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.

Lord Will Provide

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, June 28, 2026

Good morning. Okay, so y'all know how there are different categories of movies. I'm not talking about genres. I'm talking about the movies that are so good, or they look so good, that you've got to see them right when they come out in theaters. There are movies that you're like, "Well, I could probably wait until it hits streaming before I see that one." And there's this third category of movie, the kind of movie that you're really only going to watch if you're stuck on an airplane. And that was me this week. I was like, fine, I guess I will finally watch the third installment of the Avatar franchise, Fire and Ash, as I flew to West Virginia earlier this week.

So, if you're unfamiliar with this franchise or this story, Jake Sully, who is a human marine, falls in love with this humanoid alien on the planet of Pandora, in which the humans have colonized and they've been terrorizing the natives there, these humanoids called the Na'vi. You fast forward through a couple of movies—sorry for some spoiler alerts here—and Jake Sully has given up his life as a human to live as the Na'vi because he's fallen in love with this woman. And so he and his wife have this beautiful, blended, and complicated family. There's Jake, who is the former human, he's the father. Neytiri, who is his wife, she's Na'vi. Their two sons, Neteyam, who unfortunately passes away in the movie prior, and Lo'ak, and their daughter Tuk. They also have this adopted daughter named Kiri, who is born of human and Na'vi, who is constantly reminded that she's different from the rest. And they've also taken in a human child named, or nicknamed, Spider. Neytiri, the wife, looks on Spider with disgust and resentment, as his people have destroyed parts of her planet, have killed her people, and have driven them to find somewhere else to live on the planet. Even though Spider is barely a teenager, is innocent, and has lived with the Na'vi his entire life, she looks on him with resentment and disgust. She looks on Kiri, the human and alien child, in a way that says, "I don't really know how to help you." All the while, she's still grieving the loss of her oldest son. And it makes their family dynamics in this story, in all three movies, uncomfortable and complicated. And it reminds me of this story in Genesis. She looks at Spider the way that I imagine that Sarah looked at Ishmael, as someone who, though innocent, represents all that had been taken from her and all that she was not afforded. Lo'ak, the younger son, feels like he's been discarded, and he contemplates leaving indefinitely.

These stories that we've been journeying through this month, they really aren't that ancient after all. But then we get today's story. A well-known story, but one that we often don't know what to do with. So before we dive into this text today, I'm wondering, I'm curious, what word is bubbling up for you. What word describes how you feel in this moment about this story? And I'd love for you to shout it out.

Evil.

Confused.

Any other thoughts? Any other words bubbling up?

Shocked. Yeah.

Holding all of these things, let's go to God in a word of prayer.

Holy God, be with us as we journey through this text. We're carrying these feelings of shock, of confusion. We see these evil acts in this story and we don't really know what to do with them. Give us the gift of discernment as we seek to understand this story today in all of its complexities. Amen.

So as we tackle this text today, I want to break it up into three different sections. First is how would the first listeners have understood this story. Next is how do we understand this story in 2026. And finally, what do we do with this story, this well-known story that we really don't fully understand even after we've heard it a million times.

So first, I think it's important for us to understand that this type of story is an archetype. It exists in all three of the Abrahamic traditions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. All three have a version where a chosen son is sacrificed or nearly sacrificed. Sound familiar? Carolyn Hessle and Song Park state that this story, also referred as the Akedah, which means the binding, like the binding of Isaac, is one of the most disturbing narratives in the Hebrew Bible, but it's also one of the most central narratives in the Hebrew Bible.

So I want you to remove your 2026 lens and put on this lens of antiquity. And I want you to remember the stories that we've gone through and journeyed through over the last four weeks. And I also want you to remember the following: Abraham was 75 years old when he received the promise that he and Sarah would build a great nation and that God would bless him and would make his name renowned. Seventy-five years old. He then had to wait another 11 years before Ishmael was born of Hagar, his concubine, his slave. He then had to wait another 14 years, when he was a hundred years old, for his first legitimate son. And that's a lot to unpack. But his first legitimate son, Isaac, had to be born, and in doing so had to turn away his other son, Ishmael, and Hagar. And then God asks him, after all this time, after a hundred years, to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the unfathomable.

And I can hear his inner monologue. It's not in the text, but I can hear his inner monologue in my head, and it sounds something like this. God, you cannot be serious. I have waited and waited and waited for this, my son to be born, my lineage, my namesake. I've watched Sarah's heart break time and time again, longing to bear a son. I've watched her resent Hagar and my boy, my precious boy, Ishmael. I've seen how she looks at them. I've seen how she looks at me. And then finally your promise is fulfilled, and he's strong and he's smart and he's beautiful, my boy Isaac, and now you want me to.

To ancient listeners, this was a story about commitment to following God and God providing. To ancient listeners who understood the importance of lineage, of having a male heir, of having a namesake, those who saw the high child mortality rates of their society, they would have understood how deep of a sacrifice Abraham was making. This was his son. The text says, "the son whom he loved," but it was also his name, his lineage, his status in his world, his heritage. And remember that these are stories that are told and retold orally and then written down, we think, by Moses, but really, who knows? And then told and heard by a people who are just trying to make sense of the world.

I think, and I invite you to come up with your own conclusion too, I think that they would have heard this story as a reminder that following God takes sacrifice, but that God will always provide. I think they would have understood this less about what God was asking of Abraham, but more so that despite all that Abraham had endured, that he was still willing to follow God and that God fulfilled his promise to Abraham and he provided.

I finished Avatar: Fire and Ash on the flight back to Nashville from West Virginia on Friday night. And there's this scene where Jake Sully takes Spider, his human son, or someone he counts as a son. And Spider had developed this ability, even as a human, to breathe the air on the planet Pandora. And Jake knows that if the humans get a hold of Spider, they will study him. They will figure out how to breathe the air on Pandora, and that will make them unstoppable from colonizing the planet and terrorizing and genociding the natives there, the Na'vi. And Jake thinks that the only way to save the Na'vi is to take Spider into the woods and sacrifice him. And so he takes him into the woods, he makes Spider kneel, and he draws his knife.

So, how do we understand this story in 2026? Because we don't live in antiquity. Human sacrifice isn't really a normal part of our society. Our children are important to us, yes, but they don't really determine our worth as a people or as a family. Well, I think we should be critical of this story. I think that's what we're called to do as listeners and hearers and readers of the word. So, I'm curious, what questions are bubbling up to you about this story? What's coming to the top?

Why?

Was he really going to do it?

How long was the ram there?

What does it foreshadow?

I have some questions too. Why did the text say that Abraham, or that Isaac, was Abraham's only son? Is that because he who holds the pen writes history? Are they writing Ishmael out here? Or is it because Isaac is his only son, because the writer knew that he had already sent Ishmael away? I'm curious about what Sarah thought about all this, because it's not in the text. It's not recorded. How did she feel after finally conceiving a son after 90 years, and after probably giving up the thought that it would ever happen? How did she feel when she had learned what had transpired? Would she see this as God providing, or would she feel betrayed by this?

Rabbi Dr. Cecil Gonlave provides a look into this, as she says that the biblical text practices narrative violence against Sarah. She completely disappears from the narrative of the Akedah. Abraham receives this divine command, but Sarah is neither consulted, nor informed, nor even mentioned in the story. This textual silence is a form of erasure that reflects the invisibilization of women in narratives produced by patriarchal societies. She's not informed. She's not mentioned. She's not consulted. Nothing. The Bereshit Rabbah, which is essentially a Jewish rabbinical commentary on the book of Genesis, offers this compelling image, as Sarah herself sets out in search of Abraham and Isaac. And it tells of her traversing the path to Mount Moriah. And this image of Sarah wandering, looking for her only son that she waited 90 years for, is poignant. The next chapter of our text does tell of her death, but the Bereshit Rabbah gives imagery to what our text leaves out. In fact, because Sarah promptly dies in the next chapter of Genesis, interpreters have often wondered whether her death was a result of Sarah's discovery of her husband's secret attempt to murder their child, the child that she spent her entire life waiting for. Also, following this story, we don't see Isaac speak directly to Abraham again. Perhaps it happened, it just wasn't recorded in scripture, but in the text, at least, it doesn't say anything about that. So, did this act tear their family apart?

With my 2026 lens, I'm also wondering if this is more so a testament to the fact that many people throughout human history have heard God say something and then they take actions towards violence or greed or power, and how convenient that can be. So what if this is a critique of when what God said is antithetical to the nature of who we know God to be? When what we hear God say is hurtful or harmful, and it doesn't reflect the nature of this all-loving, merciful, and gracious God that we read about. From the doctrine of discovery, where we colonize lands in the name of Christ, often killing or enslaving those who refuse to do so, Indian boarding schools, where we taught them the Bible but we beat their indigenous languages out of them, to today, when televangelists who heard God say send them some money over the TV so that they can be in turn blessed.

Yesterday at Pride, I stood with my dear friend Reverend Don Bennett. She'd been out there for a long time. I just kind of joined her at the end, and she was trying to block the street preachers, the ones preaching on the street, who were preaching fire and brimstone to the crowd as they entered the festival gates. And I truly think that they believe what they are saying. And I believe that they believe that they are being loving by helping folks with their truth and what God has called them to do. I truly believe that they believe that. But I also know that the messages that they were preaching are the same messages that make LGBTQ kids four times more likely to try and take their own lives. I know that the messages that they are preaching are the same reason that 39% of LGBTQ kids have seriously considered suicide in the last year. Their messages are the same reason that there were 372 suicides, homicides, and other acts of violence towards trans folks in general last year.

If what God is saying to us is to hurt or harm, even if that isn't our intention, maybe we are mis-sharing God. If what God is saying to us doesn't consult the closest to us who will be directly affected by our actions, then maybe we are mis-sharing God. When Jake Sully has his knife drawn and he's about to kill this child, this person who's going to become a son to him, thinking that this is the only way to save his people, he can't do it. And his wife, the one who once looked upon Spider with resentment, runs and saves him and says that there has to be another way.

We've been talking about Genesis for the last four weeks, about these complex stories that really aren't so ancient after all, about complicated family dynamics, and I think that we've barely scratched the surface. I think we could have spent the entire month on this text alone. But what do we do with these stories? I think we have to journey with them. I think we have to journey with them. There's a reason that we revisit these stories in the Bible every three years within the lectionary. There's a reason that these rabbis create this ongoing commentary, like the Bereshit Rabbah, on these ancient texts. It's because these stories aren't something that you just get the first time around. We have to journey with these stories, and these stories journey with us. And each time we hear them, we learn something new, or each time we ask a new question, or each time we better understand who God is.

Helil and Park speak about how, in Jewish tradition, Isaac, whose name means what? Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Jewish tradition speaks about Isaac as a survivor. They choose to focus not so much on Abraham here, or Sarah, but Isaac as a survivor, as a model of hope. It's a testament that we too, no matter our traumas, our problems, our abuse, we can survive and we can live and we can laugh, as Isaac did. The Jewish tradition asks, "Why was the most tragic of our ancestors named Isaac, a name which evokes and signifies laughter?" And they say, "Here's why. As the first survivor, he had to teach us, the rest, and the future survivors of Jewish history, that it is possible to suffer and to despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter and joy."

Friends, I feel like we have more questions now than we did at the beginning of this month, from when we started this sermon series four weeks ago. But the thing that has been made clear is that we are not called to journey through these texts, journey through this life, alone. We may not hear Isaac's voice in this story, but we are called into community so that we can listen for the voices that are so often left out. We have the opportunity to listen to the voices of people who've felt like their families chose their religion over them. So let this be a reminder to us that God loves each and every one of us, so much so that God called us good and has called us into community so that we may journey together and leave nobody behind. Journey through this life, journey through this world, journey through this work, together. That's what we've been called to do. So may it be so. And may we make it so with our actions and our loving. Amen.

Family Matters

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, June 21, 2026

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Margie, and I come from one big, happy, perfect family.

My mom is out of town this week, so I'm going to talk about our one... No, I'm just kidding. Unlike Sarah and Abraham, my one big, perfect, happy family has no history of marital strain. We have never had issues with inheritance. We have never had the pain of stories of infertility. We have never dealt with sibling favoritism in my one-of-six-sibling household. We haven't dealt with the complexities of blended families. No, we are one big, happy family. And you already know that's not true. And you already know that's not true for you either. Amen. We've been journeying through Genesis together, looking at the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Ishmael and so many others who show us just how human and relatable these ancient figures in the first book of the Bible are. I have found it helpful and heartwarming to read stories where I see myself reflected in some of these characters and some of these interpersonal dynamics and some of these wrestlings with God. But today what I read is actually to me the most heartbreaking story in scripture in all 66 books of the Bible. When I read this particular passage, my heart breaks every time. Last week, we hinted at this resentment that the woman named Sarah may have felt for her husband Abraham around the birth of their son, Ishmael. I didn't get too much into it then, but today before we even get to the passage that Jim just read, we have to go back a little bit to Genesis 16, because that's the origin story of the birth of Ishmael. For those of you who don't know, we learn that Sarah was barren. She couldn't have a child. And for women at that time in that culture, their womb was their identity. It was their power. It was how they carried on the family lineage and legacy. It was how they had worth in their household and in society. And she couldn't bear a child.

So she goes to her husband Abraham and she says, "You need to go into our slave girl Hagar and conceive a child for us, because the Lord is not going to do it for me." And he did as he was told. And the slave girl Hagar conceives. And when she sees that she has conceived, scripture tells us that she looks with contempt on her mistress. She looks with contempt on her mistress, on what Sarah demanded Abraham do to her and on what happened and would happen after.

And Sarah sees this and she turns to Abraham and she says, "May the wrongs done to me be on you. I gave my slave girl to your embrace, and now she looks at me with contempt." Abraham said, "Your slave girl is in your power. You do with her what you want." Taking the back seat to this story. And it says that Sarah dealt with her harshly. And so Hagar ran away. Hagar ran away into the wilderness. And all of a sudden, the angel of the Lord appears. And the angel says, "Where have you come from, Hagar? And where are you going?" And she says, "I'm running away from my mistress Sarah." The angel says, "This is hard, y'all." The angel says, "Return to her and submit to her. I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude. You will bear a son, and you will call him Ishmael, which means God hears." So Hagar, hearing this, looks up at the angel of the Lord, or looks up at the Lord — and Hagar, who is the only figure in the Bible to have the audacity to name God, which is for a whole other day, we'll get there — says, "I'm going to give you a name, God. I'm going to name you El Roy, which means God who sees," and in some translations, "God who sees me." El Roy, she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive?" As if that can really happen.

That is the origin story of the birth of Ishmael. And you hear in it the heartbreak, don't you? You hear the jealousy and the resentment. You hear this mother who's so heartbroken that she can't have a child of her own that she pushes out the slave girl that was forced to have a child for her. And you see, perhaps, threaded into this story, Abraham's passivity allowing the women to be pitted against each other and deal with it themselves. You hear all of that?

Now we jump to our story today. In our story today, that baby boy Ishmael, named for the one God hears, is a teenager. He's about 13 or 14 years old. And maybe you can try to think through this with me. What would it have been like — since we don't know in the text — what would it have been like for Ishmael growing up? Would Sarah have looked on him with contempt too, being reminded of the way that he came into the world, of what she couldn't do? Would she have just loved him as if he really were her own son — a tenderness that some mothers have told me they didn't know existed within them until they gave birth? What about Hagar? Is she serving this family, watching them raise her child? Is she able to reveal to him who she really is at this point? There's so much that we don't know and don't get to hear. And as one theologian said, God has other stories, just not the ones written down.

So at this point, Ishmael is about 13 or 14. And Sarah has Isaac, who God promised. Isaac, which means — who was here last week? What does it mean? Do you remember? Oh, somebody said it. God laughs. Y'all are going to start getting a test on the back of your bulletin.

So Sarah has Isaac, and about two years into Isaac's life, they have what's called a weaning feast day. It's a kind of celebration for Isaac being weaned off of Sarah's breast. It's a big day of celebration in ancient culture. And Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac. Just a teenage boy playing with his brother. She sees Ishmael playing with Isaac. And actually, what scripture tells us is she says she sees the son of Hagar the Egyptian playing with her son.

She's not calling him his name anymore. She sees the son of Hagar the Egyptian playing with her son. The verb there is actually "Isaacing." Ishmael is laughing with his baby brother and playing. Sarah doesn't like it. So she grabs Abraham. She says, "Abraham, come here." She says, "Cast out Hagar immediately. The son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac."

That is a loaded sentence, is it not? "The son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac." Sarah, somewhere along the way, believed that God would not have enough for both boys — that God's promise of this offspring that would be multitudes, numbering the stars, that it wouldn't be enough for both. Sarah, as many of us do, had come to worship scarcity and question God, and be skeptical that God really could love and provide for both boys. And so, once again, Hagar — a woman who has done nothing wrong — is cast out. The first time she flees; this time she is made to go. And we learn, in a really human moment, that this matter was really distressing to Abraham. It says this matter was really distressing to Abraham on account of his son, on his son Ishmael, and on Hagar.

God says to Abraham, "Don't be distressed because of Ishmael and Hagar. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. And as for Ishmael, don't worry — I will make a nation of him, because he is your offspring too." You see what God does there? There's enough, and there is abundance, if we are patient enough to see it.

Abraham gets up really early in the morning and wakes up Hagar, and grabs bread and a skin of water, and in this really tender moment, to me, gives Hagar the bread and actually puts the skin of water on her shoulder, and then he sends her and Ishmael away. And what was he feeling then? A woman that he has been intimate with. A woman with whom he shares this heartbreaking, complicated story of joy and pain. A woman who, in some ways, has given him one of two boys that he loves unconditionally. Is he ever going to see her again? Is he ever going to see Ishmael again — his son? We don't know. We actually don't know.

So Hagar leaves. She wanders in the wilderness for a very long time. She runs out of bread. She runs out of water. And so she takes her teenage boy, her baby boy, and she hides him under a bush. She sits opposite him, pretty far away. And she says, "Do not let me look upon the death of my child. I'm not doing it." And then — and this is so interesting, too. Isn't the Bible interesting? It just kind of is. Okay, this is so interesting, too. We learn that an angel of the Lord appears again, and it says, "The angel heard the boy." The angel heard the boy. So what was Ishmael praying under that bush? Or was he crying and the angel heard it? Or was he whispering his own prayers — please save my mom, please help me? The angel heard the boy and then calls out to Hagar and says, "What troubles you? You don't need to be afraid. God heard the voice of Ishmael. Lift him up. Hold him fast. I will make a great nation of him." And then God — El Roy, the one she had named, the God who sees — God opened her eyes, and all of a sudden there appears to her a well of water. Abundance, life again — a wilderness resurrection moment, is it not? And so she fills up this water skin. And like many parents do, before she even takes a drink of water, she gives it to Ishmael. And then we learn that God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness and as he became really skilled with a bow and arrow. Kind of sounds like John the Baptist to me sometimes — like the wild child.

I wanted to spend time telling you those two vignettes because they are stories that need to be told. They are stories that make me ask a lot of unanswered questions — to God, to myself, to Sarah, to Abraham. They are stories of this complicated, broken, blended family that is desperately trying to be faithful and getting it wrong a lot. My family knows nothing about that kind of family.

It is easy for me to villainize Sarah. Does anyone feel that way? It's easy for me to villainize Sarah. But theologian Reita Williams talks about, in her culture, a woman's womb was her destiny — that Sarah, even though she had social standing, that she had some money, that her and Abraham had material possessions and they had slaves, that she may have had that social standing, but she didn't have respect. And there's one part in the book of Genesis that describes Sarah as beautiful, but it didn't matter. She was barren. She had material abundance, but she didn't have offspring. The one thing that she craved, the one thing that would have given her power, was the one thing that this seemingly powerless slave girl could. It's tricky. It's tricky. Hagar had been a powerless slave, but then all of a sudden, given her gift of fertility, she becomes Abraham's wife. She has this newfound power with Sarah. And so often, when two people experience some kind of brokenness and oppression, instead of looking up at who is doing it to them, they look at each other and feel pinned against one another. I know I have acted like that with women.

A lot of womanist theologians — womanist just means Black feminist — a lot of womanist theologians read this story and immediately feel this haunting memory of how this is reminiscent of Black slave women and white mistresses during American slavery. Dolores Williams, Reita Williams — I mean, they have so many commentaries on this, on these harrowing accounts of slavery. Slave masters would assault enslaved Black women, and then those women would be beaten by the white wives who were resentful. These enslaved Black women were often forced to be surrogates and take care of the white children, not being able to nurture their own. Even if the enslaved women weren't forced into these sexual assaults, sometimes they conceded to them to protect their family, to protect the ones that they thought might be sold away.

But we know that powerlessness does not unite the powerless. That harrowing history of our country, and in this scripture, teaches us how not to be. Sarah and Hagar are portrayed as rivals, which is too often a narrative we still see in our media today. Sarah just wants some sense of control and dominance. But in doing that, she oppresses a woman who is just one sister away from being a source of healing or comfort.

The mercy that God shows to Sarah by granting her a child in her womb, by giving her Isaac, is a mercy that she can no longer find in her heart for someone like Hagar.

It's ironic — Hagar, this Egyptian slave — and we didn't talk about Genesis 12 the last few weeks, but in those passages, Sarah is actually a slave of Pharaoh's. So she's experienced this same kind of oppression and forgotten it.

There's so much happening in this story. I've just touched on a little of it. There's these themes of divine favoritism that we see with Cain and Abel, and Jacob and Esau, where it often really does feel like God favors the second child and not the first child. Is anyone the first child? Yeah. I mean, the first child sometimes gets the money, or the heir of legacy, or whatever may have it, in scripture at least. God seems to choose the second child, the underdog, sometimes. Why does God do this? This problem of unfairness, as a theologian called it, in which we see time and time again siblings pitted against each other out of a disbelief that God's covenant really could be a promise for all — that there really could be enough to share. And so then we see violence and estrangement, and jealousy makes complete sense to me, because these questions from back then are still questions today. Like, who gets what money and what material benefits? Which sibling deserves what? Which brother deserves the covenantal promise and which one doesn't? Why do we value some women who can have offspring and not others who can't? What do we do about these complicated blended families? How do we talk about the complexities of growing up in those? Those are questions in Genesis, and those are questions at Vine Street Christian Church.

And I've got to know — what's God doing here? God could have easily said to Abram, Abraham and Sarah, "There's no need for your anger, because I have a plan for Ishmael and I have a plan for Isaac. They are both fruitful and abundant plans. You don't need to worry. The boys can grow up and laugh and play with each other." Why does God tell Hagar to go back and submit to Sarah? Why does it feel like God, in some of these stories, insists that we suffer before we're rewarded? And I invite me — and I also invite you — to just throw up these questions at God, because these two stories in particular, from Genesis 16 and 21, leave me with a lot of them.

What happens next is a little bit of a question mark. We know that Hagar and Ishmael go off. We learn that Hagar finds an Egyptian wife for Ishmael to marry. Then, really interestingly — yeah — we don't know if Ishmael ever sees Abraham and Sarah again. We don't know if him and Isaac ever see each other again. All we have is one verse: Genesis 25:9, which is going to be on the test next week. In Genesis 25:9, we learn that Isaac and Ishmael met together to bury their dad.

They saw each other again. Was it for the first time since that banishment? Was it cold? Was it tender? Were there words spoken? Was there healing? Was there bitterness? We don't know. We know that they met in brutal, heartbreaking circumstances to bury their father. Who knows how Ishmael viewed Abraham by that point?

Maybe they hugged. Maybe they tried to understand, and maybe they just couldn't.

Genesis may feel like a very old text, and it is a text of one big, complicated family — of which I am one. It's complicated. It's heartwarming. It's heartbreaking. It's bewildering. And it is the story that many of us have lived. Many of us still hold these unresolved questions — not just for God, not just for scripture, but in our own family systems, in our own lives. Why? Why was there favoritism? Why did the inheritance go this way? Why was there jealousy? Why is there brokenness? Why couldn't we have learned to reconcile? Why can't we see eye to eye?

We have been journeying through this book, and we will continue next week. I gave Wesley the Abraham-sacrificing-Isaac passage, because I didn't want it, and that's what I get to do now.

And again, a story that might feel so foreign and ancient, we'll learn next week has so much to do with us.

So I invite you this week, just like every other week this June, as we've been journeying through this book — however hard it might be, or freeing — where are you in it? Are you someone who takes a backseat and lets other family members fight it out? Do you feel like you're in the wilderness? Do you miss your boy? Do you feel jealous of what others have that you don't? Where is God in it all? Is God the one who sees you? Is God the one who hears? Or are you just not sure? Today, I'm asking myself the same thing. And friends, this is a place where we know what it's like to be wilderness people. You are always welcome into these complicated stories. Amen.

Nothing is Too Wonderful

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, June 14, 2026

It was a really hot day. It was really hot. And then imagine being a 99-year-old man. And there's like a new kind of hot when it comes from having been alive for a lot of hot days like that. I had been going ever since God called me into this role. Ever since God told me, Abram, you are going to go out and you are going to make nations as numbered as the stars in the sky. And I was tired. So I was lost in thought. I was leaning my back up against the tent as my wife Sarah and my teenager Ishmael slept. And I was replaying this conversation that I had had with God not too long ago. God spoke to me and said, "Your wife Sarah, she's going to have a son. She's going to bring you a son." This God who had changed my name from Abram, which means ancestor, to Abraham, which means ancestor of multitudes. Multitudes. All I had was Ishmael. I was just the father of one. And then God came up to me and said that there would be another.

I don't know. It felt like too wonderful to be true. Even for God. Sometimes I still felt this unspoken resentment with my wife Sarah. It had been 13 years since the birth of Ishmael. But those 13 years ago, she had demanded out of a grief and a desperation that I'll admit I don't know what that feels like. She had demanded that I conceive with our slave girl Hagar. She told me I needed to have a son. And so I did. And after she blamed me, and then she dealt really harshly with Hagar. I will never claim to understand what she was going through. But marriage can feel lonelier than being alone sometimes. But we had survived it. We're still here. We're still getting older day by day. And we're still finding each other's hands in the dark to hold. However weathered or wrinkled they are, we're still taking care of this boy, this boy that we didn't know we could love so much. Our Ishmael, ancestor of multitudes, God had named me. But God had promised, but God had fulfilled every promise that God had made me so far. I will bless her, God told me. And I will give you a son by her, and I will bless her, God said again. And she shall give rise to nations. Kings of people shall come from her. What could I do but fall on my face and laugh? Can a child be born to a man that is a hundred years old? I asked God. Can a child be born to a woman that is 90 years old? No offense, I asked God.

God promised to bless Ishmael, but then told me the name of my new unborn son. God said, "This son will be named Isaac." You know what that means, Abraham? No. He laughs.

I was really tired. Raise your hand if you've raised a teenage boy. Go on, raise it so you get it. Well, now imagine being 90 and having arthritis, having a bad back and being worn out and tired and fatigued all the time and sleeping in a tent with two really smelly men. Now you're starting to feel my pain. Carrying packs every day, moving around because my husband was talking to God all of the time, not that I ever had. Carrying with me this weight of such a layered life, carrying with me the grief of what my body had never given me, of what I hoped it could have, and the shame of what I couldn't do, of what I wasn't able to bear. But then the joy of this unexpected surprise named Ishmael and this inexplicable, undefinable love at my husband Abraham, who got on my very last nerve, at whom there were layers and patterns of pain there, but who always found my hand in the dark, weathered and wrinkled. I was tired and I was in that place between when you're kind of asleep but when you're kind of awake, show of hands. But then I heard the voice of God. I knew it was the voice of God. Even though God had never talked to me directly, I knew that voice by now. God who only spoke to my husband. God who even spoke to the slave girl, Hagar, but had never spoken to me. But I knew that voice, had been around Abraham enough to believe that there really was a guiding hand asking him, asking us to follow. And so when I peeked out and saw three men standing outside of the tent, somehow just intrinsically I knew that those strangers were angels, that those men were one. Abraham, my husband, he's ever the host. He immediately ran up to them, bowed at their feet. He would have done that even if it wasn't God. But pretty sure he knew who it was too. And he said, "Rest. Rest a while." Isn't it funny how we can always offer people rest and we can't really afford to give it to ourselves? Rest a while. He said, "We will get water for you to wash your feet. We'll bake you cakes for you to eat." He offered this to all of them. But I knew who was going to have to provide it. Sarah, he yelled. Yeah, I was just waiting for it. Quickly, can you make cakes for these men? And then he tried to explain to me how to bake. Okay. He said, "Make three measures of choice flour. Knead the — I got it." And then he took our calf. Women can kind of do a bunch of things at one time. So I was kneading and I was still peeking out the tent. He took our calf and he got milk from the calf and made curds and milk and offered it to them as well. From the tent, I watched Abraham and these three strangers, angels, men of God, God.

I'm from ancient times. I don't know what this is.

I watched Abraham with these strangers, angels, men of God, God, sitting and talking with them. They were swapping stories and telling tales. And I, ever the woman, ever the homemaker, stayed where I was, just listening, eavesdropping. But then I heard my name. Where's your wife? Where's Sarah? Uh-oh. Did they hear me complaining? My whole body like froze. There in the tent, he said. Oh, were they going to say thank you for the meal? I will return, the man said. And when I do, she will have a son. Okay. I'd heard that one before. I'm 90. I'm not having a son. Abraham had hinted at this. He had told me that he had spoken to God another time and God had mentioned this promise, but I wasn't buying it. No, I'd given up on prayer. I'd given up on hoping. My husband had enough faith for the both of us. And so, what do you do when something sounds so ridiculous and delusional and insane? You just laugh. So, I started talking to myself as I was cleaning up the extra dough. I've gotten old. Abraham's even older. Now, I'm going to have the pleasure of having a son. But then, of course, I hear God. But God's talking to Abraham and not me. God never talks to me. And God asks, "Why did Sarah laugh?" Uh-oh. God heard me. God hears me.

Why did she say, "Am I really going to bear a child now that I'm old?" God asked my husband, "Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" "I'll come back and she'll have a son." "I didn't laugh," I cried out. I hoped I'd catch God before he left. I was scared. All of the sudden, I felt like after having lived in the shadows of my husband's story, there was this great light that was shining on me. All of the sudden, it felt like all my mumbling and complaining and crying and weeping in the night, the volume turned up and I was heard.

And then for the first time ever, God spoke to me. God spoke to me, Sarah. And God said, "Oh yes, you did laugh." And then I laughed again. And this time God joined me. Maybe nothing is too wonderful for God.

Yeah, I was asleep for that whole thing. My mom told me about something called puberty and it basically feels like someone's taking your limbs and like stretching them out and you're just really tired all the time. So, I was just taking a nap for that one. But, and maybe I dreamed it, but I could have sworn. I think for the first time in my whole life, I think I heard my mom laugh.

God ended up fulfilling God's promise. Sarah gave birth to Isaac when she was 90 and when Abraham was a hundred years old. She had not laughed in years until that day under that oak tree with God. And looking at this boy, looking at her new boy Isaac with Abraham and Ishmael next to her, she said, "God has brought laughter for me. Everyone who hears me will laugh."

I'm back. What's been going on? I do know what this is. So, who are you in this story? Who are you in this story? Are you taking a nap as I'm preaching? Maybe. Are you hosting people for cakes later today? Are you the kind of person who flings the door open and says, "Come on. Come on in. We'll get you lemonade. We'll get you cookies. We'll have it all ready." Meanwhile, you may have an introverted partner or child who's like, "Wait, wait, wait. Let's talk about this." Are you sure of God's promises in your life? Do you laugh out of a certainty and belief that you know that God is talking to you about something that you yourself had prayed for, had hoped for, and is now coming true? Or do you laugh at the possibility that the best is yet to come? A cold laugh, a bitter laugh, a resigned laugh, a laugh that says impossible, a laugh that says ridiculous, a laugh that doesn't come from any place in that deep gut belly, but is more of a scoff.

Are you old? Are you feeling those aches and pains? Are you young and feeling those aches and pains? Are you hoping for a baby? Are you hungry for someone to offer you cake and milk and sit at your feet and tell stories with you? Make you feel more welcomed and a little less lonely in a new place. Are you someone who needs me to repeat the instructions for the cake? I need instructions for the cake repeated to me. We bring our whole selves to God. And how I know that is through these families and these stories in Genesis that there's no one right way to be. That there's no right figure in these stories and these passages that we've carried on for millennia. Some are invited to rush out and kneel at God's feet in this moment of such strong faithfulness that might feel like a snapshot in our lives. Or maybe it's how we always are. Some of us laugh in God's face when something feels too ridiculous to be true. Sometimes we fall asleep and miss God's promises, numb, unawake,

not knowing or maybe trusting that they'll still be there when we wake up. And church, this week we journey through Genesis once again with a man named Abraham and a woman named Sarah and a boy named Ishmael and a baby named Isaac. We journey with angels and strangers, with a family that is dog tired and weary from trusting in a surprising, unexpecting, laughing God. We journey with a family that knows what it's like to hope. To hope against hope. We journey with a family that is tired.

Like all families, this larger family that we are a part of has it all. This family knows loss. This family knows surprise. This family knows puberty. This family knows grief and love and long marriages filled with many different lives in them. This family knows what it means to pick up and go, to travel out of love for one's family. And this family at different times has heard from God, has heard the voice of God speak to them. And for some, it happened early in their life. And for others, it happened when they were 90, which might mean that it doesn't mean it can't happen for us yet.

Are you Abraham? Are you Sarah? Are you Ishmael? Are you a stranger? Are you an angel? Are you not sure? Are you still finding your place in this ancient book, wondering where you'll see yourself in it? Today, next Sunday, and the one after. We hope and believe that you will. That this text that can feel so antiquated is actually something that's quite intimate, real, and present in our lives in this sanctuary today. So laugh with me at the hilarity of it all. Of old people getting pregnant, of a man giving a woman instructions on how to make a cake. We are in here. And believe it or not, God hears us. Believe it or not, nothing is too wonderful for God. Amen.

Whispers of a Blessing

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, June 7, 2026

I had heard stories like this before. God calling people to do God’s will. I had heard whispers of names like Moses and Noah, like Miriam and Aaron. But I couldn't believe that God's voice came to me. And God didn't just start by asking me, "How are you?" God didn't start with a simple, "Hello, it's good to see you, Abram." The first word that God said to me was, "Go."

My wife Sarai and I had been traveling for what felt like forever. We had actually tried to get to Canaan. And we were leaving the land of and we were on our way when we got stalled in Heron and had to set down roots there for now. But then my dad died. He had been alive for 205 faithful years. And in that land I lost him. So it was just me and my wife Sarah and we were childless, still struggling with infertility. I was 75 years old and she was 65. Just me and her and the nephew that we had taken in, Lot, my brother's son, who had lost his mom and lost his dad.

God didn't just ask me to leave my land when God called me. God didn't just ask me to leave my kindred and my clan when God called me. No, God said, "Leave your home, too." God used these words that I hadn't heard before. Leah, go forth alone. And God said this to me. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and your name will be great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

At 75 years old, I was too old to be called. God called young guys. God called young women. I didn't even know what God was talking about. From my family, we could bring a blessing to others for those outside of this chosen community. Protection from those who would curse us or mistreat us.

The sacrifice felt impossible and the call felt undeniable.

Don't look back on the past. God seemed to be telling me, "Don't regress out of nostalgia. Don't mimic or copy something that you've already experienced. I'm inviting you into the unknown. Into a land that you don't even know the name of yet, into a journey that you couldn't even begin to perceive. Go."

And I have struggled with a lot of things in my life, but I haven't struggled with faithfulness. And so I went, but I didn't go forth alone. That's where I disobeyed God just a little because how could I leave my companion, my wife, the woman who had journeyed with me, who had experienced pain and joy with me, Sarah. I brought her and we brought our nephew, parentless. There was no way we were going to leave Lot behind. And I brought the people that I had acquired in that land. And I brought possessions and I went.

When we got to Canaan, I felt this holy nudge telling me to go to this big oak tree at Mora. And I went and I heard this voice of God. Kind of like the story I had heard of God and Moses by this bush. As I stood under this tree, God said to me, "To your offspring, I will give your land." So I built an altar right then and there, not to any human that I worship, but to a God that had led me this far in safety. And I kept moving and moving, pitching tents and building altars as I went, showing people what it meant to be a blessing, showing people the God who blesses us each day.

I trusted the one who called me by my name. When that one said, "Go."

You won't hear my voice in this story because I felt like I didn't have one. My husband gets to talk to God directly and I don't have one conversation with this divine being. And not only does my husband have a conversation with God, which I'm not a part of, then Abram doesn't even have a conversation with me before he makes the decision to go. There is no calculation on his part. There is no including me in this decision. As his wife, as his wife who has been with him every step of the journey, he said yes before he even took a breath. He said go before he even took a beat.

Did he think this was going to be an easy journey? This wasn't like the roads were lit. This wasn't like if he got hurt, there would be some emergency of folks who showed up to help us. And what if he died? What if he died on that journey? I was no longer a potential matriarch. I was a woman who could have been a homeless vagabond. I could have been a slave. I could have been taken advantage of. Did he even think about that?

And no baby, still no baby. This wasn't just a journey into the unknown. This was a journey of life and death. We were going from a place where we had really come to belong to a place that this God had called us to and said that this land was unknown to us. God didn't even give us the name of it before we left. And when we arrived, my husband Abram picks up and begins traveling again, moving from place to place, building altars and pitching tents, leaving me to what? Follow him along, stay put where we went. There was no road map for the wife of the one who was called.

Did this God have my back, too? This voice that I had never heard from. Would this God protect me from the same curses? Would this God bless me in the same way? Would this God finally give me a baby?

I had heard the word offspring. What offspring? From who? I wanted to have faith. I really did. A promise. But I felt like faithfulness was reserved for the one who had heard from God directly and not for me.

You won't hear my voice in this story because I was speechless. I was speechless. I had lost my parents. I had lost my granddad. I had lost my sense of home. When my uncle came up to me and said, "We're leaving. Go." And I said, "Where?" Forward. I know you want to look back. He said, "I know you want to dwell on what happened. I know you want to sit in the heaviness of your grief. And I am asking you to come with us. A land that is a blessing and a promise. A land that will be ours, and it will be yours, too. God has not forgotten you, and neither have we. We can settle there."

I missed my granddad. I missed my parents. I don't know what choice I had. If I stayed behind, who was going to take care of me? Who would I turn to? My uncle and aunt, they really had cared for me very well and treated me like the son that they never had. But I'm going to be honest, I wasn't their son. Why did I have to leave the few friends that I was starting to make? Why did I have to leave the olive trees that I walked by on my way to their home? Why did I have to leave the streets that were starting to become familiar to me, that crossroads and that one? Why did we always have to move as a way of showing our faith?

Church, it's me again. And this may feel like a very ancient text with nothing that we can quite relate to. This may feel like a text that has pharaohs and plagues. This may feel like a text that has altars and pitching tents, that has giant floods and arcs. But this book, as I read it again, is a book about family. And family is complicated. There are new couples like Adam and Eve who are naked and unashamed still. And that happens today. There are brothers like Cain and Abel that hate each other. And that happens today still. There are drunk fathers like Noah who embarrass their sons and that happens today still. There is infertility. There are strained marriages. We lose our parents. We lose our grandparents. Some of us move in with families that are not our nuclear ones. And all of this is in Genesis 2.

And in this story, we hear of this call to pick up and move, to start a journey that we've never been on, to move to a land that's unknown. And maybe you have felt that, too. Many of you have experienced this. Now, in our days, we work jobs that take us all around the country. We move for schools. We're displaced from natural disasters. We move for our spouse's work. We move to serve overseas. We're grandparents who move closer to our kids or grandkids to take care of them. We are adult children who move closer to our parents who are dying.

We are called to pick up and leave. Some of us are forced out, kicked out of families because of our sexual and gender identities, torn from our families, and deported or detained. And in the leaving, we don't just leave the land we're familiar with. We don't just leave the kindred and the clan that we're familiar with, like that sports league or those colleagues that you get drinks with or that house that you loved or even your own church. But you leave home. You leave belonging. You leave behind the ways that you have felt seen and heard and known in your own context to set out for something new.

Abram's call from God, as you heard, is filled with promise. It's filled with blessing. That word blessing is used in Genesis 88 times. As if God really has something to say to us about how much of a blessing each of us are to the God that loves us.

And as we journey through Genesis this month, I hope that you will come back. I don't often tell people come back to church, but I hope you will to hear yourself breathed out of these stories. Some of you who have been called into the unknown and the families that are impacted by that call and the resentment and the hard conversations and the processing, or maybe the lack of that, is in here too.

When God has called you to pick up and go and leave the familiar behind, what do you do? And who do you turn to? And are you faithful like Abram? Or do you feel a lack of faithfulness like Sarai?

I hear in this text whispers of a blessing and a promise and a God who holds all of it with us. A God who wonders with us what it looks like to go. A God who lets us off the hook when we say, "I don't want to go alone." And maybe this is a cautionary tale, church, for us to spend more time discerning with our families, with our friends, with ourselves what we should do. Or maybe it's an example of sacrifice that we give to the ones that we love.

And maybe today it's just part of our religious history. And so I'm inviting you to dive into it with me. Whether this story touches a wound, whether you can't relate to it at all, this is a book that is rich with life and that is rife with it. It's a book that we don't read alone. It's a book that we speak and listen to together.

Where are you in this story? Where are you in Genesis? I promise you're in there. Even if it's just because you had an apple for breakfast.

Amen.

Where You Go, I Will Go

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, May 24, 2026

Good morning. We celebrated Pentecost a little bit early last week. We got a little birthday-happy and went ahead and installed Reverend Wesley, read the story from Acts, and talked about the gift of the Holy Spirit — where folks began to hear each other in each other's difference as clearly as if every language was fluent to all. So we have this kind of floating Sunday where Larry and I talked, and we kept the Pentecost paraments up. And we have this Sunday, before we get into the summer, where I was thinking about the Pentecost story and the opportunity to preach about — or wonder about — a theme that I really have never heard preached about in church before. It's not a theme that's stigmatized. It's not a theme that holds shame. I just think it's a topic that goes overlooked in a lot of ways, because we as Christians take it for granted. And that is friendship.

After this crowd of skeptics and scoffers looks at the disciples, after they see that this Holy Spirit mayhem has occurred — that people are speaking in tongues of all kinds — they begin to sneer and actually think that what's going on is that the people are drunk. And Peter stands up. This might be the first time that Peter has addressed a crowd without Jesus standing by his side. Peter stands up and turns to them. And what I imagine is that his friends pop up, put an arm on his shoulder, as he says what he says about a spirit that sees visions and dreams dreams. What struck me about this line, as I reread Acts — just the first few chapters; I'm still making my way through it again this week — is that it says, "But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them." Peter standing with the eleven.

Peter didn't have to do it alone. He got to do it with eleven other people — eleven other friends that he made while following Jesus around. I like to imagine that gang of brothers together near him. I think they had probably really taken in Jesus's final discourse to them, some of the last things that Jesus said, that you heard Karen read again in the fifteenth chapter of John. Jesus said, "There is actually no greater love than this: to lay down your life for a friend." And it seems as though — in many moments when we don't give the disciples much credit — they knew exactly what he meant when he said that.

As Kevin DeYoung writes, "Friendship is the most important, least talked-about relationship in the church." The most important, least talked-about relationship in the church. And as someone who is not married, I can't tell you how many people have asked me, "Who are you dating? When will you get married? Who are you seeing?" Or even when I have been in a relationship: "How is your partner? When will you get engaged?" I wonder what it looks like to say instead, "How are your relationships? How is it with your friends?" It's a different question that gets to a different kind of answer. Marriage and dating, singleness and partnership — they are important. But what does it look like when we examine scripture through the lens of friendship? Proverbs talks about it. We have David and Jonathan, and many other examples of people who show up for each other, who teach us something about being a friend. Jesus was particularly good at that. But I thought about Ruth and Naomi — the friendship between these two women.

For some of you who don't know the story, it actually starts with grief. Naomi is married to a man named Elimelech. They are from Judah, but they live their lives in Moab. They have two sons, and both sons marry women — Ruth and Orpah. We learn very early on in the book of Ruth that Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi a widow. For ten years, Naomi — widowed — is living with Ruth and Orpah and their husbands. And then Ruth's husband dies. And then Orpah's husband dies. And the three women are left widowed. Naomi is heartbroken and distressed. She wants to go back home, where she grew up, to the land of Judah, because she has heard word that God has started to provide food for the people who have been experiencing famine.

"Go back to your mother's house, each of you," she says to Ruth and Orpah. "I have to do this part alone." And she kisses them and they begin to weep. "No, we want to come with you and your people," they say to her. "Turn back, my daughters," she says. "Why would you want to go with me? I have no sons in my womb for you to marry. And even if I did have someone I was married to, you're not going to wait until those sons are old enough. I am bitter." In this moment, Naomi actually picks a new name for herself. She says, "Call me Mara, not Naomi." Naomi means pleasant. Mara means bitter. "I'm bitter. God has turned against me."

And Ruth and Orpah weep aloud once again. And Orpah kisses her mother-in-law and then does what she says — she goes back home. And scripture tells us, "But Ruth clung to her." Naomi said, "See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people. Go with her." But Ruth said, "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you. Don't you get it? Where you go, I go. Where you lodge, I lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die. There I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you."

The youth call that being a girl's girl. I would have to agree with them. It is perhaps the most unrelenting, steadfast example of the fierce and loyal love that God has for us. God's relational desire for us is always to be connected to each other. In fact, the Hebrew word for friend means "connect." God understood that and taught us that.

Naomi is really used to loss at this point, is she not? She's bitter. Her husband has died. Not one but two sons have died. "Just leave me alone. Turn away from me. Go back." But there is Ruth, clinging. Where you go, I go. Where you lodge, I lodge. Your people are my people. You are stuck with me.

It reminds me — I know y'all are going to go see Andor along with Grogu — and it also reminds me of another iconic fantasy series: Lord of the Rings. In the last scene of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo is on a boat heading to Mordor and he decides he's going to do it alone. And this is a very funny scene for those of you who remember. Sam, his best friend, begins running out into the water to get on the boat with him as he's paddling away. Sam cannot swim. And Frodo looks at him and says, "Go back, Sam. I'm going to Mordor alone." And Sam says, "Of course you are, and I'm coming with you."

Pastor Lee Finnegan notes that Ruth's sole purpose in this whole narrative is redemption — a fact reinforced by the repetition of that word twenty times in only eighty-five verses. Twenty times in only eighty-five verses. There is something to be said for a friend who wants to redeem another friend. Not fix her grief, not sugarcoat it, not ignore it or turn away from it — but cling to it, as if to say, "What you feel, I will feel. Your heartbreak is my heartbreak, and your pain is my pain. And sister, I am right there with you in it."

It's really no surprise, then, that when we open Matthew 1 and look at the genealogy of Jesus, Ruth's name appears — as if this fierce and steadfast friendship is embedded in his very DNA — because he taught us a lot about what it means to be a good friend.

Ruth the Redeemer. I wonder if you have someone like that in your life. A clinger. I have been redeemed by many Ruths, and I do not take it for granted. Many Ruths who have witnessed me in moments of great loss and showed me steadfast love when they could have turned around and gone back home. My friend Diana always says, "Margie, you walk to a wedding, you run to a funeral." Those are words to live by. My friend Megan, in a very difficult season when I was trying out medication, referred to it as my "vertical juice" — a way to help soften some of the stigma of being medicated. Friends who have sat with me eating Indian food on the living room floor as I howled after the loss of a family member. Friends who flew in just for a few hours to attend a funeral before flying back home.

Redeeming Ruths. I want to know about yours. Or maybe the ache of who you hope that person could be. They have showed up for me when I am bitter, when I want a name change because I don't feel too pleasant. And they didn't just kiss my cheek and walk home. They clung.

Friendship is so sacred, and it is so clunky. It is both a balm and a mirror. It's one of the most simple ways that I think God reveals God's love to us. It's a reminder that we can't do life alone — that we actually need two or more gathered for Jesus, for church to be there. That Jesus didn't even want to do it alone. He knew he needed people. And friendship is hard. There are times I have not been a good friend. I haven't known how to show up for someone in their grief, and so I have walked home. Or I have been flaky. I have let people down. We often speak of breakups — romantic breakups — but the breakups that keep me up at night are those of friends.

And yet Jesus welcomes me back. He always does. He offers a road map to stumble along and try again. He says: "I ate with people who denied me. I ate with people who betrayed me. I ate with fishermen who had serious body odor. And I ate with tax collectors who made a lot more money than me and could go on trips I could never afford. Some of my friends couldn't even show up for me in my final moments on earth — it was too painful for them." When Jesus appears after the resurrection, Thomas can hardly believe it's him. "Aren't you supposed to be perfect?" he seems to say. And Jesus says, "No. I have wounds. You want to see them?"

I think that's what good friends do. We take the risk to show our wounds to each other. Naomi unflinchingly looked at Ruth and Orpah and said, "Get away from me. I'm too bitter, too heartbroken, too in pain for you to be here walking with me through this." But Ruth shows up again and again. And so we must try to as well — even when we get it horribly wrong. Even when our envy or resentment or hurt gets in the way. And of course there's discernment there. Sometimes the right thing to do is walk home, away from a friendship that isn't serving us. And sometimes the invitation is to learn how to cling harder.

Jesus knew that he couldn't do life alone. And of the myriad miracles he performed, I wonder if he saw friendship as one of the greatest. Author Hanya Yanagihara writes in her book A Little Life: "Wasn't friendship its own miracle? The finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely."

Ruth's words echo throughout Jesus's life. Where we go, he goes. Where we lodge, he lodges. Our people are his people, and our God is his God. Like the eleven standing with Peter. Like the twelve eating with Jesus. Like Ruth — the one who won't let go.

I feel, and maybe you feel, convicted and comforted by these examples of biblical friendship that give us a way forward, to show up for our friends. Every new day — every blessed, broken day — we try again.

"I'm going alone," we may protest. Or we may hear someone say to us: "Of course you are, and I'm going with you."

Amen.

Walk Humbly

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, May 17, 2026

All right, let's see.

Y'all seen the news lately? Front page, baby. Front page. Someone saw that story and said, "How's it going at Vine Street? What's it like?" And I said, "I'm having a blast." And they said, "Having a blast making TikToks?" I said, "Maybe. Yes. People like those TikToks. Thank you very much. But it's way, way more than that." I said, "I'm having a blast doing ministry with these folks." I told them — did you know that during the ice storm just a couple months ago, Vine Street was the only church that was able to stay open and house those unhoused guests that evening from Room in the Inn? The rest couldn't do it because of lack of power or lack of people. Did you know that? I said, "Did you know that Vine Street gave away $30,000 in their community ministry grants this past year to local nonprofits and ministries and charities? $10,000 more than they did last year." I said, "Did you know that Vine Street has been a long-standing supporter and founder of Disciples Divinity House and Institute, and that Margie and I met with them and we fed them and we listened to their stories and their journeys? We built relationship with them, and now we have three Vandy interns starting in the fall." Those TikToks may grab people's attention, but it's what they see when they look deeper into who Vine Street is that hooks them.

In the paper, Margie says, "How do we make history?" By that, I mean, how do we make sure that people know our history and continue to make history? Quinn said, "To know our past is to know the blueprint for our future. To know our past is to know the blueprint for our future." So today, as we celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the church, I'm hoping that we can look at what the big-C Church has done in the past and let it be a blueprint for us as we move forward.

For those who are unaware, let me recap the Pentecost story. It happens in Acts chapter 2, and Luke tells it this way:

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. And suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one of them heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked, "Aren't all of these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of them hears in their own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome — both Jews and those who have converted to Judaism — Cretans and Arabs — we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"

But this year, our Pentecost theme from the general church really centers around Micah 6:8, a verse that is probably very familiar to everyone here, but I think it warrants a little bit of context. The prophet Micah in chapter 6 — the opening lines place the speaker on their way to the temple, preparing to worship God. The worshipper approaches God ready to bow down and present an offering. And we watch this imagined sacrifice begin to escalate. First, ordinary burnt offerings; then young calves of high value; then these extravagant gifts like thousands of rams and oil — the sort of offerings that only a king could provide. And the progression reaches its most extreme point when the suggestion of offering one's own child comes up. But then in verse six, the literary voice shifts, and the worshipper is reminded that none of these sacrifices are what God actually desires. Instead, God requires a life that is marked by justice, steadfast kindness, and humility.

And so leading up to this week, I've been holding this newness of Pentecost — the day in which the Holy Spirit takes charge and leads God's people to walk in the way of Christ, building the church and making disciples. And I've been holding that God's call is so simple: to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly. But what are these two passages saying to us now? We've heard them both before, but how do they merge together? And I want you to hold those two stories in tandem during this sermon.

This weekend, I've been hosting, with my boss the Reverend Dr. José Martinez, a new church summit — a gathering of regional ministers and new church pastors where we came together to dream and imagine what the future of our church looks like. If you didn't know, we have 195 new churches within the Disciples of Christ, otherwise known as Churches in Formation, and that's all across the US and Canada. And within those new churches, there are 17 different languages. In fact, some of the fastest growing traditions within the Disciples are Chuukese-speaking and Spanish-speaking churches. Feels a little bit like our Pentecost story.

And it was so encouraging to hear these stories of how God is working in their midst, working in so many different ways. For example, in Memphis — Christ City Church, which began in 2010 as a non-denominational congregation aimed at young adults, specifically in the Midtown neighborhood of Memphis. In its early years, Christ City Church embraced a more evangelical theology. But over the years that began to evolve and shift, specifically around the role of women in ministry, and by 2018 they had embraced an egalitarian approach to ministry. And while that shift prompted several of their neighboring faith communities to cut ties with them, it also laid the groundwork for them hiring their first female pastor, Pastor Mandy, who was their executive pastor.

That same year, they began to rent space from Central Christian Church, which is a Disciples congregation in Memphis. And they articulated eight core principles: choosing presence, seeking health, cultivating spirituality, embracing justice, engaging culture, creating beauty, showing mercy, and pursuing all that God calls them to. These practices have since shaped the congregation's identity, guiding their members to see themselves as co-laborers in God's work of renewal on earth. And in 2023, they also became an open and affirming congregation.

But as Central's congregation and membership was dwindling, Christ City was thriving. This new church was thriving. And so Central gifted their building to Christ City. The hospitality that they experienced from Central Christian touched Pastors Jamon and Mandy and prompted them to attend the Disciples regional assembly in Tennessee — in Memphis — in 2024. The same regional assembly where I told Margie that I want to come work with her. And at that regional assembly, I got the honor of sitting at lunch with them and hearing their story and their journey. And I connected them with new church ministry and I connected them with other congregations that have similar stories and similar journeys. And a year later, they joined us. They joined the Disciples. And they are one of three new churches coming out of Memphis in the last year. And there's more on the way. I got to share that special story with folks this weekend at the summit about how God is moving in Memphis.

But speaking of Memphis — I spent much of last week at the Capitol as our state legislature carved up Memphis's voting voice. After so many of our state's leadership jumped at the opportunity to appease President Trump's request to redraw the maps, the Tennessee legislature successfully gerrymandered Memphis — our state — once again, just like they did to Nashville back in 2022. And it's true, yes, that both political parties have redrawn maps for their own political gain. That is true. But this was different. This targeted Black and brown voters. This dismantled key parts of the Voting Rights Act. This disparaged a part of our state that our legislature has already had a target on for a long time. And I watched these men and women sneer and laugh in the faces of young and old Black and brown faces — as I watched this man who claims to follow Jesus, who should be clothed in righteousness, drape a Trump flag over him, laugh in their face, and walk into the rotunda. And while these lawmakers have maintained that this is about partisan opportunity, their colleagues have constantly reminded them that within their privileged power grab, they are disparaging and mistreating a history of mistreatment of Black and brown folks that they are seemingly conveniently forgetting.

State Senator London Lamar said that her son will have fewer rights than her grandmother did.

At the end of that session — when they voted, and we knew how they were going to vote, and they voted how we thought they would — I was standing outside the Capitol waiting for the final demonstration of that day. And this man walked up the stairs wearing a shirt that said, "In Memphis as it is in Heaven." And I got a little emotional, because while the majority of folks don't even fully realize what happened over just 72 hours, I was there. And I heard story after story after story of people sharing how their grandparents had to fight just to be able to vote — how they had to guess the number of marbles in a jar just to be able to vote. And now their district was being carved up so that their voice in Congress was being diluted.

I've been holding these two experiences — these two stories — in tandem this week, trying to figure out what they mean. How do they coincide? How do they merge? How do they fit together? And then I read the words of Reverend Beth Patillo, someone local to Nashville, someone who has done so much for our church. And she said that the day the church was born was the day that the church became prophetic. The day that the church was born was the day that the church became prophetic. She writes that a deeper understanding of Micah 6:8 empowers today's church to enact its own prophetic witness, which works for all human flourishing.

One of the things that drew Christ City Church to the Disciples was our commitment to justice. Christ City's pastor said that justice is about everybody being able to get what they need. He said, "Joining the Disciples of Christ is making clear for us as a church what we want and what we want to be a part of."

And likewise, in Luke's story from Acts 2 — after the crowd had admonished those who were speaking with tongues of fire, speaking different languages, thinking that they were drunk with wine — Peter stands up and quotes the prophet Joel, saying, "I will pour out my Spirit, and your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions and your old will dream dreams."

The day the church was born was the day that the church became prophetic.

The other chapters in Micah list many ways that humanity has failed to do justice. In chapters 2 and 3, the powerful had oppressed the powerless. The laborers had been exploited. The courts had been corrupted. But the central theme of Micah chapter 6, as Reverend Patillo says, is a reversal of the people's understanding of God's expectation for them — that God doesn't want rams, God doesn't want calves or oil. God wants justice and mercy and loving kindness and humility.

Micah addresses people who are preparing to enter the temple for worship. In our Pentecost story, something similar is happening, both figuratively and literally. So paraphrasing Reverend Patillo: Pentecost marks a shift. God's people now include all those from across the world who hear and who respond to what the Spirit is doing — who hear and respond to what the Spirit is prophesying. Micah's escalating list of sacrifices easily parallels our own attempts to negotiate with God. Across Micah's time, the day of Pentecost, and our own Sunday gatherings, the answer remains unchanged: God does not desire material things that we can offer, but instead, in every age, God seeks transformed behavior — of justice and mercy and humility — which is the truest act of worship.

These stories remind us that the church is called to live prophetically. Reverend Patillo says that to do justice is to practice the fairness and equity captured in the Hebrew mishpat. To love kindness is to embody the covenantal love and loyalty expressed by hesed. And to walk humbly is to enter a way of life that resists exploitative power and embraces faithful obedience to God. This is exactly the kind of life that we see in the early church — something that our Restoration and Stone-Campbell ancestors sought to return us to. When believers held their possessions in common, when they cared for the widows and the orphans, when they bore witness to the resurrection and shared meals together in their homes, they were taking the first steps toward becoming a community shaped by the prophet's call to do justice, kindness, and humble devotion to God. Micah's words become a reminder to ensure that we do — within and outside these four walls — what is truly called of us to do. And it's also a good measurement: are we doing that, or are we just offering burnt sacrifices? Are we doing justice? Are we loving kindness? Are we walking humbly with God? Or are we just doing what's comfortable and what's easy?

Pastor Jim at Christ City Church says that their aspiration is to be a church for the future that is still grounded in their knowledge of the past. And that quote reminded me so much of what Pastor Margie said in the paper — that to know our past is to know the blueprint for our future.

Like the day of Pentecost, this church has had tongues of fire in our past. This church has prophesied in our past. This church has planted numerous new churches and ministries across this city, many of which are still standing — including the Disciples Divinity House and Institute, which has been training leaders for almost a hundred years. This church has stood for peace amidst war when it was very unpopular. This church has supported the desegregation of our schools and their bathrooms and the lunch counters when it was very unpopular, claiming that all people have a place here in God's church and at God's table. This church has affirmed the need for mental health when it started the Insight Counseling Center that now has 10 locations across Middle Tennessee. When other churches are building barriers around the table, this church has said that all are welcome at the table — no matter who you are, no matter what — because it's Christ's table, not ours. When churches not too far from here are doubling down that women do not belong in the pulpit, this church saw the gifts and the calling and the talents of this young woman and said, "Come and lead us." When other congregations can't get over who I share this ring with, this church said to me, "We see you and we hear you. Come and share your gifts with us."

The blueprint is here, friends. Our history is that of doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with God. We only need to follow where the Spirit is moving and going now.

Love One Another

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, May 10, 2026

In my final semester of seminary, I felt really far away from my — Daniel, don't be alarmed. You're going to be fine. Um, I felt pretty burnt out from school. I felt far away from my family. I felt anxious about the unknown future. I began to dread waking up. I began to dread going to school. And I was losing joy in the things that had very much been giving me joy in my life. For someone who was studying God, I was asking myself, where is God? How do I feel God's love? So I went to one of my mentors who immediately pulled out her laptop and she opened it up and she asked me to come sit next to her and she showed me the Decorah North Bald Eagle Cam. The Decorah North Bald Eagle Cam, which is a 24/7 live stream of an eagle's nest in Decorah, Iowa. Maybe some of you have seen it too. At all times — like this morning, like six years ago — it shows this nest. And at the time, it showed a mother eagle, a mama eagle, who was sitting on the nest protecting one baby eaglet. She said, "I want you to just look at this with me for a second."

And then she closed her laptop and later she sent me the link to the Decorah North Bald Eagle Cam. In the subject line she sent the link and then she wrote, "Baby eaglet sleeps, comes out to eat, and then is put back to rest once again by her unmovable mother." Her unmovable mother. I became addicted to watching the Decorah North Bald Eagle Cam. I would pull it open when I was in class. I would wake up and immediately look it up. When I couldn't sleep, I would watch the Decorah Bald Eagle Cam. I couldn't stop watching this mama eagle who was vigilant, who was cutting, who was always watching and who was always protecting and caring for this little eaglet — restlessly, relentlessly, day after day. And I had been reading scripture, but sometimes the words of scripture don't necessarily come alive to us, do they? But then I was watching this mama eagle, thinking about the words in Deuteronomy when God is described as this eagle who stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, spreading its wings and taking them up, bearing them aloft on its pinions. An unmovable mother, the embodiment of love.

This is the sixth Sunday of Eastertide — as I know all of you know — and we are coming up on the end of what we know as celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. Celebrating that love wins, after all, does it not? But there is a certain sadness about the sixth Sunday of Eastertide, because today, as FA read to us, Jesus is speaking to his disciples. He's just washed their callous and dirty feet and then he gives what a lot of folks call his final discourse. This is his final discourse. This is his last words. This is his goodbye speech. This is his commencement address to the twelve who have been with him. This is when he gets to decide exactly what he wants to say and impart to them before he leaves them. This is what he says. "I'm with you only a little longer. You will look for me and where I am going, you cannot come. So I'm going to give you one final commandment. Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another." And then he says, "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Don't be afraid." And then he says again, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And they who have my commandments and those who keep them love me. And those who love me will be loved by my parent, by my Father. And I will love them. And I will reveal myself to them." And then later, "As my parent, as my mother has loved me, I love you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my parent's commandments and abided in his love." And then this: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." That's his final discourse.

And as I sat in my office on Thursday — actually, I was driving back from a lunch and I got a call from Quinn Moseley, who is a junior in high school, and he said, "Why aren't you at the church?" And I said, "Oh, I'm coming back from a lunch." And he said, "Great. Well, I'm on your couch." So I walk into my office and he said, "Hacky Sack Club got cancelled, so I had a couple hours to burn." So I thought I'd come into your office. And like I do with everyone who comes to my office, I said, "Okay, well, I was just about to start writing my sermon, so I'm going to make you read John 14 out loud to me, and we're going to walk through it verse by verse, and we're going to figure this out together." So Quinn takes my little Bible and he starts reading to me Jesus's final discourse. Love me like I love my Father, like my Father loves me, like this commandment, like the commandment I give you to love me. And by the end of it, he goes, "What does it mean?" And I go, "What does it mean?" And we just kept asking each other, "What does it mean?" And then Quinn asked this: What does it mean to love Jesus if he isn't here anymore?

Y'all. What does it mean to love Jesus if he isn't here anymore? Which sounds a lot like something the theologian Caroline Lewis asked of this passage this week. What does it look like to embody God's love when Jesus isn't here anymore? When he has said that he is going somewhere where we cannot come — yet that he's not going to leave us orphaned, that he will come back to us, but for now he's just leaving us with the Paraclete, the advocate, the helper, the Holy Spirit. So I think that's our question today. How do we love God when Jesus has gone somewhere that we can't go? In any way, what is love?

Let's start. There's a great band called The Wild Reeds. And they write, "Love is a choice every day, not some fuzzy feeling in the room." The Apostle Paul said that love is patient and kind. It's not arrogant. It's not rude. It doesn't boast. It doesn't delight in wrongdoing. It never ends. A six-year-old named Emma wrote, "Love is when you're missing some of your teeth, but you're not afraid to smile because you know your friends will still love you even if some of you is missing." Y'all, come on. These young people — I'm just going to go ahead and sit down. And then Jesus — well, Jesus is more of a shower, not a teller, as we know — when he kept asking Simon Peter, "Do you love me? Simon Peter, do you love me? Do you love me?" And Simon Peter kept saying, "Jesus, I love you. I love you. I love you. How many more times do I need to say it?" His response was, "If you love me, just feed my sheep. Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep." And that sounds like pretty good marching orders for us. Just feed people. Take care of people. And then feed people again. Baby eaglet sleeps, comes out to eat, and then is put back to rest once again by her unmovable mother.

So often I talk about — we talk about — God's love for us. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. But this week it really struck me that while I think about and talk about and pontificate on Jesus's love for me, I don't often think about my love for him. When he commands me to love him, what does he want me to do? What is it? Something about a choice and not a feeling? Something about an unmovable eagle? Something about missing a tooth and letting people see you when you're missing things? What is it? What is it, Jesus? So this week that's what was — as I say — rolling around upstairs. That's what I was thinking about. How to take care of sheep and how to embody God's love when I don't really have Jesus to hold my hand all the time and lead me around and show me exactly how to do that and point to the people that I should be paying attention to and wave his hands at me when he wants me to be a little bit more compassionate than I'm being.

So I tried a few things. I wrote a thank you note to a family whose house I stayed in in South Carolina. I left my retainers there. And if you've been to the orthodontist, you know how expensive retainers are and also how quickly your teeth can move when you don't wear your retainers. Okay? So they went to a Walmart to send them back to me. The Walmart was closed. They went to a post office. They went to a FedEx. The fourth place they went, they were able to put my retainers in the mail. So I wrote them a thank you note. I took my niece out to dinner. I drove around praying for you — yes, you. I drove a friend to the airport. Not during rush hour, so it wasn't the most loving thing that I could do. So I tried some ways to love and wondered, is this loving you? Is this what you mean? If I'm loving them, am I loving you? Sometimes you write about it in a really convoluted way.

But I also just witnessed love, and I think that's part of it too. I've witnessed people show up at the Capitol, reminding me that love is a verb, reminding me that that mama eagle will stop at nothing to protect her babies. I watched my best friend breastfeed, holding her baby and rocking her and complimenting her and whispering to her while I just painted my living room. I asked my friend, "Is she hungry? I've got pretzels."

She said, "She's going to need another ten months before she can have your pretzels."

It's just — it's all love. It's all love. I witnessed the concern and care of one of your voices this week when you called me to tell me how your mom's doing, who just had surgery. And I heard the hurt and the grief when I had lunch with one of you this week who lost your mom nine years ago, for whom this day is complicated. And I grinned as you gushed about how good of a mom your sister is. And in all of it — all of it — love, love. This ultimate commandment, this number one marching order, the thing that activates us and comforts us and nourishes us and challenges us and convicts us, that's always waiting for us to come back to it. Love is the whole thing. It's the commandment in the final discourse. It's the last sentence in the commencement address. Just love one another like I've loved you. And that's loving me. It's the beginning and the end. God so loved the world that God gave us Godself in Jesus to show up and love the world too, right up until the end. And then left us with something that scripture calls the Paraclete, or the advocate, that we think of as the Holy Spirit.

And I wonder if you have felt it too — that even if we're trying to embody God's love and we feel like Jesus isn't too near us, sometimes we get that holy nudge. Margie, pick up the pen and write the thank you note. Margie, go grab the car door for them. Margie, go give that person a hug. Call your mom. Call your mom. That Holy Spirit that reminds us, that urges us to feed each other, lay down our lives for each other, just like Jesus did.

I miss seeing those bracelets that were big in the early 2000s — the WWJD bracelets. Y'all remember those? What would Jesus do? Well, this week I want someone to make me one that says — let me get this right — HDJJL. How did Jesus love? Because that might make my Grinch heart grow three sizes. If I could just hold it, have it around me, try to think about that as I go about my day. How did Jesus love? He loved in a lot of ways. And he did a lot of things, didn't he? He gave us the road map. He really did. He fed the hungry — he fed the hungry not because it was the right thing to do, not because he'd get his picture taken for the paper, but because he loved the hungry. He touched lepers not because it was glorifying him, but because he loved the lepers. He turned tables because he loved the church so much he was willing to be a little angry at it. He healed people because he loved them. He partied at people's weddings because he loved them. He wept over friends' graves because he loved them. He washed dirty feet because he loved them. He came back for us because he loved us. He prayed on mountain sides for people because he loved them. He shared a lot of meals with all kinds of kinds because he loved them.

I don't know. What if we really believe? What if we really believe that Jesus is among us when we practice that commandment of love? What if we really believe he shows up smiling and nodding his head, or shaking his head, or looking at the retainer case like, "How did you leave it again?" Just says, "Ah, you got it right, man. I love you."

This morning I checked the Decorah North Bald Eagle Cam — I know you were waiting just to see. It's been years since I've looked at it. And the mama eagle was gone. There was nothing in the nest. Where is that unmovable mother? I wonder. I don't know. I think she's taken flight. I think her wings have carried her somewhere else. She's on the move, just like Jesus always is, ushering us to keep up and to keep trying and to do our best at that final commandment.

Take flight, church, and just love.

Let's try it.

Make a Joyful Noise

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, April 26, 2026

The first band I was in was in third grade. We were called the Backyard Angels, and we sang lyrics like: “Is it official? Can we really do it? The Backyard Angels—we will be, ’cause we can get through it.”

My second band was in fourth grade, and we were called Pitch Black. So clearly, I was really going through something. Something must have happened from fourth to fifth grade. I wrote a song called Leave Me Alone: “I don’t care what you say. Leave me alone. Don’t want to see you anyway.”

Music has been threaded into my life since I can remember, and that is true for most of you. We live in Music City. I don’t need to tell you the importance of music, the importance of song. I don’t need to tell you how something happens to us when we hear a chord, and then another chord, and our hearts break open and we feel tears streaming down our eyes.

But I do want to tell you about the psalmist David, our songwriter in scripture. He wrote 150 songs—or at least that’s how many were canonized. That’s how many we’ve got in the Good Book. Some of the psalms, like the ones that Jack and Daniel read, are songs of praise. They are songs about singing to the Lord, all the earth, blessing God’s name.

I love that. I love that this psalm doesn’t say “sing about God.” It says, “Sing to God.” And it says, “Sing, all the earth,” as if David intrinsically understands the crickets chirping at night, and birdsong, and even the whales—with their, is it tenor or bass? Probably bass—singing in the ocean.

And even the songs of praise include songs of suffering. Psalm 22 is the only one of the 150 psalms that actually doesn’t resolve. There’s no part at the end where David wraps it up in a nice bow and says, “But praise to you.” It just ends with suffering, as if David understood that it’s important to express and experience the full range of human emotion.

As many of you who are writers know, we don’t sing hymns on accident here. We don’t sing a bunch of hymns in our service just to sing them. The liturgy of the service—which basically means the order of worship—literally means “the work of the people.” The work of the people.

So when we come here together, we are practicing for an hour the work of the people that we will go out and try to do: breaking bread with all kinds of people, praying prayers for the church and the world and each other, holding hands at the end to remember that we are not alone as we try to live out the gospel in our lives.

And that’s also singing. That’s also singing—not just once or twice, but throughout the whole service—because it’s a language that transcends anything we could say, anything we could read. Music is perhaps the greatest response of gratitude and praise to God that we have.

And not just with our voices. Y’all heard Kyle on the trumpet. Y’all have heard Erica on the flute. Y’all have heard Quentyn on the bass and Abby on the ukulele. Y’all have heard Micah and Chris on the keys. Y’all have heard Julia on the organ. I could keep going on and on. This church is filled with people who use their instruments to praise and worship God.

And yeah, it’s filled with those of us who tentatively reach for the high notes and tentatively reach for the low notes. It’s filled with those who get really excited about hymns that we love and know, and those of us who groan when we look at the hymn we’re about to sing. And it is all okay here. Whether you are tone-deaf or right in key, you are welcome here.

What fills this room is, I believe, what fills our world—and that is song, and that is praise, and that is music.

Friends, sometimes I read and reread scripture and something new catches me every time. Maybe that happens to you, too. And so, when I reread the Gospels in seminary, I hadn’t caught before that in two of the Gospels, when we’re looking at Jesus’s Last Supper, after the disciples ate and after everybody kicked their feet up, they sang a hymn.

I’ve got to know—what hymn did they sing? Do you have a guess? Was it a Gregorian chant, or was it a Southern spiritual? Was one of them tone-deaf, or were they all in key? Were some of them crying, knowing it was probably the last time they would sing with their Savior? What was that hymn? Did they harmonize, or were they not quite that good?

The Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesians, as we heard, and he doesn’t just suggest, and he doesn’t just invite—he actually commands them to be filled with the Spirit as they sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs among themselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in their hearts, giving thanks to God at all times and for everything in the name of Jesus.

It’s not a suggestion. It’s a commandment. Music permeates our faith. The psalmist David knew that. Paul knew that. Jesus knew that. There are so many people in scripture who knew that—who showed us the way to respond in these moments in our lives with songs.

Y’all remember Moses? Right after the Israelites cross the Red Sea into safety—right after they are freed from their oppressors—guess what he does? He sings, y’all. And that song, if you go back and read it in Exodus, it almost reads like a folk song you would sing in the back of a church camp bus on your way to Bethany Hills.

He says: “At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up; the floods stood in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. You blew with your wind, and the sea covered them; they sank like lead in mighty waters.”

And then, right after Moses sings, we learn that the prophet Miriam sings. And not just that—she sings with her voice, she picks up a tambourine, and she invites the other women to sing and dance with her, song after song, as a response of gratitude and praise for what the Lord has just done for them.

Or what about Mary’s song, which might just be the backbone of our entire theology? In the Gospel of Luke, she sings: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones. He has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” That’s what she sings when she finds out that she is with the Christ child.

Music is how we memorize. Music is how I flip through and find every book in scripture. Because when I was in third grade, someone taught me: “Genesis, Exodus…” And that’s how I know the whole story of Noah’s Ark:

“The animals, the animals, they came on by two-zies, two-zies—chimpanzees and kangaroosies, roosies—they were on that boat.”

Or Jonah, who was swallowed by a fish: “He made quite a tasty dish. Freedom was his only wish from that watery grave.” And then: “Who did swallow? Jo-jo Jonah…”

Music is how we memorize. It’s how we memorize Psalm 23. It’s how we memorize the Lord’s Prayer. Even people with cognitive decline—one of the last things that they remember is song and music. And if that doesn’t preach, I don’t know what will.

We know lullabies. We know nursery rhymes. You remember the song that you walked down the aisle to, and you remember the song from the funeral of your loved one. You know the one by heart in worship that you love, and you know the one in worship that you groan when you see.

During Don Schlitz’s funeral yesterday—who was a prolific songwriter and a beloved member of our community—I quoted something that he said a lot. He said, “You write a song to get to the next song. You show up, and you just keep writing songs until you get to one that really sticks or sings out.”

And I love that—you show up to write every day knowing that some of these songs are just the ones getting you to something special, like The Gambler, which he wrote, and When You Say Nothing at All, which he wrote.

And so we do. We show up to life. We plant seeds, or we practice instruments. We work jobs. We take gigs. We sing songs just to get to the next song, and that carries us all the way home.

We sing in order to grieve. We sing “Happy Birthday.” We sing to calm our nervous systems. We sing our kids to sleep. We sing in order to join with others and become part of this melody, this chorus that then takes us out to praise with the chorus of this community.

I have a tattoo on my left arm, and it’s the last two words of a Mary Oliver poem called I Worried. And I would like to close with that poem:

“I worried a lot. Will the garden grow? Will the rivers flow in the right direction? Will the earth turn as it was taught? And if not, how am I going to correct it? Was I right? Was I wrong? Will I be forgiven? Can I do better? Will I ever be able to sing?

Well, even the sparrows can do it, and I am, well, hopeless. Is my eyesight fading, or am I just imagining it? Am I going to get rheumatism or lockjaw or dementia?

And finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And I gave it up, and I took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang and sang and sang.”

Amen.