Make a Joyful Noise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

The Stranger on the Road

Sermon preached by Christy Brown on Sunday, April 19, 2026

Last week, Wesley preached a great message about doubting Thomas, about how our doubt doesn’t mean we don’t have faith, but our doubt is actually a sign of our faith. A sign that we are questioning how to have faith in this imperfect world that has not yet lived up to the world that God designed for us.

And this week we are met with other disciples who are also questioning. They are wondering about the meaning of Jesus in a world that doesn’t make sense to human eyes. Sound familiar?

Today’s scripture from the Gospel of Luke reminds us to be prepared to recognize Jesus in unexpected places. And I identify with this message because sometimes I can get so wrapped up in considering the gospels, and ethics, and analyzing Christianity today, that I lose sight of Jesus’s actual presence in our world.  So, I hope that as we all study Luke’s message, it reaches each of us, and that we take it from this place and remember to keep our eyes open for Jesus’s presence throughout the week ahead. 

Let us pray together:

Loving God, guide us today as we study your scripture. Shine your light within our hearts and open the eyes of our minds and our spirits that we may be ready to know your truth and understand your ways. Amen.

Have you ever been looking everywhere for your keys, or your phone, or your glasses, and you eventually realize that whatever it is you are looking for it’s actually right in front of you? I have been known to put on a pair of sunglasses while I still have another pair sitting on top of my head. And I only notice that I’m wearing two pairs because while I’m putting the second pair on, they bump the first pair of sunglasses.

Today’s scripture strikes me as being a little bit like that. It’s like being so close to something that even though you’re searching for it, you don’t see it. Jesus can be like that. Sometimes we are working so hard to find him that we miss seeing him when he appears in right in front of our noses. 

In fact, so many people are searching to find Jesus in today’s world, that we have over 216 major Christian denominations in the just US and Canada, and over 35,000 independent or nondenominational congregations. That means there are around thirty-two different denominations for every page of the Bible. People are looking for Jesus, but how do we know what he looks like when we have 35,000 different versions?

Today’s gospel reading is the story of people who focused so hard on trying to figure out the meaning behind Jesus’s death that they miss his resurrection. 

Luke chapter 24 tells us it is the third day after Jesus’s crucifixion. The day when Christ is risen. The day his body was not found at the tomb. And two of his followers are walking down the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. It’s not a short walk. Emmaus is about seven miles from Jerusalem. So, they have plenty of time to talk about what has happened in the past three days and what it all means. 

They know that the tomb was found empty, because the women told them it was empty. In verse 10, Luke says the women who first heard the story of the risen Christ were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women. And these women were the first to see the empty tomb. And not only the tomb, but two men in dazzling clothing also appeared before them and asked, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.” 

Obviously, the women were amazed, and they returned to the eleven apostles and shared what they had seen, but the apostles didn’t believe them. The gospel says, “the words seemed to them an idle tale.” But I guess Peter at least questioned if the women might be telling the truth because he got up and ran to the tomb himself and confirmed it. He saw the empty tomb and the linen cloths lying there with no body inside. But the apostles still didn’t understand what it all meant.

So later that day, these two men, these two followers of Jesus are walking along the road to Emmaus, talking about these recent events, as a stranger approaches them. And even though they are consumed by their conversations about Jesus – it’s all they can think about – scripture tells us that their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus. Even while he was walking right beside them. They are talking about him, but they don’t recognize him.  

We can’t know for sure why scripture says that their eyes “were kept” from recognizing him. Some people interpret this to mean that their eyes were closed by some sort of mystical divine intervention so that they would listen while Jesus explained the scriptures to them and not just be distracted by the fact that he was there, physically in front of them. Others believe that they didn’t recognize Jesus because they knew he was dead and their faith wasn’t strong enough to believe that he could be alive. Despite the women’s testimony that Jesus was risen, and Peter’s confirmation that Jesus’s body was gone, they weren’t ready to believe that Jesus was alive. 

But when I read Luke’s gospel, I tend to think that maybe it was their own preoccupation with Jesus’s story – trying to figure out what had happened that made them unable to recognize Jesus. Maybe they were just so busy thinking. And trying to make sense of Jesus’ ministry. And trying to figure it all out in their heads. That they just missed the real live Jesus, walking down the road. Right beside them. 

I know I struggle with this. Sometimes I don’t see Jesus in the world because I get caught up in hype. And social media adds a new dimension for my distraction because I am constantly interrupted by unimportant things – like AI memes of the Golden GIrls – or sometimes by upsetting things – like the latest political news. And these things seem urgent when often they are just drawing my attention away from real places where I might be able to serve God in the physical world. I am thinking about what’s on the screen, or what’s in my head, or maybe even what’s written in scripture to the point that I forget to look at the actual world around me.

How many times do I miss seeing Jesus because I am too busy looking at other distractions? I don’t know, but it helps me identify with Cleopas.

We don’t really know why Cleopas and the other disciple don’t realize who Jesus is, but when they see a stranger join them on their walk and ask what they are talking about, they look at him like he’s crazy. Cleopas even asks in verse 18, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” They assume that Jesus must be an outsider because everyone in Jerusalem is aware of what has happened over the weekend. This man, this stranger, must be from somewhere else. He must be unaware of the local news and customs and culture. The Passover, the crucifixion. 

Now, the Greek word for stranger that Cleopas uses to address Jesus is Pah’-roy-kos. It is derived from Para which means alongside and oikos, or home. So, this is someone who is alongside their home. Not at home. It’s a word used to describe someone who is living temporarily in the land, usually without citizenship rights. In America today, Paroikos would probably be the word we would use for an undocumented resident or a migrant worker. Someone without rights who doesn’t fit in our culture and doesn’t understand our customs. Someone that ICE might target. 

So how can we recognize Jesus? We can look for the Paroikos, because Jesus was an outsider – not just walking to Emmaus, but all of his life. 

Just as Jesus was not born into royalty, but into a manger. And just as he did not choose to ride into Jerusalem on a stallion, but on a donkey, when Jesus first appears to his followers after the crucifixion, he does not appear as a rich merchant, or a centurion, or a king. Although he had the ability and authority to be any of those things. Instead, he chooses to show up as a migrant who hasn’t heard the news. 

I don’t know about you, but this makes me think a lot about the headlines in this week’s news.  While Jesus, our risen Lord, appeared to his followers, he did not choose to appear as someone worthy of worship, but as a stranger. When Jesus has the opportunity to show the entire world his glory. To prove his triumph over death, he chooses to come back as someone who isn’t recognized even by his own followers.

In the meantime, this very week in the US we have a leader whose favorite pastime seems to be creating false images with AI to put himself in all sorts of positions of power – as a king, as a fighter pilot, as a Jedi, as the Pope, and this week, even as Jesus himself. 

And although all these AI images are vile, and even sacrilegious, it’s usually easy to spot an AI-generated Jesus. What can be harder to spot are the other false prophets who claim to speak in Jesus’ name yet prophesy about why it is important to start wars to bomb unjust regimes and then use their false war to bomb neighborhoods and hospitals and schools instead. These wars aren’t limited to Epic Fury. These wars are being waged all over the world in the name of God or Allah or Yahweh, or even the god of capitalism. 

So how do we spot Jesus in the world? We have to be able to know the difference between the Jesus who walks with the oppressed and AI generated images of Jesus who supports the empire. 

Liberation theology is the study of the gospel as it reaches to those who have been exploited by empire. It has its roots among the poor and oppressed. Not among the people who are controlling the empires and waging wars, but among the people who are being bombed around the world today while their governments take their sweet time working out a peace plan.  

Liberation theology started in the indigenous communities of central and south America when they were being exploited by colonial capitalist who were tearing down their forests and taking away the land that their families had lived on for generations. It also has roots in the Black church in the US. With people who had been taken from their homeland and stripped of their culture and enslaved for generations. These are the people Jesus chose to identify with when revealed himself, not the rulers, but the oppressed.

And basically what liberation theology boils down to, is this: We have a choice in what we believe the message of Christ is. Did Jesus come to earth and live in a nation that was under the control of the Roman Empire, and die the death of a martyr, so that generations after his death his people could continue to live under the control of an empire and hope for a better life one day in heaven? Or did Jesus come so that all people might have life more abundant here, and now, on earth? Did he just come to give us hope for an afterlife? Or does his message of love thy neighbor, give us the tools to work for a better tomorrow here and now?

Father Bruce Morrill, says the entire Bible can be summarized in two lines. First, “Somebody’s in trouble,” and second, “Repent.” Throughout both the Old or the New Testament, every story starts with someone in trouble. The people of God aren’t the ruling authorities, they are the people who are in trouble. And even when the Israelites have some power, like King David or Joseph, there’s still trouble.

And the second line that Fr. Morrill says summarizes the Bible is simply one word: “Repent.” Repent means to change what you are doing because if somebody’s in trouble, then something needs to change. The Gospel of Mark is consider to be the oldest gospel, so the first words ever written to come from the mouth of Jesus are found in Mark chapter 1, Jesus says “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.”  Somebody’s in trouble, and it’s time to repent. 

I don’t know about you, but I find those words convicting. And I come here to church each week because I believe that the gospel message is not meant simply for heaven. It’s not just about the afterlife, but about creating the kin-dom of heaven here on earth.  

Here at Vine Street, I know I am close to a group of other people who feel the same way. When I sit in Sunday school, or elders meetings, or on the O&A committee, I find myself surrounded by other people who just want to make the world a better place, who care for each other, and who welcome everyone to the table. 

I see it in our members when they march at the capital and write letters and make calls to our legislators reminding them that they have a responsibility to take care of everyone who lives here, not just the wealthy or those who think like they do. Like the slogan for Room in the Inn says, “Love your neighbor, Y’all.” And every true Southerner knows that Y’all means all.

How many opportunities do we have to see Jesus that we aren’t even aware of? How often do we dismiss our chance because it seems too miraculous, too unlikely, or simply because we’re too busy doing other things?

On the road to Emmaus, Cleopas and the other disciple are talking about Jesus, but they don’t see him. They are believers. But the problem isn’t about their belief. They’re so busy talking about Jesus, trying to figure out the theology and what it means, that they miss Jesus in the world. They miss the Jesus that is standing beside them, talking to them, walking with them. 

How often do we spend our time thinking about Jesus, reading our Bibles, and wondering what it all means? 

When we spend time in our own heads, do we miss Jesus standing right in front of us?

Jesus says in Matthew 25 that some of us won’t recognize him when we see him out in the world. At the end of our lives there will be some people who say:

 Lord, when did I see you hungry or thirsty and give you food or drink?  When did I welcome you as a stranger or visit you when you were sick or in prison?’ 40 And he will answer them, ‘Just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’

And the good news for Cleopas and the other disciple is that even though they didn’t recognize Jesus when he was walking with them. When they came to the end of their journey, they invited the stranger to come in and stay with them. And when the stranger was in their house, and they were sharing their bread with him, only then were their eyes opened. Jesus took the bread and blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, and when they recognized him, he immediately vanished from their sight. And they realized the importance of all that Jesus had told them on their walk. 

So, when I think about the entirety of this story, I think about what Father Morrill said and how to summarize the Bible: “Somebody’s in trouble, and repent.” These disciples thought Jesus was the one who was in trouble. They didn’t want the stranger to be out on the road at night so they offered him shelter and food. And only then did they realize that Jesus wasn’t the one in trouble at all.

Love Has Overcome

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

Let me take you to the fall of 2005. Do you remember where you were in 2005? Were you alive in 2005? In the fall of 2005, I’m driving in my little two-door black Saturn SC2. Do you know what that is? That was my first car. And I’m blasting the CD of one of my bands that I was obsessed with at the time, the American bluegrass band Nickel Creek. Anybody remember them? They’re still around, by the way. They had just released their sophomore album, and these are the words that I heard:

"What will be left when I’ve drawn my last breath? Besides the folks I’ve met or the folks who have known me? And will I discover a soul-saving love or just the dirt above and below me? I’m a doubting Thomas. I took a promise but I do not feel safe. Oh, me of little faith."

Chris Thile wrote that song, if you know who that is. The second verse goes on to say, "Sometimes I pray for a slap in the face. Then I beg to be scared or bear—to beg to be spared because I’m a coward. And if there’s a master of death, I bet he’s holding his breath as I show the blind and tell the deaf of his power." I love that line. "I’m a doubting Thomas. I can’t keep my promises because I don’t know what’s safe. Oh, me of little faith."

Let’s pray together.

Holy One, give us the wisdom to hear your words. Give us the wisdom to take them into our hearts and give us the wisdom to act on their truth. For we are listening. We are listening. Amen. Amen.

Now, growing up, I often heard that doubt was a sign that you weren’t right with God. Doubt was a sin. Doubt was a sign that you didn’t try hard enough. You didn’t believe hard enough. You didn’t have a strong enough faith. It was a sign of moral failure. Folks who doubted couldn’t be saved because if you were saved, then you must have believed. So, you couldn’t have had doubt. So there was this fear in even just admitting that you had questions or doubt or you didn’t understand something. That was my experience, at least. Maybe it was yours as well.

I’ve even shared a couple times that after my grandfather passed away, I was sitting with my grandmother and she started asking like, "Why would a loving God let Grandpa suffer? Why would God let Grandpapa suffer so long and why?" And then she gasped. She retreated back into herself and she said, "I’m sorry. I know you’re not supposed to doubt. You’re not supposed to question God." I remember a classmate in college when someone asked if all of this was just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. And she said, "Well, I’d rather believe it and not need it than not believe it and wish that I had."

But even then, as I think back on that, that is belief based out of fear, right? And it’s human nature to have doubts. It’s human nature to question if we want to see it so that we can believe it. God made us these finite beings, these fallible beings. So to expect that we will never sin, that we will never fail, we will never doubt, we will never question is just unrealistic. And yet that is the expectation that so many had placed on ourselves growing up. And so much of that expectation is singular—church placed on the self, right? "You didn’t believe. You doubted it."

I was talking to someone a while back who used to go to church pretty regularly, but amidst the turmoil of life, the rise of Christian nationalism, failings of organized religion, all that’s going on in the world, they said that they just couldn’t step back into church. "I want to get there," they said, "but I’m just not there yet. Can you believe enough for the both of us?"

We’ve been taught that to doubt is a failing of the human experience instead of it being a part of the human experience. We’ve been taught that doubt is a failure of faith instead of it being a part of the faith process. We’ve been taught that doubt is a roadblock to our journey instead of being a part of the journey itself. Yes.

Each week, Pastor Margie and I say something to the effect of, "Whether you are devout or full of doubt, you are welcome here." And we say that because we’re trying to create something new here at Vine Street. We’re trying to help people understand that you don’t belong because you believe. You believe because you belong. I want to say that again. You don’t belong because you believe. You believe because you belong. Meaning, you are welcome here as you are with all that you might bring: your faith, your doubts, your questions, your convictions. And in doing so, our collective faith is made stronger. Why? Because we’re not doing it alone.

Verse 25 says Thomas replied, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger in the wounds left by the nails and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe." But here’s something I want you to think about. Thomas was the only one who didn’t see Jesus from the group the first time, right? He was alone in that. Everyone else claimed to see this miraculous event—that this man that they saw murdered had come back to life. Don’t you think that some of them, even after they left that experience, might have said, "What just happened? What did I just see? Did that really just happen? Am I dreaming? Was any of that real?" And then together they were able to recount, to reassure, and reaffirm what they had just witnessed.

But not Thomas. He was alone. And so I get it. I imagine that Thomas looked at his world as this oppressed person, someone living under a tyrannical regime, under the thumb of empire, and he could not see death defeated. I look at my own world. I look out at the world and I see this senseless war that is somehow won and yet not done. I see this tiny, tiny man who’s trying to convince the world that he is big and bad. I see unfilled potholes in our streets and rising gas prices and failing infrastructure. And yet our concern is denying trans folks healthcare. Our concern is denying kids an education for the little maps that we’ve drawn with lines. Right. I can’t fault Thomas because I too sometimes wonder how or where is death defeated.

But the good news, friends, is that even when I am a doubting Thomas myself, I remember that I have this community of goodness in the world here. A community that helps me remember when it’s hard for me to remember on my own that this is not the end and to hold on a little bit longer. A community that helps me remember that Christ is indeed alive in the world through their love and through their actions. They prove it to me. They help me remember that the kingdom of God is nigh—and not in this apocalyptic way, but in the sense that we are bringing heaven to earth. Yes. And that we don’t have to do it alone.

Even after this miraculous interaction that they had with Jesus, the disciples doubted again, right? How could they not? They’re human. In fact, I invite you to go read in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 28:18, where they even had doubts at the ascension. There were some who, yes, believing became easy to them. But for most of them, especially in these post-resurrection stories, it didn’t. And their first response was doubt and fear.

Jesus said, "Thomas, put your finger here and look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. Stop doubting and have faith." Thomas replied, "You are my Lord and my God." And Jesus said, "Thomas, do you believe and have faith because you have seen me? Because the people who have not seen me but still have faith are the ones who are truly blessed."

Commentator Jim Harnish, he shares these words about this story. He says, "My guess is that the early church preserved this story about Thomas not because it was peculiar, but because it was familiar to them. They were not so unlike us in confronting oppression and injustice, racism, corruption, and dishonesty in our world." But don’t miss the words that acknowledge their doubt, too. Because it says, "Although you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him." He says that in and through their doubt, they experienced a new birth into the living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection did not remove every doubt. It did not change their challenging circumstances, but it allowed them to find strength and to live boldly in tumultuous times.

By the way, that song ends like this. He sings, "Please forgive me and give me the time to decipher the signs and please forgive me for the time that I’ve wasted. Oh, I’m a doubting Thomas, but I’ll take your promise, though I know nothing’s safe. Oh, me of little faith."

Chris Thile, one of the most renowned mandolin players in the world, if you don’t know who he is—and in this song, he’s acknowledging his doubt. This was a big deal, by the way. This was a band that was presented to the world as a very Christian version of bluegrass. And so, for him to say, "I don’t know what’s going to happen," or for him to say, "I don’t know what I believe sometimes," was huge. But he acknowledges his doubt. He says, "I’ll take your promise anyway, though I know nothing is safe. Nothing’s easy. Nothing’s comfortable. Oh, me of little faith."

Last week, Pastor Margie reminded us that nothing is easy, nothing is safe, nothing is comfortable. She reminded us that the good news means that we can be scared and afraid and we can proclaim good news in the world anyway. We can proclaim joy anyway. We can be scared and we can run quickly with trembling and we can announce that love has the last word. She said that we can be scared and we can still see those resurrection moments in our lives, in our world, in our community.

And when that fear, that trembling, or in this case, when that doubt is the loudest voice in our ears, we want you to know that you have this community of faith ready to walk with you, to hold your hand, to pick you up, and remind you that you don’t have to do this alone. We can believe enough for the both of us for a while until you are ready to step back out into the world and proclaim that death is defeated, that Christ is alive in the world, and Christ has overcome, love has overcome.

So this week, may it be so, but may we make it so, and may we do so together. Amen. Amen.

With Fear and Great Joy

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

Good morning. I invite you—if you hear something that resonates—you can say yes. You can say amen. You can say hallelujah. Because we are not scared of the risen Christ this morning, are we?

So, for those of you who don’t know, Lent—the season of Lent—was originally a season for new converts to prepare for their baptism on Easter. They would engage in studies about the Christian tradition. They would study what was central to Jesus’s life and ministry. They would study what the gospel—the good news—really was.

And if you’ve been here this Lenten season, starting on Ash Wednesday, we’ve been talking about grounding ourselves in the good news of Lent.

Y’all remember that good news: when the host of the banquet found out none of his friends would come and eat with him, he told his servant to find the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and bring them in—and there was still room. Y’all remember that good news?

Y’all remember the good news when Jesus wanted to keep the party going at the wedding at Cana, and he saved the best wine for last—and there was still more. Y’all remember that good news?

Y’all remember the good news that together, the impossible is possible with God—when we had a couple loaves, a couple fish, and he made it multiply?

Y’all remember the good news rooted in justice and mercy—when Jesus found this woman caught in adultery and said, “You who have not sinned, why don’t you pick up a stone and cast it?” Our God of mercy—that’s good news.

Y’all remember the good news from last week that inspires us to act? When Jesus came into Jerusalem on a donkey—nothing fancy, not a warrior, not on a throne—but on a pile of cloaks his disciples had put down. No red carpet, but palm branches cut from the fields where the people worked, waving, shouting, “Hosanna.” Jesus saying, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.” Y’all remember that good news?

And now today, church—on Thursday—when the good news washed even Judas’s feet, when the good news was crucified and buried and silenced in a tomb—I am here to proclaim to you that the good news is alive in the world. The good news is alive in the world.

Today we learn that death—even death—cannot stop the good news.

And we learn it in Matthew’s gospel. I like Matthew’s version of this story—it’s shorter. For those of you who read your Bible, if you want to find a shorter one, this is it. It doesn’t go into too much detail for those of you who aren’t very detail-oriented.

But this passage is seismic.

There was an earthquake in those hours when Jesus was crucified. And there is an earthquake in this passage. There is lightning in this passage. There is an angel descending from the heavens like lightning, wearing blinding clothes, white as snow. And the angel comes and rolls the stone away—and sits on top of that stone.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine an angel going, “Hey, how y’all doing?”

And the guards were so scared. So scared at what they saw. So scared at what it might mean that Scripture tells us they shook and fell over like they were dead.

Y’all, if this ain’t some Monty Python kind of scene—they shook and fell over like they were dead.

And we know that Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene—two of the women who stood and watched as their Savior, their son, was crucified—are the same two women who come to the tomb to see.

And let’s have a little Greek lesson here. That word “to see”—theomai—it’s the same word used when the women were looking and seeing Jesus hanging on the cross. It doesn’t mean some kind of casual looking around. No—“to see” means to observe, to intentionally look.

And I don’t know if they expected to find the risen Savior, but I know they intentionally wanted to observe something. It was not an accident that they came to see.

Women are so good at showing up and bearing witness to pain, are we not?

So they go and see. And we get the earthquake, and we get the angel, and we get the guards—but the women are scared too. The women are scared too as the ground shakes and lightning strikes the sky.

And the angel looks at them and says a phrase—the most repeated phrase that God says in Scripture. Y’all want to guess? Somebody’s got it.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Don’t be afraid.

“I know it’s hard to trust in resurrection and to believe in hope, Mary—but don’t be afraid. I know it’s hard to see that light is on the other side when these seismic shifts come—but don’t be afraid.

“I know that you are looking for Jesus—the Jesus that was crucified. I know you are intentionally trying to observe something. And I am here to tell you—he’s not here. He’s not here. He has been raised. He has been raised.”

Y’all remember at the beginning of the birth story, when an angel comes to the shepherds—this ragtag bunch, this smelly group of guys—and they were scared as heck, and the angel says to them, “Come on—what? Don’t be afraid.”

And you know what they do next? They run with haste.

And in this passage, when the angel says, “Don’t be afraid,” the angel says, “Quickly—go tell the disciples.” And so quickly, Mary and Mary Magdalene set off.

The poet Mary Oliver—I’ve got to quote her today—she says, “The instructions for living a life are: pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it.” Pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it.

And I love this part. So the angel goes on: “Tell the disciples he’s been raised from the dead. He’s going ahead of you. There you will see him.”

Jesus is always a few steps ahead of us. Jesus is always on the loose as we scratch our heads and wonder how we keep up with him.

Nowhere in Scripture does it say, “Worship me,” but everywhere it says, “Follow me. Come on—I’m way up ahead of you. Come find me. Come follow me.”

And then we read that they left the tomb quickly—with fear and great joy.

With fear and great joy.

I went on a backpacking trip with my best friend about 10 years ago. We backpacked in the Pasayten Wilderness in central Washington. We were out there for a few days—we didn’t see anybody out there, y’all.

And as we backpacked, my best friend Eliza became more and more scared that we would see bears. She became frightened that bears were going to come out of the woods and attack us—which I found kind of funny. Like, we’re going to be good. There aren’t any bears out here.

And the second day that we backpacked, the fear had overwhelmed her so much that she bent down and picked up a giant stick from the side of the trail. And she started hiking, holding this giant stick.

I looked at her and said, “What are you doing? You’re ruining the fun.”

And she said, “The way for me to have fun right now is to carry this stick. The way for me to express and experience joy is to take my fear with me.”

With fear and great joy.

And y’all, there have been years where I am not ready for Easter. I want to sit in the damp, dark tomb with Jesus, because the darkness feels more comfortable than the light. I’m not ready for the resurrected Christ—for the flowers to bloom, for the light to come in. I am afraid.

Maybe you are afraid too.

Maybe fear has overtaken you right now in these times. And maybe you showed up here not too sure about a message of hope. And I’m here to remind you—and to remind myself—that the good news means you can be scared, and you can proclaim joy anyway.

I want to say that again: you can be scared and afraid of what’s happening, and you can proclaim joy anyway.

You can be scared and you can run quickly, and you can announce that love has the last word.

You can be scared and you can see—no, you can observe—those resurrection moments happening in your life. Whether they are small, like that flower bursting out of the ground, or whether they are grand and seismic, like an angel coming down like a lightning bolt.

Who here has watched Game of Thrones? I see my friend Mark—yeah, you got me. Bran, at one point in the show, asks his dad, “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”

And his dad says, “That’s the only time a man can be brave.”

Why would they be afraid? Why would Mary and Mary Magdalene be so afraid?

Maybe they were afraid because the guards—the ones who shook with fear, the ones who flopped over like they were dead—they’re going to wake up again. And they are going to—what we learn in a couple chapters—try to suppress the good news that Jesus is back, to confront in a nonviolent way the powers that be.

They are scared because Rome never runs out of crosses.

And as Victor Judith Jones says, they are scared because tyrants and empires devote endless energy toward maintaining the power to silence their critics and foes.

There is reason to fear, church. I know you see it.

And resurrection moments are everywhere. Everywhere. If we are willing to go with haste—to sprint quickly and find them—they are everywhere. I am telling you what.

So what’s going to happen in this story? What’s going to happen to this ragtag bunch of resurrection believers who offer testimony in response to state-sanctioned death? What’s going to happen to them?

What’s going to happen when the God who shakes the earth cannot be stopped by armed guards or an official seal?

What’s going to happen?

This story begins with fear and overwhelming joy. And that’s how it continues.

It ends with resurrection, and it ends with the promise of deep hope—not cheap hope.

Cheap hope, church, prances around as blind optimism, failing to acknowledge the cross and what has happened. But deep hope—Christian hope—knows that the shadows are still here in the night and chooses hope anyway. Hopes anyway. Hopes despite it all.

Because we know the end of the story. We know what has the last word. And it is not death, and it is not threat, and it is not violence—but a deep hope and a man who rose against all odds.

So my question for you is: do you count yourselves among this ragtag bunch of resurrection believers? Or have you given up because the powers that be have capitalized on your fear?

Not to be offensive—but I’m looking at a ragtag bunch.

I am looking at a ragtag bunch who forget to set the table wide. Who forget to save the best wine for last. Who forget to wash the feet of people who have betrayed them. Who forget that the impossible is possible with a God who can multiply out of scarcity.

We are ragtag, and we are sometimes getting it wrong.

But I’m looking at a ragtag bunch who woke up this morning, who put on your Sunday best—or your Sunday casual. We don’t care here. And you showed up.

Maybe you were dragged here. Or maybe something brought you here—that deep hope that there still is light streaming through the darkness, that we still flower a cross of death.

When Mary and Mary and the disciples reach Jesus, he meets them and says, “Greetings.”

“You didn’t think I was coming back, did you?”

And you know what they do? They take hold of his feet and they worship him.

And then he looks at them and says the verse that God says the most in Scripture:

“Don’t be afraid.”

Even as I hear those words, I know there are shadows in the night. I know that Rome never runs out of crosses.

But this ragtag pastor will never run out of hope.

I believe the good news is alive in the world. I see it here. I’m asking you to see it with me—like Mary and Mary did—to tiptoe to the tomb and wonder if there is something going on.

So I’m asking you: if you are scared, pick up that stick and follow me—in your fear and in your joy.

Because, church—he is risen. Hallelujah. He is risen indeed.

Amen.

Don’t Be Fancy

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, March 29, 2026

Good morning. I love all this talk about divinity schools and seminary and all that good stuff, because today my first story is about a younger Margie who had just completed her first year at Duke Divinity. Daniel, you ready?

I had asked if I could be placed in a small town for my first summer in field education placement. I wanted to be in a context that I hadn't ever experienced before, being from a big city and coming from Seattle at that time. And so I was placed in a pretty rural Methodist church in Bryson City, North Carolina. Has anybody ever been to Bryson City? It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful, beautiful town. The Nantahala Outdoor Center is right there—lots of good rafting.

There’s also this road next to Bryson City called the Tail of the Dragon. The Tail of the Dragon is an 11-mile stretch of road with 318 curves. I didn’t believe it, so I took my 1999 Toyota Camry and drove it that summer—and had to stop and dry heave for quite some time. That is true.

A lot of people come to Bryson City to ride the Tail of the Dragon—motorcyclists, or what I’m going to call bikers. That summer, there was an annual gathering of bikers—a big cookout. And the bikers wanted a pastor to come and bless the bikes. Y’all know where this is going.

So, perched near the Tail of the Dragon under a bunch of pavilions, young Margie in her Chacos was asked to go bless the bikes. I was asked to do that because my supervisor, my pastor, was out of town. He thought it would be a very easy task for me—just go and offer a simple prayer to this group of motorcycle riders.

So I park and show up to the cookout by myself. I have a bunch of hot dogs. I’m eating pie. I’m kind of waiting for my big moment. And I’ve just had a year of theological education, so I’ve thought a lot about what I want this prayer to sound like. I want to sound smart. I wanted to pray about the hermeneutic of an eschatological world and the theodicy of God as an ecstasy reimagined with the soteriology of salvific something, something, something.

Y’all don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what I’m talking about.

And I get up there to pray with these 15 guys and their motorcycles. I’m about to lay hands on a bike, and one goes, “Ah, don’t touch that. Don’t touch that bike.” And I looked around and realized, Margie, just pray something simple.

So I don’t even remember what I prayed, y’all, but it did not have the word “soteriology” in it.

In that moment, they just wanted me to bless these bikes and bless this journey. They didn’t want me to get fancy.

I went back to Duke the next year and was reading something by author Glennon Doyle. Many of you know her. In her book she said, “Don’t be fancy. Just help people.” Don’t be fancy. Just help people.

I think Mark 11:1–11—it’s not fancy at all. We know it as the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but in a lot of ways it’s not that triumphant, is it? And I think it tells us everything we need to know about the one who came in the name of the Lord.

This telling takes “fancy” and turns it on its head. I like Mark’s version best because he directs our focus to what everyone else is doing around Jesus. It’s like what we’ve been talking about during this Lenten season—that all of these background characters in these healings and miracles are actually the ones tasked with performing the gospel.

Jesus says, “Come over here. I’m going to tell you what to do—now go be the hands and feet for me.” And that’s what’s going on in Mark’s account.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He gathers his disciples at Bethany and draws two of them in. He says, “I want you to go find a donkey—one that’s never been ridden. When you find it, untie it and bring it to me. And if anyone asks why you’re untying it, just say, ‘The Lord needs it.’ And if they look confused, say, ‘He’ll bring it back immediately.’”

So the disciples, without missing a beat, go and find this colt tied out in the street. They start to untie it, and sure enough, bystanders say, “What are you doing?” And they say, “The Lord needs it.” And the bystanders don’t bat an eye. They let them take it.

They bring the donkey to Jesus—Jesus, Lord of Lords; Jesus, Messiah; Jesus, the King. They take cloaks and put them on the back of this donkey for him to ride.

That’s not very fancy, is it?

They bring the donkey, throw their cloaks on it, and as he rides, people come from all over. Scripture says they’re waving palm branches they cut from the fields, shouting, “Hosanna!” which means “Save us.”

Wait a minute—a donkey? What happened to a king on a warhorse? A couple of cloaks? What happened to a throne? Leafy branches from the fields? What happened to a red carpet?

Where is the royal procession fit for a king?

It’s not very fancy at all.

And we know that’s because that’s not the way our King works. His kingship is symbolized by a humble colt. And as he told the disciples before this entry: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.”

That’s the whole thing.

It’s as if he’s saying, “I’m not in the business of fancy. I’m in the business of sacrifice, humility, and love. And all it takes is a cloak and a branch.”

The good news Jesus shared throughout his ministry—that he lived and preached for 33 years—built trust. So when we look at the disciples, the crowd, even the bystanders, nobody hesitates.

Mark’s gospel moves fast—“immediately” shows up again and again. And we hear it here, too. When Jesus tells people what to do, they do it. He lived among them, not above them, and they trusted him.

They find the donkey. They grab the cloak. They cut the branches. They respond.

Y’all remember that group from October—the Buddhist monks who walked 2,300 miles for peace and compassion? They took nothing with them. Nothing fancy about that.

You remember when Jesus sent out the disciples? “Take nothing—no staff, no bread, no bag, no money, no extra shirt.” Nothing fancy.

The Son of Man, cloaked in humility. Not a royal robe—but the cloak a hemorrhaging woman reached out to touch. “If I could just touch the hem of his garment…”

People in Gennesaret begged to touch his cloak and be healed. It didn’t have gold sewn into it. It didn’t need to.

Nothing fancy.

I don’t think the good news of the gospel wants us to get caught up in sounding smart or getting it perfect. We might miss the chance to pray if we’re too busy finding the right words. We might miss the chance to act if we’re too busy trying to look the part.

We don’t worship that kind of king.

He doesn’t care about our vocabulary, our accolades, our titles, what we’re wearing, how much we have, whether we made the team, got into the school, or hit our sales goals. He cares whether we will act—and not in a way that gets in the way of the gospel.

He says, “Move. Get out of the way. Do what I say. It’s easy. Don’t be fancy. Just help people.”

That’s it.

It reminds me of those Southern mothers who say, “You don’t need all that.” We don’t. We don’t need all that to go out and help someone.

So my question for you—and for me—is: What will the good news inspire you to do?

Because the irony of this story is that the same people shouting “Hosanna” will soon shout “Crucify him.” We have to decide which voice we’ll amplify.

In one of his last public acts, Jesus shows us what matters most:
Show up.
Look around.
Respond immediately.
Help.

So I don’t care about your theodicy or your eschatological soteriology, church—and I don’t think Jesus does either.

He just says, “Don’t be fancy. Just help people.”

Amen.

Mercy Over Judment

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, March 22, 2026

As we prepare for this sermon, would you please pray with me?

Holy One, when you speak, we don’t want to miss it—
when you bend down and write in the dirt,
when you move through the trees,
when you wake with the dawn,
when you tug on our hearts and whisper into our dreams.
We don’t want to miss it.

So today we pray:
clear out the cobwebs in our ears,
quiet the steady stream of thoughts that march through our minds,
and open up space in our hearts so that we can receive your word
and what it has for us today.

With hope we pray. Amen.

Recently, I wrote an op-ed that appeared in The Tennessean newspaper. The Tennessean has been very kind to publish some of my ramblings. This piece was about how we all choose which scripture verses to live by—and how that’s actually a good thing. It’s called discernment. It’s called discipleship.

In this op-ed, I gave a couple of examples of two posts I saw on Facebook regarding the U.S.’s recent bombing of Iran. One post critiqued the war from a pacifist perspective. They said that the Ten Commandments instruct us not to kill, not to murder, and they called for soldiers to refuse unjust orders.

The other post was a rebuttal, saying that we are instructed to obey authority, according to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 13.

As I mentioned in the piece, both of these are biblical arguments. But what they highlight is more about the interpreter’s agenda than about the scriptures themselves.

You see, the Bible is complex. It was written and compiled by many authors over roughly 1,200 years. Of course this vast library contains contradictions and discrepancies. The Bible is not a magic eight ball. You can’t open it to a random page, point your finger, and live by whatever that verse says. That’s not how it works.

Regarding the verses above, one of the most obvious of the Ten Commandments is “You shall not kill.” However, there are other verses—such as Leviticus 24:17—that seem to permit killing in certain cases: “Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.”

Similarly, regarding submission to authority, Romans 13 instructs the early church to be subject to governing authorities. Yet the prophet Isaiah says, “Woe to those who make unjust laws.”

And as I’ve mentioned before, Romans 13 has been used throughout history to justify slavery, Jim Crow laws, and segregation.

So which is it?

As we move toward Holy Week, we acknowledge that Jesus’ ministry increasingly put him at odds with religious leaders—those who prioritized legality and saw Jesus as a threat.

Our passage today tells us that while Jesus was teaching in the temple, scribes and Pharisees interrupted him. They brought a woman allegedly caught in adultery and put both her and Jesus on trial. They cited Mosaic law and placed her fate in Jesus’ hands.

But instead of focusing on punishment, Jesus flips the script, as he often does. He invites them to consider their own sin.

He knows what the scripture says—but he asks:
“What is the most just, merciful, and faithful interpretation of this text?”

It’s important to note the hypocrisy of the law itself. The law of adultery largely applied only to women. Men could have multiple wives and concubines. A man would only be tried if he defiled another man’s “property.”

The woman’s male counterpart is absent. Her accusers—her jury—are people who would not have been breaking this law themselves, yet they get to decide her fate.

We’re given no details. Was she assaulted? Threatened? Or simply bait for Jesus?

Jesus’ teachings were grounded in scripture, but his actions interpreted the law through love, compassion, and mercy.

The Reverend Lizzie McManus-Dail writes:
“The inconvenience of mercy is that it is hardly ever merited.”

And yet Jesus speaks of mercy constantly. He tells his disciples to forgive seventy-seven times. He calls the merciful blessed. Even on the cross, he says, “Father, forgive them.”

Reverend Lizzie continues:
“In John 8:2–11, Jesus embodies mercy with a woman who may have received none in her life. She may not deserve it—and yet he offers it anyway.”

Because mercy—unmerited, impractical, and full of hope—is the mark of a true follower of Christ.

Verse 6 says they were using this moment as a trap. But what does Jesus do? He bends down and writes in the dust.

What was he doing?

Was he writing a message to the woman? Listing sins? Reciting the law? Buying time?

Instead of reacting, he pauses.

Then in verse 7, he says:
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Then he bends down again.

One by one, they leave—beginning with the oldest—until only Jesus and the woman remain.

He asks, “Has no one condemned you?”
She replies, “No one, sir.”
“Then neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin.”

Jesus does not abolish the law—he reinterprets it through mercy.

The scribes focus on legalism. Jesus focuses on transformation—for the woman and for everyone present.

Some say the issue here is Jewish law, but that misses the point. Jesus was Jewish. This is not Christian versus Jewish—it is legality versus love.

In Matthew, Jesus says:
“You have neglected the more important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness.”

How we interpret scripture says more about us than about the text itself.

And the Bible has been used to harm.

So I ask: What will our message be? What is our agenda?

This week, our state legislature considered bills to mandate the Ten Commandments in classrooms, require Bible reading, and track students’ immigration status.

So what good is it to look like a Christian state if we don’t act like one?
What good is Christian decor without Christian decency?

We have neglected the weightier matters: justice, mercy, compassion.

On Ash Wednesday, Reverend Margie reminded us that Lent is a season of preparation, reflection, and transformation.

As new members join this church and others prepare for baptism, we are reminded that we follow Jesus because of the good news.

And that good news must be for everyone.

It must be rooted in justice, mercy, and faithfulness—because that is what Jesus calls the most important.

Reverend Lizzie writes:
“Receiving and extending mercy—even in the most unlikely places—is how I know God is still at work.”

Mercy reminds us there is more than what hurts us.

God’s justice is not retributive—it is restorative. It is the joy of the lost being found.

That is why Jesus says, “Go and live.”

The good news is rooted in justice and mercy—but it is not automatic. We must make it so.

That is why we don’t just say “may it be so.” We say, “we make it so.”

We are the ones who create a more just, compassionate, merciful world.

So what is our message going to be?
What is our agenda?

This church has a legacy of love, mercy, and faithfulness—but we cannot rest on that legacy.

We must live it forward.

Amen.

So let us go into the world—this week and beyond this Lenten season—choosing love over hate, peace over violence, compassion over condemnation, and mercy over judgment.

Because this is the good news.

Amen. Amen.

May we make it so.

Welcoming the Child

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, March 15, 2026

Many of you know this by now — I've talked about this exhaustively in the last couple of months — but I found my first diary a few years ago. It was a small Tweety Bird journal, and it had one of those locks on it that's fake, but I thought it was real, so my brothers couldn't open the lock and see it. And written in sparkly gel pen — y'all remember gel pens? Everyone's like, "Yeah." — written in sparkly gel pen, it said "Important Questions." This was the page right after I had listed all of the Tennessee Titans from the year 1999, which was when we had hope, you know. So, Tennessee Titans — the next page said, "Important Questions. Question number one: Who made God? Question number two: Is God really a boy? Question number three" — which I haven't talked about — "Is there life on another planet?"

I've been thinking about that little girl a lot as I step into this new role of senior minister. Her wheels were turning. Her questions were kind of the same ones that I have today. And her Tweety Bird journal was the first book she was writing in that led to her fascination with a bigger book that she would study and try to understand for decades. I'm talking about the Bible.

We know that kids say the darndest things, and kids also ask the deepest questions. On a podcast I found this week — it's called Hearing Jesus for Kids — the podcast host Rachel Gro shares questions that she has received from kids that she attempts to answer on the podcast. Listen to some of these questions: Will my pet go to heaven? What does God's handwriting look like? Why did God make Satan? Why did God make mosquitoes suck my blood? Where does God live? How old is God? What's the best way to pray? If heaven is such a happy place, why are people so sad when folks go there? Why do bad things happen if God is good?

Kids say the darndest things. Kids ask the deepest questions, do they not? And I'll admit that in my years of growing up, I sometimes forget the very children in my life — my eight nieces and nephews, the little ones here — who hold these theologically rich questions that you and I are still asking today. What's the best way to pray? If heaven is such a happy place, why are we so sad when people go there? Who made God?

Kids start asking "why" from such a young age, and then somewhere along the way, we stop asking it as much. We tense up. We become rigid. We start to feel embarrassed when we say, "I don't know." We play pretend. We seem a little too smart to ask why anymore. We shrug our shoulders. We say, "I'm not creative. I'm not an artist." A little kid would never say that. We stop playing dress-up. We stop dancing around the house. We think that kids' movies are silly, when so much of them have things to teach us adults. Can you think of any kids' movies that have done that for you? Inside Out. Zootopia. Balto. So many rich lessons in those movies.

Instead of crouching down to look children in the eye, we stand tall. We posture maturity and wisdom, dominance and absolutes. We want more families and kids in our pews, but what about the families and kids that are here that need care and nurture? And as the youth say — and I think as Jesus would say — church, we've lost the plot.

It's easy, then, to identify with the disciples in our scripture this morning, who sternly — such a good word; has anybody had a parent be stern with you? — who sternly speak to the children that are running up to Jesus. And it's easy to imagine arguing with the disciples. In Mark 9, in this same story, in Matthew 18, they say, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of God?" It's no surprise that adults are asking about the greatest. Kids don't care about the greatest. Who's the greatest colleague? Who got the greatest performance review? And yet the disciples are asking Jesus: who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus has an answer for them, and it's very short and very direct, as Jesus can be. He says, "The kingdom of heaven belongs to kids." That's what he says. He says, "Let the little children come to me, and don't stop them."

In this account in Mark 10, Jesus continues: "Whoever welcomes one such child welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me." Whoever welcomes a kid welcomes Jesus. Whoever welcomes Jesus welcomes God. Are you following this? So through the transitive property — I think that's what it's called — when we welcome kids, we welcome God. It's that simple. And yet we have made it a little bit complicated. So the good news this Lent is that welcoming kids is welcoming the one who came to us as a vulnerable baby.

These words — welcoming kids — they might feel kind of cute to us today, but they would have felt very destabilizing and perplexing to the disciples. Why? Because kids in Jesus's day weren't like they are now. Children weren't how we think of them. Michael Joseph Brown notes that "children and childhood in antiquity was different." Fifty percent of kids died before the age of five. The weakest members of society were kids. They were fed last. They received the smallest and least desirable portions of food. They were the first to suffer from famine and war and disease and natural disasters. Many — some say more than 70% — would have lost a parent before they hit puberty. A minor had the same status as an enslaved person, and it was not until adulthood that they became what we might think of as a free person.

In other words, in Jesus's day, children weren't the main event. They were the side items that would be useful later on — when they were able to care for their parents, when they were able to work in the family business, when they were able to bring money to their family from a marriage dowry. Children were more often treated as slaves than family. It's so hard to fathom that.

And so this story — it's not only an illustration, it's a metaphor pointing us toward the least and the lost and the last in the kingdom of God. The ones that God wants us to be the most attentive to. The ones who lack societal status. Not just children, but anyone vulnerable and in need of care and protection.

I think this is also illustrated in Deuteronomy, which Lydia read — and thank you; I love the way you emphasized "the alien," or what we might think of as the foreigner, the sojourner, the immigrant — the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow. A litany repeated four times in just five verses, as if God is trying to get us to wake up to these populations that are in need of our attention and care and protection.

"Do not deprive them," we read. "Don't hoard your sheaves in the field. When you drop one, leave it. Leave your abundance for the immigrant and the orphan and the widow. And when you have olives left on your olive trees, don't pick them all — leave some for the immigrant and the orphan and the widow. And when you have grapes in the vineyard, don't pick them all — leave some for the immigrant and the orphan and the widow. And you do this to honor me, and because you must remember that you were vulnerable too. That you were enslaved in Egypt and I set you free. Don't forget that you experienced oppression. And so you don't get to sit on that and say, 'Whew, that's over.' You get to look around and crouch down and wonder: who else needs care?"

And this isn't a suggestion in Deuteronomy. It's a commandment. That word appears twice: I command you to care.

So, while children and immigrants and widows and orphans are named in our scripture today, I think we're invited to remember that each of us has been vulnerable at some point in our lives. We have needed care and protection. We have needed attention and respect.

Jesus is talking to kids, yes. But as priest Joanna Cybert writes, he's also talking about the ones in this world with no status, no influence, no income — like the working poor and the homeless, the people with disabilities and mental health issues, the LGBTQ teenagers who tell their parents who they are and are kicked out of their houses. He's talking about immigrants and abused children and vulnerable elderly people and abused men and women, people in the throes of this dreadful war. God is daring us to welcome all as bearers of God.

Joanna said this, not me: to believe that God's hierarchy is the reverse of culture's hierarchy. I want to repeat that because I need the reminder. God's hierarchy is the reverse of culture's hierarchy. The good news is so hard.

Church, we've got a bill in our legislature right now where people want to track and surveil kids who are immigrants. Imagine going to school in that kind of fear. We've got missiles that destroyed a girls' school in southern Iran, killing over 150 girls. We've got kids going to school in a synagogue this week, just trying to go and learn, that synagogue interrupted by an attack. And of course, one zip code over, we've got kids lacking the resources to thrive and flourish — to be quite literally fed.

We have got to care for and seek protection for and welcome children, knowing that in doing so, we welcome God. God who — remember this — called the prophet Jeremiah, who was around ten years old, just a kid, we might say. God called the prophet Jeremiah. God called Jesus, who shows up as a baby, who is found at twelve years old in the temple wrestling with scripture, talking about scripture with his teachers. I think there's a reason that story is in scripture.

God called a refugee and a little one, and had no hesitation when Jesus grew up that he wasn't supposed to sternly talk to kids. He was supposed to welcome them in, lay hands on them, and bless them, knowing that they are the face of God.

So, church, our job is yes — to care for those who are overlooked, to care for those who are also looked down on, because God reminds us we were once overlooked too. Our job is to learn the names of our little ones in this church. Our job is to nurture their faith. Our job is to volunteer as Sunday school teachers if that calls to us. Our job is not to look down on, but to crouch down. To say, "How are you?" And not only to ask them questions, but to hear theirs too. To learn from them just as much as we may think we teach them.

Kids say the darndest things, and kids ask the deepest questions. And when we welcome children — when we welcome the child in us, when we grab a kid's bulletin and color, as I know some of the adults like to do — when we welcome that child in us, we welcome God. And that's important too.

The good news that we are grounded in this Lent is that we love and believe in a God who offers care and protection for the most vulnerable. But we don't watch God do that. We join in God's work doing that.

So, church, hear these words from the prophet Isaiah — called to be a prophet probably around the age of 18 — who said: "The wolf shall live with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the young goat. The calf and the lion will feed together. And a little child will lead them."

Amen.

Far More Abundantly

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, March 8, 2026

Before we get to this passage, something really terrible has happened. Leading up to it, we learn that John the Baptist has just been beheaded. It's a passage that you probably won't hear preached on; it doesn't come up in our lectionary, but I think it's important to note before we get to this miracle.

The disciples have learned of this—have learned that he has been beheaded for the person he was, for the work that he did. And so they go to him, and they take his body and they lay it in a tomb. Then they gather around Jesus, telling him what they've been up to. And perhaps they do talk about anointing the sick and casting out demons and healing those that nobody else wanted to touch. Maybe they also talk about how he told them they weren't allowed to take their bag or their bread or any money on the journey. Perhaps they lament to him about this friend that they lost.

I wonder if one of them, in sharing, was kind of like a teacher's pet—trying to display his work and prove that he had done enough, that he had healed enough and cured enough, looking to Jesus for that affirmation like some of us may have done with our favorite teacher. And maybe one of them was just ragged and tired, his head hanging low, feeling shame that he hadn't made Jesus proud, that he hadn't done enough—that he had tried his best to heal as many as he could, but he had still walked by people in need.

Maybe one of them was on fire, totally galvanized by the work that they were doing, ready to sprint off and continue it. Maybe one of them was resentful, with blisters on his feet and this audible hunger, looking at Jesus like, "This is what you're having us do? This is the kingdom work?" And maybe all of them in that moment were also heavy with the death of their friend, afraid of what it might mean for them to show their loyalty was not to Herod, but to a different kind of king.

This is where the disciples are when we get to this miracle. Do you feel that sense of raggedness? Do you feel that exhaustion and perhaps fatigue?

Knowing Jesus, knowing the person and the Savior he is, he perhaps had compassion on them. I think he did, because he invited them to go to a deserted place. Maybe he knows that we have to rest in the midst of the work. And so it says that many were coming and going and they didn't even have the leisure to eat. Maybe he wanted them to have the leisure time.

So perhaps with a relieved sigh and that feeling—y'all know that feeling of being at home with someone who loves and sees you—you can just deeply exhale and lean into that comfort. They take their weary bodies and they crawl into a boat to go out to a deserted place and find that respite. And before they can even remove the sandals from their feet and rub the calluses and maybe the bunions, people recognize them. And the people actually beat them to the place where they were going to rest.

And Jesus—perhaps leaving the disciples in the boat to look at each other and say, "There he goes again"—he walks to shore. Scripture tells us that he looks on the crowd with compassion. They were sheep without a shepherd; they were a flock without food. And we learn that he begins to teach them many things.

Can you imagine being there and hearing what he might have taught? What did he teach them? Did he recount his stories of the wedding at Cana, of the hemorrhaging woman, of the demoniac? What did he say to them? Rocking on a boat, getting spiritually fed once again by the one who embodied compassion. Perhaps the disciples were starting to regain that spiritual energy that they so desperately needed.

Whatever he said, he talked into the night—which I'm not going to do right now. It says that he talked into the night. It says that it grew late. And so perhaps these seasick disciples rocking in the boat and the crowds—well, they're listening to the Son of God. I would hope to be pretty alert, taking mental notes, but he is preaching and he is preaching.

And so finally they say, "Hey Jesus, this place is deserted. Not that people went away, but it's deserted and it's late. What if you just come with us and then have these people go and find food for themselves in the villages and in the surrounding country?"

And he answered, "You give them something to eat. You give them something to eat. You give them something to eat." The teaching portion was over. The speaking into the night had ended. And Jesus, the one with the divine power, did not perform the task himself, but empowered his disciples to do it. Do y'all hear me there? He empowers them to show everyone what Good News looks like. "You go give them something to eat."

"You want us to buy bread? Well, you sent us out without money and without a bag and without anything on our person. It's impossible."

Jesus has presented them with what we may think of as an impossible task. Then he says, "Okay, well, what do you got? What are we working with here?"

Five loaves and two fish. That's not even enough to maybe feed just these front rows of people right here. What didn't seem like enough for the disciples somehow was more than enough for Jesus. What seemed impossible for them became this grand holy possibility for him.

And then he says, "You—not me—you go get all of these groups of people to sit down on the grass." And so, we're not talking about the size of this congregation today. We're talking about 5,000 people that they had to organize and mobilize. You know something about mobilizing and organizing people? It's not easy work. 5,000 people. I have a friend moving to Pleasant View, Tennessee. Population: 5,000 people. Trying to put it into perspective for you.

You go organize the people, and the people are still there. The people have seen five loaves and two fish and the people stick around, waiting after hearing what this man has said to see if he really is who he says he is. And I bet a lot of them thought, "He's got this."

And so the disciples go out to the crowd. Jesus takes the food. He blesses it. But he's not the one who goes out and feeds them. He doesn't ask them to come forward so that he can share the loaves and fish with them. No, the one with power empowers the disciples to go and share the Good News—to see a crowd in need and be nourished by their gratitude as they nourish them with food.

And all ate and were filled. Man, if we could etch those words on that table: And all ate and were filled.

And Jesus, whose first miracle was to make wine overflow with abundance, shows them that, Church, there is always enough in the Kingdom of God. And all ate and were filled—yeah, by food. And we talk about that a lot in this miracle. But perhaps they were filled by other things. Filled by touching the hand of a disciple who passed them a loaf. Filled by the eye contact of one who perhaps also embodied compassion. Filled by seeing neighbors and strangers also being fed. Filled by being together in one place. Filled by seeing this shepherd feed his flock. Filled.

What I love about these stories in this Lenten season, and what is so convicting to me, is that Jesus is working out of the spotlight. So, he wouldn't be here; he's working out of the spotlight to bring the Good News to people. He is a "secret agent Savior." He doesn't need to be the one recognized and rewarded. In fact, he is telling us something about how miracles work—how the impossible becomes possible. He empowers the servants at the wedding just as he empowers the disciples at this feast to share the goodness.

There are so many of you who I've thought about this week as I've thought about secret agent stewards. So many of you who are working outside of the spotlight to make this community flourish.

• You who iron the paraments—you bring in your iron from home and iron the paraments and the cloth as we change them over every liturgical season.

• You who write birthday cards to most members of this congregation without expecting anything in return.

• You who hand me grocery cards every Sunday—you know who you are, and you've asked to remain anonymous—and you say, "Share them with people in need."

• You who purchase lighters for lighting this Christ candle when you saw me and Wesley struggling for a couple weeks—we couldn't get it working and then just gets awkward and we're up there for more and more seconds—and you hand me a bag of lighters that you purchased and say, "Okay, that's getting old. Use these."

• You who pick up the scattered bulletins after the service and grab the trash to throw away.

• You who made soup and cornbread for us during the ice storm.

• You who stand in the back, making sure that our online viewers can be a part of this community—those who are sick, those who can't make it here today, those who live in a different state and want to be a part of what Vine Street is up to.

• You who change light bulbs on ladders.

• You who volunteer in our nursery when one of our workers is sick.

• You who stay after every event to clean the kitchen, to wash tablecloths, to put chairs away.

• You who buy the donuts every week so that we have a sugar rush as we wrestle with Scripture.

You know who you are. Doesn't matter about the spotlight. A church is the people who are stewarding in secret. A church is made of disciples. A church is made of people who hear this story and trust God's abundance and say, "There is enough if we make it so." And we don't have to do it alone, but it is up to us to do it—to participate in the work of Jesus.

And you all remind me that the one we follow—yes, he preached in front of crowds, but a lot of the Good News he shared was behind the scenes. He says, "You give them something to eat. You fill the vessels with water, and I will figure out a way to turn it into wine. You go tell the disciples that I have risen, Mary. I could do it—I am fully divine—but I'm trying to tell you something about community: that the impossible is possible together. It doesn't happen alone."

The miracle requires group participation. How many of you hate group projects? Faith goes, "Me too." And yet the miracle requires it.

And for those of you like me who relate more to the disciples than perhaps the secret agent Savior, I think we need that holy nudge. This Lent, as Reverend Verzola says, Lent is not about watching Jesus work. It's about participating in the work that Jesus is already doing. I want to repeat her words: Lent is not just about watching Jesus work. It's about participating in the work that Jesus is already doing.

All ate and were filled because the miracle became possible through the power of community.

So I got to wonder where God is inviting you to participate in the Good News this Lent.

On Ash Wednesday, I thought I had really messed up. I have never mixed the ashes with the oil before. This was my first Wednesday to do that. And so I got here early and I took the ashes that we burned from the palms on Palm Sunday, if you didn't know that. And I took the oil and I went down to the kitchen. And many of you know that I can't bake, but Kathy wants me to try to bake a cake for the Festival of Cakes to perhaps empower me ("You give them something to eat"). Nobody buy my cake, okay?

And I look at the ashes and I look at the oil and I just make a guess. Later, right before people processed, Wesley comes up and I've given him the bowl of the ashes and oil that I mixed. And he looks at me and says, "I don't know if this is right. It's like... gloopy." Y'all wouldn't even know what goes on behind the scenes! And I freaked out and my stomach dropped. "Oh my gosh, I'm not good enough. I'm not like the man who led before me. Gosh, I messed up this sacred ritual that is serious. We're talking about ashes and dust."

And people walked toward us and I did my best to remain present, but I felt a small sense of shame that I hadn't prepared well enough. And all the while, people continued to come forward to receive their ashes. And a man I'd never seen before was one of the last to come forward. And I imposed the ashes on him.

And I sat down thinking about my "concoction," we're going to call it. And he came up to me after the service and he said, "I am in Nashville for just today. I have been at Sarah Cannon Cancer Center and I have Stage IV gastric cancer, and I found out today that the clinical trial failed and I have some very, very hard decisions to make now. Receiving these ashes means more to me than you will ever know."

We participate in the work flawed, and then we let Jesus be Jesus.

We mix the oil with the ashes and we show up and we let God work. And we crawl out of the boat with all of our human gifts and flaws and we look to the one who just empowers us to do the best we can. Whether we're weary or galvanized, whether we are exhausted or in grief, we show up. We let Jesus be Jesus.

Because the Good News, Reverend Lizzie McManus-Dail writes, is that what the disciples have to offer is enough. What we have to offer is enough. The Good News is that the disciples' limiting beliefs do not limit what God is up to. The Good News is that everyone's fed. And the Good News is that the impossible becomes possible together.

God doesn't start with the problem—"How do we feed these people?" God starts with what God has, which is everything held in God's hands. And God starts with what God has given us, which is five loaves and two fish.

So our work is simple: Participate in the Good News this Lent while also letting Jesus be Jesus. We can follow in his footsteps. We can do works in secret with a reminder that the good wine and the long table and the many loaves—that's Jesus laughing at the impossible. That's him not shuddering from this "not-enoughness." He's not scrambling with scarcity; he's leading with abundance. And he's showing us that we never have to do it alone. We get to do it together.

And that's the miracle in this story, Church. So, how will you participate with me in crawling out of that boat—maybe scrambling out—showing up, offering what you can as he tells us: "You... you give them something to eat."

Amen.

The Call to Love

Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, March 1, 2026

And now hear this reading from Matthew’s Gospel, the 25th chapter:

"For I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me into your home, and I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you cared for me. I was in prison and you visited me."

Then the righteous ones will reply, "Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink, or a stranger and show you hospitality? When did we see you naked and give you clothing, or come and see you when you were in prison?"

And the King will say, "I will tell you the truth: when you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me."

Friends, for the Word of God that is in scripture, for the Word of God among us, and for the Word of God within us: Thanks be to God. Let’s pray together.

God of good news, speak louder to us than the news updates. Speak louder than these mental distractions. Speak louder than our anger. Speak louder than our fear. God, speak loudly to us today because we long to hear good news once more. We hope and we pray. Amen.

I too am tired this morning. I got back from Philadelphia last night pretty late. This weekend I presented a paper that I wrote on interfaith coalition building and policymaking at a conference in Philadelphia that was titled Liberating Our Democracy. This event and other events are strategically planned this spring as we lead up to America’s 250th birthday, also known as the semisesquicentennial. And if you can say that, I’ll give you 50 bucks. If you can spell it, I’ll give you a hundred.

This conference began with a land acknowledgment, as many events or organizations do nowadays—churches do that, agencies do that. But this conference had the Tadodaho, who is a spiritual leader of the Onondaga Nation. And this gentleman gave this Thanksgiving address to kick off our time together. We were told ahead of time that these Thanksgiving addresses can be anywhere from seven minutes to two hours. So, I kind of sunk back into my chair for what might be a long winter nap.

He began speaking, and I obviously wasn't able to understand what he was saying, and he went on for about seven to ten minutes. So, he was really gracious for us. But then he told us what he actually said, because he was speaking in his native tongue. He said he was giving a Thanksgiving address that has been passed down through his people’s bloodline for centuries.

In this Thanksgiving address, the speaker gives thanks to the Creator for each and every person that is gathered there. They give thanks for their family, for the earth, for the plants, for the waters and the skies, for the weather and the animals; for the thunders, whom he called his grandfather; the sun, whom he called his elder brother; the moon, whom he called his grandmother; and for the stars, whom he named as his ancestors. He also said that this Thanksgiving address gives thanks for the gifts brought by their white brothers and sisters.

Now, before we try and sanitize this and "Disney-fy" this story, that isn’t all that he and his wife shared. Both of them are from the Onondaga Nation, the Snipe Clan specifically. His wife works for the American Indian Law Alliance, and they fight for the rights of indigenous peoples in America.

They shared stories of how both sets of their grandparents, and their grandparents' parents, and their grandparents' grandparents attended these boarding schools where they were trained by white settlers. They were not allowed to speak their native tongue. They were not allowed to wear their traditional garb. They were not allowed to do anything that resembled their heritage or their culture. Not only were they not allowed to do it, they were punished if they did.

She also shared how her nation had a three-party system that our government is modeled after. But we often don’t hear that story—except she mentioned that in her nation, in her tribal government, it is egalitarian and the women have actual rights. She recalled this story where the Onondaga tribe met with white colonists and they asked, "Where are your women? How are you going to make decisions?" In fact, she mentioned that the tribe that she belongs to—in that tribe, the women choose the chief and also remove the chief when he’s doing a bad job. It sounded pretty good to me.

She told this story of her grandmother who wouldn’t speak in her native language because if other people were around, she got scared. She had this PTSD moment where she got scared of what happened to her in those boarding schools. She shared that that trauma they experienced then trickled down into the younger generations in the form of self-hatred and erasure of their own culture. And then she said something that really struck me: "These boarding schools taught them Christianity."

And all I could think about was these people who had stolen these people’s land and had beaten their heritage and culture out of them were teaching them how to love their neighbor. They’re teaching them Matthew 25 and completely missing the whole thing.

Like Disney sanitized the colonizer story in Pocahontas—despite the fact that it has a killer soundtrack—I think we can all agree we too have sanitized the Golden Rule. We’ve taken "love your neighbor as yourself" to mean be nice, be polite, be civil. And all those things are good and well, but that isn’t what Jesus lays out when he talks about loving your neighbor in Matthew 25.

He shows in Matthew 25 that in order to love your neighbor, you have to do something about the atrocities and the injustice that they are facing. To love your neighbor, you have to feed them. To love your neighbor, you have to clothe them. To love your neighbor, you have to care for them. Why? Because loving God and loving neighbor are intrinsically connected. We cannot truly love God if we are not loving our neighbor. Loving our neighbor is a form of loving God by honoring the divine image in each and every person. Jesus says, "I am them and they are me."

But just as the characters in this parable didn’t get it, Jesus' disciples didn’t get it either. Going back to Luke’s passage, Reverend Dr. Brian Blount tells the story this way. He says:

"Simon, a Pharisee, a religious man who lives his life according to the law—God’s laws—invites Jesus into his home. And customarily, such a host would greet such guests with acts of hospitality: the washing of feet that have been soiled by dusty roadways, the anointing of oil as respite from the heat of the day, a kiss of welcome. And though Simon receives Jesus, he provides no such greeting. Impertinent and audacious, having heard that the great teacher is in Simon’s house, this woman—likely an unsolicited sex worker—invades the space."

Immediately the Pharisee, someone who is tasked with conveying God’s love to God’s people, distances himself from her. From his perspective, the "love" in which she traffics commercially, but not virtuously, prohibits her presence from them. But Jesus graciously allows her to draw near. And when she’s close, ironically, she offers Jesus the hospitality that Simon had neglected. She washes, she dries, she anoints, she kisses.

Scandalized, Simon rebukes Jesus, of all people, for letting this woman touch him. Disappointed in Simon, Jesus responds with this parable about the extravagance and ferocity of God’s love. These two people are in debt to this man, just as every one of us is in debt. One debtor owes him a little, but the other owes him a lot. Ridiculously, the man forgives both of them their debts.

"Which debtor," Jesus asks, "will be the most grateful? Which one will respond to the man with the most love?" And of course, we know it’s the one who owed the most. Simon believes that he owes God much less than this woman—this disreputable woman—because he has lived this life of holiness or righteousness in his mind. Simon can never know the ferocity of the woman’s love for God, who loves her back.

According to Jesus, God loves her with this extravagance of grace that cancels all of her sin just as surely as the creditor expunged the lender’s massive debt. Jesus then tells the woman to go in peace. But how can she, though? Living on the streets, she’s found welcome among those who struggle like her. But forgiven, she now needs the welcome that she has given to be shown back to her by whom? A community of Jesus people who often fail to do so. People who should recognize that they too have been graced with the extravagance of God’s fierce and ferocious, unrelenting love, but so often fail to do so.

Since two Ash Wednesdays ago, I’ve been wrestling nonstop with something that we prayed while standing outside of the hearing rooms at the Cordell Hull building at the Capitol. We prayed for the oppressed—yes, obviously. But then we prayed for the oppressors, because they too are victims of oppression.

And it convicted me. That’s really hard for me to do. And don’t get me wrong, we have just cause to criticize and critique these systems and these structures. ICE snatched a blind refugee off the street recently—a blind refugee. And when they realized that they could not charge him with anything because he was here lawfully, they left him about five miles away from his home and he died in the cold.

Despite running on a "no new wars" campaign and calling himself, 79 times, the "peace president," Donald Trump and his administration—and he’s not alone in this—in conjunction with Israel, launched missiles at Iran, one that struck an all-girls school. The last time I checked, the death toll was 85.

Here in Tennessee, pro-life lawmakers are seeking to charge women who have abortions with the death penalty. Lawmakers in Kansas revoked the licenses of trans folks, making them invalid and didn't even give them a grace period to change their licenses back, setting them up to fail.

There’s so much injustice in this world. There’s so much injustice in this country, and in our state, and in our community. But we cannot let up. We cannot back down. We cannot let hate win, or injustice win, or malice win. But friends, as soon as we begin to dehumanize those that oppress, we have become that which we preach against. Audre Lorde said that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

And it’s hard, and it sucks. It goes against our human nature. We want to retaliate. We want to fight back. We want to do to them what they did to us. And we fail at it a lot—or at least I do. But that is why we confess today that God, we long to be people who love our neighbors, but we’ve got a long way to go.

The Tadodaho, the spiritual leader of the Onondaga tribe centuries ago—despite the land theft, despite the colonization of his people, despite the boarding schools that beat the culture and the heritage out of his people, despite the erasure of their history and the replacement of history that centers the white man—he still gave thanks for his white brothers and sisters. Why? Because he understood that they are a part of this mess, too. He understood that this is a part of their world, too. They were made by the same Creator.

What strikes me about these stories is that those who are actually modeling Christ and modeling Christ’s teachings are not the Christians in the story. They’re not the followers of Christ in the story. Instead, it’s those who are following Christ and modeling his teachings that we often discredit, disparage, and cast out. These lessons that we read every Sunday—they’re not for those who don’t know Christ. They’re for us that do and don’t do a good job at showing it.

I know it feels bleak. I know it feels discouraging. I know it feels heavy. I feel it; I’m sure you feel it, too. But if the Tadodaho can love his neighbors despite everything that we did to his people, and if this woman with the alabaster box can love God despite being disparaged by religious people of her day, then surely those of us who call ourselves Christians—those of us who call ourselves disciples of Christ—can learn to love our neighbors better.

Amen. And his call is simple: Feed them, clothe them, care for them, visit them, love them. For when you do, you feed me. When you do, you clothe me. When you do, you care for me. When you do, you visit me. You love me.

The good news is that even when we act with judgment, even when we are guided by fear, even when we turn our back on our neighbors in need, God does not turn God’s back on us. We are instead loved with this extravagant grace, this ferocious love. And we’re seen, and we’re forgiven, and we’re invited to try again. We’re invited to do better.

Thanks be to God for this unending love. And let’s love and learn to love our neighbors better. May it be so. And may we make it so. Amen. Amen.

Good News Catches Us By Surprise

Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, February 22, 2026

This morning’s scripture reading will be Matthew 13, verses 31 and 32. You can find that in your pew Bibles on page 14 of the New Testament.

He put before them another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

For the Word of God in scripture,
for the Word of God among us,
for the Word of God within us.
Thanks be to God.

I’m coming down here today because we’re going to have a chat.

Will you pray with me?

Holy One, it is easy to see the mustard plant and forget to marvel at the seed. It’s easy to taste good wine and not appreciate it. It’s easy to miss the holy that is in our midst. So as we turn to your text today, we pray: surprise us, speak to us, move through us, draw us closer to your good news. We wait with bated breath. Amen.

You may or may not know this, but the season of Lent—its initial intent—was to prepare new Christians for their baptism on Easter. This was for new converts to begin to understand the ministry of Jesus and the tenets and core beliefs of the Christian faith.

On Easter, they would be baptized, having now come to know what is central to Christianity. We typically think of the beginning of Lent as Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, of fasting and deprivation. And certainly, that is how the story begins in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. What the good news could have really meant to them—and what it means for us—is something we want to explore. How were the early converts coming to understand what the word gospel meant? What good news actually means?

So we are grounding ourselves in the good news of Lent. Because I think at the heart of Jesus’ teachings, we find love, and we find mercy, and we find wide, long tables, and we find fine wine, and we find good surprises. I think it was a ministry he hoped we would understand as truly meant to be good.

On Ash Wednesday, we talked about a host who throws a great dinner. First, he invites his friends—people of the same class as him, people of the same social status. One after the other—maybe you’ve had this experience with a birthday party—the first guy says, “Hey, I can’t make it. I just bought a piece of land. I’ve got to go look at it. I send my regrets.” The second guy says, “I can’t make it. I just bought a bunch of oxen, and I want to go test them out. I send my regrets.” The third guy just says, “I got married, and I can’t come. I send my regrets.” We don’t need to think about that too hard.

So then this man sends his slave out and says, “Okay, don’t go find people like me anymore. Go to the streets and the lanes of the town and find the poor, find the crippled, find the lame, and find the blind.” And the slave does. These people come in for the great dinner, and scripture tells us there is still room. There is still room.

So he sends his slave out again. The slave says, “What you’ve told me to do, I’ve done, so that your house may be filled—and there is still room.” If the good news on Ash Wednesday is that there is still room, then I’m hoping that today the good news we hear in the wedding at Cana, in this moment of fine wine, is that there is still more. Still more for us in this good news.

For early converts, if they opened up the first three Gospels, they would have found temptation and deprivation. But if they opened up the Gospel of John, after Jesus is baptized, after he calls his disciples, the very first story we get in his ministry is what? A wedding. A wedding—not healings or exorcisms. We find our Savior at a wedding in Cana.

I want to read that passage to you now. This is from the second chapter of John, verses 1–11.

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the one in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. When the one in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the one in charge called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

So at this wedding, Jesus, his disciples, and his mother are there, and the wine has run out. Mary pulls Jesus aside, and when I read it, they kind of have this mother-son dynamic going on. Maybe you caught that, too. Mary—ever attentive and observant, like a lot of parents—has noticed the scarcity at this wedding. She lets Jesus know, and then she looks at the servants and says, “Okay, do whatever he tells you.”

We have to note that in this context—the lack of clean water, the large number of guests, how long wedding feasts usually lasted—the lack of wine was a problem. It was a failure of hospitality. It would have brought great shame on the bride and groom and the family hosting the event.

So how did the family fail to provide enough wine? How does that happen? Lindsay Scott notes that it was also an ancient custom for guests to come with gifts of food and drink. So did the community not provide enough resources for this celebration? That doesn’t look good for the family and friends of this couple.

Jesus was not only acting on behalf of the hosts; he was acting as a community member—jumping into action, showing up, being loyal to this family. And what follows next is a series of what I’m going to call good surprises.

The first good surprise, and we all know it, is that Jesus turns water into wine. This isn’t just any wine. This isn’t wine that’s on sale. This isn’t wine that tastes a lot like grape juice. This is fine wine—the fancy stuff, the good stuff, the top-shelf stuff. It’s almost as if Jesus is revealing that part of his glory is showing the abundance of goodness he brings—sometimes when we least expect it. That he saves the best for last, even when we think things have run out. That’s the first good surprise.

The second good surprise—and maybe you caught it, too—is that the only people who know about this miracle are not the bride and groom, not the guests, not the person in charge. It’s the servants. This is written almost as an aside: the ones who drew the water knew. It’s as if the writer of John is letting us in on a secret.

The servants are the ones who know about the miracle—the background characters, the ones cooking in the kitchen, the ones making sure everything runs smoothly. Jesus reveals in his glory the abundance of God and the sneaky, surprising nature of God that we see again and again in his life.

And the third good surprise—and I’ve mentioned it already—is that the first story we learn about Jesus is not a healing or an exorcism. It’s not him turning over tables for justice. It’s him stretching out joy. It’s him keeping the party going. It’s him reminding you and me that even in this world right now, there is cause for celebration.

Church, we’ve got to lean into it. Hope is a muscle we stretch. Joy is a discipline we practice—to celebrate the goodness and abundance of God. That is a good surprise. It’s as if Jesus knows the end of the story. He knows that evil is defeated and love has the last word. Evil is predictable. So Jesus doesn’t have to start by showing how to overcome it. He already knows the plot twist. He starts his ministry by saying, “God’s abundance overflows like fine wine every single time.”

This week I asked people to tell me about a good surprise they’ve experienced lately, and I want to read some of those to you.

One woman said, “After three years of infertility, I am pregnant.”
Another said, “I was diagnosed with diabetes a month ago, and I’ve been surprised by how supportive and encouraging my friends and family have been.”
Another: “A cousin called me out of the blue just to check in.”
“The office parking attendant, who’s only known me three days, brought me avocados from her tree.”
“I’ve been feeling closer to my partner through the grief of losing our dog.”
And this one is my favorite: “My driver’s license was lost for six months, and I found it in the pocket of an old jacket.”

I kind of wonder if they had already ordered a new one. You know how that goes—you order a new card, then you find the old one, and now you’ve got to cut it up. It’s a whole thing.

Some of these are grand—life-changing. Some are small, like a mustard seed people once thought was just a weed. So I wonder what it looks like for you and me to notice the good surprises in our lives, both big and small. What does it look like to have eyes to see the holy abundance that God shows us—the overflow of the best stuff?

Maybe it’s small, like a couple of avocados from a parking attendant. Maybe it’s grand, like closeness after loss or birth after hardship. Maybe it’s like these little resurrection surprises sprinkled throughout our Lenten journey.

For the early converts—and perhaps for you and me today—we have to remember: the good news really is good. His ministry was about showing us that the gospel is as good as he says it is. Not only is there still room, there is still more wine. It overflows, church, if we look for it, if we believe in its goodness.

So may we bask in the joy of this first miracle—in these unsuspecting characters, in the overflowing abundance, in a Christian faith that, if we examine it closely, is filled to the brim. The fine wine was saved for last. God’s love is good and abundant. It will never run dry.

We’ve got to look for it, be surprised by it, and surprise others with it.

Amen. Amen.