Ready for Hospitality

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, November 8, 2026

Good morning. Listen, I got to tell you, church work is funny sometimes. I want to tell you a couple stories from this week.

So, a couple months ago, I met this young woman who’s a pastor at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church. We were meeting with Mayor Freddie about some justice issues around the city. I then saw her again at the YMCA, and so I was like, “We need to get coffee. Let’s find a time to get together. I’d love to hear more about you and about your ministry at Mount Zion.” She’s like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So she puts me in touch with her assistant, Nina.

And if you don’t know, Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church is a rather large, I’d say about 30,000-member, predominantly Black church a little north of Nashville. And so she puts me in touch with her assistant, Nina. So Nina’s calling me. I’m in Memphis. I’m in DC. We’re just not connecting, unfortunately. And so I tell her, “I’m so sorry. I’m not ignoring you. I just have not had a chance.” And so Nina says, “Oh, that’s fine. Just put me in touch with your assistant.”

I was like, “Oh, you think I have an assistant?” I was like, “I’ll get right on that.” His name is Noah Tenant.

And then this Thursday, as Noah mentioned, we kicked off Room in the Inn here at Vine Street. And if you’re not aware, it is our homelessness ministry here and in the entire city of Nashville. It’s this ministry where churches and mosques and synagogues and other groups open their buildings to about a dozen unhoused folks each night of the week. And we give them warm shelter and a warm meal and a roof over their head. And they can find solace and safety, at least for one night. Last year, Room in the Inn provided over 15,000 beds in the winter months.

So I was waiting until a little bit later in the day to come in, because I knew I was going to be staying the night here at the church. And so I was waiting a little bit, and Jim Carl had told me in an email earlier that week that we were out of some things. He said he didn’t see any plates or cups or napkins and utensils. So I went to Kroger and grabbed some on the way in. At the same time, Pastor Margie had also heard this from Jim and told Sarah Tarley, “Hey, will you pick up some supplies on the way into the church?” So Sarah showed up, I showed up, all bringing just a huge load of plates and cups and napkins and all of these things. And we found that there were some already there. And not only that, Meredith Syler had clearly labeled them “Room in the Inn supplies.” So we have enough plates and napkins and cups to survive the Armageddon. We just simply got our wires crossed.

But Thursday night went smoothly. We fed the guys. We cleaned up. We go to bed around 8 or 8:30 or so. We turn the lights off. And it takes me a little bit to go to sleep when I stay the night here. There’s 12 guys sleeping downstairs, so there’s certain sounds and smells that come along with that. So it takes me a little while to fall asleep. We do need some more overnight guests. I know I’m not selling it really well, but we do need people to stay overnight. So if you’re interested, just ignore everything I just said.

But anyway, I’m laying there, and I was kind of frustrated that, oh, we just wasted money. We just bought all this stuff we don’t need. And then it hit me. Maybe the real lesson here was just how willing Vine Street was to provide. Maybe the lesson here was how willing our folks were to jump when there was a need named. Maybe the lesson is that we’ve got enough plates and cups and napkins to last until 2028, so that whoever needs to be fed here, our members, guests, strangers, we can make them a plate. We were prepared. We were prepared.

Today’s gospel lesson is this well-known parable, one that I often heard when I was growing up. I often heard it in the context of being ready for when Jesus comes back, often as more of a threat than a promise. But the thing about parables is that you have to hear them in succession. They were meant to be understood as a whole, not just by themselves as one parable. So this parable speaks to wisdom, right? But the prior parable speaks about action. And the parable that follows is about not hoarding your time and talents and treasure. So these have to be understood together as a whole. Because what good is wisdom if you don’t act? And likewise, what good is action if you don’t think it through? Right?

And when we say wisdom in this case, we’re talking about a very specific thing, right? It’s more than just intellect. We’re drawing from the Jewish wisdom tradition. So in the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, there’s the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. There’s the Prophets, the major and minor prophets. And then there’s the Writings section. And in this last section, the Writings includes the wisdom books: Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, etc.

But what do we mean by wisdom? Biblical scholar Robert Young Scott says that at one level, wisdom is intelligence. At the next level, it’s good sense, sound judgment, and moral understanding. “A clever man’s wisdom makes him behave intelligently.” That’s Proverbs 14:8. A third level is the capacity to consider profound truth in human life and destiny. So wisdom thus becomes the fruit of the unending quest for the meaning of one’s experience in this life. “Where shall wisdom be found?” the book of Job asks. “Man does not know the way to it. It is hidden from the eyes of all living things. Only God understands the way to it.” In other words, the type of wisdom that can only be found in that which is holy, that which is divine.

So all the while, this young, kind of rogue rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, is preaching these terrible parables, and he’s using these examples and these references from these Jewish wisdom writings, things that these people would have understood, references and examples that they would have heard before.

So in today’s parable, there are these five young women who are foolish and these five young women who are wise. Some translations call them virgins. Sometimes they call them bridesmaids. The foolish ones take their lamps and they go to meet the bridegroom. And the wise women take their lamps and a flask of oil. And the bridegroom is delayed. It takes him a while to get there. And the foolish women’s lamps begin to die out. The wise women tell them that they cannot have any of their oil and they need to go buy more. So they go to do so. And while they’re gone buying more oil, the bridegroom returns. They all go into the wedding party, and the foolish women are left out.

When I think back on what Christ was trying to teach in this moment, I think Christ wanted his disciples to not lose path, not lose sight, not lose the way that he’s been teaching them and guiding them. And he knows he’s about to leave them. As we see in the gospel text, the disciples often lose their way. They often lose the path, and Christ has to pull them back. Later, Paul writes so many letters to the early church because they lost their way, and he has to kind of guide them back to the way. Jesus wanted his disciples, these people that he loved, to be ready for what was ahead.

But what does this parable mean for us today? What are we supposed to learn from this parable in 2026? Theologian Amy Miroso writes that this tale can conjure up two kinds of dynamics in this day and age that feel kind of antithetical to the abundant life that Jesus calls us to.

And the first is that this parable can evoke a sense of scarcity. So even when these foolish young women run out of oil, it feels kind of harsh that the wise women won’t share their oil with them. Even if they were hasty, and even if they were unprepared, something about that rubs me the wrong way still. But I try to remind myself that these are really complex stories and that Jesus perhaps intended them that way. So certainly, if they ran out of oil, yes, they could have shared their lamps with the foolish women. Perhaps that too is a lesson: that even in our best attempts to be faithful, to be righteous, to be ready, we often still fail. We often choose to save ourselves at the expense of others. But still, this parable is not about generosity or distribution. This is about preparedness. There are other parables about those things. Another reason to read these parables as a whole. This parable is about being ready, being prepared.

Another pitfall of hearing this parable is that it can evoke fear. Fear of not being ready and therefore being left out. I mentioned that as I heard this story growing up, it was always about waiting for Christ’s return and being left behind. Anybody remember the movie Joe Dirt?

Good, good church movie. Anybody remember that one? There’s a part in this movie where Joe keeps asking people, “Is that where you want to be when Jesus comes back?”

The disciples, the audience, these oral gospels and these later written gospels, the Apostle Paul, and even Joe Dirt all thought that Jesus’s return would be imminent. They thought it was any minute now. Fast-forward thousands of years, and we’re still waiting, even though he says, “You know not the hour or the day.”

Still, sometimes the preparedness manifests itself as fear. We buy car insurance in preparation for an unforeseen accident, right? We take vitamins and medicine to prevent health problems. A 2016 study of U.S. gun ownership by researchers at Harvard and Northwestern showed that not hunting, not sport, but fear of other people drove the U.S. to record gun sales, despite the fact that violent crime had gone down and plummeted that year.

Preparedness can evoke scarcity. Preparedness can evoke fear. But maybe that’s where we have to make a very important distinction: that there’s a kind of preparedness that is rooted in fear and scarcity, but there’s also a kind of preparedness that is rooted in hope.

Fear says, “I better stock up because there won’t be enough.” Fear says, “I have to protect what’s mine.” Fear says, “If I don’t look out for myself, nobody will.” But wisdom, wisdom says something very different. Wisdom says, “Be ready because God is still working.” Wisdom says, “Be ready because God is still at work now.” Wisdom says, “Keep your lamp trimmed, because opportunities to love your neighbor can appear at any moment.” Wisdom says, “Store up what you need, not so you can hide it away or hoard it away, but so that you can be available when the moment arrives.”

Thursday night, as I was looking at the shelves overflowing with paper plates and cups and plastic forks and all these things, I realized that what we had was not a sign of scarcity. It was a sign of readiness. Not readiness for disaster, but readiness for hospitality. Readiness for welcome. Readiness to serve our neighbors. Readiness for the possibility that somebody might be hungry and we have the chance to feed them.

Maybe that’s what the oil in the lamps represents. Not secret knowledge, not this ticket into heaven, not fear that we’ll miss out if Jesus returns tonight. But maybe it represents habits and practices that keep our faith alive even when the world grows dark.

You cannot borrow a lifetime of compassion in the last minute. You cannot suddenly create a community of welcome when the stranger is already at your door. You cannot instantly cultivate courage and mercy and justice in the moment that they are needed. Those things are forged and formed over time. One prayer at a time, one act of generosity at a time, one Room in the Inn overnight shift at a time, one meal served, one stranger welcomed, one injustice confronted, and one lamp tended.

The wise women in this story are not commended because they were afraid. They are commended because they were attentive. They lived as though the bridegroom could arrive at any moment. They were ready. They were prepared.

And I think that that’s Jesus’s invitation to us. Live attentively. Live expectantly. Live prepared. Not because we fear being locked out of the wedding party, but because we do not want to miss the moments when Christ shows up among us. Because if scripture teaches us anything, it’s that he rarely comes when we expect it. He arrives hungry. He arrives thirsty. He arrives as the stranger. He arrives needing shelter for the night.

And blessed are those who keep their lamps burning. Blessed are those who keep their hearts open and have their tables ready, set, and prepared.

Amen.

Fresh Eyes

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, November 1, 2026

Good morning. Lately, I've been thinking about snakes. So, if you need to leave now, I'll give you a minute. I've been thinking about snakes, not least because I'm having a rodent problem at my house. And my boyfriend very lovingly replaced my dishwasher this week because a rat — sorry — had chewed through the cord and the tubing. Sorry. But I've been thinking about snakes because of this whole skin-shedding process. All snakes, they shed their skin regularly. Small snakes about every two to four weeks. And as they grow into adults, it becomes two to three months and then about two to three times a year. What's really fascinating is that right before a snake sheds its skin, its eyes get really cloudy, blurry, the vision is impaired, and they just can't see very well because the old skin that's ready to come off is making it hard to have clear eyes. The process of shedding, it actually begins with their eyes. And you don't have to look at the YouTube videos. I'll tell you what happens. But a snake kind of scoots its head against the ground or a rock, and the skin begins to come off from the eyes down. And then it kind of — I won't do it — but it scooches itself out of the old skin and slithers away renewed. I have been so captivated by the fact that shedding the skin starts with fresh eyes. Maybe you know something about skin shedding, about the need to shake off what isn't serving you and find new clarity.

Last year, I had what I kept calling a skin-shedding year. I ended a long relationship. I had a season-ending injury that has prevented me from playing competitive ultimate Frisbee. I bought a house and moved into it. And on my birthday in December, you all told me that I'd be head honcho as the first female senior minister here. Zora Neale Hurston writes that there are years that ask questions and there are years that answer. And last year gave me a lot of answers to what needed to end and what needed to begin in my life. This blurry vision that I had about what would come next, it began to subside. I was trading in my old skin for something new. But what do you call the chapter after that chapter? Because it was still pretty uncomfortable, this new skin. It came with a lot of anxiety and dread. As I was scooching my way out of the blurriness, I began to ask, who even am I without Frisbee? Who even am I without a partner? And then later last year, who am I with a new one? Who am I as a church leader? I started the year with panic, wondering what I would become in this new skin. And honestly, y'all, I tried to resist the change. I spent a summer in Bryson City as a church intern. And the pastor at that church was a Olympic kayaker, retired Olympic kayaker. He told me that when kayaks turn upside down, a lot of people have a tendency to want to stand up in the current. He said, "But you actually need to put your legs up and let the water take you." And this year I have felt myself trying to stand up in the water to resist what's happening, which is change.

I don't want to believe that there's a season for everything and a time for every purpose under heaven. I only want the good stuff. But there is. There is a season of heartbreak, and there's a season of finding love again. There is a season of joy at moving into a new home, and there's a season of facing the unwelcome rodents in that home. There is a season to play travel ultimate Frisbee, and there is a season to step back from it altogether. A season of following someone else's lead, and a season of showing up authentically as a new leader. And the author of Ecclesiastes knew something about the seasons of life. W. Sibley Towner writes that here is the most real of the realists of the sacred writers of our text. This writer doesn't shy away from the hard parts of life. This writer names that there's death and there's hate and there is even war. But instead of shying away, this writer covers 28 experiences that all human beings see or experience or face. In these seven verses — maybe you noticed it — there's 14 antithetical pairings. About these verses, Towner goes on to write, "The wise person's task is to know when the right time has come and to move visibly with whatever invisible program there may be." To move visibly with whatever invisible program there may be. In other words, I think there is an invisible program at work in my life, and maybe yours. And I call that program God's will. I believe it is happening in tandem with a God who is present with us, but who doesn't give or take away, simply walks with us through these seasons. And all we have to do is surrender to it. Easy to say, but harder to do. And as the author Wendell Berry wrote, saying, "Thy will be done," might be the hardest part of any prayer. Surrender is not easy.

How do we accept that there's a time to weep for what or who has been lost, and then there's a time to laugh, maybe unexpectedly, months down the road at a memory of that person? There's a time to keep silent in shock of all the terrors of the world, and then there is a time to speak at the hope of a better one. There is a time to embrace a child or a loved one or a grandson. And then there are times to refrain from embracing, like a unexpected pandemic.

I wish desperately that life did not hold both. But I have learned, mostly from following Jesus, that there are a thousand crucifixions and resurrections in this life, and that none of us get out scot-free, not even our Savior. I think of Don Schlitz's song "The Gambler." For those of you who didn't get a chance to meet him, he was a beloved member here who passed away this year, a prophetic songwriter, and he wrote "The Gambler," which Gabe is going to sing. You don't want me to sing it. And it reminds me of Ecclesiastes. It really does. Don writes, "You got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them, know when to walk away and know when to run." But there is a season for shedding skin and a season for living into new skin. There is a time to hold your cards close to your chest, and there is a time to let them go. A time to throw away stones, a time to gather stones together, a time to mourn, a time to dance, a time to seek, a time to lose. If snakes shed their skin a few times a year, then I think we are something to marvel at, because we shed millions of skin cells a day and we just can't see it. Which means we are always becoming, which means God is always doing a new thing. But life, it is both beautiful and brutal. And as the author Glennon Doyle says, we might as well call it brutiful.

And it's hard to accept this beautiful life. But the most real of the realest of the wisdom writers tells us that there is a time to be born, there is a time to die. And today we don't cower from this truth. We actually honor it, and we name it, and we hold space for it. We honor that baby Lizzy and baby Ellis were born. And we honor that — we honor the death of Judy and Sandra and Beth and Dawn and all those names on your heart right now. It reminds me of a poem that Mark Nepo wrote called "Adrift." Excuse me. He wrote, "Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch. As this ache makes me look for those I've lost, I look for them in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. And in the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we've lost face each other. And it is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful."

The author of Ecclesiastes frames this passage with the two seasons of life that bracket something miraculous: birth and peace. Meaning that death and war do not have the first or the final word. I don't know about you, but I believe the final word is love itself, risen to offer us a hope eternal where, as the hymn we just sang says, where all our labors can rest, where there breaks a still more glorious day, and where all are one in Christ Jesus, whose name is forever blessed.

Amen.

Not on the Test

It’s a Monday morning and you walk into class to discover that there is a pop quiz. The teacher has this smirk on his face. He knows that very few of you have prepared for this pop quiz, and he has some tricks up his sleeve. The class is Religion 101. You have been studying the 613 commandments and laws in the Torah from Genesis through Deuteronomy, trying to retain the ones that prohibit and the ones that provide. Trying to remember the dos and the don’ts. There’s laws on property rights. There’s laws on punishment. Laws on idolatry, taxes, sacrifices, marriage, employees, food preparation, festivals. You get the picture. Examine the marks on the cattle before eating. Enter the temple during this festival, but not this one. Make sure the scales and the weights are correct before you measure something. You’re toast. You sit shaking at your desk, your pencil in hand, waiting for this teacher, whose smirk grows wider, to drop the piece of paper on your desk. But instead, your teacher stands at the front of the class and says this: “Instead of handing out a quiz this morning, I want you to write down for me which commandment in the law is the greatest. By the way, this is 50% of your final grade. Go.” You immediately rack your brain. Okay. Should you put Leviticus 22:23 about not saying the Lord’s name in vain? That’s a pretty good one. Or Deuteronomy 6, learn the Torah and then teach it. That would probably be impressive. Or what about reciting grace after meals like Deuteronomy 8 says? That feels like something we should do every day. What is the right answer? And then you look over and you see a kid get up, and this kid doesn’t have a look of pride or triumph on his face. He doesn’t have a look of challenge or contempt on his face, but one of mercy and tenderness. And he slowly walks up to the front of the classroom, and he grabs the hand of the teacher, and he looks into his eyes, and he says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and all the prophets.”

You stare, stunned. The teacher relaxes his shoulders. The smirk leaves his face. You see him wipe at his eyes. And then he asks to be excused. The kid goes back to his seat. And before all of you put down your pencils, you look around in wonder at what has happened.

You do not hear another word from the master of the trick questions.

This, church, is a story about what they do not grade you for. And this might feel more like a sermon for a graduation ceremony. But as I look around, I see a congregation full of people who are continually assessed for what they know, what benchmarks they hit, and whether or not they are right. But in a world that demands academic excellence and career success, how quickly you are able to implement the new software at your company, how efficient you are at turning in reports, how many accolades or A+’s you have, what your ACT test score was, how impressive your resume is. Buried beneath such a heap, Theodore Wardlaw writes, “something called gospel is struggling to get free.” This gospel cries out to you. I am wrestling with the myth of being right. And I am begging you to remember what they don’t grade you for.

They don’t grade you for church attendance and whether you show up with it all together or not. They don’t grade you for making varsity. They don’t grade you for winning a trophy. They don’t grade you for how big your house is or how many nice things you have in it. They don’t grade you for how many figures your salary is or what kind of car you drove to get here. They don’t grade you for how much attention your social media gets. You don’t get graded on whether you tithe the most or if you succeeded in losing that weight. You don’t get graded on how much of that book you can recite or on whether or not you are right. No. Based on Jesus’s response to the Pharisee, it doesn’t really seem like we get to move ahead in the board game of life if we get it right or are the best or seem the most pious. Dang it. The question, as Anne Lamott writes, is, “Do I want to be right or do I want to have a loving heart?” And then she writes, “And will this be on the test?”

Will this be on the test? We ask our teachers. And if it’s not on the test, then we really don’t bother learning it. But what’s not on the test, I reckon, is the very mustard seed of the gospel, buried beneath the heap of self-importance and accolades. The mustard seed of the gospel that boils all 613 of these laws and commandments down to their essence and says this: “Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself.” Now, they don’t grade you on that, do they? The thing about Jesus is he trades in righteousness for mercy just about every time. And on a Monday in between Palm Sunday and his crucifixion — so Jesus knew something about Mondays — when tensions are building between him and his enemies, when a Pharisee challenges him in public, one who is pretty deeply versed in Jewish law, when all this is happening, Jesus makes it plain: love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. The loving God part, that actually would have been a pretty mainstream idea. No surprises there. It’s the loving neighbor part that really would have shocked them all, because here Jesus doesn’t mean your next-door neighbor who pulls out the lawnmower before 8 a.m. Although we’ll get into that later. We’ll get into that later. No, the love command, this is from Leviticus 19. It actually follows a series of commands that govern the behavior of how we treat the weakest members in our society. So, right before the love command in Leviticus 19, it says, “Don’t withhold wages from day laborers. And when you’re in your field and you have stray ears of corn and fallen grapes, make sure you give those to the immigrant and the poor. And don’t stand by when another person’s life is at stake.” Those are the commands right before the love one. So, Israel’s covenant with God, it actually calls them to prioritize loving their neighbors. And by that, it means the most vulnerable. It means the poorest. It means the most disenfranchised. That’s who Jesus is talking about. That’s pretty shocking stuff for the people who always got it right.

When I look around at the landscape of faith in our country, it seems like some people believe that you can love God without loving your neighbor. Amen. But as Michael E. Lee writes, one cannot love God without loving who God loves. One cannot love God and oppress or exclude any of God’s creatures, even one’s enemies. That is horrible news. Even one’s enemies. But I know that I’m smarter than the people who write hate comments on our social media, right? I’m smarter, and I’m definitely right when it comes to who I vote for. And I have God’s favor ’cause I give away my stuff to Goodwill twice a year. And God definitely loves me more than God loves the people who immediately stand up on the plane when it lands and weasel their way to the front.

I’m right. Right? There is so much that is not on the test that we may fail to learn it if we are caught up in acing this thing called life. There is so much that you will not get graded for that seems to be at the heart, mind, and soul of Jesus’s gospel mission. And a lot of it is thankless, and a lot of it is small, and a lot of it is grassroots. A lot of it is unnoticed.

Here’s what’s not on the test.

Saying sorry first. Writing a thank-you note. A real one, like pen in hand, broken cursive. Letting that person who pulled up at the same time as you have the parking space. Paying for someone’s groceries. Giving that kid a ride home, even if he lives on the other side of town and it’s rush hour. Ceaselessly praying. Picking up the phone and calling first. Crying with someone as they grieve. Taking yourself on a walk just to marvel. Just to marvel at all God has created. Giving your partner the benefit of the doubt for the thousandth time. Celebrating a friend’s milestone, an engagement or a wedding or a baby, even if you’re a little jealous. Giving money to causes you believe in and never getting a thank-you. Getting down on the floor to play with kids instead of looking down at them. Writing a letter to a senator. Recycling your bulletin. Belly laughing. Flipping tables at injustice. Buying some of the McDonald’s cards for our guests at Room in the Inn. Dressing up in costume just to see people smile. Doing your darnedest to love God and to love your favorite people and to love your least favorite people, which might include yourself, with heart, mind, and soul. That’s not on the test. And it’s not new material. It wasn’t new material for the Pharisees. They would have heard that before. And we’ve heard it before, too. And maybe that’s the problem. He says, “We already know what we’re called to do. We already know what we’re called to be. But so often we are unable to do it.” Thank goodness the psalmist writes that God’s mercies are new every day. Every day. That there’s no grade in following the gospel, that this doesn’t count for 50% of anything.

So, church, I hope today you get an A+ in attentiveness to the creation that God has stirred up for us. I hope you get a B in boldness at speaking the truth to power. I hope you get a C in compassion, even if it is not given back to you, and a D in devotion to really loving God, to taking a couple minutes, putting your phone away, and saying thank you. And yeah, I hope you get an F in forgiveness, even when it is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Even if you think they really don’t deserve it.

After Jesus gave this commandment, it says that from that day on, nobody dared ask him any more questions.

Love stopped them right there in their tracks. And then love won, didn’t it? And it wasn’t even on the test.

Amen.

The Way of Prayer

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, October 18, 2026

When we talk about getting our steps in, I don’t think anybody is better at this than the prophet Moses. From the very beginning of his relationship with God, God tells him one thing over and over again: Go. When Moses encounters God, as scripture says, a blazing bush, God says, “Go assemble all the elders of Israel. Tell them that the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham and Jacob and Isaac, sent you. Tell them that God has appeared to you, knows what’s happened to your people in Egypt, and wants to bring you out of misery.” Moses tried to get out of it a bunch of times, and God said, “Go. Go back to Egypt. Everybody seeking your life is dead already.” Moses goes back to Egypt. And God says to Moses, “Go tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.”

Many of you know this story. God says time and time again, “Go to Pharaoh.” Pharaoh doesn’t listen. God turns water to blood. Go to Pharaoh. Pharaoh doesn’t listen. Frogs cover the earth. Go make sacrifices to me in this land. Pharaoh doesn’t like that. Livestock dead. Go. Go to Pharaoh. Pharaoh doesn’t listen. Locusts. Finally, Pharaoh says, “Okay.”

Moses takes the Israelites to the Red Sea, and all of a sudden, the people cry out. Moses cries out to God, “Do you really have our back? Because we’re walking in the middle of a sea right now, and at any moment it could just come crashing in.” God says, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go. Go forward.” So they go, and they reach the wilderness. The people have just been liberated by God, and they begin to grumble. “We’re hungry. We’re thirsty. Where’s the food? Where’s the water? At least when we were slaves in Egypt, we kind of knew what was coming in our situation.” So God says, “Go strike this rock at Horeb. The same staff that you used to part the sea, strike the rock with that and water will come out.” And even after that, the people look around and say to each other, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Then they get up to Mount Sinai, and we have a series of Moses really getting steps in. He goes up to the mountain to talk to God. God says, “Go back down.” He goes up the mountain again to talk to God. God says, “Go back down.” He goes up the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, and God hands him two stone tablets with a really important covenant on it. And while he’s up there for 40 days and 40 nights, the people have grown impatient. Because they’re not certain where God is, they build this giant calf made of gold. God hears about it and says, “Go back down the mountain. Here are the tablets written with,” and I love this, “written with the finger of God.”

Scripture says, “Is the Lord among us or not?” The people wonder when Moses is up there talking to God. So they build these idols to worship certainty and materialism. They build gods of gold. “Go down at once,” God says, putting Moses on the move yet again. And this time, God is really angry. “I have liberated you from slavery. I have freed you from oppression. I have given you manna and quail and water. What more do you want from me? You couldn’t wait for 40 days. Go. Leave this place.” God says, “You and your people, Moses, you and your people who I brought up out of the land of Egypt, go to the land that I promised you. And you know what? I’m not going. I’ll send an angel before you, but I’m not going. When you go to this land, there’s milk and honey flowing for you, but I will not go among you, because if I do, I’m going to consume you, because you are a stiff-necked people.” I love that, “stiff-necked,” because I feel stiff-necked this morning in multiple ways. What a great term.

We might be tempted to really believe that this is the last straw for God. That after complaining about their liberation because they didn’t have enough, after grumbling to Moses because they kept wanting to know, “Are we there yet?”, after turning their back on God time and time again, maybe this is the cherry on the cake of God’s abandonment.

But given God’s track record of sticking around with God’s people despite their stiff-neckedness, we might assume that, as Walter Brueggemann writes, “Because Yahweh speaks, Israel has a post-calf possibility.” That’s what Brueggemann says. Isn’t that fun? A post-calf possibility. Even though Israel is rich in things and poor in spirit, a post-calf possibility. Even though they’ve chosen gold over God, a post-calf possibility.

God is still in conversation with Moses despite the whole golden calf situation. Is the Lord among us or not? It would seem as though the Lord is.

So once again, in a sermon for another day, God changes God’s mind. “Okay, I’m coming with you.” God says, in one of my favorite verses in Exodus, God says to Moses, “My presence will be with you, and I will give you rest.”

Not just that kind of rest that some of us will go and experience after church, but the rest of settling in a community flowing with abundance. The kind of rest that trusts the presence of God. The kind of rest that doesn’t need to build idols out of fear because it deeply knows and believes God is with them.

And God keeps saying go.

Many of us know that feeling. I know actually several of you are in the midst of moving houses. God bless you. God is inviting you to a rest that doesn’t really feel possible when you’re packing up boxes and painting over holes in the wall from pictures that you put up. And still God says, “Go. There’s milk and honey on the other side of this big move.” Go. God might be telling you it’s time to find a new job. Or go. God might be inviting. It’s time to retire from a job. Go visit that family member even though travel is tiring. Go to the doctor even though you’re scared to make an appointment. Go to that new school even though you don’t really know a lot of people. Perhaps God is inviting some of you to go to Vine Street. Even though some of us like the Georgia Bulldogs. It’s quite a verb for Moses the prophet. And it’s quite a verb for us, that God is continually a God that’s on the move, who doesn’t allow us to sit stagnant in one place for too long and get comfy. God pushes us forward. Go.

And in response to this, in response to God saying, “Go,” Moses just wants to know. “God, you’ve said to me, ‘Bring up this people.’ But you haven’t said who you’re going to send with us. You haven’t let me know. You said that I know you by name, and you’ve also found favor in my sight. If I found favor in your sight, show me your ways so that I may know you, God. How shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight?”

And I don’t know if y’all heard it, but when I read this passage, I hear kind of a whiny Moses who is so insistent, who is in such a tizzy that God potentially isn’t going to go with him and the Israelites, that he keeps missing what God is saying. For those of you who raised a toddler, you know this. The toddler is like, “Can you get me a bottle of milk?” And you’re like, “Yeah, I’ll go get it.” You’ve got the bottle of— They see you with it. You’re filling it up with milk. They’re like, “You didn’t get me a bottle of milk.” You put it in the microwave to warm it up. They’re like, “I guess I’ll never have a bottle of milk.” Like, it is literally right here. You’re looking at it. You start bringing it over to them. They’re like, “I just wish you would give me a bottle of milk.” God says time and time again, “I have found favor in your sight. I know you by name. I’m coming.” And Moses is like, “I just don’t know if you are.”

But I think that’s because Moses is comfortable enough to be daring and bold and insistent and even whiny and brave in his prayers. Because this isn’t the first time Moses has talked to God. They’ve been in an intimate dialogue throughout their entire relationship. One that has never really hung up the phone on the other, so that Moses can be a guy who pleads. I was reading back over the book of Exodus, and it really is kind of one long conversation between a very human man and a very present God, with events threaded in between it. Do you feel like you can have a present conversation with God, being whiny and bold and honest and raw, knowing that God has that bottle of milk waiting for you?

This intimate back-and-forth thing they’ve got going on for a while, it’s so relatable. “God,” Moses says, “you said you would go.” “I said I’m coming. I know you by name. I’m doing the very thing that you asked.” Moses just wants to be certain. Is the Lord among us or not? When I move houses, when I switch jobs, when I enter a new relationship, when I change schools, when I try a new church, is the Lord among me or not?

He can only know if God lets him know. Walter Brueggemann says, “Israel is only Israel if God is present.” Maybe Vine Street is only Vine Street if God is present.

And Moses in this passage, he wants more from God. God’s presence is not enough for him. Moses again, he demands certainty. He looks at God and he says, “Show me your glory.” So God responds with four really powerful affirmations. God says, “I will make my goodness pass before you. I will proclaim before you my name. I’ll give you my name, Yahweh. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, Moses. And I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.” And interestingly, I love this, the literary structure of those last two promises, it’s actually a rhetorical device used to terminate a conversation. So in Hebrew, it’s like, “Okay, I’ll be gracious to whom I’ll be gracious. I’ll show mercy to whom I’ll show mercy. This conversation’s over. We’re done here.” God says, “Just trust me. I’m coming with you.”

God honors Moses’s need to experience God. Don’t we all feel that way? But God doesn’t honor it completely. It’s like this bird that I kept hearing when I was in Scotland called the corncrake. Has anyone heard of a corncrake? What? Well, let me educate y’all. The corncrake is a bird that loves to be heard but is rarely seen. People from all over brought binoculars to Iona, and we would go on walks and we could hear the corncrake, but after days, nobody saw one. Rarely do people see a corncrake. It’s elusive and mysterious and just out of reach. Kind of like God in this passage, or how you may experience God. You remember the Apostle Paul said, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.”

So whether you like it or not, you get your steps in with God. God always invites us to go. And just when we feel maybe comfortable or complacent or stagnant, God puts us on the move again. Whether the people like it or not, they go with the presence of God among them. Not just the presence of God, but a God who says, “I will give you rest, milk and honey. I promise you.” If only they will give up needing to know, needing certainty. If only they will trust that in God they are known. In God they are known.

So here comes the epic journey of wandering in the wilderness. That’s the spoiler alert for what happens next. The Israelites, and maybe you, have wilderness days coming.

So, if there’s anything I’ve learned from this passage, I want to pray like Moses. I want to be whiny. I want to be demanding and bold and insistent. I want to pray honest, raw prayers, trusting that I am dialoguing with a God who has never hung up the phone on me. And I want to trade in my certainty for faith. I don’t have to know. And I want to go. I want to go with you. Believing that, as Exodus wrote, as God said to Moses, “My presence will be with you, and I will give you rest.” 

Amen.

The Good Stuff

Sermon preached by Rev. Kate Fields on Sunday, October 11, 2026

Well, good morning, y'all. It's so good to be here, Vine Street. I love Vine Street. I'm so honored to get to bring the word this morning. Thank you to Reverend Margie. Thank you, Reverend Wesley, for the invitation to be here. I bring greetings on behalf of St. Augustine's Chapel and the Reverend Becca Stevens and Yuri Rodriguez and all of our congregation. We are grateful for the work that y'all are doing here in Nashville. Thank you for the work you do with Insight Counseling Centers and on National Coming Out Day. Thank you for the work that y'all do for the LGBTQIA community. It is liberatory, and we are grateful, from our congregation to yours.

The first time I came to Vine Street (I'm from Nashville, so I know about Vine Street), I first came in the sanctuary, which I think was a different sanctuary, or I don't know, y'all renovated since, but it was 2012. It was the presidential election, and y'all hosted an Election Day communion here at Vine Street, and it was the first time I had experienced this great church. And since then, I have been back for different things along the way.

And it's so good to be here today in a Hebrew Bible text that I haven't been in in many years. I was glad to revisit this text in the Exodus saga, the story of the golden calf. I bet many of us remember this from Sunday school growing up. When Moses goes away for many days, and given that Moses is this direct link to God for the people, they feel abandoned and afraid, and frankly they panic because he's not there. And so they do what they've always known, and they worship an old god that they knew from Egypt, and they say, "Aaron, come make gods for us. Who shall go before us?" That is the request of a people who are scared. They needed some control of the situation. They needed to know that someone was going before them. And so out of their fear, they made an idol.

They couldn't see the freedom that was already theirs, and they couldn't see what was to come. And so God became angry. We know this. And God told Moses what was going on and sent Moses straight back to the people to say it was Yahweh who delivered y'all from enslavement, right? Not these gods that the calf represents. Don't forget who it was that brought you freedom. So Moses pleads with God, and God changes God's mind. And what a story, what a lesson that transcends years and is still a good word for us this morning in October of 2026.

We may not have golden calves in our home foyers, right? But we know what idols are. Idols can be anything that we put our hearts into, our attention, our love, and before we know it, it soaks up our passion and our heart and our time and our energy. They can be in the shape of a person who we've given our hearts and attention and our love to, but before we know it, we're hyperfocused on that person, and we can't remember who we are anymore. An idol can be a pursuit of wealth. It can be an addiction. It can be a fear that keeps us small. Idols are often things that we're familiar with and things that we can control, because the unknown is just so scary. Sometimes an idol can be how you always have to be right and you just cannot listen to someone else's way. Or an idol can be this deep anger and vengeance for someone who has wronged you, and it truly possesses you. It becomes the vortex that all of your energy goes to.

And we can have societal idols. We know that y'all preach. I know that y'all preach about it often. Collective idols that hold things like whiteness supreme. Idols can be anything that we make them, right? And some of them are not, like, ontologically, they're not bad in and of themselves, but it's what we do with them. And I'm not... there's really no judgment. I've had idols. I know that you have had idols. The thing is, though, they keep us hollow. I was thinking about it this week. They really make us shadows of ourselves, right? They keep us from our best selves.

And there's a great Southern word for this. The word is cattywampus. Has anyone heard this word? Oh, good. Okay. I thought they're gonna think I am just from the other side of town or something and have created a word. But no, it's a real word. It's a word that means mixed up. Like when you are about to go get your Christmas lights that you threw in a box last year because you were trying to get your decorations down before February, and you didn't tie them up correctly, and they are a jumbled mess, and it will take you 30 minutes to get them unraveled. They are cattywampus. That is a giant, directionless mess. And I think that's what idols do, right? They tangle us up. They mix us up. And we don't know who we are anymore.

It's like we're malnourished, eating junk food when what we really need is actual nutrients. It's like those... I do a lot of work in the food system, so I think about food all the time, but you know those tomatoes that look like a tomato that you get at, like, a supermarket, and you cut into them and try to eat them, and it's just like water? And it looks like one, but it does not taste like one. And it's like, it's not the good stuff. It's not the tomato from over here, from the farm, grown in Tennessee soil, that is an heirloom seed. And when you cut it, you smell it. Your hands smell like it. You put it on with Duke's mayonnaise and you eat a sandwich, and that is a tomato. That's the good stuff. That's the difference in idols and love.

And I think that's the rub. It's what I want to say most today. It's the heart of this Exodus story. It's that idols take us away from the life that we could have. It takes us what? Away from what could be for each and every one of our lives. The golden calf took people away from who had actually liberated them and who could become the one to set them free.

I think about this in the Isaiah text that we read today, which gives a vision of God's people when they would come out of exile in Babylon. The text is this: "On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, a feast of food filled with marrow, of well-aged wine strained clear." This is the good stuff. God is the good stuff. The food that nourishes us. It reminds me of this great Ani DiFranco song lyric, which is, "You are really good food, and I am full."

And that's what I want to say: that there's an abundance of really good stuff for each of us today if we will just let that idol go. If we stop holding on to what is no longer ours to hold, the idol will stop possessing us. And slowly we'll remember who we are. We'll remember that the very best thing that we can experience in this life is love. And love doesn't possess. It never possesses. It always creates space. Beloved, love creates space always.

Love is the most powerful force for change in the world. It heals and it liberates, and it asks us to be our best selves and to give ourselves to the work of the healing of the world. And this is hard, and it's scary, and a lot of times it requires faith and not control. And so it's easier to stay with what we know, right? With that thing that we know. But that isn't love. Love does not possess. It creates space.

And we can't do the work of the healing of the world if our hearts are clouded by an idol, a false love, a shadow. We miss out on the best stuff, this abundant life that Jesus talks about. The cost of what we miss out on when we worship idols is enormous. And I think that's what I want to say. It isn't about the judgment of the thing. Like, we all have had idols. We're just all the same. Like, we're all in the same boat. It's all... but it's what you miss out on when that thing takes up your heart.

You are really good food, and I am full. Oh, that we would taste and see that the Lord is good, right? What a good psalm. Many of y'all may know of the work of Thistle Farms, or maybe you've been to the Thistle Stop Café on Charlotte Pike, or you've bought some oil. I'm wearing it today, from Thistle. But if not, I'd love to tell you a little bit about Thistle Farms for just a minute, because this text today really made me think of the story of Thistle Farms. Reverend Becca Stevens, who is our lead priest at St. Augustine's, along with St. Augustine's, started Thistle Farms 30 years [ago making] soap in St. A's kitchen, making a huge mess in our kitchen in the chapel. It started off in what was called Magdalene and now has expanded to the largest national network of long-term, free residential beds and sister organizations in the United States for women. It has expanded now, even now.

And most of the women this serves first experienced abuse when they were children, and then they began using alcohol and drugs by age 13 and hit the streets between 14 and 16. These traumatic childhood experiences gave way to homelessness, addiction, abuse, incarceration, and further poverty. The stories of the women of Thistle are just something else, if you ever get to hear any of them.

And at Thistle, we believe that love is more powerful a force than any of the things that drive women to the streets, and that a strong community will help them heal, and not just heal, but thrive. And reading our text this morning, I think about how many women were on the street because of society's idols that put them there, out on the street. Idols we pay a big price for, and these women certainly have. And how it took love, and not the idol of racism or judgment about addiction or criminal records, for these women to be empowered to become the heroes of their own stories and change their lives. This idol stuff, y'all, is death-dealing. It exists in the shadows, and it destroys us, and the price that we pay for it is enormous.

But what we can create together if we don't worship shadows is love. We can create a love economy, which supports human dignity, healing, and community. So that's the work I invite us into today, the work that is for the life of the world. There's this great text in John 6 where it says that Jesus came to be the bread of life and was given for the life of the world.

So let go of what isn't yours to hold anymore. It's not yours. Let it go. Let it go for yourself, so you can be your best self, so you can remember who you are, so you can be free. And let it go for others too, y'all. Let it go and choose a love that creates space for everyone to be their best selves. A love that does not see a 13-year-old on the street and let her stay there. It's time. This is our work. "What are you doing with this one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver asks. St. Mary Oliver.

As I close, I'm reminded of this other text in Isaiah, just a little bit later in chapter 55, that says, "Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread, and your earnings for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food." Delight yourselves in the good stuff. We follow the bread of life. The God of the brokenhearted. The God of the disinherited. The God of the forgotten, the alone, the oppressed, the God of women on the street, the God of the hungry, the one who can and will give you a wild and precious life full of love and meaning and the good stuff, not shadows and idols.

So when you come to the communion table today, which I love, that it's the center of your gathering, bring your hunger for the good stuff and eat the bread of life. The bread of life, not death. The bread of life. That we would all become what we receive and eat today. That we would be free. Amen. And may it be so.

What Freedom Looks Like

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, October 4, 2026

Good morning. If you've been here for the last couple of weeks, you know that we just spent four weeks in the book of Revelation. And personally, I really enjoyed that study because revisiting these books of the Bible that we don't spend a lot of time in and kind of reclaiming those books from those who would use it to instill fear, conformity, and power has been really, really empowering for me. And now we're about to spend three weeks in the book of Exodus. And while we didn't know what the world would look like when we planned this, I can't think of a more perfect transition.

Because as we said, Revelation was never written to help Christians escape the world. It was written to help Christians see the world more clearly. Revelation refuses to let us look away. It pulls back the curtain. It exposes the realities that we've learned to easily ignore, and it wakes us up. It was written to those seven churches in Asia Minor, as you might remember, that had become comfortable with the way things were. Churches that were tempted to accommodate injustice, churches that had settled into apathy, while systems of violence and oppression carried on around them. And John's message to them was, "Don't worry, you'll get out of here soon." His message was, "Wake up. Pay attention. God is at work, and God is calling you to be faithful now."

And that perfectly brings us to the book of Exodus. For many of us, the Ten Commandments are familiar. We know them as rules. We know them as laws. We know them as religious obligations that we've heard since growing up. But before God gives a single commandment, God says something else. God says, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." So this text doesn't begin with the rules. This text begins with liberation.

God is speaking to people who have known oppression. People who have lived under a system where some lives mattered more than others. Systems where people have experienced violence and exploitation and fear. And God says, now you are free. This is what freedom looks like. This is how a community of justice and dignity and belonging lives together. These commandments teach us what life looks like when God rather than fear holds power. They teach us what society looks like when human beings are treated as sacred. They teach us that neighbors matter, that workers deserve rest, that truth matters, that families matter, that life itself matters.

So, as we begin this three-week series on exploring Exodus, it's worth remembering where the Israelites were when they heard these commandments and what events took us and led us to this place. Because these commandments were not given to a comfortable people or a settled people. They were given to a people who were on a journey. A people who were learning to live in freedom after generations of bondage and slavery.

You see, after celebrating their deliverance at the Red Sea with songs of praise, they quickly faced the hardships of the wilderness together. They complain about the bitter water and the hunger and thirst that they experienced. And again and again and again, God responds with provision for them, making the water drinkable, sending manna and quail for food, and bringing water even from a rock. Along the way, they are attacked by the Amalekites, but they are sustained through God's help. Jethro, who you might remember from the movie Prince of Egypt, is the father-in-law of Moses, and he advises Moses to share leadership responsibilities so that the community can learn to flourish together.

Finally, in the third month after leaving Egypt, 90 days later, the Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai, and there God reminds them that they have been carried on eagles' wings out of Egypt and invites them into this covenantal relationship with God. The people prepare themselves amid thunder and lightning and smoke and this trembling earth. This really dramatic scene, and God descends upon the mountain, setting the stage for giving of the Ten Commandments that we read this morning.

This is again a people who are learning to trust God in freedom. And so God reminds them who he is. And God gives us these Ten Commandments that so many of us learned growing up. Have no other gods before me. Make no idols. Do not use the Lord's name in vain. Remember the Sabbath. Honor your parents. Do not kill. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not lie. And do not covet.

What I really love so much about revisiting these books, as I mentioned, such as Genesis in June and Revelation last month and now Exodus this month, is that we get to revisit these texts that we've heard a thousand times and perhaps learn something new about them. Perhaps something that we didn't learn when we were younger, or perhaps something that we weren't ready to learn until we had experienced life as an adult. So let's walk through these commandments again, maybe with new eyes this time.

Number one, have no other gods before me. In the ancient world, other gods were often linked to empires and military power, wealth, and social hierarchy. Today, our gods may take different forms, such as nationalism, greed, consumerism, perhaps political ideology, white supremacy, the things that we hold on to in our systems. Systems that demand ultimate loyalty while harming God's children. These modern idols promise security and identity, but often at the expense of justice and human dignity. So this first commandment asks us whether our deepest loyalty and where it is and where it lies. Will we follow the God who liberates the oppressed or the gods of profit and exploitation? Will we serve the God who hears the cries of the vulnerable or the gods of wealth and power and domination? Will our allegiance belong to God's beloved community or to those systems that other and dehumanize?

Number two, make no idols. The second commandment warns us about idols. And we often hear that word and we think of golden calves or carved statues or ancient temples, but idols are not confined to the ancient world, are they? An idol is anything that we create and trust more than we trust God. An idol is anything that claims our loyalty and shapes our identity and demands our devotion. Wealth can become an idol. Political power can become an idol. Nationalism can become an idol. Even religion can become an idol, when we begin to worship our idea of religion, our image of God, rather than the living God.

The dangers of idols, though, is that they always make God smaller. Idols reduce God to something that's manageable, something that we can control and possess, something that we can use to justify our own agendas, something that we can easily overlook or ignore. This week, the Secretary of War stood in front of military leadership and our brave folks in uniform and said that we are fighting a war against religious fanatics. And then he went on to quote scripture more than he did military strategy. Meanwhile, this senseless war continues. You see, we love to create a God who looks like us, who thinks like us, who votes like us, who blesses everything that we already believe. But the living God refuses to be contained by our own assumptions or by our ideologies or our fears. The call of this commandment is to let God be God. Refusing to bow before any image, ideology, or institution, or power that demands devotion that belongs to God.

Number three, don't use the Lord's name in vain. I remember getting popped when I was little. Popped every time I said, "Oh my God," instead of, "Oh my gosh." Anybody else? You got the scars to prove it. As if God really cared about the difference of those three little letters. As an adult, I know that while, yes, language does matter, that is an extreme oversimplification of what that commandment is saying. We were told that it means not cursing or not swearing or not speaking God's name carelessly. But this commandment is about far more than just words.

In the biblical world, a name represented a person's character, a person's reputation, and their identity. To bear God's name meant that you represent God before the world. Let me say that again. To bear God's name meant to represent God before the world. So the real question is not how often we say God's name, but how faithfully we live in God's name. We take God's name in vain whenever we claim God's authority for things that contradict God's character. We take God's name in vain when we use religion to justify prejudice or exclusion or oppression or violence. We take God's name in vain when we speak of God's love while refusing that love to our neighbors. We can avoid every swear word in the world and still break this commandment every day.

Number four, keep the Sabbath. Now, here's where I'm preaching to myself, y'all. If you know me, I'm not content unless I'm doing three too many things at once. This commandment reads like this in the NIV version: "Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not work on it. Not you, not your sons or daughters, or your male or female servants, not your animals, or the immigrant who's living with you."

The commandment to remember the Sabbath is about more than just taking a day off. It declares that our worth is not measured in our productivity. The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt. Right there, their value was defined by how much they could produce. But by giving them Sabbath, God taught them a new way of living. That they were no longer slaves, but free. And notice too that the Sabbath is not reserved for the powerful or the wealthy. It's for everybody. Everyone is included. Children, servants, immigrants, even animals. Sabbath is one of the Bible's most radical visions of justice, because everyone is entitled to rest. It reminds me that God's kingdom is not built on endless labor and exhaustion or expectation.

So perhaps the Sabbath question asks us this: Are we living as a free people, or are we still serving the idols of productivity, achievement, and busyness? Ouch, that one hurt. Are we living as a free people? Are we still serving the idols of productivity, achievement, and busyness? I know I am. But this commandment invites us to resist a world that tells us that our value comes from what we do, and instead to remember that our value comes from what God gives us, who we are.

Number five, honor your parents. The commandment to honor our father and mother is often heard simply as just obedience, right? But it's really about sustaining healthy relationships and communities across generations. In the ancient world, honoring parents meant recognizing our responsibilities to one another and ensuring that our elders, our families, our communities were cared for rather than abandoned. This commandment calls us to build a society where people can age with dignity, where families have the support that they need to flourish, and where we learn from those who came before us while also preparing this world for those that come after us. Honoring our parents is not about blindly accepting what they say or do, but rather about recognizing our interconnectedness with them and taking responsibility for one another and each other's well-being.

Number six, do not kill.

Sometimes things happen in the world that forces us to pay attention, don't they? This week was one of those moments for sure. Across Tennessee, many people found themselves talking again about life and death, justice, punishment, and what it means for a society to take a human life. The attempted execution of Christa Pike brought difficult questions back into public view. Questions about accountability, about mercy, about whether redemption is possible. Questions that many of us and many in our society would rather not think about.

I'd say Christa Pike, who did do something unimaginable and inexcusable in 1995 when she took the life of Colleen Slemmer, has spent nearly 30 years on death row. And despite several other botched executions this year, they proceeded with lethal injection this past Wednesday. The execution descended into chaos when Pike, who's aged 50, survived two rounds of lethal injection drugs and was rushed to the hospital. Her attorneys on October 2nd said that she was unconscious and on a ventilator. "Hospital staff are working to save Ms. Pike's life and clear the pentobarbital from her system," her attorney said on Friday, comparing pentobarbital to bleach and Drano. It's caustic and highly alkaline and burns upon contact, including skin, tissue, and veins. And apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed, or that the veins had blown and the pentobarbital was in whole or in part entering Ms. Pike's body.

A catastrophic failure on Wednesday that caused Frank Strada, the commissioner of the prison system, to resign right as they are opening an investigation. And one would think that after this gruesome, inhumane treatment, you would think that you might see the complexity, the expensiveness, the sickening truth of state-sanctioned murder as a sign that perhaps we don't need to be taking a life. And yet the woman who is most likely to become our governor made bringing back the electric chair a campaign promise. God help us.

You see, we love to cite "do not kill" when it comes to abortion, and apparently abortion only. Not when it comes to genocide across the globe. Not when it comes to the wars that we start. Not when it comes to the 52 people who've died in ICE custody. Not for the 18 migrant miscarriages that have occurred in ICE custody. Not when it comes to the 256 transgender lives lost last year to violence. But friends, "do not kill" says that every human life is sacred, because every single person bears the image of God. We do not get to assign worth based on what they've done or who they are, where they're from, if they've come here legally, because they have been claimed by God.

Number seven, eight, and nine. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. I think these are pretty self-explanatory. All of these are about honoring the dignity of others while protecting the trust that makes community possible and those relationships possible. In each case, the harm extends beyond just an individual act. It weakens the bonds that hold us together. These commandments recognize that healthy relationships and communities are built on mutual respect, integrity, and faithfulness.

Under these commandments, young men should know that they can never violate a young woman unconscious in such a disgusting way as the Cornell 7 did. And furthermore, under these commandments, the powers that be know that they cannot make excuses for them. They cannot assign them essays instead of jail sentences. They cannot worry about these young men's futures, but not the safety of these young women on their campuses. These commandments call us to reject every form of exploitation. They call us to be trustworthy in our relationships and equitable in our dealings with others. At their core, these commandments ask whether we are treating people as gifts to be cherished or objects to use.

And finally, number ten, do not covet. This commandment moves beyond our actions and into desires. While the other commandments focus on what we do, this one asks us to examine what's happening in our hearts. Coveting begins when we become consumed by something that belongs to someone else, whether it's possessions or status or success or relationships. And I think growing up, we all thought this was just wanting other people's stuff, right? I admit I've coveted Brock's boat. It's a beautiful boat. He's since sold it, unfortunately, but I coveted it for sure. I coveted the $39.5 million house I saw in Zillow the other day in Fort Lauderdale. Looked beautiful.

But after going through these today, I think we all know that it's so much more, so much deeper than just wanting other people's stuff, right? This commandment challenges a culture that constantly tells us that we are incomplete, that we need more to be worthy or successful or happy. It calls us away from scarcity and comparison and greed and invites us instead into gratitude and generosity and contentment. Rather than viewing others as competitors or their blessings as threats, we are called to celebrate one another's flourishing and work towards a community where everybody has enough. God's vision of this world is not defined by endless wanting, but by a beloved community that is shaped by gratitude and generosity and mutual care.

So perhaps that's the question before us this morning. In a world still marked by violence and division and injustice, will we treat these commandments as ancient words carved into stone? Or will we hear them as God's living invitation to become a different kind of people, now, here? Because these commandments were never merely about personal morality. They were about forming a beloved community. A people who worship God instead of idols. A people who tell the truth. A people who honor one another's dignity. A people who rest when they need it. A people who honor life. A people who reject greed and exploitation and violence. A people who reflect God's dream for the world.

So hear this charge this morning, and think about these things as we reflect on the book of Exodus this month: that the God who spoke at Sinai is still speaking now. The God who spoke at Sinai is still calling us now. Calling us away from idols of power and fear. Calling us away from the lies that divide and dehumanize. Calling us away from the violence that wounds God's vulnerable children, and instead is calling us towards justice, calling us towards mercy, calling us towards beloved community. So maybe the question is not, is God still speaking, but instead, are we awake, and are we ready to hear it?

Your Vision of Heaven

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, September 27, 2026

I asked in the newsletter this week: what's your vision of heaven? Jack sent me... thank you for responding to the newsletter, Jack. Wow. Jack sent me a really beautiful answer of how he perceives heaven, and I would love to read how you do as well.

What's hard about all of this being-alive business is that we're in the middle. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, "You don't wish to live without the beginning, without the end, because being in the middle causes you anxiety." God created, and we were not front row for it. God will reconcile all things into a new heaven and a new earth, but we haven't gotten tickets to that show yet either. So we often wonder, with great awe and fear and maybe even curiosity: what happens after this? Where do we go when we die? Heaven. What does heaven look like? Who gets to go? What might it be like? These are questions that a lot of us have wrestled with. Some from a young age, and some who are older are wrestling with that as they reckon with and face their own mortality.

I started thinking about it more when my sister-in-law Tallu was diagnosed with brain cancer and died about five years ago. She wrote a beautiful book called What We Wish Were True, and it's about reckoning with life when you know you're going to die. She was actually buried out at Larkspur Conservation, wrapped in a shroud, and we buried her in the ground. It was a really beautiful moment and also very intimate with death. In this book, at the very end of it, she writes a meditation, and she calls it "Some of What It Might Be Like," where she's maybe wondering what happens after she died. This is what she writes, just a little bit of it:

"It might be that I'm a waxy leaf rushing downstream, following the curve of the water, flipping, tumbling, somersaulting down the watershed, a delight right in the water. Or maybe I will be cosmic, a ball of light, a star in the night sky, obvious and out loud. Or maybe I will be a song, golden words rolling off of someone's tongue, a tune anyone can hum. Or maybe I will be the ears that hear it."

And she continues on. She says, "Maybe I'll be a wide quilt large enough to cover a multitude. Maybe I'll be a box turtle lounging on a log to get as much of that hot sun. Maybe I'll be a forest floor, damp, sweet, constantly renewing itself through death and decomposition." She goes on and on, wondering what it might be like. And this is the last line of her book: "May we become all of this and more."

If you have been hanging out with us this month, you have persisted through quite a book. We have heard about dragons and beasts. We've heard about seven seals being broken from a scroll. We've heard about seven trumpets blasting and seven bowls of wrath being poured on God's people. We've heard about the four horsemen. There's stuff in there about the mark of the beast and the lake of fire. All this violence, all this chaos. It's not a prediction of what's to come. It's a wake-up call from a guy named John who's exiled on an island, writing to seven churches that need to be awakened to the ways in which they are complacent to empire. Y'all know anybody like that? The realities of Rome.

It's too much to wrap our heads around. And so for fifteen chapters, John is giving us a diagnosis. You want to know how broken the world is? He says, "I'll show you." You want to know how complicit we are in systems of oppression? "I'll write it out for you." It's been a hard couple of chapters to get through, and we've spent the last few weeks looking pretty unflinchingly at the pathology report. And now today, finally, we get to hear about how to heal this illness. We hear about heaven. And for a guy on an island, we hear about some of what it might be like.

And some of what it might be like actually begins with (I don't know why we love the number seven in this book) seven things it won't be like. It's an interesting way to hear nos as we try to figure out God's final yes. He says, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth. I saw a holy city, a new Jerusalem. It was actually coming down from heaven to us."

And the first thing he says of what it's not like, he says, "The sea was no more." For those of you, when you picture some of what it might be like, your toes in the sand, you looking out at the water, that's not really what he's talking about here. The sea in those times represented chaotic power. In Revelation 12 and 13, we read about a beast coming out of the sea, a metaphor for the Roman Empire, for these armies and imperial cults who would come to touch ground and rule. Chaotic power coming to threaten and intimidate the people. The sea will be no more. Maybe also for John, the sea is what's separating him from his beloved communities. There will be no more separation, and I will not be exiled on this island far away from you. The sea will be no more. That's his first vision of heaven.

Two: there will be no tears, death, sorrow, crying, or pain. The home of God is not somewhere up there or out here. God says, "I'm among mortals. I will dwell with you. You will be my people, and I will be with you." Death will be no more. Mourning will be no more. Pain will be no more. Crying and suffering will be no more. Not in this new heaven.

The third thing it won't be: there will be no cowards, no faithless, no polluted folks, no murderers, no idolaters, no liars. The people reading this would have known exactly who John was talking about. People who were bending the knee to Rome. People who would rather worship an emperor than worship a loving God. People who were so scared of the wrath, of the greed and power of a leader, that they turned away from what was inside of them to bow down to something intimidating and threatening. He said there's no more of that. There's no wealth hoarding. There's no power mongering. There's no lying. There's no fear spreading in the new heaven.

And then no temple. No temple in heaven, no set-apart place where we encounter God, 'cause God is everywhere in heaven. No temple. No... and I'm looking at Katie... no electric bills. No gnats in the sink. No internet woes. No HVAC systems going down. There's no church tension and strife. There's no place to go to church in the heavenly city, because what John is describing is that God is the temple. The Lamb, Jesus, is the temple. We don't need to siphon off in buildings to gather, even though we know, Vine Street, that we gather in order to go out and be the church in the world. John is saying God is that, permeating everything and everywhere in this holy city.

And the fifth thing it won't be: the city has no need for sun or moon or light, because the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. There is light in the heavenly city because God is that glorious light. Isn't that a beautiful image? Its lamp is the Lamb. Say that ten times fast.

The sixth: there will be no closed gates in this city. Everyone is welcome in. There is no lock. There is no password. There is no discriminating against who is in and who is not out. The entrance of the city is open to all people.

The seventh thing John says heaven won't be: there's no curse. Nothing is accursed. The angel shows John nothing will be cursed anymore. We'll be stripped bare of all of our shame, of all of our guilt, of all of our resentment, of all of our anger, of being naked and afraid. We will walk vulnerable and open into God's loving embrace, into this new city.

What do y'all think of that?

It's easy to dream of this new Jerusalem, this new city coming down, this future that we can escape to in our minds. But did you notice that when John was writing about this, he used some past-tense verbs? He said, "I saw a new heaven and earth," like Mary and the Magnificat. God has already filled the hungry with good things, already sent the rich away empty. It's been fulfilled. The already and the not yet. And if it's been fulfilled, and it is being realized before us, maybe we have a part in making it happen. John saw it. As William Pender writes, John cracks the window shades on this room that we call reality, and we catch a glimpse of God's world surrounding us, just beyond the walls of reality.

What changes for you? What changes for me if we believe that heaven is not remote? It's not what we wait for until the rapture comes. It's not where we go when we die, or not just that. But as Eugene Peterson says, it is immediate, and it is also barely out of range of our senses, but it's brought to our senses because of this guy's vision.

So heaven begins on earth, at least for John. It's the invisible to which we are drawn now, he says. And when we are drawn to it, it will develop into a full visibility, a full completion. And the features of heaven John describes, they are what we already know. I've seen it. Have you seen it? I've seen the seven nos that John lays out. There's no chaotic power when I hold a baby. There's no tears or sorrow when I spend time out at our church camp. There's no cowards or liars when I go down to the Capitol and I see people speaking truth to corruption and greed. There's no temple, but there's church outside of church, like an AA meeting or a hike at Percy Warner or a shared meal with a bunch of misfit toys. There are no closed gates, but an open table. And there is no curse of shame. There is only abounding freedom. Imagine glimpses of heaven all around us. The invisible breaking in, desperately wanting us to see it, to experience it. But not just that.

Earth is crammed with heaven. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes, "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."

What happens when we look up from plucking blackberries, to see heaven all around us, to see earth? Don't you love that? That verb: earth crammed with heaven.

What John notices, though, it's not a blackberry bush. It's not even a garden. Heaven for John is urban. Heaven is a city. This is the dominant theme in his vision. It's a city where we don't just sit back and look at it, the splendor, but it's a city where we have a responsibility to renew and restore and redeem and reconcile it. Which means we play a part in bringing heaven to earth.

But the biblical track record for cities, it ain't great. Y'all remember the first city in the Bible, the one that was built by Cain? He murdered a guy. Y'all remember Babel? Y'all remember Sodom and Gomorrah? Y'all remember even Jerusalem? Jesus says in Matthew, that's the city that kills the prophets and stones whoever is sent to it. "How often I have desired," Jesus says, "to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing."

And of course, Rome. Babylon. What about Nashville? We haven't always had the best track record. These broken cities, they actually have a holy city to strive toward. Heaven is not eternal nothingness. William Pender writes, "Heaven is not eternal nothingness, because we continue to have work to do." Is that daunting, or is that encouraging?

So for John, for Tallu, this is some of what it might be like. And if we receive this letter, just like the seven churches did in Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and so on, we're given a greeting. It's a good way to start a letter. And then we're given a wake-up call, the diagnosis that we really have to look around us at the brokenness of what we've done and come to terms with it. And then we're given an invitation. And the invitation, whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, is not to escape, but to engage. Not to wait, but to work for heaven. To be hopeful enough to believe in the healing of the nations. To be imaginative and bold enough to believe that there is a new heaven happening, where God is making all things new, where we will see God's face, John wrote, and God will be our light, John said, and we will reign forever and ever and ever.

The beginning of that big book (and that one is particularly big): God. And the end of that big book: God. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end. And so when we feel this messy middle of anxiety, that we didn't get a front-row seat to the beginning, that we don't have a ticket yet to the end, it means that we can both hope and work toward an earth that just might be crammed with heaven.

And this is just some of what it might be like. Or what it can be like, or what it should be like, or what it will be like.

May it be so. And as Wesley often says, may we make it so.

Amen.

Pulling Back the Curtain

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, September 20, 2026

The Muppets Christmas Carol. Why are y'all already laughing? You haven't even said anything. The Muppets Christmas Carol is one of my favorite movies. It's one of my family's favorite movies — one of the ones we quote the most in our family. I was reminded of this movie this week by Dr. Barbara Rossing, a scholar on apocalyptic literature in the Bible, who used The Muppets Christmas Carol as a metaphor for the book of Revelation. Y'all know the story: Ebenezer Scrooge, this callous and selfish guy, has lost the meaning of Christmas. His heart has turned colder and colder as his pockets have become fuller and fuller. So he's visited by three ghosts who hope to instill in him a transformation of sorts — the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and finally the Ghost of Christmas Future. The Ghost of Christmas Future takes him to a graveyard, and he finds that people are happy and gleeful that a wretched man has died. He comes to realize that they're celebrating his death. Scrooge looks at the spirit and says, "Are these the shadows of things that will be, or the shadows of things that may be only?" The spirit points at the gravestone, and Scrooge slowly approaches. "These events can be changed," he cries out. "A life can be made right." He clears the snow from the stone and finds his own name. "Please, spirit, no," he says. "Hear me. I'm not the man I was. Why would you show me this if I was past all hope?"

We are in week three of studying the book of Revelation. That word simply means a revealing or an unveiling — not revealing a future escape from the world, as we've come to learn together, but unveiling what already is happening in the world, and what could be if we don't take a good, long look at the brokenness of Rome, or the many names that Rome has had throughout history. For those of you just tuning in, there's a guy named John — not John of the Gospel of John, but John of Patmos. He's exiled on the island of Patmos, and he's writing a letter to seven churches along this Roman postal route — like down Harding and West End and back again. He's writing to churches, some of which are poor, some of which have more resources, but all of which are slipping into spiritual apathy and complacency, and starting to be tempted to worship Roman imperial culture rather than a god who made manifest in a vulnerable lamb. That's the image of Jesus throughout this book. Last week, John addressed these churches, and then he had a vision — a vision of a heavenly throne room. But instead of the emperor being seated on this throne, it was God. And instead of Roman rulers and attendants bowing down before this ruler, it was angels and creatures of every kind and elders. Worship, John seemed to say — heavenly worship. I'm inviting you to consider this: the gathering, the centering, the singing, the listening. This was a different kind of worship. And by the end of it, remember, there were rainbows and seas of glass and singing — not to an emperor that the emperor was worthy, but to God: "Thou art worthy. Thou art the one to receive power and honor and glory. Amen and amen." Feels like Christmas morning.

Wow, what a heavenly sight. And we could just stop there, couldn't we? But then, just like that, the Lamb — let me give you a little visual. Pretend like this is an ancient scroll. The Lamb is holding a scroll with seven seals on it, and the Lamb begins to open the first seal. In a galaxy far, far away — just kidding. The Lamb opens the seal, and here begins the messy middle of the book of Revelation. The messy middle, which is Revelation 6 through about 19. We're not going to get to all of it today — and that's why we're studying it the whole year. Just kidding. This messy middle — it's not a prediction. As Dr. Rossing points out, this is a wake-up call. This messy middle, this seven seals and seven trumpets and seven bowls of wrath, is showing the churches that there is something wrong in the world. There is an illness, and we can't even talk about healing and hope until we've really addressed the diagnosis. We've got to really examine what is going on in the world. And folks, it ain't good.

Just how sick is the Roman Empire? Just how sick is the state of things on earth? We're about to find out.

The first seal opens, and there is a white horse. There's a rider on this horse with a crown and a bow and arrow, and this rider came out conquering and to conquer. The color white at that time meant victory — but not eternal and holy victory through peace, but victory through violence, military conquest. We've got to think about — in that time, just twenty-five years earlier, this invincible Roman legion had been crushed by the Parthians. So this horse, this metaphor, is familiar to these churches reading this letter from John.

The second horse: the horse of war. Its rider was given a sword, and it was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people would slaughter one another. The people would be reminded when they read this that just a few years after this Roman army was thrashed, there was a bloody civil war in Judea, destroying Jerusalem and the temple. They would remember that.

And then a third horse. This horse was black, and a voice said, "A quart of wheat for a day's pay, and three quarts of barley for a day's pay." This horse was famine. And the tragedy of famine, as we know, is that daily necessities — like wheat and barley, or gas for our cars — are priced out of range for average workers. That's what happens when we enter war. So around the time of John's writing, the crops were failing. There was a disruption in the food supplies. This horse would have been familiar.

And finally, a fourth horse. This horse was pale green, ashen, like those who die. Its name was Death, and Hades followed it. Its rider was given authority to kill in all kinds of ways.

These are the first four seals opened in this scroll, and they show not what is going to be — they show what is. They are revealing a sickness and brokenness in this world.

And then there's a fifth seal, because we're not done yet. This fifth seal is opened, and under the altar are the souls of the martyrs — people who have been killed and persecuted for their faith — and they are told to rest, because unfortunately, more people will die. But it won't last forever. This would have been familiar to them. Thirty years earlier there was a great fire in Rome, and Christians were blamed for it. So many suffered and died. This fifth seal, these martyrs under the altar — it would have been familiar to these people.

And a sixth seal — this one is so gripping and haunting and jarring. There's an earthquake. The sky turns dark. There are gales of wind. You've got to remember, Mount Vesuvius had erupted thirty years before, so this image of ash and darkness, of wind, of the earth rumbling — it wouldn't have been unfamiliar to these people. All the kings and the army generals and the rich and the powerful — they want to hide in caves. Why? But not just them — everyone, slave and free, everyone wants to hide. They even say, "Let the mountains fall on us, for we want to hide from the wrath of God."

How bad was it that they thought God was wrathful? When, in fact, as William Barclay points out, the wrath of God is always the wrath of love — which is not out to destroy, but even in anger, is out to save the one it loves. How bad had it gotten, church, that they thought they would be punished? They're so scared, even though they have forgotten our God is not one of wrath but liberation. And so they ask, "Who is able to stand? Who is able to face and endure what is going on?"

And then the seventh seal is broken. And this seal — you'd think it would bring more violence. You'd think it would bring more chaos and pain and bad news. And yet what it brings is thirty minutes of silence in heaven.

As if everybody needed a little nap after all that. Thirty minutes of silence in heaven. Is it the calm before another storm? Or, as a couple of theologians have pointed out, maybe that silence was heaven halting — a listening. Because what happens in chapter 8 is you start to hear the prayers from the saints. Even the music of heaven and even the thunder of Revelation are stilled, so that God's ear may catch the whispered prayer of the humblest of God's trusting people. War and famine, military conquest and disease, cosmic upheaval and the killing of the souls of martyrs, the powerful and the disempowered hiding — and then silence.

And I wish it ended there, but this is the messy middle, and so it's back to the brokenness of the world we go. Angels enter the scene — seven of them. This number seven keeps coming up: Sabbath, wholeness, unity, the churches. Seven angels holding seven trumpets, and later these angels are given seven bowls of wrath. And in both instances, what they sound out and what they pour out are seven plagues. And these plagues are not just random plagues — does anybody want to guess what these plagues are reminiscent of?

Egypt — I heard it. Whoever that was, I've got a cake for you.

The plagues of Egypt. So when we read about these trumpets and these bowls, what's poured out, what's sounded out, are frogs and boils and the water turning to blood and fire coming down. It was the same reminder of these plagues that were begging Pharaoh to repent, and he didn't. As if God is saying something about these nations that also won't repent. As if John, like Moses, is trying to speak to these unrepentant people and say, "Did you not hear when I unsealed the scrolls? Did you not hear the Lamb? Did you not hear the trumpets? Well, then it's time to pour out these plagues."

This is a messy middle — a diagnosis of spiritual and ecological disaster and brokenness, if nothing changes. And if you want to keep reading — if you're a really good student, like whoever said Egypt — what continues is more beasts and dragons, metaphors for Roman imperial rule, for people at that time who demanded power, who were greedy, who were hungry for everyone to worship them, to say, "Thou art worthy." To say, "Thou art God." To say, "Thou art Lord."

This vision didn't happen in a vacuum. This vision happened as a reaction, as a promise that things could be, can be different, if we can wake up enough and shake our spiritual apathy enough to see it. You picking up what I'm putting down? That even though this book feels long ago, it is right now.

And so we ask, just like Ebenezer Scrooge: are these the shadows of things that will be, or are the shadows of things that may be only?

Why would John show us this? Why would John show them this if all hope was lost?

Clearly, not all hope is lost. But in order to have hope — this is kind of the ironic thing about hope — in order to really feel a sense that things could get better, we have to see things as they are. We have to be unflinching and willing to look at the wound. And in this case, the wound is great. If in order to heal, we need to know what we're healing.

John — he's pulling back these curtains. He's showing us different images. Maybe some of you musicians understand the trumpets. Maybe some of you ceramicists understand the bowls. Maybe some of you writers understand the seals. Example after example, image after image, to try to get their attention, and ours.

And what Scrooge says at the end of this movie — and your homework is to go back and watch The Muppets Christmas Carol — it might be exactly what we need to hear today: "I will not shut out the lessons that the spirits have taught me. Tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone. Spirit, please speak to me." That's what he says. And so this morning we ask: Spirit, speak to us, that we may not shut out the lessons of a book that can feel intimidating and strange and scary and hurtful, but that we may see a book of lessons that speaks to this moment. That we may see a Lamb on a throne — God flipping the script once again, reminding us that not all hope is lost. Not yet.

Peace, Justice, Glory

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, September 13, 2026

I don't know what we have gotten ourselves into with these wings and eyeballs and creatures like eagles and ox.

For those of you who aren't aware, we are studying the book of Revelation this September, and Wesley did an amazing job prepping the intro of this book for us last Sunday. For those of you who weren't here, Revelation simply means revealing. And it's considered an apocalyptic text, which sounds a little bit scary. Many of you may have heard sermons on this book that have frightened or hurt you. But apocalypse, an unveiling, simply pulls back the curtain to see what is. This book was written by a guy named John of Patmos. This is a different John from the guy who wrote that gospel. And he's exiled on an island, the island called Patmos. So you can call me like Margie of Hawaii, okay? [laughter] He's exiled on this island and he has a vision from God. And so he picks up a pen and paper and he writes seven letters to seven different churches. And these churches are on a circular route, kind of like a postal route. So maybe you start with St. George Episcopal. And if you follow Harding, you get to Vine Street, Westminster Press and Otter Creek Church of Christ, Blakemore United Methodist, Christ Church Cathedral, Weston United Methodist. You're writing to seven different churches on this postal route. Many of us think these churches were the people who were being oppressed and marginalized and victimized by the rulers at the time. But a lot of these churches were actually victims of spiritual apathy, of complacency, people who had kind of an anemic faith, who actually were pretty well resourced. [laughter] You think about this strip all the way down Harding and West End, but they had come to believe that their social life was tied up in their religious one, that worshiping an emperor, an earthly ruler, someone who was claiming power and authority was a little more inviting than worshiping this son of God. So John is writing to these folks some pretty wild images, but they get it. He is writing in a language that they actually understand. He didn't write this book as a secret code for you and me to decipher this timetable of Jesus's return. It's a symbolic vision that brought hope and challenge to these seven first century Christian churches. And it reveals history's pattern and God's promise that every human kingdom eventually becomes Babylon and it must be resisted in the power of the slain lamb. Well, you will hear in this entire book, the image of Jesus that we get in the book of Revelation is of a lamb. That visual is so important to our faith and our theology.

But let me back up. So in the first three chapters of Revelation, John is writing these letters and sending them off. In the last four churches he writes to, let's say Vine Street, Westminster, Blakemore, Otter Creek. They don't even know they're being called out today. Nobody tell them. He says, "Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the spirit is saying to the churches." That's his sincerely. And then chapter 4 begins. Caitlyn did an amazing job reading about wings and eyes and all kinds of things. He said, "I looked and there was a door that stood open to heaven, and the first voice which I heard speaking to me, it sounded like a trumpet and it said, 'Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.'" This verse, the first verse in chapter 4 of Revelation, is one of the ways that we have heard a rapture theology talked about, that when John hears this vision that says come up here, in the 1820s when people started this rapture theology, they thought it meant come up. But what Wesley preached last week is that this isn't an escape from our world. This is a revealing of the world that John was seeing and a vision of a heavenly throne room. In other words, a vision of heavenly worship. I looked, he said, and a door stood open into heaven. A voice like a trumpet said, "Come up here and see what our worship is about." What John finds on the other side of this door to heaven, worship that has four elements that I would argue are the same as our earthly worship. Centering, gathering, revealing, and singing. So, first there's centering. Worship is a time of centering for John and his communities, just like for us. And in this case, it's centered around this throne. [laughter] This looks a lot like a throne, doesn't it? It's centered on this throne, on the one who sits on this throne. And in this heavenly worship, there is one seated on the throne, the one we call God, who is shining like jasper and carnelian. Does anyone know what those are? I didn't either. These are precious stones and metals. I kind of imagine like Glinda the good witch. She's in her bubble and there's shining pink aura and there's little stones on her dress. This is what we're invited to do with this book of Revelation. Come up with our own images and metaphors and visuals for what we are reading that make sense to us in Nashville, Tennessee in September of 2026. So we can play with it. We can think about Glinda. We can think about other visuals in our mind that the exiled prophet was talking about. And around this throne, there's a rainbow. It shines like emerald. Is it the same rainbow that God hearkens back to in Noah when God promises after the flood that God will not destroy again? I don't know. And around this throne are 24 thrones.

Seated on the throne are 24 elders dressed in white robes with gold crowns on their heads. Coming from the throne are these flashes of lightning and these thunder rumblings. And in front of this throne are seven burning torches. Are you seeing it? Seven burning torches and seven spirits of God. And in front of this throne is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.

I want to pause there and go back. So in this heavenly worship, what is centered has everything to do with the earthly worship of John's time. In Rome, the emperor Domitian sits on a throne. He demands to be called Lord. He demands to be called God. He demands for people to say, "Hail Domitian," just like hail Caesar. He demands that people say, "Thou art worthy." But in heavenly worship, God sits on a throne. This divine entity and a rainbow shines around this throne. In Rome, there were 24 Roman attendants and rulers that sat and stood in the throne room around the emperor. And they set their crowns before this image of Nero swearing allegiance to an earthly ruler. And in the heavenly worship, y'all following? These 24 elders worship not a ruler hungry for power and authority, but a God. They set their crowns down before one who invites them to center on something of peace and justice and glory.

In this heavenly worship, there is a lamb. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This lightning and thunder we hear. You might have thought about other parts in the Hebrew Bible where we see it. This is a theophany. Say theophany. Y'all sound smart. [laughter] A theophany from God. Kind of like Moses when he went up to Mount Sinai in Genesis or Isaiah in First Kings when he stood on Mount Horeb. We hear lightning and thunder. Sometimes God is noisy. Lightning and thunder drawing people's attention to the one who is centered and the seven torches. I don't know. Could John be talking to these seven churches and saying, "You can be the light. You can be set afire with the gospel. You can be filled with these spirits of God, these seven spirits that John has the vision of." And then this sea of glass. Some people who read this book, theologians and authors, say that John might have just been looking out at the Aegean Sea writing this water, this clear, beautiful water like crystal that he sees. We don't center corruptors of power in this heavenly worship, this throne room. We center the one true God. And then we have the gathering. This is where it gets a little weird. We have four living creatures on each side of the throne full of eyes in front of them and behind them. This is how angels were often described in scripture. So the first one is like a lion, the second one like an ox, the third one has a human face, and the fourth one like an eagle. Kind of like school mascots, but then you glue googly eyes all over them. What's cool is in Ezekiel 1, the priest Ezekiel, he has a similar vision of living creatures with faces like an ox and a lion and a human face and an eagle. This book, which hearkens backward, shows us the way forward. The noblest animal, the king of beasts, the lion. The strongest animal in the field, the ox. The wisest animal, or some think the human. The swiftest animal, the eagle. That's what is around the throne. Just like in Ezekiel, this priest has a vision of God with these creatures, and they dart to and fro with lightning behind them and a throne above them. William Pender writes that the impact of John's vision is this. Around the centering throne are not 24 Roman attendants, but 24 elders. And a lot of people think these 12 elders represent the 12 tribes of Israel. And these 12 represent any guesses? The disciples. Oh, y'all are on it today. In other words, we have all creatures of our God and King represented. Both the history and the future and animals that fly in the air and animals that are livestock on the ground. We have it all. A diversity and a myriad of who centers around this kind of ruler, which is not a ruler at all, but a lamb of God. So, we've centered and we've gathered some pretty interesting characters and then there is a revealing. So, I took you through chapter 4 just then. Do you feel smarter? I feel smarter. And now we're getting into chapter 5. This revealing. So, John sees God sitting in the throne and in God's right hand is a scroll with writing on the front and back of it. John can tell and there's seven seals on this scroll, but no one can open it. No one is worthy to open the scroll. An angel asks, "Who's worthy?" And John begins weeping bitterly. No one on heaven or earth is able to open it. He says, "No one's worthy." One of the elders turns to him. He says, "Don't cry. The lion of Judah, the root of David, he has conquered and he can open it and its seven seals. Did you notice that? He has conquered." Y'all remember Mary's song? Even before Jesus is born, she says, "He has cast down the mighty. He has brought the poor good things. He has conquered already. Only the lion of Judah can open the scroll," the elder thinks. And then John finds out that not a lion, not something intimidating and threatening and the king of beasts opens the scroll, but a lamb, a lamb that is slaughtered, a vulnerable little lamb that is the one who can open this scroll … and the unrolling of this scroll. Again, there's so much intertextuality happening in the book of Revelation. The unrolling of this scroll. It kind of reminds me of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Y'all know where I'm going. When he reads from this scroll of Isaiah and he says, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and to tell you all today that the oppressed will go free." That's the kind of scroll that Jesus Christ reads from. Those the same words in John's vision that the oppressed really can go free under Roman rule. That there will be recovery of sight to those who are blind to the woes of many.

Only the lamb is worthy to unseal this scroll. And only through the lamb do we see what God is revealing to God's people. So worship in this text, it's the center point of what God is trying to show us. All of the people who gather are all kinds of kinds. And what is revealed is revealed by a lamb, a slain lamb. Are y'all picking up what I'm putting down? And finally in these four elements of a heavenly worship that John wishes and hopes for for these seven churches is does anyone remembering? I think I heard it. You should singing singing in Revelation 4 and 5. We get five hymns in this heavenly throne room, which we definitely sing five hymns on purpose based on this book. If you include the Gloria, we also sing five hymns here. It made me think about what we sing when we sing the Gloria a little differently. Glory be not to any earthly ruler but to God who was in the beginning, who is now, who will be forever and ever.

These choruses of praise in this heavenly throne room. They proclaim who is really holy in a world where the emperor deemed that he was when he said, "You tell me I'm Lord. You tell me I'm God. You tell me I'm worthy." And our hymns say, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," which isn't just some hymn we proclaim in a vacuum but an act of defiance in itself that we who are sitting here centered and gathered and revealed and singing are worshiping a different kind of God and a different kind of ruler. Right?

The last two verses in Revelation 5, the four living creatures said amen. They said amen. They said amen to a lamb who was slaughtered, not an emperor who had conquered.

This book which has been so misused, so poorly taken care of, so misinterpreted, so misunderstood. And I have such deep sorrow for those of you for whom this book was thrown at. It reveals so much about what the churches at the time needed to hear to shake their spiritual complacency, to stop believing in the powers of an emperor and begin to understand a heavenly worship from a lamb of God.

And all four living creatures said, "Amen." And the elders fell down and worshiped.

And the church says, "Amen."

The First and The Last

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

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

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

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

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

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

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