on the fringes of society. Paralytics and demon-possessed men and women who have been bleeding for 12 years when no one would help them. And people with leprosy, and it seems for him that no one is beyond healing. He has come for the last and the least and the lost. But the people of God don't have ears to hear. They are throwing this man out of towns. They are arguing with him about the law when it is so clear that he has come to fulfill it. Even his own disciples barely understand what he's up to. Just last week, Peter sank into the sea from disbelief that Jesus is who he says he is.

So today we find this weary man traveling to Tyre and Sidon with the disciples. Not just traveling to any district, but this is a Gentile district. This is foreign territory. These are not Israelite cities. But what's funny is that folks outside of Israelite cities seem to recognize the son of God more than those who he came to save first. Amen. But Jesus is never afraid of putting himself in uncomfortable situations in foreign places. But in these districts, his disciples, they kind of have their ears perked up. They have their eyes shifting around. They are a little more nervous as they cross over into Gentile territory where they are looking at those people. Y'all know about those people. Weary and raw, dejected and rejected. Jesus meets this Canaanite woman. Somebody give me a name for her. Sarah. Jesus meets Sarah. Not only does he meet her, but immediately Sarah starts shouting. Imagine they are in this district that they are not familiar with. And a foreign woman, an outcast, someone who is different from them ethnically, shouts at them. They would have been pretty spooked. And here is what she says. Help me. Have mercy on me, son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon.

Take a second and imagine the urgency in this woman's voice. We have a lot of mamas here today, or a lot of mother figures. And so there is nothing you wouldn't do for your kid, even if it meant approaching a group that hasn't really been considering you on its mercy tour. But just 10 chapters ago, Jesus preached something called the Sermon on the Mount. And he said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive." Y'all better wake up. I'm not done here. They will receive mercy. Sarah has heard whispers of this, traveling from town to town, about this man who preached mercy. And so surely if she crosses her fingers and reaches out, it could be for her, too.

And she is met with silence. Not a word from the man who has been walking around while people grasp his cloak, trip him in the streets, grab onto the fringes of his clothes, begging to be healed. Silence and maybe a weariness.

And his disciples jump in. Send her away. She keeps shouting after us. Get rid of her. Like a starving mom in Palestine, yelling for food for her babies. Like a weary mom in the emergency room pleading with the staff to help her and her kid. Like a desperate father begging for mercy so that ICE doesn't snatch his own son. But they look at her with fear and they look at her with disgust and they find her annoying.

And Jesus finally talks to her. I was only sent to help the lost sheep of Israel.

Is this the Jesus you know? This isn't the Jesus I know. But somehow in the Gospel of Matthew, we're able to say, "This man calmed storms." And this man needed a dose of mercy. This man ate with tax collectors and sinners. This man crawled into caves with crazy people. This man walked on water. This man set the table. And somehow he forgot an extra placemat today. He forgot to pull up a chair. And nevertheless, she persists. Kneeling at his feet, she pleads, "Lord, help me."

This woman is not giving up until her daughter is healed. Y'all remember when Jacob wrestled with the angel and he said, "I'm not letting go until you bless me." Y'all remember when Hagar fled into the wilderness with her son and she looked at God and said, "You will not let me look upon the death of my son. Bless me." That same tenacity, that same persistence is what we see in Sarah, the Canaanite woman, today.

He said, "I'm so sorry. It's not fair to take the food from the children and throw it to the dogs."

The dogs, a derogatory word used for Gentiles. That's pretty rude. But he is tired. He's just been on a particular mission. God has said, "Jews first and Gentiles later." In other words, the good news is not quite ready for Gentiles. Okay? Not yet. There's only so much mercy to go around. This is the same man who just fed 5,000 with an overflow of abundance, reminding us that there is a myth of scarcity that we better not buy into. And yet, he's got a mercy shortage. And nevertheless, she persists. And not only does she respond, and I kind of imagine it in like a quippy manner where she's using his own language with him, she says, "I understand what you're saying. I agree with you. But even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master's table. Even the dogs, Jesus."

As priest Jennifer Wickerly writes, she takes Jesus's nasty words and she transforms them. She takes that belittling label dog and she puts the label right in front of Jesus. She says, "I'm not waiting until Easter. I'm not waiting until the resurrection. It also applies to me. You will extend your mercy to me right now."

She is not going to wait for the people of God to wake up. She wants her blessing, the blessing that God eventually intends anyway. So why not right now?

And what follows? It may even surprise Jesus. Sometimes our own generosity and abundance might sneak up on us and we're like, "All right, I'm pretty good." He holds his hands and a surplus of mercy pours out. Bread that spills over for the 5,000 and the children. And yes, Sarah, the Canaanite woman. Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish. Thank you for the reminder. And her daughter was healed instantly. Somebody say instantly.

You know what happens next? I'm not going to make Noah the intern come back and keep reading. Now he goes up to a mountain, and the disciples, instead of sending the people who need healing away, they bring these people to Jesus's feet and he heals them all. And listen to what it says in Matthew 16. The crowd was amazed at what they saw. The mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, the blind seeing. Imagine that. That maybe the faith of this Canaanite woman sped up the mercy that was already intended for all of God's people. Because y'all read the last part of Matthew, right? When Jesus commissions his disciples, he says, "Go and make believers of all people." I wonder if he learned some of that from Sarah. Not some, but all. Not some, but all.

And so today on kickoff Sunday, we're kind of dusting off our Bibles and we're kicking off. We're trying to do a little spiritual inventory and ask ourselves at Vine Street Christian Church, is the table set for some or is it set for all? Truly, because let me tell you something, and this is true for me. It is tempting to limit the gospel and the good news for who I want it to go to. It is tempting to limit God's mercy to just the people who agree with me, who look like me, who vote like me, who worship like me. But y'all, Jesus's mission is so clear, perhaps more so because a Canaanite woman woke him up one day. He says, "Set the table for not some, but all. Set the table for the people who vote like you. Set the table for the people who don't. Set the table for the people who forget to vote. Set the table for the men and women on death row, the people who faithfully visit them, the lawmakers who approve their execution, the protesters who don't support it and the counterprotesters who do, the correctional officers who have to look at it. Set the table for babies who can't yet speak for themselves and for our older folks who are teaching us how to slow down a little bit and our young people who sprint through the hallways. Set the table for your closest colleague, the one that you can make eye contact with in a staff meeting and kind of roll your eyes together, and the colleague who annoys you to no end. You better not say me. Set the table for the boss who is so attentive to you. And set the table for the one who still doesn't get your name right. Set the table for the people marching in glee at the pride parade. And for the people holding up signs that say sinners. And for the people who aren't ready to be there yet. Set the table for single moms shouting for their kids to be healed. And set the table for the people working at corporations who don't want them to. Set the table for your grumpy uncle, for your self-obsessed aunt, for your overbearing dad, for your anxious mom, for your weird cousin, for your annoying sibling. You set the table for them. Set the table for your spouse who is late to dinner again. And set the table for the guy standing at the 440 intersection right now whose stares you ignore, whose motives that you don't trust. And set the table for yourself, that your mercy is limited. Set the table for the abused and the abusers, for the perpetrators and the victims, for the rich and the poor and the hungry and the filled and the hoarders and the sharers and the friends and the strangers and the Christians and the atheists. Not some, but all. No one. No one is too broken or too foreign or too different or too damaged to have a chair pulled up for them at Christ's table. No one.

And when we pull up that extra chair, when we shift in our pews at the thought of those people sitting next to us here, that that is when the real work of the gospel begins. That's when we kick it off. When the abundance falls out of our hands. Bread for the kids, bread for the dogs, bread for everybody.

Endless mercy. Endless mercy. It began with a Canaanite woman named Sarah. A woman who wouldn't take no for an answer. And the son of God who wasn't too ashamed to change his mind.

Who ended this book commissioning all.

So, we got to pull up an extra chair, especially for the ones crying out, "Help me."

And there we will find the uncomfortable, stretchy, subversive, merciful kingdom of God that is never just for some, but for all.

Amen.

Still Small Voice

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, August 9, 2026

Many of you know that a couple weeks ago I went to Iona Abbey, which is on an island off the coast of Scotland. It's an island that's three miles long and one mile wide. Before I left, I went on a walk with my spiritual director. And for those of you who don't know what that is, a spiritual director is a therapist for pastors. So you'll be glad I have one. And after talking to Jean for a while, she looked at me and said, "You are so hard on yourself. Why are you so hard on yourself?" And then she asked me, "Is that how God talks to you?" And I said, "I don't know. I haven't been listening." Well, then Iona is probably coming at the right time, she said, because it's time to listen.

The same thing was true 10 years ago when I was in seminary. The world felt noisy. The political landscape of 2016 was noisy. Studying theology and philosophy and divinity makes the mind a little bit noisy. Screen time and scrolling and all that good stuff was noisy. And on top of that, within my own family, divorce was making things noisy. So I got an email about going to an abbey spring break of that year. I don't know what it is with me and abbeys. It's like the monks. I don't know. So I said yes without realizing in the email that this week at the abbey was a silent retreat. Why are y'all laughing?

I went up to this Cistercian Abbey in Berryville, Virginia, and for a week I was silent. I sent an email to my family that week and I said, "What a gift silence is." But it's also, as it turns out, much louder than I thought it would be. By that, I mean it makes the things that I've been stifling come to the forefront in an almost aggressive manner. Maybe that's why all the other retreaters look pained, too. The only time that we broke our silence in that week was to worship at night with the monks to do an evening service where we chanted the psalms and read the liturgy. And on my last night there, for whatever reason, one of the monks approaches me and says, "What are you doing here? What are you doing here?" It's the same question that God asks Elijah today. What are you doing here, Elijah?

If Jeremiah is the weeping prophet and Jonah is the reluctant prophet, I think Elijah is the fleeing prophet. And for good reason. He has just killed about 400 false prophets that were worshiping Baal. Not the Israel's God of love and liberation and care for all people, but a different kind of idol. And Queen Jezebel, the head of all of these false prophets, wants to kill him. We keep having these stories where someone wants to kill someone. She wants to kill him. So he's on the run. And in First Kings 18, it says Elijah was terrified. He got up and ran for his life. And we're not talking about a couple miles. We're not talking about a couple days. We're talking about three weeks of running over rough terrain, not knowing if he was safe or not, trying to get away and run for his life. At one point, he even asks God, "I don't want to live anymore. Take my life. I'm scared." But God is a God of provision and continues to feed and nourish Elijah as he's on the run.

Elijah's walking an ancient path. It's actually one that Moses has walked before. Elijah makes it to Mount Horeb, which is the same mountain that Moses received the Ten Commandments. Elijah traveled 40 days and 40 nights after hiding in a cave. But unlike Moses, who stood up to Pharaoh, who had the courage and the boldness even with a stutter, Elijah cowers to Queen Jezebel and doesn't trust in a God who has promised to always be with him. And so God asks him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah says, "I have been very zealous for the Lord." Zealous here means to campaign or to champion. I have been championing you, God, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel, they have forsaken your covenant. They have thrown down your altars and killed your prophets. I alone am the only one left, and they want to kill me, too.

Go out, God said, and stand on the mountain, for the Lord is about to pass by.

Now there was a great wind so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks, but God was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake. But God was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. But God was not in the fire. And after the fire, the sound of sheer silence.

The Common English Bible version of that is a sound, thin, quiet. The King James version, a still small voice.

And when Elijah hears it, he wraps his face in his mantle and he goes and he stands out at the entrance of this cave and a voice says, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

And he says the same thing. I have been very zealous for you. I've been campaigning for you. They want to kill me.

A few things here for those of you who find that God does show up in the noise. That is true of God in the Hebrew Bible. Earthquakes and winds and fires, God has shown up there. But today, to this fleeing prophet, God makes herself known in the silence.

What comes up for Elijah in that moment? I have a feeling it's things that he doesn't want to confront. And what comes up for Peter and the disciples when Jesus stills the wind? Because did you notice that it's not when Jesus walks on water that they say that is the son of the Lord? It's when Jesus quiets the wind that they are able to proclaim truly you are the son of God. As if in the silence they experience feeling known and seen and heard by God.

Sometimes it takes stillness for us to feel the Lord passing by.

There is this place in the Hoh Rainforest, I've talked about it before, in Olympic National Park in Washington State. It's called one square inch of silence and it's marked by a red stone and it is placed on top of a moss-covered log and it is said to be the quietest place in our country.

There are only 15 places left in our country where you can experience 15 minutes or longer without any noise intrusion. 15 places.

We are starved for silence and yet it is becoming dangerous. Silence. When we listen to ourselves, when we listen to a divine, still small voice is being co-opted by productivity and efficiency and noise. They don't want us to hear from a God that makes himself known to us when we quiet down.

It may seem like you have to go overseas or up to Berryville, Virginia to find silence, but you don't. You don't. The location of Elijah's encounter with God, it actually doesn't matter. Yes, it's significant because that's where Moses stood, but many commentaries said he could have experienced God anywhere. In the cave, in the wilderness, in the temples, which means that we don't have to go anywhere to feel the Lord passing by.

I was in an old Bible study once and we talked about this passage and we made an agreement. Okay, at 3:03 p.m. every day, we're going to set a timer. And for that moment, wherever we are, we will pause. We will look around. We will listen. For months we did that, checking back in weekly to see what had come up, what had been noticed, what had been heard.

Because believe it or not, lots of things come up in silence that we don't want to face. Oftentimes when I get quiet, it's the things that I'd rather avoid that speak to me. You are lonely. You are scared. You have lost hope. You are tired. You are frightened. You miss him. You grieve her. You don't want to be alone.

And then oftentimes underneath the scary stuff is a loving voice. One of mercy and grace, always ushering me back to believe that I am beloved. God is well pleased with me. But if we don't take time to listen, how can we ever hear the still small voice of God? And if we don't take time to listen to God, how do we think we're going to be able to hear each other in a world that really doesn't want us to listen to each other? Amen.

There is an American composer John Cage. He wrote a song called 4'33". Do you know this song? Of course TJ knows this song. There are no intentional music notes. There's a video of him sitting at the piano and setting his timer, and for 273 seconds.

Perhaps that's the only time in the audience's day when they hear nothing and therefore hear everything, or the only time in their week or their month.

Elijah's response before and after this event. This is what's kind of frustrating and kind of interesting and a lot relatable is that did you notice before this moment of thin quiet, God asks, Elijah, what are you doing here? And Elijah answers, I'm scared. I'm scared for my life. I'm running away. I have been campaigning for you. Why aren't you here for me? And God gets Elijah's attention in ways that God has been known before. And then silence. And then again, God asks, perhaps hoping that Elijah was transformed by that 4 minutes and 33 seconds. God asks again, "Elijah, what are you doing here?" I'm scared. I'm running for my life. I've been campaigning for you and they want to kill me. And we know that even after Jesus calms the wind that Peter still has moments of doubt and denial.

The invitation there, I think, is that this isn't a one-time show. This isn't a one-time experience. This is a spiritual practice that we have to build up and attempt because it is subversive. Because the world doesn't want us to.

What's also interesting about this story is it's actually a retirement plan. After God says, "What are you doing here?" for the second time, and Elijah answers in fear, God says, "Okay, go back down the mountain. I'm decommissioning you and I'm going to appoint Elisha, a new prophet."

Perhaps in that moment, God saw Elijah's fear and thought, "Then I will give you a rest." Perhaps in that 4 minutes and 33 seconds, God felt Elijah's fatigue when Elijah was able to say perhaps the most raw, honest things to God in that stillness that he wasn't allowed to say in the noise.

God wants to pass by. God is passing by. God is calming the wind and inviting us day in and day out to take a moment, a moment for something beyond and greater than us to speak.

When I got to that island, when I walked around Iona, I felt flooded, flooded with mercy. And I heard God say, "It is enough. To have helped one person, it would have been enough. You are enough."

Thank God that in that moment and in moments that we can find if we look for them, we hear a still small voice.

Walking Scared

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, August 2, 2026

Is anyone here a twin? Okay. Two. Oh, right. Okay. Two twins in the building. I was curious. This is a really interesting passage to me and maybe to you. And before we talk about this wrestling match, I want to take us very back to the beginning of this story of a set of twin brothers. So, Isaac and Rebecca have two twin boys. The first one to come out of the womb is Esau. And we learn that Esau is red in complexion. He's very hairy and he is going to be strong in might. This is kind of foreshadowing to the fact that Esau will be this skilled hunter and will be kind of a nature man. And then grabbing onto his heel as he exits Rebecca's womb is Jacob. Jacob literally means to take by the heel. And what we learn about Jacob is that he has softer skin. He's a quieter baby, meaning that he becomes a quiet man. And so, we start to see the difference in these twins. Y'all are very different as twins, right? That's usually the case. And then we learn later in this story that Jacob, the younger brother, steals his older twin's birthright and his blessing. And the Hebrew in this moment is really cool. This play on words. Jacob steals Esau's birthright, Becker, and has his dad grant him a blessing bar of the firstborn son. So what happens? Esau hates Jacob for tricking him, for stealing the blessing and the birthright for him. And we learn that Esau wants to kill his twin. 

Jacob in this moment has his mother approach him, Rebecca. Rebecca favored Jacob, and Isaac favored Esau. And Rebecca says, "You have got to flee from Canaan. You got to get out of here. Let Esau cool off. Let him calm down a little bit. And when that happens, when he doesn't really want to kill you anymore, I will send for you and you can come back home." But Rebecca never calls for her son. 20 years go by and Jacob is living with his uncle Laban in Haran, Rebecca's brother, and she never calls for him. And at this point in the story, Jacob hears from God. And God says, "It's time to go home. It's time to go home to the land of Canaan. But in order to do so, you're going to have to pass through Edom." Anybody want to guess who lives in Edom? Esau, who last time we checked in with Esau, wanted to kill him. So, Jacob in his sort of trickster younger twin way sends a messenger, sends a messenger to his older twin and he says, "Listen, Esau, I've been a foreigner for a very long time in my uncle's house and I've had my struggles and y'all can read the couple chapters before 32 to get a sense for that." He says, "I'm going to send some things ahead for you, some presents, so that maybe you find favor with me, your servant again." So Jacob sends ahead of him an oxen, donkey, male and female slaves. He says, "They're all yours." He tells this to the messenger to tell to Esau. And Esau tells the messenger to say to Jacob, "I will come and meet you. I'm going to bring 400 men." So, I'll be there and I'm gonna come with 400 of my buddies. Obviously, this might not incentivize Jacob to come and meet his brother. 

So, Jacob has another idea at this point because he's very, as scripture tells us, distressed and afraid, as many of us would be. He separates his people, his animals into two companies. He says, "Okay, I'm going to send one company ahead, and that's going to be a lot of animals and some family and possessions, and then I'm going to have another company follow behind so that even if Esau and his 400 men kill the first company, we got a backup company who can escape." So, Jacob first petitions to God and says, "Will you just deliver me from the hand of Esau? Like I've had it pretty rough. I had to flee my home. I had to live with my uncle who wasn't really fun to live with. I just want to go home. Can you spare me that?" So, he takes these presents. And I want to read you everything he takes. 200 female goats, 20 male goats, 200 ewes, 20 rams, 30 camels, 30 colts, 40 cows and bulls, 20 female donkeys, and 10 male donkeys. He's laying it on thick, church, is he not?

If Esau asks whose, therefore, he says again, therefore, his servant Jacob. He's laying it on real thick, isn't he? Jacob says, "I'm going to come behind y'all. Okay, y'all go ahead with all these animals, with all these presents. I'm going to come behind y'all so that maybe I can appease him with these gifts." And when he sees my face after receiving all that I want to give him, maybe he will accept me. The presents pass on ahead of him. And he decides to spend a night in this camp with his wives and maids and 11 children. And then he thinks, actually, I think we should cross this ford of Jabbok, and I'm actually going to send all my family across a stream. And so he does. And then scripture says this, Jacob was left alone. Hundreds and hundreds of animals, possessions, family. He sends them ahead of him. And Jacob was left alone.

And a man wrestled with him until daybreak. A man wrestled with Jacob until daybreak. Any guesses as to who this man is? People are undecided on this. Any guesses?

God. Great guess. Any other guesses? Who would be wrestling with him?

His twin. And that's another guess. Some people think that Jacob's wrestling partner was actually his twin. That Esau had come to meet him, gotten into the ring, and wanted to have it out. Some people think that this wrestling match actually didn't take place physically while Jacob was awake. It was like a nightmare where he wrestled with his twin in his dreams. And maybe you've experienced this, church, when you have these anxiety dreams when something is going to happen in the next day or week or month that scares you and anxiously you're wrestling in your sleep. Most theologians do think it's God, but it's unclear who Jacob meets in the night. And that's how it is with night, isn't it? It can be muddled who we are addressing and approaching and wrestling with when we wake up or are asleep. Walter Brueggemann writes, "What's interesting is during the day, Jacob has it all together. He manages and takes initiative. And then at night, as it is for all of us, Jacob turns out to be really vulnerable and things rush powerfully beyond his control. His night is peopled with someone who's uninvited and unwelcomed into his life. But they are the ones with whom he has to come to terms with before he can go home peaceably." Jacob has to wrestle with himself and with this wrestling partner before he can see his brother.

So God gets in the ring with Jacob. Let's say it's God. God gets in the ring with Jacob. And many people reading this story actually don't think that it's a nightmare or a dream or something psychological. I'm willing to play with the fact that it might be. It's fun to play with scripture, but a lot of people think that he was fully awake. Fully awake. And he wasn't flinching in the dark, but he was wrestling with this man, God, whoever this was. And what I love is that in this genuine encounter with God in which Jacob does leave physically affected, God doesn't prevail from the very jump. God wrestles back with Jacob. God wrestles back with Jacob. God wrestles through the night with him until he finally strikes Jacob on the hip, putting his hip socket out of joint.

And I wonder if in that moment their relationship changed. Both God and Jacob. Maybe their relationship changed because they hold fast to each other and neither of them will turn away. Neither of them turn away from each other in the wrestling match. Then God says, "You got to let me go cuz day is breaking." And what we know from that time is anyone who sees God face to face during the day dies. So maybe God wants to spare Jacob's life. Okay buddy, we just had this big old wrestling match. Maybe we've both come away from it changed and now you have to let me go. You've got to continue on. Actually want you to live to play out your story. And Jacob says, "No, I'm not letting you go. I'm not letting you go until you bless me." Jacob talks back to God. I'm not letting you go until you bless me. Maybe God smirks at this point. Maybe God is surprised by the boldness and courage of this demand for a blessing because God says, "What's your name?" Jacob. God says, "Not anymore. Your name is Israel." Which means he who strives to strive because you have wrestled against man and humans and God. And you have prevailed. Your name is changed. The name you had grabbing life by the heel doesn't reflect the story of your life anymore. And the wrestle that we just had a new name for you. Not that you struggle in the moment, but that you have striven and you have prevailed.

A changed name. And then Jacob says, "Okay, I told you my name. What's your name? Who are you? Who is this person who has met me and encountered me and not been too scared to meet me in my fears and anxieties, but has said, 'I'm with you. I'm engaging in this challenge with you.'" And God in such an annoying God way answers a question with a question. Do y'all know people who do that? I feel like three-year-olds do that. Why do I think that? It's like, why? Why? And then you start to like go down your own loophole and you're like, I don't even know why anymore. So God answers a question with a question. Why do you ask? Why does it matter? Why do you want to know? And before Jacob can answer, God cuts him off and God blesses him. This isn't a stolen blessing. This isn't Jacob tricking his father into blessing him. This is a willing blessing from a God who loves blessing people. Just read Genesis and you will see our God loves blessing us.

Oh, this is way down here. Have y'all been able to hear me? Why don't I start over? So, who's a twin? Raise your hand if you're a twin.

I'm going to grab the microphone if that's okay. I'm having my own wrestling match.

God blesses Jacob. And in doing so, he receives this divine blessing. It really validates who he is. It validates his life, what he's been through, not who he was born as. His old name doesn't fit anymore. And in this moment, here's what Jacob says. I've seen God face to face and I've lived. I've seen God face to face and I've lived.

And of course, then the sun begins to rise. That in that twilight, in that darkness, Jacob sees God not in the light, but in his darkest moment. That's when God chooses to reveal Godself to Jacob. Then the sun rises. Then the dawn breaks and in that moment, Jacob doesn't sit down and nurse his wounds. I mean, he has developed a limp because of this wrestling match. A limp that he'll have forever. A sign of what it means to be wounded and changed and given a new name because of this wrestling. Jacob doesn't sit down. Jacob doesn't turn back. Jacob isn't passive to his own life. Jacob doesn't turn back from what he has to do, which is go face his twin. We learn then that Jacob gets up and he goes on limping because of his hip.

I don't want to spoil the story for you. A lot of you know the story, but for those of you who don't, for those of you who have forgotten, I really encourage you to read Genesis 33 when you get home. Or you can pick it up right now and tune me out. The ending of this story is quite beautiful.

There's so many things in this passage that feel freeing to me. So many moments in this passage when I feel God's invitation. And I want to name a few. The first is that I feel like God is normalizing how much we feel anxiety, how much we feel scared, how much we feel alone when we wake up in the night with our thoughts racing, unable to go back to sleep for fear of what's coming, a difficult interaction, a really hard exam, a moment at work that we don't want to face, something going on in our own family unit. To wake up and be anxious and scared is pretty dang normal. It's helpful that in our most vulnerable moments, especially at our nighttime moments, God says that happens. That's okay. That's human.

And then what a beautiful, beautiful testament to who our God is. God doesn't exist far away from Jacob's moment of fear. God steps in the ring with Jacob. God chooses to engage with each of us personally because nothing is too scary. Nothing is too challenging. Nothing is too far beyond our God who meets us, who wrestles with us until daybreak. It means that you and I can pretty much bring anything to our maker. God will not sit away from it. God will engage with it.

I love that Jacob's given a new name. I love that he's changed from this experience. There's no way he's going to walk away and be the same man that he was. Maybe he lays down his tricks. No more putting presents and livestock and land and family ahead of himself in order to save his butt. Maybe he lays down this feeling of being an underdog of trickery and says mercy and says grace and says forgiveness and says honesty and says courage is not being brave. Courage is walking scared to meet my twin not knowing what will happen to me. Jacob is given a new name. And I love that Jacob demands a blessing. Sometimes this story reminds me of Hagar that sometimes I think it feels like we have to cower away from God. That we're not allowed to demand blessings from God. But here is a man who does who doesn't let go of God. Who doesn't let go of the challenge before saying, "You better bless me. If you're going to wound me, then transform me."

And finally, none of us are getting out of here without wounds. Nobody is exempt from a wounded life. Y'all remember a guy named Jesus and a guy named Thomas? Thomas who doubted that after the resurrection, it really was the risen savior until Jesus said, "I am wounded just like you. I carry these wounds and these scars from a life lived of struggle. I'm not exempt from that either." That none of us are getting out of here wounded. And I dare say none of us are getting out of here transformed.

And for some of you, it's quite literally physical wounds. I've actually met with a couple people this week who've had knee replacement surgeries and back issues and whose hips are very much in pain. Some who may have gone from walking upright to needing to limp. And for some of you who I meet with, it feels more like a mental wound, a broken brain, limping in a way that feels invisible, but is very much personal and acute.

God is a God of blessing and we will be wounded in this lifetime. But I dare say we will be transformed.

I think we're invited to hang on to God. I think we're invited to wrestle with God. I think we are invited to claim our promises. I think we are invited to demand our blessings. And I think we're invited to persist in a relationship with God.

And maybe the most freeing of all and what I feel here in this church is that we welcome the wounded. This life is not one of perfection but one of salvation. And so if you do not have it all together, if you identify with any part of this story, you are exactly where you are supposed to be. We welcome the wounded and we welcome the wrestlers. Those who are willing to get in the ring with a God who shows up with us and won't let go until we are ready. The wounded, the wrestler, the blessed, the changed name, the transformed. It is all in this rich story. A story for us today.

So, I don't know about you, but I'm hopeful for a God that sticks around. And as I wrestle with God in my woundedness, I feel comforted that God's not going anywhere. God says, "I'm coming into the ring with you in all of your wounds, and you are blessed."

Amen.

God is For Us

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, July 26, 2026

Good morning. This weekend I watched this documentary called Alabama Snake. And actually I sang in this opera this weekend as a part of the Kindling Arts Festival that was inspired by this story. And so I've been meaning to watch this documentary. So I finally got around to it on Friday night. And this story tells of this Holiness Pentecostal preacher in Scottsboro, Alabama, not too far from where I grew up, and this little Pentecostal church in the foothills of Appalachia that believed so strongly in the power of the Holy Spirit. They believed in the signs of the spirit, healing, deliverance of demons, speaking in tongues, and they believed quite literally in the words from Mark chapter 16 that says, "And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils. Shall they speak in new tongues, and they shall take up serpents?" These folks were snake handlers. So, guess what's in the box? [laughter] Margie, I'd like for you to reach your hands, [laughter] the day that the disciples of Christ become snake handlers is the day I walk out of that door and never look back. But it is this fascinating documentary, and I encourage you to go watch it if you have the streaming service. But there was something so intriguing about the fact that these people believed so fervently in the power of the Holy Spirit, in the providence of God, and the love of Jesus that they trusted that these animals would not strike them. A couple of weeks ago, I preached on the beginning of Romans chapter 8. And while Romans may not be everybody's favorite book of the Bible, I'm glad that we're coming back to it today. You may remember that I mentioned that several theologians have said that Romans chapter 8 is the heart of Paul's letter to the church in Rome. The Roman church was composed of both Jewish and Gentile believers which occasionally led to tensions amongst them. Thus, the need for this letter by Paul. The church in Rome also faced significant persecution as you heard in the reading that Daniel just read, particularly by the emperor Nero. But even so, this church in Rome grew and flourished, even being under the direct thumb of the empire. And lastly, this church in Rome held a significant place in early Christian history, being one of the earliest and most influential Christian communities around, likely established by Jewish Christians who were actually present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. So, they had witnessed these miraculous things and then returned back to Rome. So this is this very important and influential and intermixed group of early believers. So our passage for today seems to be these three important things that Paul's wanting to mention and declare to the Roman church. The work of the spirit, understanding God's promises, and then finding meaning in a confusing time. So perhaps it feels like a separate thought by Paul as you hear this text compared to the one that we read two weeks ago, but it's not. It's actually a continuation of what Paul was saying before, except he's focusing now not on the future, but on the present. Theologian and commentator Nick Carter, who is not a Backstreet Boy by the way, says that Paul has claimed that we are indeed children of God, made so through the faith of Christ's sacrifice, and we have confidence in our future salvation. But now he's saying we have assurance for our present challenges. Paul has set forth all of these doctrinal statements in this passage from two weeks ago. And those were beliefs that he was instructing the early church in Rome to believe that there's no condemnation in Christ and that the law of the spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. That people whose lives are based on selfishness think about selfish things. But people whose lives are based on the spirit think about things related to the spirit. And lastly, if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then the one who raised Christ from the dead will give you and your human body also through the spirit who lives in you. He's setting forth these doctrinal beliefs to form this, as you heard, mixed bag of believers that make up the Roman church. But in today's passage, he's also providing the reassurance that they need to sustain them through perilous times and this persecution that was mentioned in the reading. He knows that these people are persecuted. They're occupied. They're oppressed. They want to believe and they know what to believe, but they need this reassurance that the God who saves, who liberates, and who frees hasn't forgotten about them. And so Paul is reminding them in this passage from today's reading that the spirit will come to their aid, that God is working all things together for their good and that nothing can separate them from the love of God. A few weeks ago, I quoted this womanist theologian and her take on Paul's letter to the Romans. Specifically, I quoted Reverend Dr. Wil Gafney, who is this black Episcopal priest and scholar, and she noted that freedom, that liberation is communal. It's not just individual. Paul's language about walking according to the spirit in our text from a few weeks ago is a communal ethic. This idea that freedom is not just personal salvation. It is collective healing and liberation. No condemnation, as from our text a few weeks ago, becomes this call to build communities where stories are honored, where leadership is shared and vulnerability is safe. In a place like this, where joy is a theological practice that each of us embody, and where freedom means creating spaces where everyone can breathe and speak and dance and lament and flourish without fear. There's a reason that liberation theology and theologians that the civil rights movement and other movements that are centered on justice have found solace in the gospel writings and in these truly prophetic and progressive words of Paul. They too need this reassurance that the God who saves, who liberates, who frees has not forgotten about them. And while I can't get into the snake handling, I do think that this type of fervent spiritual belief that we find in Appalachia is because they too need that reassurance of a God who will never leave them nor forsake them. They need the reassurance of a God that's working all things together for their good. And they need to know that if God is for them, then no one can be against them. These communities in Appalachia are often food deserts. They're often in economic poverty. They're often in infrastructural ruin. They need the power of the Holy Spirit to sustain them through their own perilous times. Do you know what? I think that even though we're doing pretty good right now. I've been sailing a lot. I got a pretty nice suntan there. We've been traveling Europe. We've been traveling the US. We've been going to camp. We've been doing pretty well. But I think that we too need that reassurance at a time like this when more Americans have been killed by ICE than have been killed in the war with Iran. I need the Holy Spirit to intercede on my behalf with groanings that are too deep for words, assuring me and all of us that even when words fail, God understands the deepest and deepest needs of our hearts and our communities and our world, and that the spirit is advocating for us. When a 15-year-old boy from my hometown who was diagnosed with stage 4 osteosarcoma, which is this rare and aggressive bone cancer, when he died this past Thursday at the age of 15 after this long, hard-fought and public battle, I need to believe that somehow God is working all things together for our good and that there's a purpose to the things that we can't make sense of in this life or in this world. Theologian and commentator Wendy Farley asks, "Who can condemn when Christ has shown us how desperately God loves the world?" But after so many of the stories that I hear from people who have left church or were kicked out of church because they asked too many questions, they were too opinionated, they were too loud, they were too autistic, they were too gay, they were too this, too that. I need and truly everyone needs this reminder that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation can separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.

I feel like we as disciples of Christ often know what to believe. We know the right versions of the Bible to read. We know the right commentaries to read. We know the right interpretations and the right exegesis of scripture to understand. We know the right lens of how to view the work of Christ and the work that caused us to. But I sometimes wonder how seriously we take the belief that it can work. I wonder how serious we are in believing that it can truly happen. What would our ministry look like if we here at Vine Street really leaned into those promises of God that Paul lays out? What would it look like if we trusted, truly trusted that the spirit is interceding for us? Not just in those quiet moments of prayer, not just when we feel holy or feel centered, but in those messy and chaotic and aching places where we don't even know what to say and we don't even know what to pray. What if we believe that God is indeed working all things together for our good? Not as a platitude, not as a band-aid, but as this deep, stubborn, spirit-driven hope that refuses to let a suffering world have the last word. Because Paul isn't writing to a people that have it all together. He's writing to a people who are barely hanging on. People who are persecuted and misunderstood, who are pushed to the margins, who are trying to make sense of a world that seems determined to crush them. And yet Paul says in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Not conquerors because we're strong. Not conquerors because we're clever. Not conquerors because we've mastered the right theology or read the right commentaries. But we're conquerors because God's love refuses to let us go. And if God is for us, then who can be against us? And if that was true, if that was true for the Roman church, then it has to be true for us, too. If the church leaned into God's promises, our ministry would look less like cautious optimism and more like courageous imagination. If the church truly leaned into God's promises, we would stop assuming that the limits of our budgets and our buildings and our comfort zones are the limits of God's mission. If the church leaned into God's promises, we would become a community where people who have been told that they are too much or not enough finally hear the truth that you are beloved, you belong, and you cannot be separated from the love of God. Imagine a church where the person who asked too many questions is seen as the theologian in the making. Imagine a church where the queer teen who was told that God could not love them maybe for the first time hears that nothing can separate them from the love of God. Imagine a church where the grieving parent or the exhausted caregiver, the person who feels like they're barely hanging on, finds a community that says, "We will hold hope for you until you can hold it again yourself."

Paul says that the spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. That means that the spirit is already praying for things that we are too afraid to name. The spirit is already advocating for the people that we don't know how to help. The spirit is already working in those places when our own strength runs out. And if that's true, if all of this is true, then our ministry doesn't begin with our ability. It begins with our availability. I want to say that again. If all of this is true, that means that our ministry doesn't begin with what we can do, our ability, but with our availability and our willingness to say yes to where the spirit is leading us. So here Paul's promise anew that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Not war, not injustice, not grief, not fear, not doubt, not the church's failures, not the world's cruelty, not even the places that we feel the most lost. Nothing. So, Vine Street, what would our ministry look like if we truly leaned into the promises of God? I think it would look like a people who trust the spirit more than their own fear. And we don't have to handle snakes to trust the spirit. It would look like a community that believes that God is working for their good even when the world feels broken and lost. It would look like a church that refuses to let anyone believe that they are beyond the reach of God's love. It would look like us. It would look like us. Fully alive, fully committed, fully rooted in the God that never lets us go.

We have Kickoff Sunday in a few weeks, August 16th, as Margie mentioned. We've got this amazing year planned, and we want you to be a part of it because we know that the spirit is just waiting to burst at all of the things that we're doing here at Vine Street. So, may we be that church. May we trust that promise. May we live like nothing can separate us from God's love because our ministry doesn't begin with our ability but with our availability. May it be so. And may we make it so with our living and our loving. Amen.

Believe the Good News

Sermon preached by Rev. Stacy Rector on Sunday, July 19, 2026

Good morning. It's so good to be here with you. I'm so grateful for Pastor Margie and Wesley's invitation and your warm welcome. I see some familiar faces and new faces, and I hope I get a chance to speak to everybody when the service is over.

A little bit about my background: everybody knows when I preach you often hear about my grandmothers. I was very close to them and grew up with them right around the corner. So I've got a lot of good stories about grandmothers. But the church that raised me was a rural Cumberland Presbyterian church in West Tennessee, where the 20 or 30 folks who regularly attended were all related to each other either by blood or by marriage—I was never sure. And for most of my life, I was the sole Sunday school member of my grandmother's Sunday school class. Needless to say, I aced my Bible content exam in seminary because of my grandmother.

She was the unofficial pastor of the church. She wasn't ordained. She didn't have a college degree, but when things needed to get done, Mama did them. She taught me Sunday school, as I said. She also played piano for the church services. She ran the Cumberland Presbyterian women. She visited the sick and those in the nursing home, made sure all the special offerings were taken. And any seminary student that made the drive from Memphis for the occasional preaching at our little country church always got fed.

And though she was probably one of the most loving and faithful people that has ever walked this earth, she had her church lady side—if you know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about. With just a look, she could let you know that she was not pleased. And she was not afraid to speak her mind or drop the occasional guilt bomb. One church member who grew up under my grandmother's tutelage was not the most consistent churchgoer as an adult. And after my grandmother's death, as many whose lives she touched were sharing stories about her, he said, "You know, if I missed a few Sundays and ran into Miss Dorothy at the grocery store, she didn't have to say a word to me. I'd just start confessing I'd skipped church to go fishing."

Now, my hunch is Jesus was likely a faithful attender of synagogue services, so perhaps would not have gotten any of those looks from my grandmother, but he does seem to have an affinity for fishing. So, I don't know. John's gospel reports that one of the first things Jesus does after his resurrection is appear to his disciples, instructing them on how to catch a few more fish. And of course, one of his most famous miracles includes a fish fry. Perhaps then it is no surprise that these fishermen recognize a kindred spirit when he calls to them.

Now, the gospel doesn't give us many details, if any really, about why these fishermen on the spot were told immediately join Jesus. But it doesn't seem to take much for Peter, Andrew, James, and John to drop their nets, to drop their livelihoods, their families, even, to follow this one who calls them now to fish for people.

On the other hand, in our other text for today, minus a few verses, we meet Jonah, who is not ready to drop anything to get with God's program. And if you remember the story from Sunday school, in a futile attempt to flee the line that God has cast, Jonah ends up serving as bait.

These texts remind us once again, as we need to be reminded over and over, that God chooses to reveal God's power, God's purposes, God's call, not just through miracles and on mountaintops, but through the mundane and the muddled. And as our texts describe, God's call is often disruptive. It throws us off balance. It puts kinks in our plans, because God's way of being, the way of Jesus, is not a particularly easy way, right? We know that. It's rarely convenient or comfortable. It's rarely safe or secure and often doesn't even seem particularly fair. Which leads us back to Jonah and those pesky Ninevites.

I'll give you a quick refresher, if any of you need it, on Jonah's story. God calls him, tells him to go to Nineveh, cry out against the wickedness of the Ninevites. They have a pretty awful reputation for being a bunch of mean people. And though it may be downright dangerous for Jonah to go to Nineveh preaching repentance to these immoral people, as we know, such messengers don't often fare well. Fear is not seemed to be what motivates Jonah's resistance to the call. In a moment of honesty that we don't hear in our reading, the text tells us that Jonah confesses the real reason he does not want to go to Nineveh is because the people there don't deserve to hear a word from God. Jonah says, "This is why I fled in the beginning, God, for I knew you were a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing."

Jonah thinks the people of Nineveh might actually listen to him. Maybe they'll change, and God will spare them in the end. For Jonah, this will not do. Utter destruction is too good for them. And so the story goes. Jonah flees from God's call, hops a boat. God sends a storm. Jonah convinces the crew to toss him overboard to calm the sea. And God sends a giant fish to swallow Jonah. He remains in the belly of the beast for three days before the fish can't take it anymore and throws him up.

After all of this, you would think Jonah would immediately get that one-way ticket to Nineveh. But no, God has to call him a second time. This time, Jonah does go and tells the Ninevites, "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown." And by the way, I can't wait. But Jonah's worst fears are realized. The people of Nineveh pay attention to him. They listen. They proclaim a fast. They put on sackcloth. They don't have to be convinced or told a second time like some people. They hear the word of God and repent on the spot. Then we're told God changes God's mind about their destruction. And poor Jonah, he can't take it. He stomps away, sits under a bush, and prays for death, rather than to have to live with a bunch of low-down, no-good Ninevites as his new family. Pitiful.

Now, Jonah makes the disciples in our text look pretty good in comparison. Ironic, since often in Mark's gospel they end up looking confused and bumbling. But here, I'll give them their due. When Jesus calls them to drop their nets and follow, they listen. But we know that won't always be the case, will it? They're the same guys who will argue about who's the greatest. When Jesus most desperately needs their support before his arrest, they will fall asleep on him. One of them will betray him. One of them will deny him. All of them will scatter when he is executed, leaving only the women followers at the cross. And no, in this particular instance, they show Jonah up. They're just as flawed as he is.

But that's the point, isn't it? God's freedom to choose whomever God wants, to call whomever God wants, even the most bumbling, stubborn, and mean among us. That is what God's beloved community is. That's what it looks like. Like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's Island of the Misfit Toys. And it can be hard to take sometimes, when we realize just who our sisters and brothers really are, when we realize God loves them just as much as God loves us and that God's not taking inventory or checking off boxes or keeping score. It can be hard to take, even though it's the best news our world has ever received: that our God does not love us as much as we deserve, but as much as we need.

The Ninevites, that mean old bunch of people, they listen to God's call. They recognize their own need for change, and so did the disciples, or they wouldn't have dropped everything to join Jesus. And this is our work as disciples of Jesus too. To listen, to recognize our own need for newness, our own need for change, not just one time, but over and over and over. And not only for ourselves, but we are to encourage and provide support for such newness for everyone. For everyone, even and especially those who challenge us, who push our buttons, who turn our stomachs, or who frankly don't seem capable of change at all.

Our path as disciples of Jesus is not the path of least resistance: staying where we are as we are, clinging to what we have, to those we know, and not stepping out in faith because of our fear. Our fear that following the call of God in our lives will cost too much. The Ninevites could have made that choice, the disciples too. But imagine the life they would have missed out on if they had. Not much of a life at all, really. Certainly not the abundant life that our God longs for each of us to have.

So when God calls, particularly to the hard things, to love the hard people, I mean, Jesus says, follow me. Do we dare? And if so, how? How? When the problems are so big, the people are so broken, the systems are so corrupt, the divisions are so great, how do we follow? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but I think we're off to a decent start here together. Gathering as a body, worshiping, praying, singing, sharing a meal at the table, and then doing what the Ninevites do and what the disciples do, and what's really hard for us to do sometimes: listen. Listen wherever we find ourselves—in our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our churches—to listen to one another with compassion and open to the possibility that we will be changed.

And not only that, we step out beyond our usual spaces and we follow Jesus into proximity to those whose voices have too often not been listened to, or whose voices have been discounted or ignored. Our Black and brown sisters and brothers, the immigrant and refugee community, the indigent, the prisoner, the condemned, the outcast. We must go to them and let them teach us too. Of course, this is not easy. It is not an easy way. We know that. But it is the only way to continue to become who we truly are, the body of Christ, in a world that is hungry for newness, for life.

And if we're reluctant to follow this call to step up and step out, you know what? That's okay. We do it together, with the confidence and the faith that the one we follow, the one we follow, has never asked us to go anywhere that he hasn't already been and will not go with us still. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Life & Peace

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, July 12, 2026

Good morning. I don't know if I mentioned, but our senior minister, Reverend Margie Quinn, is in Switzerland right now. She's on a vacation and then she's going to a spiritual enrichment retreat on the Isle of Iona in Scotland. So, I'm super excited to hear how her travels go. So in her absence, as we've been diving into the gospel texts a lot from the lectionary, I'm going to do a little bit of a change. I want to focus this Sunday and then on the 26th on Paul's letter to the Romans, which is in the lectionary text for these two weeks. Of course, next week we'll have the Reverend Stacy Rector. And I hope that you'll come and hear her. It's going to be really exciting to hear from her and her work. But for this week and for the 26th, I want to talk about Romans, specifically chapter 8.

Now, Paul is a very complicated character with the Holy Scriptures, as many of you and other Christians may know, and you may have your own complicated relationship with Paul. But if you've heard me speak about this before, you may know that I am a Paul fan. I think that Paul has gotten a bad rap. I think that Paul has been weaponized and used to hurt and to harm by Christians and by other people often dressed like me. But as Dr. Eric Smith from the Iliff School of Theology, who came last fall, I believe it was, and preached for us and also gave a presentation on his own book, Paul was a progressive. Paul was a forward thinker for his time. And while yes, there are certain things that we may question now with a 2026 lens, and yes, certain writings of Paul have been used to demean and dehumanize groups of people before—they're often cherry-picked to promote an agenda about power and greed over certain groups of people—in my opinion, still, Paul was ahead of his time, we'll say.

So, Romans chapter 8 is what some theologians have called the heart of Paul's letter to the church in Rome. And there's a couple of things that you need to understand about the Roman church before reading this passage. So first, the Roman church was composed of both Jewish and Gentile believers, which occasionally led to some tension amongst those groups. It led to the need for unity and mutual understanding, which is something that Paul wrote a lot about in his letters to these various early churches. And so Paul addresses these dynamics and he urges unity and acceptance among these believers. Second, the church in Rome faced significant persecution right there, right under the thumb of the Roman Empire, particularly from Emperor Nero, who blamed the Christians for the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. But even despite these trials and these tribulations, that church continued to grow and became this central hub for Christianity and for early Christianity thought and leadership even under the Roman Empire. But still, it was a place of occupation and pressure and oppression. And tradition even states that it would be Rome where Paul would later be martyred for his faith. And lastly, the thing you need to understand about the church in Rome is that it holds this significant place in early Christian history, being one of the earliest and most influential communities in the Christian faith. And the origins of this Roman church are not explicitly detailed in the New Testament, but it's widely believed that the church was established by Jewish Christians who were present in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost. So they've seen what the Holy Spirit can do, and then they return to Rome to continue this tradition of following in the way of this man named Jesus.

So Paul is writing this letter to a church that is a mixed bag of believers from all these various backgrounds. He's writing it to this group that is often in tension because of those differences. He's writing this letter to these people who were under persecution and occupation and oppression by the most powerful empire in the world at that time. So much so that the author of this letter would even be killed by them at one point. And yet this is still a stronghold of hope in the face of adversity, and resilience in the face of oppression and persecution, and freedom in the face of occupation and oppression.

So now with this lens in mind of hearing how this early church experienced the world, specifically in Rome, allow me to reread this passage in the Common English translation and see if anything jumps out at you as I reread this. So now there isn't any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. God has done what was impossible for the law since it was weak because of selfishness. God condemned sin in the body by sending his own son to deal with sin in the same body as humans who were controlled by sin. And he did this so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Now the way we live is based on the spirit, not based on selfishness. People whose lives are based on selfishness think about selfish things. But people whose lives are based on the spirit think about things related to the spirit. And the attitude that comes from selfishness leads to death. But the attitude that comes from the spirit leads to life and peace. So the attitude that comes from this selfishness is hostile to God. It doesn't submit to God's law because it can't, because people who are self-centered aren't able to please God. But you, beloved, aren't self-centered. Instead, you are in the spirit. If, in fact, God's spirit does live in you. So, if anyone doesn't have the spirit of Christ, they do not belong to him. If Christ is in you, the spirit is in your life because of God's righteousness. But the body is dead because of sin. And if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also through the spirit that lives in you.

So if anything jumped out at you during the reading of this text, especially through this new lens that we put on, I do want you to let me know. And there's so many directions that we could go with this text. But here are three things that jumped out to me as I was preparing for this sermon this morning.

First, this call to embodied freedom. Romans 8 begins with no condemnation for those in Christ. And many understand that as being salvific language, and that's because we think of salvation in Christ, we cannot be condemned. And I do think that's part of what Paul was intending. That Christ freely gave of himself so that the power of death may be defeated, and that we as people of Christ may live freely in him. But I also think this is a larger critique of empire. One thing that I learned in seminary is that many of these New Testament writers may have been writing to a specific audience, but they were often writing for the society at large or the society as a whole too. So for example, in the gospel of Mark, Christ is preaching against divorce to an audience of poor fishermen who had no money to obtain a divorce through the Roman Empire. So more likely Christ was speaking to a much larger audience, critiquing a much larger audience, most likely Caesar Augustus, who had just had a divorce and could remarry now purely for the acquisitions of land and power. So here Paul says that the law of the spirit of life is Christ and that Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. And I think this does mean personal sin of things like selfishness and greed that Paul mentions. But I think he's also critiquing—subtly, of course, right, he's under the thumb of the empire—but he's critiquing those whose laws deal in death. He's telling the church that they live in a freedom that is beyond what they are experiencing and what they are understanding as this occupation by the Romans continues. And in verse 5, Paul says, "People whose lives are based on selfishness think on selfish things, but people whose lives are based on the spirit think on things related to the spirit." And I think he's making a comment about our personal behavior, yes, but also about the society in which they lived. In other words, you have been called to a behavior or a posture that is higher than that that you see modeled by the empire. You've been called to be in and of the spirit rather than in and of the flesh.

But I've also been compelled this week by the writing of Reverend Dr. Wil Gafney. And if you aren't familiar with her, she is a Black Episcopal priest and womanist theologian and scholar. She writes that Romans 8 is not just a legal declaration, but a liberation from systems of oppression—from spiritual, social, and cultural systems of oppression that have historically silenced and devalued voices, specifically in her case, Black female voices. And she notes that the freedom, the liberation that is spoken about by Paul is communal, not just individual. Paul's language about walking according to the spirit becomes this communal ethic that's expected of the community. Freedom is not just personal salvation. It's a collective healing that we all participate in. No condemnation becomes this call to build communities where stories are honored and leadership is shared, where vulnerability is safe and where joy is a theological practice. Embodied freedom means creating spaces where everyone can breathe and speak and dance and lament and flourish without fear.

The next thing that jumped out to me was the spiritual empowerment that Paul talks about. That is, seeing the walking according to the spirit line in verse four. And Dr. Gafney sees this as aligning with the prophetic and communal and relational energies that you find in scripture, these people who often acted as healers, as leaders, as peacemakers. As I mentioned, Paul and his writings have been used throughout history to hurt and to harm. Most recently, the Southern Baptist Convention, the church of my own childhood, and many of you out there, doubled down on their already in place ban about women serving in leadership positions, specifically pastoral positions. But I distinctly remember growing up in my own church and the women of my childhood church doing everything for that body. But when the question came up as to whether they could be deacons or not, it was immediately shut down. In other words, you can cook and clean and teach kids and run our missions and sing and play the piano, but you can't stand in that pulpit. That was the message that I got about these servants of God that I knew and loved.

To Dr. Gafney, a womanist theology reading of this text highlights how the spirit empowers women to speak, act, and lead even when the institutions and systems deny them authority. And she speaks to all of the women that Paul and others uplifted in scripture, even though Paul is the one most often quoted to put those same groups of people down. She lifts up that Deborah judges Israel not through coercive power but through the spirit-grounded wisdom and courage that she possesses. That Miriam leads the people in liberation song, embodying the spirit's joy and defiance. Huldah interprets scripture authoritatively, demonstrating that spirit-filled insight is not restricted to gender. Ruth models covenantal solidarity that defies ethnic and patriarchal boundaries that were set up by the systems of that day. The midwives Shiphrah and Puah protect vulnerable lives through courageous civil disobedience. Mary and Elizabeth form a spirit-filled community of mutual affirmation and blessing and prophetic hope. Walking according to the spirit means aligning ourselves with this prophetic lineage, claiming voice, claiming authority, claiming truth-telling, even when systems attempt to silence or diminish us.

And finally, being in Christ in Romans 8 becomes this deeply communal, embodied, and relational reality, one that we must live into. The Kaufman commentary states that to be in Christ also means to be in the church, which pressures us to ask ourselves, what kind of church, who shapes this church, whose voices define it, whose leadership is honored in this church that we're building. In 2017, the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, elected Reverend Terri Hord Owens to be our general minister and president, the head of our denomination. And we were the first to elect a woman of color to lead a major mainline denomination. In fact, the Disciples were the first to elect a woman to lead us in 2005, when the Reverend Sharon Watkins was elected to become the first woman to lead a major mainline denomination. And it was cool and it was momentous and it was important that we elected these two women. But we didn't elect them because of their gender or because of their race. We elected them because they were called and ordained by God for such a time as this. But what we did do was that we valued and cherished and celebrated the lens in which they worship and read and teach theology to the church.

So let's go back to the text really quickly and look at the end of this passage for today, because I want to focus on verses 9-11. But you are not in flesh, beloved. You are in the spirit. Since the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin. But the spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give you life to your mortal bodies through the spirit that dwells in you. God accomplished what the law could not by sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh. He condemned sin in the flesh, fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law of these believers. Remember, this is a very transactional audience. They would have understood the importance of law and sacrifice, of payment, of transformation. So the indwelling spirit assures that believers are not merely forgiven but also empowered to live transformed lives, even in the face of adversity, even in the face of oppression. Paul emphasizes that those who have the spirit of Christ are no longer controlled by the flesh and will receive even in their mortal bodies through the spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. Paul's promise to the spirit, or that the spirit will give life to these mortal bodies, signals God's commitment to embodied liberation. Resurrection power that restores dignity to exploited bodies, breathes life into exhausted communities, and animates these movements towards justice. The passage ends by saying that the very same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is the same spirit who sustains our joy, who sustains our leadership and our prophetic witness now. That God's spirit not only forgives but empowers us, not only transforms but liberates us, giving life to us here and now.

Someone asked me recently how things are going at Vine Street. And I told them, in some ways, we're changing. We're evolving. We're shifting. We've got new leadership, both clergy and lay leadership. We're utilizing the building in new ways. We're talking about long-range goal setting and organ restoration and emboldening our insurance and strategic planning for our future. But in other ways, this is the same church that I walked into in 2021. The same church who is committed to living out the way that Jesus has taught us and led us. Paul sought to embody freedom, to spiritually empower, and call us to community in his letter to the Romans. And I believe that this text, even though it was written thousands of years ago, mirrors what we are doing and trying to live into today. To be a church who doesn't seek to condemn but to lift up. A church that seeks to include those that have been left out, that have been told that they don't matter, that they're not worthy. A church who seeks to give voice to those who have been silenced. A church who seeks to preach the good news of Jesus dead, buried, and resurrected, and triumphing over death. A church who seeks to live into the spirit and where the spirit is calling us to go in our next chapter. So I pray that we heed these words of Paul this morning. May it be so, and may we make it so with our living and with our loving. Amen.

I Will Give You Rest

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, July 5, 2026

Good morning. Did anybody else have to drug your dog last night? Woo! We made it.

For those of you who have been coming here since June, and I know exactly who you are and who hasn't been here, we have been journeying through the book of Genesis, talking about complicated families and how, other than my family, there are no perfect families. We've been talking about what it means to have sibling favoritism, what it means to have infertility, what it means to have loss, what it means to travel with your family. And this morning, we are now back in the Gospels. We're in the Gospel of Matthew. But we are not done with complicated family. We may never be done. So, if you are someone who likes to follow along with your Bible, today I'm going to be walking through the text a little bit more than I usually do, kind of passage by passage. So, if you want to grab a Bible and look at Matthew 11 with me, you're welcome to. If reading and listening at the same time is something that is hard for you, I totally get that, too.

My best friend is a priest down the street and I called her this week and said, "What are you preaching on?" And she said, "The beginning of Matthew 11 is actually my favorite scripture in the whole Bible." She said, "What I love about the beginning of Matthew 11 is that we find John the Baptist in prison." He's in prison for talking about and calling out Herod—Herod's exploitation and domination and intimidation over those that are the most stepped on, the most oppressed, the most silenced. Herod wants to silence John. So, he throws him in prison. John, the one who baptized Jesus, Jesus's first cousin, the one who leaped in the womb when he heard about this Messiah, this savior. John has been the one this whole time beckoning people, telling them, "The kingdom of heaven is near." Maybe you have a friend like John who talks with such intensity and urgency, calling out, "I'm a voice in the wilderness saying, 'Prepare the way of the Lord.'" And yet here he's starting to doubt that Jesus is really who he says he is. John, sitting in prison, calls out to the disciples, maybe behind bars, maybe through a letter, and says, "Can you go to my cousin, the Messiah, and can you ask him this?"

Are you really the one that we've been waiting for? Or is there another one? More specifically, he says, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" The disciples scurry off to do what John asks them. And they get to Jesus and they say, "Hey, your cousin John has a question for you. Are you really the Messiah or are we waiting for somebody else?" Because John's in prison. Because things don't look like they've been changed much. Because we know you've been performing some miracles and healing people, but we still see people living on the streets. We still see people oppressed. We still see people who don't feel welcomed to church. So, are you really the one or are we going to wait for another? And Jesus says this to them. And I wonder if he says it with a little bit of exasperation at his cousin, because you get a little annoyed with your cousins sometimes.

He says, "What do you think I've been doing? Am I the one to come? The blind see. The deaf hear. The lame are healed. The poor are brought good news. The sick are cleansed. What more do you want from me, John? Am I the one to come? What more could I possibly do to show you that the kingdom of heaven is near and that those who have been unnoticed, untalked to, untouched, unseen—those are the folks that I am directly seeing?"

Who else are you waiting for? But we've got to remember that at this point, John, who is locked up, he thinks he's going to die in there. Where is this one who calls himself a savior? Is he going to save me? Now, there's fear and there's doubt even for the one who has, I think, been the most devout. And that's why my best friend loves this text, because even for those of us who are capital F, Faithful, we still got those moments. We look around and think, is Jesus really the one or are we waiting for another? Because things don't always seem like they are healed and transformed and that the kingdom of heaven actually is near. So Jesus responds with all of the things he has been doing. And then, I think in a moment where he is still feeling a little exasperated with his cousin, a little frustrated that people still wouldn't believe that he is the Messiah despite the life he has lived, he turns to the crowds and he says this. "Well then, what did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the winds? No. What did you go out to see? Did you go out to see someone wearing soft robes?"

Did you go out to see a prophet? What did you go out to see? Someone who's dressed in soft robes is out living in royal palaces. That's not me. Someone who is so easily shaken by the winds of resistance and violence. That's not me. You said you went out to see a prophet and I gave you one. John the Baptist, my cousin who has prepared a way for me. Y'all remember him? He is Elijah. Scripture says he is prophetic. We have known he was going to come. He is here. What more do you want? Jesus is a little ticked off right now. And then he starts to wonder. He starts to get a little more ticked. "Let anyone with ears listen. I'm so sick of this generation." He says, "This generation is like children in the marketplace playing the flute, and you didn't dance. They are mourning and you didn't weep." Here's what I think he's saying here. I think he's saying it doesn't matter what kind of messengers God sends. No one wants to hear from prophets and teachers. No one is good enough for y'all. Because let's take John the Baptist for a second. John the Baptist is a pretty intense guy, right? He's too stern and demanding for them. He calls out people and calls them a brood of vipers. He's ascetic. He's eating locusts in the wilderness and honey. He's a little bit of a wild child. Maybe he's got that crazy hair that you've seen on your uncle at some point. He is urgent. He is on the go. He is shouting, "The kingdom of heaven is right under your nose if you would just stop to see it." And yet, what do they do? They call him demonic. And they call him deranged and they lock him up. Someone who takes to the streets with the bullhorn. Someone who is marching and advocating with the oppressed. They can't handle it. Well, then we have Jesus, who has a pretty different approach. Jesus who wants there to be even more wine at weddings. He wants the party to keep going. Jesus who's sharing meals with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus, who is rest for the weary, more of a pastoral approach, a one-on-one approach. And that's not even good enough for them, because they say he's eating and drinking with sinners and saints. He's a drunk. He's a glutton. So, we've got John, who's a little too serious for them. And they say, "Why won't you just dance when we play the flute, John? Lighten up." And then we've got Jesus, who's a little too joyful, who's a little too inclusive for them. And they say, "Why aren't you weeping and why aren't you grieving with us?" They are very, very different kinds of cousins. They couldn't be more different. And yet, neither of their approaches to sharing the gospel is enough for God's people.

One is too radical. One is too soft and pastoral. So I wonder, for me and you, what prophets or messengers or teachers are we thinking are too much or not enough? Would we ever really be satisfied with the way that someone is sharing the gospel? Feels like the bar is set so high for the people of God. And what's interesting is what happens next, something that Erica didn't read because it's not in the lectionary. For those of you who don't know, the lectionary is a three-year cycle of passages that most Protestants all over the world preach from Sunday to Sunday. So, you could be here in Nashville hearing Matthew 11, or—who's got a World Cup game today?—you could be in Mexico City and you might be hearing a different Margie preaching about Matthew 11. We are assigned these passages as part of the liturgical year so that me and Wesley aren't always choosing what we want to say based on how we're feeling, but that we examine scripture for that week and allow it to breathe life into this place. So the people who pick the passages sometimes leave things out of them, and it's important for us to literally read between the lines and wonder why certain things are included in the lectionary. So the next part of what Jesus says is not actually assigned for today. And I wonder if you can guess why.

He says, "I don't like what these cities are doing." He says, "Woe to you, for the deeds of power have been done in your cities, and you still don't repent and you still don't get it." Woe to you, Nashville. Woe to you, Smyrna. Woe to you, Murfreesboro. Who else I got in here? Call it out. Who did I miss? Woe to you, La Vergne. Anybody else? Woe to you, Mount Juliet. You don't get it. You don't get it. Things aren't okay. I am walking around your cities, sharing the good news of God, centering the voices that are the most unheard, and you aren't changing your ways. Woe to you, he says again and again and again. Why wasn't that included? I think sometimes it's hard for us to hear from a judgy Jesus. That sometimes Jesus's judgment might remind us of things we heard growing up in churches that hurt us. That Jesus's judgment makes us a little itchy and uncomfortable. But as one theologian said, the concept of judgment here is just people refusing to show mercy. The concept of judgment here is just people who don't show mercy. They don't show mercy to others. They don't show mercy to themselves. They don't spread mercy around society. Ain't no mercy in Mount Juliet. Ain't no mercy in La Vergne. Sorry, I forgot y'all. Why was that left out? So, as you can tell, Jesus is a little heated right now. He's heated that no message is good enough for them, whether it's John or Jesus. He's heated at the people for not getting it. He's heated at the cities who aren't transforming the systems and the ways of doing things based on what he is saying and doing. And you know, when you get really worked up at your child or your friend or your partner or a parent, and then you kind of go, let me stop myself. Let me pull back. And I love what Jesus does here. He's kind of been on this righteous tear, maybe channeling a little bit of his cousin. And then he stops and he breathes and he prays. How many of us stop and breathe and pray after we have gone on a little bit of a riff about mercy and judgment and righteousness? He stops and he breathes and he prays. And this is what he prays. He starts by thanking God. Not a bad idea. He thanks God for revealing God's wisdom. Not to the theologically educated, not to the master's degrees, not to the ones who have read their Bibles. He thanks God for the ones with whom wisdom has been hidden. Where wisdom has been revealed, he says, to the infants. And we might think of that as kids. And I think that's true, because we know children are wise beyond all get out. But he's also talking here in the Greek about spiritual infants. Maybe people who are new to faith, or maybe front porch people who tell a story of the gospel that's really accessible versus using these lofty words to impress. And if we ever do that, come on and call us out.

He thanks God for sharing God's wisdom with the spiritual infants. How relieving is that, that we don't need to know how to pronounce everything in here? That we don't have to prove to ourselves or anyone else that we've got all the answers, that we know all the fancy jargon about the Christian faith, but that sometimes we might feel like these little kids with wonder in our eyes at what's happening here. And that's where wisdom is revealed. So he says, "Thank you, God, for revealing it to the least theologically sophisticated," those with, as Lance Pape says, the fewest illusions about their own power of understanding, who know how to receive Jesus in humility and so gain access to the one that he came to reveal.

And after praying, maybe he sits down. Maybe he sits down like he does right before the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe he gets at eye level with the little ones. He says, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I'm gentle and I'm humble, and you will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and my burden is light." What I've learned about this passage this week from a lot of different writers is that he's actually not talking to me here. He's not talking to folks who are middle class or upper middle class who are just kind of stressed out. He is talking to those who are weary in their bodies. Those who have been stepped on. Those who are working right now because they can't get a break to go to church. Those who don't have the resources, the time, the money to take Sabbath. Those who have been burdened by systems that forget them, that deport them, that dehumanize them, that ignore them. He has just called out cities who are not getting it right and then looked at the ones who are so burdened, whose bodies are quite literally weary, and says, "I will give you rest." Imagine,

imagine driving around, walking around, and everyone you see who looks tired, who seems cranky, who isn't giving you grace—imagine that Jesus comes to them and says, "I've got you. Rest in me."

Because what I love about the next passage is that then he gets in trouble for doing stuff on the Sabbath. So, that's a little foreshadowing for those of you who haven't read Matthew 12.

I love what he says: "Learn from me." And here, he's not talking about being a stern teacher. Has anybody ever had a stern teacher? Someone who holds you to such a high expectation that you're always a little bit nervous you're in trouble. He says, "Learn from me." And here he means this. He doesn't say read further or mull over some theological ideas, but incarnate and embody for yourselves a kingdom of God that we know you're doing by the way you're talking and the way you're acting. That's what I mean by learn from me. I mean imitate me. I mean follow me. I mean come to me and see what I'm up to. What I'm up to is an easy yoke, an easy burden, a light, gentle, and humble spirit.

What does it look like to really believe that when we come to Jesus, some of the burdens that we carry really could be lifted a little bit? What does it look like to hear these words and feel convicted that maybe it's our responsibility to lift those burdens for others—when we do Room in the Inn, when we offer grants to those who are providing easy yoke for those in our community?

So that's our passage. That's Matthew 11 for us. It begins with a man in prison. Begins with a man who has done everything right and wonders, "How am I here? Am I gonna die? Are you really the Messiah like I have been saying my whole ministry? Or are we waiting on someone else?" It begins with Jesus trying to convince his own cousin, the one who baptized him, "Look at what I've done. How could you still not believe?"

And it goes on to a man who says, "No message, no messenger is going to be good enough for y'all." Whether you want to dance or whether you want to mourn, whether you want a prophet that's out in the streets or whether you want a pastor that simply sits around tables and shares meals with fishermen and the people collecting your tax forms. And then he calls out cities, a part that we don't want to read, makes us a little bit uncomfy, before praying and before providing rest. What a complicated and a little bit chaotic arc all in one chapter.

So I wonder who you feel like you are in this story today. Are you sitting next to John the Baptist in doubt, suffering, looking around and wondering? Is Jesus among us? Doesn't always feel like it. Are you Jesus in this story, who says, "I am doing as much as I can. How do you not see it?" Are you the people in the marketplace expecting too much?

Are you someone who looks around at your city and says, "Woe to you. What are we doing? How do we not get it?" Are you a person of prayer who is giving thanks to God this week that God shows up among the kids, God shows up among the people with a spiritual faith that feels a little bit like an infant? Or do you need rest? Are you weary as you sit in that pew? Or are you the one providing it?

One chapter in Matthew has so much to say to us today about cousins and complicated family, about prophets and pastors. But this text doesn't happen in a royal palace. This text doesn't happen with somebody wearing soft robes that are made of velvet and are fancy. This text is happening to two men doing their best to speak out to us in all kinds of ways just to say: if we look close, and it might be right under our nose, the kingdom of heaven is here. It is near. It is for those who feel burdened. If we can believe it.

Amen.