What to Leave Behind

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

Good morning. I want to do a little experiment. How many of you know what it means to be salty? Can you shout it out? Well, if I say you’re being salty, what am I saying?

Bad attitude. Anything else? Grumpy. Bitter. Okay. Okay. Y’all are cooler than I thought. Yeah.

If I’m being salty, I’m in a bad mood. I’m frustrated. I’m sulking. I’m letting people know that I’m not happy about something. And so it always makes me laugh when I think about Jesus saying that we are the salt of the earth—because Christians do be salty sometimes.

I think Christians are often salty in bad ways. But here’s what I’m proposing for today: when language is translated and then later transcribed, word meanings—and even their functions—change. It’s good for us to revisit what the author meant by this text and how the audience who first received it would have understood the message. Because obviously, Jesus was not calling these people salty.

So I hope we can dive a little deeper into God’s Word this morning. And as we do so, let’s pray together.

O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight as we seek to hear the Word of God that is in this passage, but also the Word of God that is among us and within us. Amen.

It’s important to note that salt in Scripture is significant in many different ways.

First, salt is a sign—or symbol—of preservation, reflecting its role in preventing decay and corruption. In Scripture, salt was used with meat and other foods to preserve them and prevent spoilage.

Salt is also a symbol of God’s covenant with us. It represents the enduring nature of God’s covenant with God’s people. In Leviticus 2:13, God commands that all grain offerings be seasoned with salt, indicating the importance of this element in sacred rituals and symbolizing the lasting promise between God and humanity.

Salt is also a symbol of cleansing. It signifies the need for purification. In various biblical passages, salt represents the cleansing of sins—both personal and systemic—and the necessity of approaching God with a pure mind, a pure heart, and pure intentions.

It also symbolizes wisdom and gracious speech. In Colossians 4:6, believers are encouraged to let their speech be seasoned with salt, emphasizing the importance of wisdom and grace in how we speak to one another—suggesting that our interactions should be seasoned with kindness, compassion, and discernment.

Salt also symbolizes judgment and consequences. In the story of Lot’s wife, she looks back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah during their destruction, disobeying the angel’s instructions, and is turned into a pillar of salt.

I know it feels a little late to be setting intentions for the year, but I think we have an excuse, right? We’ve had several weeks of snow and ice. We had to get the kids back into their schedules. We had to get ourselves back into routines. So even though we’re already well into February, I’m wondering if we might still set some intentions—for our lives and for our church—by asking a few questions from this passage:

What do we need to preserve?
What covenant do we need to strengthen?
What do we need to cleanse?
What behaviors do we need to season with salt?
And what do we need to leave behind—without looking back—into 2025 and beyond?

There’s so much in this passage that I really feel like it could become a multi-week series. But today I want to focus on the section that the NIV subtitles as The Fulfillment of the Law—verses 17–20.

A few weeks ago, I was working overnight at Room in the Inn and met one of our guests. He was kind and helpful, assisting with cleanup after dinner and again the next morning. At dinner, I had the privilege of listening to his story.

He told me he was a truck driver who drove routes from Reno, Nevada, to somewhere in Virginia and back. On one trip, while stopped here in Middle Tennessee for the night, he transitioned to the sleeping cabin of his 18-wheeler. Before going to bed, he had a couple of beers.

In the middle of the night, police arrived for an unrelated issue—something about lighting or how his vehicle was marked where he was parked. I don’t remember the exact reason. They banged on the cabin door where he was sleeping, searched the cab, and found the open containers. Because the truck was technically on, he was arrested and charged with a DUI.

To be clear: he was not operating the vehicle. He was not driving the truck. But he was still arrested.

Because of that DUI, he lost his job. And because his job also provided him shelter, he lost his housing as well. From there, he spiraled into depression and began using substances—not recreationally anymore, but as a way to numb the pain of losing everything.

Thankfully, he has since found another job, is paying off his fines and court fees, and is beginning to turn his life around. But it highlighted how one decision—however ridiculous it may seem—caused everything to unravel.

Christians have been very vocal lately about the law. Quite literally, some have said that the law is above everything else. As tensions rise in Minneapolis, as Homeland Security and ICE continue to abduct people, as others say, “Well, they shouldn’t have done this” or “If only they had done that,” we’ve heard a lot about the law.

And to be fair, many cite biblical foundations—often quoting Romans 13:

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. And consequently, whoever rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment upon themselves.”

So yes—Paul said that. Paul said that to the church in Rome. Paul said that to a people who were occupied by empire, a people who were directly under the thumb of a very dangerous empire.

But I want to go back to what we were reading just a minute ago—the passage from Jesus we heard today, where he says:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter—not one stroke of a letter—will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never even enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I think what Jesus is saying here is that the law and the prophets are needed. Yes, they are necessary—but not at the expense of love, not at the expense of justice, not at the expense of mercy, and not at the expense of compassion.

In fact, in verse 19 he says, “Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great.”

Romans 13 is an important part of our scripture. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t have been canonized into the Holy Bible. But what purpose is it serving?

I think it’s a stark reminder of how the early church had to survive in dangerous and oppressive times. It’s also a reminder that the early churches were not all the same. They had different contexts. They experienced different trials.

It’s also important to note that Romans 13 has been used throughout U.S. history to preserve slavery, segregation, the separation of families, and now the despicable behavior of our own government toward other children of God.

But in today’s passage, Christ is calling us to more than what the law and the prophets alone have called us to. He says that in the fulfillment of his commandments, we will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. And unless our righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and the scribes, we will never even enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. People do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket. Rather, they put it on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

So my question for today is this: are we going to be salty as Christians, or are we going to be the salt of the earth?

I want to go back to our questions, and I really hope you’ll ponder them this week and come up with your own answers. But I want to share some of mine with you this morning.

What do we need to preserve?
I think we need to preserve the idea that Christians are called to love. Our reputation cannot be based on hate. It cannot be based on who we’re against. God loves all. Christ welcomes all. That must be the first thing people think of when they think of Christians—and I’d be willing to bet that right now, it’s not.

What covenant do we need to strengthen?
I think we need to strengthen the covenant we have with our fellow human beings. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. That doesn’t just mean being nice. It means wanting for them what we want for ourselves. If we want rights, protections, and dignity, then we must fight for theirs as well. People outside the church, people of other faiths, and people of no faith all need to know that we are here for them too—no matter who they are.

What do we need to cleanse?
We need to cleanse ourselves of the need to control everyone. We need to cleanse ourselves of the desire for power and dominance. We need to cleanse ourselves of fear-driven decisions and fear-driven policies. We need to cleanse ourselves of the belief that we are always right and everyone else is wrong. Christ called us to love—and that is enough.

What behaviors do we need to season with salt?
This one is hard for me. We need to be more mindful of how we speak about “the other.” I’m not saying don’t call out injustice. I’m not saying let injustice slide. But when we speak, we must remember that whoever they are, they too are children of God. I’m preaching to myself here. Even the people I vehemently disagree with—even those enacting some of the most despicable actions in our nation and world—are themselves caught in systems of oppression. Those systems have their claws in people who are also children of God.

What do we need to leave behind?
What do we need to leave behind in 2025—with no looking back?

I think we need to leave behind the desire to be biblical but not Christlike. Using Romans 13 to uphold slavery and segregation was biblical, but it wasn’t Christlike. Using Romans 13 to justify hateful and harmful immigration practices may be biblical, but it certainly isn’t Christlike.

In today’s passage, Christ calls us beyond the law and the prophets. He calls us beyond being merely biblical and invites us instead into the abundant life he so often speaks about—the life shaped by love, mercy, and justice.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. People do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket, but put it on a lampstand, and it gives light to the entire house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God in heaven.”

So what kind of light are we going to be?

This week, ask yourself:
What do you want to preserve?
What covenant do you need to strengthen?
What do you need to cleanse from your life?
What behaviors need to be seasoned with salt?
And what do you need to leave behind—without looking back?

And finally, ask yourself: are we going to be a salty church, or are we going to be a church that is truly the salt of the earth?

May it be so.

The Kingdom is Near

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, January 25, 2026

Oh God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts who are gathered be acceptable in your sight. Amen.

In other translations, verse 17 is actually written as: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is nigh.” Repent. That’s not a word that we really say or use a lot in Disciples circles. We don’t really talk about repentance very often. And that’s probably for a good reason. A lot of people find their way to our tradition, to the Disciples of Christ, by way of other traditions that might harp on sin or the depravity of humanity, the need for repentance in order to get right with God. And a lot of that theology has done a lot of harm and damage to folks over many decades.

And yet Jesus calls us to repent in this passage. So what do we do with that? As I read earlier in the Common English translation, Jesus says instead, “Change your hearts and lives, because here comes the kingdom of heaven.”

This passage today begins on a note of danger. One commentator said, “John the Baptist, who is Jesus’s beloved friend and cousin, has been arrested. And so Jesus withdraws to Galilee, but not to hide, but instead to give comfort to some of those that were the most vulnerable among them.” Because at this time, Galilee is occupied by the Roman Empire, and one of their most prophetic voices and prophetic leaders has been taken from them.

Earlier this week, we remembered the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his life and legacy. And so I’m thinking about what his movement must have felt like in that moment when he was taken from them. What did the other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the labor unions or these clergy groups feel? Fear during this time?

But then Jesus proclaims these prophetic words from the prophet Isaiah who said, “The people who have lived in darkness have seen a great light, and a light has come upon those who lived in the region and in the shadow of death; a light has dawned.”

Ancient readers would have recognized these as prophetic call stories. So here is Jesus, following this horrific event, going to those whom he loved and whom he cared for and giving them this word of inspiration — that the darkness, the turmoil, all of this that they had been facing, would not be the final chapter in their story. And then he says, “Change your hearts and lives, because here comes the kingdom of heaven.”

This week, I’ve been following — as many of you have probably as well — the turmoil happening in Minneapolis. Several clergy friends of mine actually have traveled to the city to try and be a witness to the atrocities happening there and to diminish the harm happening. Perhaps you might have seen a little 5-year-old boy named Liam Ramos who was detained by ICE just a few days ago. They used him as bait in order to detain his father. They caught them as his father was walking Liam home from school.

And in the picture that’s being shared on news outlets and social media, you can see this scared little boy wearing a Spider-Man backpack, a little blue bunny toboggan over his head, and this fear in his eyes as he’s being held outside what looks like to be an ICE van. According to several news outlets, another adult who had been living in their home had been outside during this incident and had begged the agents to let the 5-year-old stay with them, but the agents refused and transported both Liam and his father to a Texas detention center.

The family’s lawyer stated that the family did everything they were supposed to do in accordance with how the rules have been set out. They did not come here illegally. They were not criminals, and yet they were taken from their community.

Christians — those following the Christ who himself was a refugee to the nation of Egypt, as we heard in Matthew earlier a few Sundays ago — we’ve been called to proclaim good news to the captives. We’ve been called to proclaim that those who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. And here we’ve been called to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is nigh.

Now, oftentimes when we read this passage, we like to jump to the part about making disciples — creating “fishers of men,” as it says later in this passage — and that’s all well and good. But one commentator that I read said that Jesus’s call to repentance is actually one of the most important pieces of this passage. Stanley Saunders notes that when John the Baptist says that the kingdom is near, by implication he means it’s near but not yet here. So whereas John is setting expectations, Jesus is calling us into participation.

Later in the passage, it speaks of Jesus’ ministry of going out and healing, and that both works toward and embodies this realization of God’s kingdom. So what if, when Jesus says to repent or to change our hearts and lives, he isn’t just talking to the oppressive powers of that day or of this day, but he’s saying that to his own followers who have lost sight of the kingdom of God that is right in front of them?

So what if instead we might say: “Repent of the mindset that nothing can be done. Repent of the idea that evil will always win. Repent of the notion that we don’t have the power to make change. Repent of the belief that ‘that’s just how it is.’ Repent of the feeling that your voice doesn’t matter.”

I know that we’re probably snowed or iced in in this moment. I know that we’re probably stuck behind our phones or iPads, our laptops, our TVs. We’re doom-scrolling. We’re taking in all of this turmoil that’s happening in our world. But I think that this passage is meant to be heard today. It’s meant to be a reminder from God not to give up hope.

We just finished this Advent series on fear. And yes, fear is real. We must acknowledge it. And it likely will never go away. But what we can’t do is let fear rule our lives. We can’t let fear dictate. We can’t let fear act. We can’t let fear write policy or enforce rules. We can’t let fear win in the end.

“The people who once lived in darkness have seen a great light. And a light has come to those who lived in the region and in the shadow of death; a light has dawned to them.” Amidst the turmoil of this life, of this news cycle, I think this is a reminder from God that we have the power to change our world. We have the power to create the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven that Jesus talks about — bringing it to earth now. Not something that we just wait until the next life to experience, but something that we have the ability to cultivate now.

May it be so, and may we make it so. Amen.

Come and See

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

I don't care how many times I have been to St. Thomas West, the hospital right over here. Every single time I walk into that building, I don't know where I'm supposed to go. I don't know where I parked. I don't know which entrance I walked into. I don't know the maze of hallways and how I'm supposed to find you in room 128. And so I always end up going to the desk and saying, “Hey, I'm trying to get to room 128.”

And sometimes the people behind the desk say, “Walk down that hallway. Take a left at the surgery doors. You're going to see room 400. Take a right. You follow that hallway for a while. There's a water fountain. Take a right. And then you're going to take a left at the bathroom.”

And then there are people who stand up and they come around the desk and they say, “Come and see. Let me show you.”

The same thing is true when I go to grocery stores. I was making Mediterranean bowls this week and I wanted to have falafel, and I went to Kroger and I searched that whole dang store and I couldn't find falafel. So I went up to an employee and said, “Do you have any falafel?” And he said, “What is that?” And I don't really know how to describe it. I was like, there are these little balls that have like mush. I don't know.

And instead of saying it's on—well, he didn't even know—but let's assume he did. Instead of saying it's on aisle 12, he came with me and looked for it with me. And you know, we didn't find any at Kroger, but I have a feeling that had we, he would have stayed with me as we searched diligently to find falafel.

There are people who are describers and there are people who are showers. I can't describe to you the sunset at Love Circle, but come and see it. I can't describe to you the queso at Satco, but you need to come and see it. I can't describe to you the way Abby sings jazz at Rudy's. You have to come and see her for yourself.

And in our passage this morning, we meet John the Baptist, who is not just a describer, he's a shower. You know John the Baptist. He's the one who was a voice crying out in the wilderness, this crazy-looking dude who wore camel hair and ate locusts and honey, who said, “It's going to be kind of hard to explain. There's one who came before me. I'm not even lowly enough or worthy enough to untie the sandals from his feet.” He's trying to describe Jesus. He's not gatekeeping the Son of God. He is—and don't be scared—evangelizing about him.

And so he's testifying about Jesus. He says, “Y’all listen up. I saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove onto this man, and I am testifying that he's the Lamb of God. He takes away the sin of the world. He's the Son of God.” Some people might have given him blank looks, but some people in hearing his description gave him attention. And all of a sudden, Jesus’s cousin, the great pointer to the light, started attracting some disciples himself. And they began following him around.

“Look, here is the Lamb of God.” He sees Jesus and that's what he says. He's showing them to Jesus. And as Jesus walks by, as Olivia read, he just says, “Look, that's the Lamb of God.” He shows them the way and then they follow the way—the way and the light, as we say.

And Jesus, kind of turning around, maybe sees this crew following him and he says, “What are you looking for? What are you seeking? What do you want?” And they say, “Rabbi,” like they already know who he is. At this point in our Gospel, Jesus hasn't done anything to warrant people following him. We haven't gotten to the wedding at Cana. We haven't had any healings, any miracles. We haven't heard any sermons in the temple. And yet they recognize him as their teacher and their rabbi. What is it about him?

And he says, “What are you looking for?” And they say, “We just want to know where you're staying.” The Greek translation for “staying” here is “abiding.” We just want to know where you abide and whom you abide with. That's all we're wondering.

And Jesus doesn't respond, “You get on 440 and then you hop on I-65 toward Huntsville.” He says, “Come and see. Come and see. I can't really describe to you what I'm up to. But what if you just come and see? What if you come and see where I'm abiding, the one in whom I'm abiding with, the love that I'm spreading, the justice I'm seeking. Just come and see.”

And guess what happens? It's like one of those good books that you pass around in your friend group or like the Amy Poehler podcast you've probably sent around at this point. It becomes contagious. It becomes contagious.

Andrew the fisherman, who had heard John the Baptist testifying—he followed John and then he followed Jesus—and he went and got his brother Simon and he said, “We found the Messiah. We found the anointed one.” And he doesn't just stop at describing him, but he brings Simon to Jesus. So he's not only showing, he's then inviting.

The guys in our passage today, they do describe the one we follow. Did you catch how many adjectives and descriptors there were for our Savior this morning? We have Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi, Messiah. But they don't stop there. And church, we cannot stop there either.

It might feel really simple to describe this place. It might feel really easy to sit behind that reception desk and say, “We have an amazing choir. We have very meaningful and joyful worship. We have great ministries like Room in the Inn and Community Grants.” And it may feel like enough to tell those stories or show pictures from Trunk or Treat or our Pride parade. You feel like you've done your due diligence by describing what goes on here, by describing the one in whom we follow. You might talk about your Sunday school class or the book study and relay funny moments from the youth fundraiser. But we are not John the Describers. We are John the Inviters.

It takes time to show people how to get to the falafel. It takes time, and it's sometimes inconvenient, to continue to welcome people who visit here or who are out there. What is going on in the life of this church takes time. But I believe that John, Jesus—they don't want us to stop at using descriptors for the one we follow. They want us to beckon our hand out and say, “Just come and see. Just come and see.”

And I don't know about you—it's even outside of my comfort zone. And I am a minister. I have become a little bit self-effacing about what I do and the community that I serve because I don't want to pressure anyone. I don't want to pressure people who have been harmed by the church, who have religious trauma. I don't want to force anyone to come and see what's going on here. And yet, it's contagious, right? The music we hear on Sundays, the ministry that goes on downstairs on Thursday nights, the grants that we offer people—nonprofits and grassroots organizations doing the work of justice and fairness—the conversations that you have in Sunday school where you're really chewing on Scripture, the kids that make you laugh in children's Sunday school. There's something contagious happening here.

And I don't want to scare people off by evangelizing to them, but I want people to come and see. And that's how I feel convicted. That's my job in this new year: to be bold and unafraid of saying we're a different kind of Christian in this world. And if you are feeling heartbroken by the church or lost or scarred, just come and see. Just come and see.

Being a Christian is not about what I'm doing. It's about the one in whom I follow, who first invited me. And I wonder who first invited you. Can you call them by name? Was it a friend or a grandmother? Was it a camp counselor or a fellow student? Who was your great inviter?

I don't think it's about me. I think it's about the one who first invited me. I think it's about asking where Jesus abides and following him there and then inviting others—like Andrew—inviting others to hop on the train and follow along as well.

And y’all don't take my word for it. The proof is in the pudding, because right after this passage, right after this passage, Jesus calls Philip and Nathaniel and he says, “Follow me.” That's all he says. Just “Follow me.” And pretty quickly Nathaniel asks Philip—anybody remember this?—he says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good really happen on Harding Pike? Can anything good happen in Nashville, Tennessee? Can anything good happen right on this little street?” And Philip says, “Just come and see.” That's what he says, church: “Just come and see.”

In John 4, after Jesus meets with the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman runs back to the city. And what does she say? Say it with me: “Come and see.” That's exactly what she says. She says it to the whole city. Scripture says—and listen to the next verse right after she says it—“The people left the city and they were on their way to him.” Not missing a beat, they followed.

If you believe that Jesus is up to something in your life—something compelling and contagious, something indescribable sometimes—then it is not enough to just call him your Lord and Savior, your teacher and your friend, your Messiah and God enfleshed. It's not enough. It's not enough to describe the influence that he has on your life. You’ve got to walk people to aisle 12. You’ve got to take them out to lunch at Satco. You’ve got to drive up Love Circle and watch the sunset with them. You’ve got to bring them down to Room in the Inn. You’ve got to take them to choir rehearsal on Tuesday nights. You’ve got to bring them to worship here—even if you're sitting directly into the sun.

That's what we're called to do. Because some people can't find the directions. They need us to help them locate what's going on.

After Mary finds Jesus in the garden, after he's resurrected—remember this—she immediately says, “Teacher,” just like John and the disciples do today. Teacher. And I love this so much. Jesus says, “Don't cling to me. You can't gatekeep me. I'm not your secret. I'm not just for you.” He says, “Go and tell folks what you've seen.” And our very first preacher in the Gospel runs down the hill and tells people, “I've seen the Lord.”

Jesus is not just for you and me to cling to. He is for us to show and invite, to usher people in, to talk about the effect that he's had on your life—the ways that he has transformed and changed your heart, galvanized you, and loved you so unconditionally with grace upon grace that you can't help but sprint after him when he says, “Follow me.”

So, are you just going to describe him? Are you just going to describe this community that follows him? Or, like the one that we follow, are you going to invite people to come and see like John the Baptist and Andrew? Like the Samaritan woman and, yes, Mary.

Can you say it with me one time? Come and see. Yeah. Three words. And then you can let people make the decision for themselves. Maybe they don't come. There were a lot of people who didn't follow Jesus. And maybe they do. Maybe they do.

I don't think we're in the business of telling, church. There's a lot of talk going on these days. I think we're in the business of showing, of inviting. So, I don't know about you, I'm going to try to show up and invite others to see that there is something good that comes out of Nazareth. There is someone good who comes out of there, and he is up to something radical and loving and groundbreaking and amazing in our lives. Is he not? So just come and see.

Amen.

Another World is Possible

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, January 11, 2026

On Thursday morning, I woke up with a really troubled spirit. My soul was disturbed, is how I would put it, because the day before, as you know, a woman named Renee Nicole Good — she was 37 years old, the age of Pastor Wesley, a mother of three — was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officer in broad daylight. As the officer approached her Honda Pilot, you can see her turning her wheel to the right, away from the agent, before he fired three shots and killed her. Her partner can be seen rushing toward the car and a physician at the scene asked, “Please let me check on her.” But he was refused. In broad daylight on a street in Minneapolis, one of God’s beloved children was taken from us. And if you have felt fear this week, you are not alone. It feels like fear is getting the final say these days as the powers that be — the powers that deport and detain, that threaten us, and yes, even kill — loom large.

In our scripture this morning, we hear that same narrative of powers looming large — of those six words we heard the very first Sunday of Advent back on November 30th when we read Luke 1:5–13. Those six words that said: “In the time of King Herod.”

The words that frame our entire Christmas story. And church, we have to frame our Christmas season in these words. Because as you and I know, the King Herods of this world and of Jesus’ time still loom large in the background or the foreground.

Herod, who represents the worst of what power can do to someone, exists between every line of our Christmas story.

Today, we read that in the time of King Herod, there were wise people from the East who came to Jerusalem to ask about this child who was born a different kind of king. They said he was not King Herod — he was King of the Jews. We often sing about these three wise men in our Christmas season — the three kings who traverse field and fountain, moor and mountain to follow this rising star. And that term “three kings,” magi apo anatolon in Old Persian, simply means “magi from the East.” There’s no specification of gender or number of people or religion. So anytime I can find a woman in scripture, I’m going to find her. In the Zoroastrian tradition, men and women could hold this title. It isn’t a stretch for us to wonder if you and me were some of those magi — this group of people following stars all the way to the birth of Christ.

And then we quickly learn that when King Herod hears of these foreign astrologers coming to pay homage to the child, he is frightened. He is frightened.

What is he so scared of? Why is he so scared of the title of a newborn baby born in a poor town, not in a large city, somewhere insignificant, in a smelly barn? What is he scared of?

He secretly calls for the magi and he wants to know the exact time that they saw this star appear in the sky. Then he says, “Okay, go to Bethlehem. Find this child. Tell me when you have found him so that I may pay homage to him as well.” Deceit at its finest. So they set out obeying what he tells them to do and they follow this star until it stops right over the place where Jesus was born. And when they see this star stop in Bethlehem in this broken-down barn in a poor village, guess what Noah just read? That they were overwhelmed with joy. That in the midst of fear looming large, they were overwhelmed with joy.

When was the last time, church, you were overwhelmed with joy?

When these men and women get there and they see Mary with Jesus, what did we just hear? They immediately kneel. They kneel when they see this baby, in awe and obedience to another kind of king.

And here we get this really neat imagery that you and I know well in our Christmas pageants, that we’ve sung hymns about. They open their treasure chests and what are the three things they offer? Ready? Gold.

I’ve never known what myrrh is. But gold — maybe for a different kind of royalty. Frankincense — this fragrant resin used in incense and perfume, maybe the same perfume that Mary Magdalene used when she took her hair to Jesus’ feet before he was crucified. I wonder if it was that frankincense. And myrrh — which is this sort of gummy resin that’s used as an anti-inflammatory and treats wounds. Did they know Jesus was going to be wounded when he was beaten and flogged by empire? Did they know he would need myrrh for the harrowing journey ahead?

In any case, after they give these gifts, they spend the night, and in a dream — there are so many people who are visited in dreams — they are warned not to return to Herod. And I love this verse. Ready? “So they left by a different road.” They left by a different road. Having seen what they saw, having been overwhelmed with joy, having knelt at the Christ child, they return home by a new route, a new way, possibly this new transformed life. Perhaps believing that in the midst of this power-drunk king and empire that was using coercion and control to threaten its people, in the midst of all that, perhaps they choose to believe that another world is possible.

On this day, we celebrate Epiphany. And so we might ask ourselves: what kind of epiphany provoked these wise men and women to go down a different road than the road of Herod? You know — a different road, church. Reverend Dr. Boy Lee writes: “Epiphanies, they’re not always warm and personal. Sometimes they’re disruptive. Sometimes they’re dangerous. Sometimes they lead to confrontation with empire. Sometimes they ask us to cross borders. Sometimes they send us home by another way. They ask something of us, church. Will we move the way fear makes us move? Or will we move the way love calls us to? Will we move the way fear makes us move? Or will we move the way love calls us to?”

So on Thursday morning, when I wanted to move the way fear was making me move — when I woke up with rage — I reached out to Pastor Wesley and he said, “There’s a vigil taking place at the ICE facility not far from you, not 10 miles from here, and it’s this morning — Thursday morning — and I don’t know who’s going to be there, but come.” So I met him there, where over a hundred people gathered — clergy, United Methodist and UCC, Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ clergy, teachers, students, all kinds of folks. And we gathered and we lit candles and we shared stories of heartbreak and pain. And we lamented together and we sang songs. And between every story shared — by people who have had siblings deported, by people who volunteer tirelessly to protect the most vulnerable in our community — a woman leading this vigil asked everyone to repeat: “Another world is possible.” Will you say that with me? Another world is possible.

Saying that, I think, is its own kind of epiphany. Saying that insinuates that fear looms large in Herod’s world. But we believe it doesn’t stop us. We believe it doesn’t get the final say. We believe that love leads us forward. And we believe that we are here to work toward another world — a world where we follow the one who wasn’t born in Jerusalem but Bethlehem; the one who is hailed not by the religious elite but by Gentile astrologers; the one who’s not protected by armies but by dreams, by a refugee father; the one who wasn’t visited by government officials or palace royalty but by smelly shepherds, by magi like you and me.

That vigil reminded me that the question for us today is not whether fear exists or not. We know it does.

The question is what we do with it. Do we let it stop us? Do we let it paralyze us? Do we let it make us callous and bitter, rageful and vengeful? Or do we let it move us forward?

The birth of Jesus has not silenced the Herods of this world — I wish I could tell you that it has. And they feel perhaps even louder, or so it seems, using their power to intimidate and coerce, to threaten and yes, to kill.

Fear is so loud.

But I can’t stop thinking about that group that we gathered with on Thursday morning in broad daylight, defying empire not with swords but song — singing This Little Light of Mine and begging, crying out, emphatically shouting that another world is possible.

I’m begging you, church. Begging you like the magi who knelt before this Christ child. I’m begging you not to let fear stop you. Don’t let it take your hope. Don’t let it take your love. Don’t let it take that gospel spirit in you that knows that the inbreaking of the kingdom of God is all around us. Don’t let it have the last word. Look to the magi who sprinted toward that guiding star, who refused to let fear be the end of this story. And so, if you must gather, and if you must lament, and if you must sing, and if you must pray fervently, and if you must use your hands and feet to be Jesus out in this world —

Because we place our loyalty with the most surprising thing of all: with this unexpected baby, this different kind of king, whose title scared the man with the most power, whose birth led the magi to proclaim: “Star of wonder, star of light, star with royal beauty bright. Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light.” Still proceeding. That’s what I’m writing on my hand this week. With hope, they proceeded. With hope, they placed one foot in front of the other. They knew what we know. They knew what we choose to work toward when we follow this man. They knew that we’ve got to believe and work toward a world where good news is louder than fear. And none of us are off the hook.

Love, not fear — it gets the final say. Love gets the final say. I promise it does. And another world is possible. I promise it is.

May it be so. But we’ve got to make it so. Amen.

With Skin On

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, January 4, 2026

A mom is tucking in her daughter at night, and she gives her daughter a really warm, comforting hug and says, “God is with you always. You don’t need to be afraid.” And then she leaves the room like normal.

And this kiddo waits a bit and then calls out, “Mom, I’m scared.”

And so the mom comes into her room again and gives her a hug and maybe a stuffed animal and says, “It’s okay. God is with you. Now float off to dreamland.”

And then this happens yet again. And finally the mom thinks, “Okay, this is the last time.” And so the mom goes in and tucks the kiddo in and again says, “God is with you.”

And the kid says, “Yes, I know that, but I need someone with skin on.”

This is a story that writer Ann Lamott tells. She says that she actually tells this story to her children’s Sunday school. And it’s one that I’m going to tell, too, because this little girl, I think, summarizes what the profound poet John seems to be talking about in chapter 1 of our gospel.

And if your mind wanders during sermons, mine does too. It’s okay. I hope you at least jot down this important cry from that girl: I need someone with skin on. I need God to become flesh and dwell among me.

John is a really swirly, cerebral writer. One of my friends described him as a tortured poet, and he kind of writes in this discombobulated, philosophical way that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to clear interpretation. Some of the other gospels are pretty straightforward. And John is one of those poets that’s like:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.

Are you following? This more swirly way of writing is hard to interpret, and that’s okay. And if it feels a little elusive to you, you are not alone. That’s why we wrestle with this stuff together.

And moments like this—especially after the last week in December, which for me is sort of like John’s writing—it’s confusing and swirly. There’s a lack of structure to the past week. I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of clarity about it. How do I fill my time?

But maybe this text is actually the perfect way to begin this new year. So I’m out here with a lantern, searching for the liberating message in this kind of loopy introduction to the Gospel of John. And I kind of wonder what sticks out to you.

Maybe for you, you’ve always loved the language grace upon grace. Isn’t that so lovely? Let’s go get tattoos. [laughter] Grace upon grace.

Maybe you love the language the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. That’s a longer tattoo, but we could put it somewhere.

This morning, though, I’m struck by these liberating words: The Word became flesh and lived among us. Because as many theologians have pointed out, and as John states in verse 18, no one’s ever seen God. It’s Jesus who actually has made God known. We’ve seen God’s glory, John writes, through Jesus.

All we know about God, we know because of Jesus, who is God with skin on. It’s like God wanted to reveal to us the character of who he or she is. And so perhaps the best way to do that for us broken and beautiful human beings was to show up and send someone like us.

We learn from John that when God lives among us, it’s not always good for God. We pretend like we don’t know him. We don’t accept him. We reject and defile him. And yes, we end up crucifying him.

Listen to this beautiful, beautiful writing from Thomas Merton:

Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those for whom there is no room either.

His place is with those who do not belong. His place is with those who are rejected by power because they are deemed too weak. Those who are discredited, those who are denied the status of persons, who are tortured, who are exterminated— with those for whom there is no room.

Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst— with those for whom there is no room. Christ is present in the world. His place is with those who do not belong.

So the God with skin on, the gift that we call the incarnation, means that when we feel rejected, when we feel weak, when we feel unaccepted, uninvited, like we don’t belong, we just might be a little bit closer, church, to experiencing the person of Jesus—and therefore the character and divinity of God.

And in the beginning was the Word. This also reveals to us something about God. That phrase harkens back to Genesis 1: In the beginning. And we learn that God created the heavens and the earth. And the Trinity was already at work. When we read “in the beginning, God created,” the Hebrew for God is already talking about this trinitarian divine dance— that God is in relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit from the jump.

“He was in the beginning with God,” John writes.

So what we learn is that our creator is already relational, is already interdependent—excuse me—and is already showing us that we cannot do this alone. That even God needs relationship in order to create and in order to flourish.

Maybe you identify with Jesus, who knows something about not feeling known. Or maybe you actually do feel a deep sense of belonging right now in your life— a deep relationship with those around you, a deep acceptance. And if so, I’m jumping a little bit now to what we read about John the Baptist in this passage.

John could have pointed the light at himself and said, “I’m pretty awesome for being Jesus’s cousin and showing you all the way. I’m pretty cool for baptizing the Son of God.” But instead, he testifies to the light so that everybody will believe.

How selfless and interesting that John the Baptist says, “I’m just a voice crying out in the wilderness. I’m not worthy to even untie Jesus’s sandals. He who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”

So some of us feel that rejection like Jesus. And some of us are the ones who are supposed to be the inviters and the light-pointers like John. It’s like he wants us to know that God is not some guy in the sky. God is the best among-us dweller that there ever was.

But here’s the catch. It’s so nice to imagine God showing up as Jesus, with us and fleshed. But it is hard to like the skin that we are in—especially in a new year, when we receive yet again this onslaught of messages from a now trillion-dollar industry telling us that we can be healthier, we should be skinnier, we should be stronger, we should be more beautiful, more youthful-looking, we need to get back in the gym and lose that weight and hide those blemishes.

If we only try a little harder, maybe God would love us more. And maybe the world would too.

In other words, we’ve got to chase after our worthiness and our body’s perfection every January first until, inevitably—at least for me—I end up kind of disappointed that I couldn’t keep it all up. We inevitably burn out and maybe revert back to a sense of shame for what we haven’t done, for who we haven’t become.

None of us can reach this unobtainable perfection that the world is selling us—quite literally trying to sell us.

Nadia Bolz-Weber writes, “But our bodies bruise and they decay and they disappoint us and they sag insistently toward the earth. So why in the world would God not spare Godself the indignity of having things like sweat glands and the hiccups?”

Because in Jesus’s church, the physical life is the spiritual life, whether we like that or not. God could have come as some ethereal, elusive spirit, like the Ghost of Christmas Past. But God came as a poor carpenter with calloused hands and swollen feet. And his flesh is not perfect. And his promise is not to make ours perfect either.

But God does promise to be among us in our physical imperfections. God promises to be that mom in the story, whose eyes are probably puffy from a lack of sleep because her daughter keeps waking her up. Maybe she has a bloated stomach from heaping holiday food on her plate. Maybe her back really hurts from picking up her daughter all the time, or her feet are swollen from walking her in her stroller. Maybe she’s got graying hairs from years of love and care.

And that is God with skin on, if you can believe it. Can you believe it?

The portrayals of Jesus in stained glass and in the public sphere are so misleading. Where are the wounds? Where are the scars? Where is the life lived on his body? Surely if God is in flesh, we would reveal that to each other—and to ourselves.

So in this new year, we are challenged to look for the God who dwells among us, for the incarnation of the one who understands rejection and ridicule. We’re challenged to look for grace upon grace for these bodies that comfort kids and give long hugs and hold a hymnal and shake hands with strangers.

My New Year’s resolution—I made a list yesterday, and now I’m kind of, you know, believing in Jesus is annoying sometimes—so I had to make a new list today. And it’s really simple. It’s just to search for God with skin on who is in the most unlikely places.

And I just want to try my best to embody that freeing message that Steinbeck writes about in East of Eden. He says, “Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

I don’t have to be perfect among you. I feel that from you. And you do not have to be perfect for me. And we don’t have to be perfect for the one who is among us.

Now that you know God came in a body—and now that I know that too—maybe we can give ourselves a little more grace to try and do the same. To dwell among others. To love our flesh just a little bit more. And to testify to the true light of the world that enlightens not just some of us, but enlightens all of us.

Amen.

Three Angels and a Dream

Sermon preached by Christy Brown on Sunday, December 29, 2025

Good morning, Vine Street 

My name is Christy Brown, and I am a third year divinity student and this is my second year interning here at Vine Street. I am grateful for this opportunity to preach this morning and I am grateful to each of you who showed up here today on this last Sunday between Christmas and New Years! So, thank you for being here!

Will you join me in prayer as we prepare out hearts and minds to receive the word?

Lord, take my lips and speak through them;
Take our minds and think through them;
Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for You.
Amen.

For the past month Margie and Wesley have been talking about fear and hope in the Advent Season and how God’s presence can give us hope in a fearful world. And I know that we here at Vine Street are full of hope. It is because of hope that we gather each week. It is because of hope that we offer grants, and host Room in the Inn, and collect school supplies and food for people who have had their SNAP benefits cut, because we know that the church can help spread God’s hope in a world of fear. And it is because of hope that this church just voted for a young woman to be our senior pastor in a time when some denominations are actively removing women from ministry. 

This week I have found hope because my sons who live far away have been home, and together, we have traveled and we have visited with cousins and aunts and uncles. And we got to celebrate here at Vine Street on Christmas Eve. It has been joyful and stressful and full of travel and friends and family. 

I know that some of you have also had family coming to town, and some of you have traveled, and some of us have been missing those who are not here this year.
But whatever your Christmas has been like, December never feels like just a normal month. 

When I compare our modern Christmas to the story Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem. I see some overlap. 

For the census, all their extended family had to return to the homeland. It was crowded and noisy and although there was no room for them at the inn, they were still probably celebrating some reunions with old friends and family that they hadn’t seen in a while. Their whole clan had to come together and there was joy in the birth of a new baby. 

But just like our Christmas, things change after Christmas day. After the baby is born. After the census when people start packing up to go home. 

Today’s story focuses on that part of Christmas. What happens after. And it’s a whole different story. We have been so focused on the joy of a new baby, we forget that as soon as that baby enters the world, his life is in danger. Herod has learned of Jesus’s existence. And Herod is a king who feels threatened by anyone else who has a claim to be king – Even a tiny baby is threatening to an insecure man clinging to power. So, when the wisemen tell Herod that they are following a star that marked the birth of a new king, Herod feels threatened. He uses his power to declare that all Hebrew baby boys should be put to death. If he can’t single out which baby boy is the Christ, he will just kill them all. 

And even though we have just been on this spiritual high from Christmas, we are suddenly thrust back into the real world. A world of political unrest where the Hebrew people are not in power, but they are subjects to the whims of an insecure king. 

Sound familiar?

We all know what this world looks like. It’s a world where a powerful men use their positions of authority to bully others. It’s a world where one ethnic group feels superior to people of other ethnicities. Herod issuing an edict to kill all the Hebrew baby boys is a lot like ICE arresting undocumented Latino children from their schools. Or arresting their parents who have no criminal records on their way to work. It’s a world that shoots pepper balls at a pastor while he prays outside an ICE prison. It’s a world that blows up capsized boats to ensure there are no survivors of an illegal drug raid. 

Herod was not concerned about how many Hebrew children he killed as long as he could remain in power. His story is still playing out all over the world. In Ukraine, in Gaza, in Venezuela, and in the streets of America. There are children and families crying as they live through horrific circumstances because of leaders who view them as political chattel and not humans.

And yet, the story in today’s scripture is different. Because it is not just a story about Herod. It doesn’t end with just the cruel edicts of an insecure king. 

It is also the story of Joseph, a man who bravely and quietly listens to God’s call to do what he can to help one child. It’s not about the violence of Herod, It’s about how God uses a normal, everyday man to change the future of the world. 

I don’t know a lot about Joseph. So, this week, I scoured the Bible and reference books to see what I could find out about him. Smith’s Bible Dictionary says it best, Joseph, “son of Heli, and reputed father of Jesus Christ. All that is told us of Joseph in the New Testament may be summed up in a few words.”  

But how can that be right? He’s Joseph, the father of Jesus, he’s in all our nativity scenes. I only own 6 Biblical figurines, and he’s one of them, Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, and 3 wise men. He’s gotta be important, right? It turns out no one knows very much. There was a much later book called The History of Joseph the Carpenter, written in the 5th century. It places a lot of emphasis on the lifelong virginity of Mary by claiming that Joseph was an 89-year-old widower and already the father of James and other sons, when he agreed to wed the teenage, pregnant Mary. The same book says that he died at age 111, when Jesus would have been about 22 years old, so that explains why he wasn’t present for any of Jesus’s ministry.

The New Testament gives us much less. Joseph is only mentioned by name as a person who does something in a handful of verses, and in a few more he is referenced as “Jesus’s parents” or part of Jesus’s lineage. 

The Gospel of Luke tells us that Joseph was engaged to a virgin named Mary and that he went to Bethlehem for the census where his pregnant wife gave birth to Jesus. That’s about it for Luke. 

And while, Matthew’s Gospel gives us a little more: outlining Joseph’s lineage through Abraham and David and calling him a righteous man, Joseph by all accounts, seems like pretty a normal, quiet guy – just trying to provide for his family. And he doesn’t even have enough clout to make it into the inn in Bethlehem, so he finds a stable to provide shelter for his wife and child. 

Joseph is just trying to get by in a world that is stacked against his people. Added to that - his life is in upheaval. First, when an angel of the Lord tells him that his future wife is going to give birth to the child of God. And later when an earthly king uproots his people and forces them to travel to Bethlehem for a census. It’s not a long journey by today’s standards, only a few hours by bus, but for Joseph and Mary it would have taken several days to make the trip, maybe even a week, on a donkey, with a very pregnant wife, and probably Joseph experienced some ridicule from the caravan who knew that Mary was pregnant before he took her as his wife. 

No wonder when Jesus is born, the family decides to stay in Bethlehem for a little while. Mary is certainly in no condition to travel after childbirth, and Joseph is a tradesman, so he can probably find work in a lot of locations. Besides – show of hands – how many of you have ever traveled with a baby? And Mary and Joseph didn’t even have a stroller or a pack-n-play! They had a donkey and a manger.

So, it’s logical that Mary and Joseph decide to stay in Bethlehem with the baby for a while.  We don’t know exactly how long, but some scholars believe it could have been several months or even a couple of years that the family lived in Bethlehem. Until one day, after the shepherds have come and gone, and the magi have brought their gifts and started their journey back home, after the Christmas story, when life is settling into something normal, an Angel appears to Joseph again.

Now even though Joseph is only mentioned in scripture maybe a dozen times, and he never once speaks, one of the ways we know that he is a righteous man is that he is visited by angels four times. In today’s scripture, just 10 verses, Joseph is visited by angels 3 times and the scripture says that each time, he followed the angels’ instructions. He did what God said. Even though Joseph could have dismissed their visit as just a dream, he did what God was calling him to do. 

First, there was the angel back at the beginning of advent who appeared and told Joseph to honor his betrothal to Mary and serve as an earthly father to her child. 

Then today’s story, a few years later, when an angel warns him to take his family and flee to Egypt. Joseph wasn’t in danger in Bethlehem. Even Mary was safe to stay there. But Joseph packs up everything and leaves his country to protect a child that technically wasn’t his because God’s angel appeared in a dream and told him to. 

At this point the family has moved to Egypt and probably established a home and routine there. Maybe they aren’t even considering going back to Israel. But again, an angel appears to Joseph, this one telling him that it’s safe to return to his homeland, and he packs up to follow God’s call. 

And finally, even when he is on his way, doing exactly what the angel told him, taking his young family back to Israel, Joseph learns from another vision that Herod’s son is now king, and he changes plans and takes the child farther north, up to Nazareth – a more isolated area north of Jerusalem where Jesus is less likely to attract attention. Joseph’s life revolves around protecting Jesus and yet he is rarely mentioned in the Bible and we never once hear him speak. 

What can we learn today from Joseph, this silent man of action who listened for God’s call even in his sleep and immediately shifted his entire life to do what God directed?

We can say that angels don’t visit us today like they did in the Bible, but do they? Do we also get nudges from God in our sleep or in or subconscious minds? When we witness injustice in our world, do we feel a tug to do something about it? Isn’t that exactly why Vine Street had a food drive during the government shutdown when we knew people were losing their SNAP benefits? What else is God calling us to do?

We live in a world that likes to provide warning signs. If there’s a chance of bad weather, we have sirens that sound all over Nashville so people know to protect themselves, stay indoors, go to a save place, and crouch down in that position that we learned through drills in school. And that’s just the old-school technology. We also have alarms on our phones that can notify us of anything we want to know about. Weather alerts, amber alerts, silver alerts. Kroger has called me on more than one occasion to notify me that I purchased some peanut butter that might have been part of a recall. But I wonder, in a world with so many loud alerts, are we missing God’s quiet nudges?

Being a member at Woodmont, one of my favorite songs was Thom Schuyler’s Still Small Voice. If I had Margie’s singing voice, I might sing a few bars for you, but you can thank me now that I’m just going to read a couple of lines. 

It’s not in the pounding of the thunder,
It’s not in the whip of the wind.
This planet could shake and take you under
But that’s not how you’ll hear from Him.

It’s louder than mountains as they crumble,
And softer than sweet morning rain,
And there in the midst of all your trouble,
Just listen as He speaks your name. 

With a Still Small Voice

God calls us. But in our world where we are constantly on our phones or laptops or on Apple Play in our car, how do we hear that still, small voice?

And don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is when we ARE paying attention to media that we hear God’s voice. When we see pictures and videos on our phones of people being treated unjustly, that is also God’s voice. 

Jesus told us, “whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to me.”

That’s convicting. Because wherever we see the least of these. We see the face of God. 

Whenever we hear a choking voice calling for justice or begging for help, we hear the voice of God. 

Angels were watching and guiding Joseph in his dreams. But how many times have you tried to go to sleep and just couldn’t stop thinking about that image? The picture of war-ravaged Ukraine or Gaza, or the image of a hungry child’s eyes, the look of fear etched across a face of an undocumented worker, or from the man who was just asking for money on the side of the road with a sign that said, “I’m hungry. Anything helps?” 

It's different for all of us, but what message is God planting in your heart today?

For Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, God was guiding them towards safety. Away from political forces that wanted end Jesus’s life even though political forces did ultimately crucify Jesus, Joseph protected him so Jesus could grow up and have a ministry and start a movement that changed the world. Without Joseph we wouldn’t have Christianity. 

And it’s the same story throughout the Bible, God’s people are almost always fleeing from something. Moses, Joseph and Jacob were all fleeing. From Pharoah, or famine, or even family conflict. 

In our world, people are still fleeing from war or famine or political oppression, as well as from hurricanes and forest fires. But the one thing they are not doing is sitting still. 

Because fear requires an action:

We live in a fearful world, but fear leads us to action. 

And fear can even be holy. When it draws us to protect others, like Joseph. Fear for others is why churches provide sanctuaries. It’s why we write to our government officials to protect SNAP funding, or protest at the capitol to protect queer and trans youth from unjust laws. And fear sometimes even causes us to break the law – like Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee who was recently convicted for allowing an immigrant to leave her courtroom by the back door when she knew ICE agents were waiting to deport him. Doing the right thing doesn’t mean we won’t face trouble, but it does mean we can face ourselves in the mirror knowing we stood on the side of justice.

Herod is also fearful. He fears losing his political power, and he politicalizes his fear, lashing out against perceived threats. Just like leaders today who exercise their authority at the expense of those who have no power to fight back. 

But Joseph’s fear is not against something. He is fearful FOR the child. It’s a fear of protection and love that causes him to act

So today I ask myself, how do I react to fear? 

Do I react like Herod and lash out to keep what is mine? Or do I fear FOR others and use what I have to help those who have even less?

I know sometimes I want to bury my head in a hole and forget it, but that doesn’t make the threat go away. 

The Sanctified Art writers says “The Holy Family becomes a model for us – not because they lived without fear but because they allowed fear to move them toward justice, safety, and protection.

Fear FOR others is what fueled the Underground Railroad. It’s what causes people to create elaborate networks to protect battered women and children. It’s what causes volunteers to go into Ukraine or to travel into flood waters and fires to help those who are trapped. God’s hospitality often comes from unexpected places, through unexpected messengers, who can provide shelter in the arms of a stranger.

The Christmas story does not promise us a world without Herods, but it does promise us Emmanuel – God with us. 

May our fear, like Joseph’s lead us to protect someone else.

A Hand to Hold Onto

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, December 21, 2025

A teenage girl is really scared. Engaged to a man but not yet married. She understands the social and political risks of her situation. She finds herself pregnant with our Messiah through the Holy Spirit. Joseph doesn’t want her to suffer public disgrace from this sort of precarious predicament, so he decides to—did you catch that?—dismiss her quietly.

I have never liked that part of scripture. A man trying to dismiss me quietly. Not a passage I’m underlining with my highlighter. But I read it with new eyes this week. I realized that Joseph is scared too. To take Mary in would expose him to a lot of religious judgment. Mary could have been stoned for this suspected adultery, and Joseph could have been—and would have been—the victim of a lot of public shame.

We’ve got an unwed mother, a fragile family, an empire that meets any threat with surveillance and violence and control. And then we’ve got King Herod, who is on the lookout for this baby boy he’s heard about, who’s going to resist the status quo, and he will kill him when he finds him. Joseph is scared, and he has every right to be afraid. And he’s resolving to dismiss Mary quietly, to sneak her away.

And then this angel appears to him in a dream. And the angel says, “Joseph, son of David”—David, y’all remember David, the one that slayed Goliath kind of fearlessly—“don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. This child is from the Holy Spirit. Mary, she’s going to have a son, and you’re going to name him Jesus, and he will heal the brokenness of this world. God has already spoken through the prophets, Joseph. I promise you. And this son, he will be called Emmanuel, which means God is with us.”

Emmanuel. I don’t know if there’s any greater word in scripture. Any word better for our Advent season. God who doesn’t do life for us or without us. God who doesn’t try to fix us, but God who simply is with us—and with us in our fear. God who is holding our hand and reaching out to us in comfort in the midst of all the scary things we hold.

And Joseph, he woke up from this dream. And I do like this part. He did what he was told. Rather than letting fear isolate him, he lets it bring him into a greater connection. I want to repeat that: his fear doesn’t result in isolation; it results in connection. He could have taken a step back, but instead he stepped in.

And if you will allow a little biblical wondering, perhaps after this dream, maybe we can imagine Joseph speaking these words to Mary: “When you are afraid, give me your hand. I cannot fix everything, Mary, but I can walk alongside you. I can’t get rid of the risk that we’re taking here, but I can share the load with you.”

And here we have it. And this is so common in scripture—one of the many reasons I love it. We don’t have a hero of our story who saves this damsel in distress. No, we have one who remains in proximity with her. Emmanuel with her in her harrowing journey that they will share together.

And maybe Mary reaches out her hand as a plea for help, and maybe Joseph takes it as a gesture of support. I think many of us have experienced the connection that comes from holding a hand. I thought about this—all of the hands that we as a community might have held.

You might have held the hands of a loved one as you recited your wedding vows to each other. Or maybe you held the hand of a loved one who was passing on, stepping into the next realm. You heard their heartbeat slowing down. Many of you have held the hand of a partner as she was giving birth, letting her squeeze your hand gently—or maybe not so gently—as she welcomed a child into this world. You’ve given a hand as your child walks across the street, keeping them safe.

Some of us have held hands—I’ve held hands with you—at things like the Linking Arms for Change event, where we held hands that stretched three miles across Nashville as we advocated for safer gun laws. You have held the hand of a friend—I know you have—who is sharing something hard with you, perhaps voicing it for the first time.

And each Sunday—you know where this is going—each Sunday at the end of our service, we hold hands with a familiar or not-so-familiar person to our right and our left. Sometimes it might be a little awkward. And that hand may be soft, or it may be worn. The nails might be polished, or they might be chewed a little. The palms might be calloused, or they might be smooth. It doesn’t matter here. What matters is that sometimes we really need that time for a hand to reach out to us in support. And sometimes we are the person who reaches out first.

Some weeks we are the Mary, and others we are the Joseph. Maybe this ritual that we do at the end of the service is a reminder to us that there is always a hand that needs holding, church. There is always a hand that needs holding.

I was thinking about Peter when he walked on water. He noticed this really strong wind, and he got really scared, and he said, “Lord, save me.” That’s what he said to Jesus. And Jesus immediately—immediately, without any hesitation—reached out his hand and caught him. Maybe he remembered the sensation of his father reaching out for the hand of his mother. Maybe that was still in his body. He knew it so intuitively. He recognized what to do for Peter. Not to walk on water for him, not to abandon him, but to hold his hand.

Church, maybe the miracle is not that Peter walked on water. Maybe the miracle is that Jesus reached out and did it with him, holding his hand as he did.

So to be brief—or at least a little brief—this week, I’m not asking you, and I’m not asking me, if we will fix people. You know that we can’t. And I’m not asking you or me if we will fix the world. This week, I’m just asking you and me to take the hand of someone that you know or someone you don’t—someone that you love, someone that is not very familiar, someone who is scared, or someone who has great courage—and reach out that hand for support.

As we close our service a little later, I wonder if you will just say a quick blessing as you grab the hand to your right and the hand to your left, hearkening back to a frightened pregnant girl and a fearful, faithless man who are to welcome the one who doesn’t fix us, but who walks with us, reaching out his hand and saying, “I am with you.”

And that is the best Advent news of all. Amen.

The Courage to Say Yes

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, December 14, 2025

There is an event happening today just down the street at Woodmont Christian Church. It’s called Walk Through Bethlehem. How many of you have been to it before? Woodmont is where I grew up and first heard my call. And Walk Through Bethlehem is a live nativity. The church is turned into this ancient town of Bethlehem, with Roman soldiers and live animals—donkeys and even camels some years.

It’s a really coveted position to get to be Mary. And when I was in high school, I got to be Mary. Big deal. And Richie White, who played Joseph, and I—I'll never forget—stood in our full garb, and I was handed a baby doll. We stood out there for many hours, welcoming lines of people as they walked through to see the wise men and the shepherds and the Christ child.

The whole time that I was standing there, I was silent. There was nothing to say other than to just pose with this baby. Actually, the only thing I said that day was when a little kid came up to me and said, “Is that baby real?” And I said, “Baby Jesus was real.” Yeah. Yeah, he sure was. But other than that, I was silent.

I thought about that memory as I heard our scripture today.

We’ve been following this Advent series by insisting on hope in the midst of fear. So, in our first week of Advent, if you’ll remember, we looked at the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth—an old couple living in a time of a lot of fear, under a corrupt ruler, King Herod, who was spreading intimidation, threatening violence, and lording over the people with his toxic power. And yet, even in the midst of their fear, they longed for God to break in. And they showed up anyway. During this fearful time, they were told not to be afraid when they did.

Then, in our second week of Advent, Pastor Wesley preached on this idea that when we’re running out of hope, God is at work. That John the Baptist, when he was sitting in prison wondering if Jesus was actually Jesus, heard Jesus say, “Yeah, I am.” And you aren’t the Savior, but you’re going to point people to the Savior. You’re going to be a voice crying out in the wilderness. When he was running out of hope, God was at work.

And this week, you are invited to consider this: even in our fears, we are called forward. Will you say that with me? Even in our fears, we are called forward.

We hear about two people in our story this morning: the story of Jeremiah and the story of Mary. These are what are called call stories. And notice how I didn’t just ask you to say, “When we get rid of our fears, we are called forward,” or “When we erase our fears, we are called forward.” No.

Our two characters on this day of Advent are a boy and a girl. A boy who says, “I don’t know how to speak, for I’m only a boy,” and a girl who says, “How can this be, since I’m a virgin?”

We often talk about the prophet Jeremiah, maybe placing him at an older age, as a wiser mouthpiece of God. But when his call came to him, he was 17 years old—the same age, around the same age, as Jack or Quinn. He was young. He was a boy from humble beginnings, visited by God, his mouth touched by God to be a prophetic voice in a dark time—a high schooler.

And then I want to talk to you about Mary. This woman that we often depict as shy and wordless, white and porcelain, timid and meek. This was a teenage girl, about the same age as Gia—maybe middle school—living under imperial control, who couldn’t read, who wasn’t married, who was facing a lot of public shame. And so her yes was not an easy one, but one that came with a lot of risk and cost.

What I love about these prophets’ responses—and yes, I think they are both prophets—is that they don’t immediately jump to courage and bravery and quick resolve. Did you notice that? No. They are perplexed. They are resistant. And they are a little bit disturbed by what God is asking them to do.

Two kids, as we might look at them, called to be the mouthpiece of God and the mother of God, called to speak even if their knees shake and their voices tremble.

And in both stories, church, God doesn’t erase their fears. God acknowledges them. I want to say that again. God doesn’t erase their fears. God acknowledges them and calls them forward anyway.

“Do not be afraid,” God tells Jeremiah. “I’m with you. I’ve got your back. I’m not going anywhere.” God gently touches his mouth—the mouth that will speak many words of truth to power, the mouth that will say, “They say peace when there is no peace,” the mouth of justice in a broken world.

And to Mary, the angel says, “Do not be afraid. You have found favor with God, and nothing will be impossible,” even when it seems like it is.

In them—in Mary and Jeremiah—I see not bold bravery, but holy hesitation and timid trust. Have you ever felt that, church? Not bravery or courage, but a timidity in your own lives, in your own call.

Too often, dominant Christianity defines courage through heroic masculinity—like you have to be loud, and you have to be bold, and you have to be certain. But Mary and Jeremiah model a different courage. They model the courage to ask questions, to hesitate, to need more time, and to take just one uncertain step.

What connects them is not a lack of fear, as Dr. Buon Lee writes, “but this deep trembling resolve to move forward anyway.” To move forward anyway—not with certainty, but with open hands and the courage to say yes even in the unknown.

Do you know something about saying yes even in the unknown, church? Especially today—you know those people who like to bungee jump or skydive or do cold plunges in really freezing lakes without any hesitation or sense of fear? I am not one of those people. I hesitate. I whine. I groan. I dip my toe in the water and I scream. I look over the edge of the cliff and I cower in fear. And then I say, “Okay, count me down. Start at five.” And then it gets to one, and I say, “Okay, countdown again. This time start at ten.”

And there are a lot of countdowns before I actually jump. But I usually jump with immense fear—fear that is in the passenger seat of my life, but not the driver’s seat.

There’s a distinction there: that I carry fear with me, that I buckle it up, that it’s along for the ride, but that something holy—something that says nothing is impossible with me, something that says do not fear—is the driver of my life.

Do you know that driver, church? My fear is welcome to be there as I am called into new chapters in this life. But God does not ask me to stay put. God does not invite me to stagnancy. God invites me to hesitantly proclaim, like Mary did, “Okay. Okay. Let it be with me according to your word.”

Saying yes—saying “do your thing, God”—does not mean that the way forward is a cakewalk. And this is the hard part of faith. This is the hard part of being a Christian.

God puts Mary and Jeremiah on a path that comes with a deep cost. Jeremiah, who many called the weeping prophet, was rejected and isolated and alienated for the justice that he so yearned to see in this world. He wasn’t a popular guy, but he was a loyal servant of God.

And Mary—her yes comes at a great cost. One of estrangement and pain. One of loneliness and poverty. And the water is freezing when we take the plunge, and the cost of our yes could be great.

But as we hear in the final verse of this gospel passage today, church, Mary says yes and then runs with haste. Isn’t that such a beautiful way of describing something? She runs with haste to her cousin Elizabeth, reminding us that when we take a step forward in fear, we don’t have to do it alone. We can run with haste to our family and our friends who surround us, who get in the car—maybe in the back seat—who are along for the ride, encouraging us, not erasing our fears, but acknowledging them as we walk into our calling.

And Mary’s next act, after she comes to her cousin and proclaims what she has heard, is not one of shy silence like a young Margie wearing Converse, standing in hay, lips sealed. No. Instead, she sings the longest song of praise that we have in scripture. And I’m not going to sing it—you’re welcome. Maybe you should come sing it.

But what would it have looked like for me, back at Walk Through Bethlehem in my teenage years, to shout these words that Mary says?

God has scattered the proud.
God has brought the powerful down from their thrones.
God has lifted up the lowly.
God has filled the hungry with good things.
God has sent the rich away empty.

That is our prophet Mary, shouting and singing those words. Can you believe her, church?

In this Advent season, I wonder: what fears are you carrying? What invitation are you resisting because you feel inadequate? What fears are keeping you from living into your calling—from speaking truth to power, from auditioning for that role, from trying out for that sports team, from applying for that job, from volunteering for that opportunity at church, from singing that solo, from taking that pottery class, from showing up to that protest?

What fears are keeping you from living into your calling? And what is God inviting you to say yes to—not fearlessly, but faithfully?

Church, in our fears, we are called forward. And you are welcome to protest the fear, just as Mary and Jeremiah did. You’re welcome to wait. You’re welcome to hesitate. You’re welcome to feel a little bit perplexed and confused. You’re welcome to say, “It can’t be me. I’m only a boy.” You’re welcome to say, “How can this be?”

And then you are invited to take one step, and then another.

So say yes with me. Say, “Let it be with me,” even when your knees shake, even when your voice trembles. For the Holy One sits in the driver’s seat and whispers, “Be not afraid,” and says, “There is nothing impossible with me.”

Can you believe it?

Hope that Trembles

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, December 7, 2025

Margie and I had made a wager that whoever won the game got the big office. So, I guess you can stay put. As we begin to dive into the sermon, would you please pray with me this morning?

God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen.

Okay, friends, I’ve got to level with you. I’ve got about four more days in my PhD program and then I’m done for the semester. I started back in August, and it has been exciting and invigorating and all the wonderful things, but I am counting down the days. I’ve only got a few more assignments left.

Likewise, I only have a few more days—about six more days—until the Nashville in Harmony holiday show this upcoming weekend at Harkins Hall. Shameless plug. Probably the biggest stressor in my life right now. And so, I’m counting down the days until that is also done. And I’ve got about eight more days of work until I have a nice long vacation until the new year. And so, I’m eagerly counting down the days, as you might be as well.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it has been an amazing year. Starting here at Vine Street in June is top of my list for sure. Margie and I took a wonderful trip to the Florida Keys and to Miami earlier this year. It’s been a wonderful year. And I also lost my Nana earlier this year. And I lost my great-aunt Margene just a few weeks ago. I had ankle surgery back in January that I feel like I’m still recovering from. And like many of you, I’ve watched the news and I’ve watched injustice seemingly prevail week after week and month after month. And so, I’m just feeling really tired. Anybody else feeling tired or worn down, fearful, hopeless?

And in Advent, we’re supposed to be anticipating the birth of the One who is to come, right? But I feel like I could just sleep from now until January 1st. Maybe you’re feeling that as well. That feeling that we’re describing is how we meet John the Baptist in today’s passage. This isn’t the lively, strong, prophetic version of John the Baptist that we first meet in the Gospel readings. This is a John who sounds a bit more like us right now—tired and worn down—an imprisoned John the Baptist. And he’s wondering, “Was all of it worth it? Did I do anything that made a difference?”

Our commentary from Sanctified Art says that he’s a prisoner held under Herod’s authority who is cut off from the movement that he helped ignite. And so he asks Jesus in verse three, as you just heard, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another?”

And when he asks this question, remember he is in a prison cell. Perhaps he knows that he’s going to be executed. Perhaps he can see his own end in sight. He’s quite literally facing his own mortality. And so he’s wondering if he made the right choice. Did I follow the right man? Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another? It’s not just a question. It’s a cry from the edge of despair, our commentary says.

And so he says, “Tell me it was worth it. Tell me that it wasn’t all for nothing. Tell me something.”

This week’s theme is: when we’re running out of hope, God is at work. When we’re running out of hope, God is at work. That’s what we feel in the Hebrew passage from this morning. To a downtrodden, once-enslaved, once and then again-occupied people—a nomadic people and exiled people and oppressed people who were running out of hope—God tells them, “Behold, I am about to do a new thing. Even now it springs forth. Are you paying attention?” God says.

And so I’ve been wondering perhaps this passage in Isaiah and this passage in Matthew is also reminding us that when things seem bleak, when we feel like hope is lost, when we feel like injustice has won, we must remember that we are only seeing a glimpse of the larger picture—a glimpse of the larger narrative that is at work here.

Here’s an example I want to share. Earlier this year, I was down at the Capitol a decent amount, which was hard to do when you’re in crutches in a boot, by the way. And there was this specific piece of legislation that we were there to protest. And this specific piece of legislation would bar children whose parents were here undocumented from receiving a public school education, or they would charge them for it—one or the other. And the idea was that their parents were here without documentation, and so these children were not entitled to a Tennessee education because they didn’t pay taxes, which is untrue.

By the way, undocumented immigrants—I looked this up—undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $96.7 billion, that’s with a B, billion in federal, state, and local taxes. About $59.4 billion goes to the federal government. $37.3 billion goes to state and local government. So that’s not true. And that’s just the undocumented immigrants.

But these folks also wanted to challenge the 14th Amendment that certifies birthright citizenship. And the response was powerful. So many people of all types, of all backgrounds, showed up to protest. It was so crowded in those committee rooms and in the hallways for those who couldn’t get into the committee rooms. Pastors led protests in the committee rooms, reciting and kneeling and saying the Lord’s Prayer without stopping in unison to disrupt those proceedings so that they could not advance this harmful bill.

Our legislators—the bill garnered a bipartisan response, Republican and Democrat—responded to say that this is unnecessary, unkind, unfair, and does not reflect the faith that we profess. This does not reflect a God who said to love and welcome the stranger, to do no harm to the immigrant, and to let the little children come unto me.

And thankfully that bill died, but mostly because of red tape. And I was feeling really hopeless. And so I asked one of the advocates from TIRRC—the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. It’s a long acronym. And I asked them, I was like, “What happens if they bring this up next year?” He said, “Then we show up again next year.”

What we saw in this session is just the latest iteration of what they’re always trying to do to us. It doesn’t always take the same form, but it’s always there. I said, “How do you keep going?” He said, “We have to. What other choice do we have but to have hope?”

And that sentence both convicted me and gave me hope. It gave me hope because in the face—the literal face—looking dead in the face of those who would harm them, those who would vote to oppress them, these folks had the courage and the bravery to stand up and not be silenced. But it convicted me, too, because I just jumped in the fight. And some of these folks have been fighting this same fight their entire lives. And here I was already losing a little bit of hope after a couple of weeks. I wasn’t seeing the grander vision. I wasn’t seeing the hope that they had sustaining them and sustaining them from their parents and their grandparents and their ancestors.

Yesterday I noticed that Migra Watch had posted that two people had been detained by ICE. And so I drove over to the ICE facility about five to seven minutes from my house, and there were a couple people out there waiting, just watching. And I said, “Hey, can I just wait with y’all for a minute?” They said, “Yeah.” So I threw on a stole. And I was talking to them—two gentlemen. One grew up in a secular household, didn’t grow up in church. The other one grew up in church, but left. Didn’t really find a lot of hope there.

And I said, “In times like these, where are you finding hope? What are you doing? We’re out here outside. It’s cold. Like, where are you finding hope? I’m preaching about this tomorrow and I need some material.”

And they said, “I find hope here, doing this—knowing that we aren’t alone, knowing that those people know that they’re not in there alone, that we’re waiting out here and we’re fighting for them. Even if it’s just a couple people that show up, that gives me hope.”

John the Baptist’s question to Jesus is one that we’ve all asked ourselves before—after every protest, every election, every vigil, every life decision, every wrong turn, every failure, every mistake: Did I get it wrong? Was any of it worth it?

Our commentary writes that John’s question is not doubt born out of cynicism. It’s the trembling that comes when conviction meets suffering, when the cost of faithfulness is so high but the fruit of our labor has been so low. They write, “It’s what hope sounds like when it’s running thin.”

But how does Jesus respond to John? Not with chastisement. Not with a lecture. He doesn’t say, “John, you should know better.” Instead, he answers with the witness of what is unfolding. Verses four and five, he says, “Go and tell John what you see and hear. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have been brought good news.”

As Pastor Margie spoke about two weeks ago on Christ the King Sunday—about what kind of king Jesus would be—he also gives an answer that subverts everyone’s expectations. He doesn’t point to some big celebration or grand victory, but to quiet signs of transformation. We often find excitement in grand victories and celebrations of our time, but not hope. Hope is more often found in those whispers, in those small acts of kindness, in the smiles from strangers, in the little ways that God shows up in our lives and in our world.

Dr. Lee writes, “Hope in the gospel is not grounded in outcomes or visible success. Hope is rooted in perception.” Right? Our Isaiah passage: “I am about to do a new thing. Now, it springs forth. Do you perceive it?” One of my favorite passages in the Hebrew Bible. Hope is rooted in trusting that God is still at work. Even when the system remains unchanged, even when the prophets die behind the bars, hope that trembles is still hope.

And if you know the rest of the story, you know that the empire is still intact and Herod still reigned. And there have been many other Herods throughout history. John was not released from prison, and he did, in fact, get executed. But verse seven says that as they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. And Jesus says, “What did you go out into the wilderness to find? A reed shaken by the wind? What did you go out to see? Somebody in soft robes? People in soft robes are in royal palaces. So what did you go see? A prophet? Yes. But more than a prophet.”

Jesus said, “This is the one about whom it is written: I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.” And Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

Jesus doesn’t see John’s crumbling hope as a failure. Instead, he names it as a part of what makes John faithful, what makes John human, what makes John like the rest of us. Hope that trembles is still hope. Even in doubt, John is still a prophet. Even in fear, he is still beloved.

Or maybe we talk about it this way: even when we are tired or at our wit’s end, even when we’re grumpy or moody, even when our patience is really running thin, or even when our cynicism and our apathy are the loudest voice, we are still beloved, and we still have the opportunity to choose hope.

Nelson Mandela said, “May your choices reflect your hopes and not your fears.” Advent does not require us, beloved, to manufacture hope, but it invites us to bring our emptied hope to Jesus and to ask those hard questions and to listen and look again for those signs of God’s nearness in our world. It asks us to believe the prophet Isaiah’s words from God when he says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing, and even now it springs forth. Are you paying attention?”

When we’re running out of hope, maybe it’s the perfect time, actually, to ask, “What do you see? What do you hear? Where do you see God?” and to trust that somewhere, even now, something new is springing forth—because hope that trembles is still hope.

May it be so. Amen.

Be Not Afraid

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, November 30, 2025

Good morning. Happy Advent.

I first want to thank Reverend Dr. Boyung Lee, who is a feminist theologian and professor of practical theology at Iliff School of Theology. She informed a lot of this sermon.

“In the days of King Herod” — that might as well be the beginning and end of our Advent discussion. In the days of King Herod — those six words might as well frame everything that we will talk about on our way to Christmas. In the days of King Herod, a particular time and a particular place, that's when God chose to enter the world. And it was a fearful time.

Have you heard about it, church? I want to tell you about the days of King Herod that were filled with violence and occupation and fear. Filled with a ruler who governed to secure oppression, to maintain economic insecurity. A world where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Have you heard of this world?

In the days of King Herod, he governed with paranoia and cruelty. He had a guard of over 2,000 soldiers. He maintained his power by coercion and surveillance. In the time of King Herod, he had many expansion projects that required a lot of funding. Have you heard of this world?

In the time of King Herod, the world was loud with threats, echoing with grief and longing. And this is when our Advent story happens. Jesus didn't come in a vacuum. It wasn't random when God chose to break into this world. It was very much in the midst of these political realities that God sensed that the people were really afraid and broke in amidst that fear.

And it's really important for us to understand this, not only in the story of Jesus, but in our story today—our story of this aging priestly couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth. Because in the time of King Herod, they felt the larger fear of a tyrant’s rule. But they also felt this personal fear, which often shows up as longing: that they were barren and wouldn't be able to have a child.

In the time of King Herod, barrenness was seen as divine judgment. People really thought that if you were barren—unable to have a child—you had done something wrong in the eyes of God. And so what Zechariah and particularly Elizabeth were experiencing was not only personal grief, but public shame.

And still, it says both of them were righteous before God. They lived blamelessly according to all the commandments and the regulations of the Lord. They were doing life right, but they didn't have children, and they were getting older.

How many years had they been waiting to bear a child? How many years had they felt the shame of this barrenness? How many years had they looked at their friends who kept getting pregnant, or their friends running around with their kids, and thought, “When will it be my turn, if it will ever be my turn?” How many years had they followed these regulations of the Lord and lived blamelessly, but maybe stopped believing that the Lord could be righteous to them—going through the motions of faith without actually feeling it? Praying so hard for something they weren’t getting that maybe they stopped praying altogether. With every birthday, with every year of getting older.

How did fear sit in their bodies? How did it live in their hearts?

And still, in the midst of this fear, Zechariah showed up to his life. It says that once he was serving as a priest and it was his time of day. Maybe they cast lots, and he was the one chosen, and he was chosen to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. And at that time, all of the people were standing outside of the temple—a great crowd—and they were praying outside, and Zechariah was here, inside, just by himself, burning the incense.

And what happens? An angel of the Lord appears.

And we think of angels as these little white cherubs, little babies—you’ve seen angels portrayed. Scripture tells us they looked terrifying. And I'm going to let you read the Bible to learn more about what they looked like—read the whole Bible; I know you already have. They were really terrifying.

So it should come as no surprise that when this angel appeared to Zechariah, standing at the right side of the altar of incense, it says that when he saw this angel, he was terrified and fear overwhelmed him.

Fear overwhelmed him.

Luke uses the verb tarassō for fear. It’s actually the same verb used when the angel Gabriel comes to Mary—tarassō. The Greek here means to be troubled, disturbed, agitated. It’s not a quick, fleeting feeling of fear, but one that evokes a deep inner shaking—a disruption of the whole body and spirit. It’s the soul’s recoil at the unexpected. It’s the mind’s clamor in the face of uncertainty. It’s the body’s trembling at the threshold of something it cannot control.

That’s tarassō. That’s fear in this text. And that’s what Zechariah felt.

We see again another word used for fear in John’s Gospel. Remember when Jesus says, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid”? That’s a different Greek word there—deilió. (And Lord, don’t check my pronunciation.) Deilió. “Good enough?” “Okay.”

In that context, fear means a shrinking of the heart or spirit—a fear that doesn’t just visit our bodies but settles there. It becomes the background noise of our lives. An unshakable feeling we carry with us, a weariness and overwhelm that no hope can really change. A background noise so constant we forget it’s there.

Maybe Zechariah and Elizabeth knew something about this background noise. Maybe you know something about this background noise too.

And yet the angel said to him, “Drown out all of that noise, Zechariah. Don’t be afraid, for your prayers have been heard. Your wife Elizabeth—she’s going to bear you a son, and you will name him John.”

It is as if the angel is saying: Your fear is real, but it is not the only truth in this story. Your fear is real, but God can still enter into your longings anyway. God can still find where your fear has taken root.

And God can respond—not by minimizing your fear, not by reframing it, not by asking you to repress it, not by ignoring it, not with toxic positivity—but with presence. By saying:

“I’ve heard you.
There’s nothing to be afraid of.
I recognize and honor your fear.
I don’t ignore it.
I don’t deny it.
I know it’s there, and I know it’s real.”

And that happens a lot with our characters of Advent. They are called by God in very unexpected ways. And it’s a God who doesn’t brush aside their fear. It's a fear they show up and express. And it’s a fear they move through.

These characters of Advent are willing to show a particular kind of vulnerability—the kind of vulnerability we see in a newborn baby. They express their fear, and they don’t want it erased. They just want it acknowledged. And I want to repeat that:

 They express their fear.
They want it to be acknowledged.
They want someone to hear them.

I think Advent gives us room to sit with our fears and to ask:

 What have we stopped praying for?
What are we afraid to even hope for?
Where has fear caused us to shrink back?
How does fear live in us?

In this season of waiting, I don't think God is asking us to reframe it or ignore it. I think God is asking us to face it and name it.

 What do you fear, church?

I'll tell you some of the things that I fear:

I fear for this world. I fear what we are doing to it—for the climate extremes, for the way we have treated this land poorly. I fear for its future and ours. I fear for our kids and youth—for the world we have given them, for the amount of work they are being tasked to do for justice and mercy.

And personally, I am afraid that I am behind on the timeline of my life. No kids. No partner. What if I've missed it?

Maybe you are afraid, too.

 Maybe you’re afraid of being alone this Christmas for the first time.
Maybe you’re afraid of telling the truth about who you are, for fear of rejection.
Maybe you’re afraid of having that hard conversation with a friend or family member.
Maybe you’re afraid you’ll never get over the grief.
Maybe you’re afraid that the estrangement you feel will last forever.
Maybe you’re afraid someone might reveal you’re an impostor at work.
Maybe you’re afraid your relationship won’t survive this emotional drought.
Maybe you’re afraid you’ll never fall in love again.
Maybe you’re afraid of aging and what it will do to your body.
Maybe you’re afraid of your own mind when you get still.
Maybe you’re afraid that your rights will be taken away—that more laws will be passed that threaten your freedom.
Maybe you’re afraid you aren’t doing enough for the people struggling out there—or struggling in here.
Maybe you’re afraid that addiction will never loosen its grip on you.
Maybe you’re afraid for your siblings in other parts of the world—living in famine, living in fear.
Maybe you’re afraid you’ll fail at work or fail that exam at school and let people down.
Maybe you’re afraid you’ll never lose the weight.
Maybe you’re afraid you’ve let your parents down.
Maybe you’re afraid you’ve let yourself down.
Maybe you’re afraid you’re not enough—even after what we say here time and time again, that Christ has shown you are.

Have I named any of your fears?

What is it you fear, church?
What are the longings that you bring to God?

I think naming them can be healing. I think when we say scary things out loud, it becomes easier to face them—especially when we say them together. Because maybe we hear the whispers of the angels all throughout this Advent story saying:

“I'm not denying your fear.
But I’m telling you there is nothing to fear.
You don’t have to be afraid.”

Somehow the great irony of this Christmas story is that fear can coexist with hope.

And it's not fleeting, flimsy hope.
It’s gritty hope.
It’s resilient hope.
It’s hope that has known grief and sits with it.
It’s hope that has known fear and lives with it.

It’s a hope that understands that Christ came into a fearful world—not as a king threatening power over us, but in the most vulnerable way possible: as a baby. Somehow fearless even then. And shined as a light in the darkness—the darkness that cannot overcome it.

Whether in exile, under the rule of a puppet king, or in the depths of personal pain, we long for God to break in through this fear and bring us hope.

And I think Zechariah and Elizabeth longed for a Messiah, and they longed for a child. And God broke in and reminded them—and reminds us—that good news is louder than fear.

Will you say that with me?

Good news is louder than fear.

It’s hard to believe sometimes. I don’t know, church. Perhaps this Advent the question is not:

How do we rid ourselves of fear?

Maybe it is:

How do we name it—honestly name it—and still believe that God is near?

As the prophet in Lamentations said:

“I called on thy name, Lord,
from the depths of the pit,
and you heard my plea.
I said, ‘Do not close your ear
to my cry for help.’”

And as Kay read, the prophet said:

“You came near when I called on you,
and you said, ‘Do not fear.’”

For my hope is louder.
My hope can handle anything you say,
anything you feel,
anything you share.
And I do not deny your fear—
I acknowledge it,
and I am with you in it.”

And the whisper of an angel to a fearful man and a barren woman:

“You have nothing to fear.”

There is nothing to fear, church.

Amen