“Break the Cycle” a sermon on Matthew 21:33-46 & Philippians 3:4b-14

Matthew 21:33-46
Philippians 3:4b-14
“Break the Cycle”
Preached Sunday, October 4, 2026

Let’s jump right into it - this is one of those passages of Scripture that it feels unsettling to say “The Word of God for the people of God - Thanks be to God” after it. Thanks be to God for…that? For a disturbing passage that depicts violence that has been used to condone violence?

Because let’s get that right out of the way - this passage has been used - historically and even today - to promote a supersessionist theology that Christianity has replaced Judaism and that hate and violence against the Jewish people, as the rejectors of Christ (which is not entirely true) is justified.

Violence is never justified and especially not by Scripture, however it may be misused and abused to do so.

So let’s look at this passage and see what God has to say to us today about the cycles of violence that exist in our world.

The start of this chapter in Matthew involves Jesus flipping over the tables in the temple - angry that those there were taking advantage of the poor by overcharging for the needed sacrifices. This puts Jesus head to head with the religious leaders - they come to him and ask “By whose authority do you say and do these things?” And thus Jesus enters into some verbal sparring over John the Baptist and he tells them two parables. The second of which is this one that we call The Parable of the Wicked Tenants.

There was a landowner who had a vineyard - and he leased it to tenants. When it was time for the harvest, he sent three servants to collect the harvest - but the tenants beat one, stoned one, and killed one. The landowner decided to try again - he sent three servants to collect the harvest. But again, the tenants beat one, stoned one, and killed one. And so, at this point, the landowner decides to send his son - surely they will respect him!, he thinks - but the tenants see a chance to gain the son’s inheritance and kill the son as well.

Let’s talk about the traditional interpretation of this parable for a moment. The landowner is God. The vineyard, the Kingdom of God or the people of Israel. The tenants are the leaders of the Jewish people. The servants who are beaten, stoned, and killed are the prophets. The son that is killed - Jesus.

Jesus ends here in the telling of this parable and he turns to the religious leaders to whom he is telling this story too and he asks them to write the ending. He says, “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” It is the religious leaders who say, “He will put the wretches to a miserable death” and give the land to other tenants who will give the landowner the harvest.

Now, Jesus continues here talking about the cornerstone that has been rejected but I want to keep our focus on the parable and the ending of the parable. The ending we are given - that the current tenants are killed and replaced - was never said by Jesus. Because that is not how God ends this story.

Given the traditional interpretation of the servants being the prophets and the son being Jesus - when Jesus is rejected and killed - how does God respond?

The end to this story where the wicked tenants are killed and replaced is NOT the ending God in Jesus gives this story - it is the ending the religious leaders who have little imagination give to the ending. In fact, not just religious leaders, but as humans - this is the ending so many of us would give because it is near impossible for us to see beyond the cycles of violence that we are trapped in. We live in an eye for an eye world. Tit for tat. They hit us so we hit back harder. The human imagination struggles to imagine a world that does not continue the perpetuation of violence. We lament, it’s just the way of this world! We continue to bomb each other, go to war, carry out the death penalty, and are a people who wield death.

I think we’re trapped in these cycles of violence for a lot of reasons…one of those reasons is we are obsessed with protecting what is “ours” and with winning. That’s one of the things that is worth pointing out in this parable - the tenants are literally killing people over something that isn’t even theirs. And they kill the son thinking they will steal his inheritance…and that makes no sense, that’s not how inheritance works! But they viewed the land they lived on as theirs…and thus would “protect” it at all costs. And I am going to say something that sounds very much like a preacher today, and I know that, but hear me out:

Nothing is ours. Everything is God’s.

I know, I know. I know how that sounds. Like a preacher’s platitude. It’s so anticultural for us too. Capitalism tells us that what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours and don’t you dare touch what is mine. But Scripture tells us that the Earth and everything in it is the Lord’s. The whole world is the vineyard and we are just its tenants who are called to give everything to the landlord of the vineyard, everything to God.

I’m not saying we should sell all our possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus - although Jesus himself said as such to at least one person. What I am saying is we need to hold all that we think is “ours” more loosely. How many wars have been started over borders? How many wars have been started over the fight over natural resources? How many wars continue over generations of fighting over land? Gaza is a prime example of this. Generations and endless cycles of violence and so, so many children killed (In June the UN reported 22,000 Palestinian children killed and 44,000 injured in Gaza since October 2023) …at what point do we as humans break the endless cycle of violence? How long, O Lord, how long?

Many native people, including the Indigenous people in the US, had no concept of ownership of the land. We could not own the land - the land belonged to itself. The land and its resources belong to God. They are not ours to exploit, to use up, to fight over - they are ours to steward, to take care of, to share.

Our obsession with what is “ours” also takes place on smaller scales than international wars. How many neighbors have you heard who feud with each other over their property lines? How many stories have you heard from churches of different ministries or groups infighting with each other when they should be sharing a mutual mission?

In his book, “Not In It To Win It” by Pastor Andy Stanley, he says that American culture values winning above all else. Now, disclaimer, I haven’t read this book but my mother has multiple times and keeps on begging me to read it - I know you’re listening to my sermon online, Mom. He says this in particular comes out in our political system and it affects every area of our lives, including the Church and how we live as Christians. But Jesus shows us another way. Stanley says, “in an ancient culture that worships winning, the message of Jesus was considered weak. Offensive. Appalling. Something to be canceled. Violently if need be… But Jesus’s others-first value system appealed to many. Christians refused to abandon the sick. The adopted abandoned children. They extended compassion and generosity to people and groups who couldn’t or would not return the favor. They deemed women equal to men. Slaves were to be treated as brothers…” But first, we need to give up our endless desire to be right, to win, to own and protect what is “ours” - for nothing is ours - everything is God’s.

Paul says as much in our reading from Philippians today: “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”

In order to gain Christ - we have to stop trying to win. Win the games of this world. Win the battles, win the war, protect what is ours - ideological or literal. In order to break the cycles of violence that have trapped us - we need to be able to let go of all that we hold on to too tightly and imagine another way, another outcome. We need God-sized imaginations.

Every week in the pastoral prayer I pray, “may minds turn from war to peace and may weapons be beaten into plowshares.” This is a direct reference to Isaiah - the day of the Lord when it is on earth as it is in heaven. Weapons, which are death wielding, are transformed into plowshares - farm equipment, something that literally creates food, that is life-giving. But to go from death-wielding to life-giving, especially in our world where we are trapped in the cycles of retribution, of war, of endless violence - it requires a holy imagination. An imagination that the religious leaders did not have that day when they said the wicked tenants would be killed and replaced. This is such a human answer - and probably a similar one to how most people in our world would answer today.

Thank God that the death of the tenants is not the ending God would write for this story. God’s imagination was and is bigger than that, bigger than our cycles violence. Because God did send prophets who were rejected, beaten, stoned, and killed. And then God sent God’s son, God’s self in Jesus, who was caught up in the cycles of violence in this world, rejected by those who he came to save, and on whom the state carried out the death penalty. If God was telling this story to us today - and we didn’t know the ending yet - and we were asked - what should God do? Our answer would look a lot like the religious leaders’ of Jesus’s day - get even, retaliate. Make them pay.

But that is not the ending God in Jesus chooses. When Jesus is rejected, tortured, and killed…God does not allow Death and Violence to have the final say.

Our God who in Ezekiel said, “Say to them: As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that the wicked turn from their ways and live;” and in Isaiah said:
“He shall judge between the nations
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
neither shall they learn war any more”;
And in Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

This God wrote a different ending than the one the religious leaders would have written, that humanity would have written - because our God has a holy and God sized imagination for a world that could be - and one day will be.

God’s ending was that when Jesus died on the cross, when Jesus went into the tomb, God broke the cycle of violence, God broke the cycle of Death - and Jesus rose from the dead. Violence did not have the final say. Death did not have the final say. Retribution did not have the final say - because instead of condemning those who killed Jesus - and instead of condemning us for our endless cycles of violence and our obsessions with winning and what’s “ours” - in the resurrection of Jesus, we are offered reconciliation over retribution. We are offered repentance over condemnation. We are offered peace over strife. We are offered life over death! We are offered another ending that we could not write for ourselves! We are offered a place in the Kingdom of God - a Kingdom of Peace that one day, thanks to God’s God sized imagination - we will have a place and a part in!

Before I end my sermon today - I want to give us some hope. Because we know the ending that God wrote, because God chose life over death, and because God has told us the ultimate ending - that one day Death will hold no sway over any of us, and all the earth, all creation will be redeemed and all people will live in peace with God and one another - because God showed us a new way, a different way, a way of peace in Jesus - we too can break the cycles of violence in our world today and chose a different way, a way of life, we too can write endings of peace.

This week is Nonviolence Week in the state of Ohio and the city of Youngstown. One of the goals of this week is to share the six principles of nonviolence and help people live into them. Martin Luther King’s 6 Principles of Nonviolence are as follows:

“1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
4. Nonviolence holds that voluntary suffering can educate and transform.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.”

I want to share with you a story of nonviolence that is not new but is new to me. During the Liberian Civil War, while men were the primary people who carried out acts of violence and war, women (and children) were the ones who carried much of the impact of the violence of the war - as it so often happens. Many of these women had their children kidnapped - their sons drugged and forced to fight, to even kill their own families. Their daughters raped and trafficked to soldiers. Their husbands and fathers - brutally murdered in front of them. Many of these women decided they could no longer endure the violence and burden of war - they had to act without continuing the cycles of violence. They banded together and formed a coalition of mothers and women who used nonviolent tactics to bring about peace and end the war.

“In 2003, during the Second Liberian Civil War, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace forced a meeting with President Charles Taylor and extracted a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana to negotiate with the rebels from Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy and Movement for Democracy in Liberia. A delegation of Liberian women went to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process.

Two hundred women surrounded the room, dressed in white, dominating the conversation. Any time the negotiators tried to leave, the women threatened to take off all of their clothes. Enclosed in the room with the women, the men would try to jump out of the windows to escape their talk. But the women persisted, staging a sit-in outside of the Presidential Palace. They blocked all the doors and windows and prevented anyone from leaving the peace talks without a resolution.” (Wikipedia)

Due to their nonviolent actions, a peace agreement was reached, ending a 14 year civil war.

Their story gives me goosebumps - and it gives me hope.

Lastly, today is World Communion Sunday. Today we recognize that this table we come to, this holy meal, this sacrament we share - is not ours. It is not Boardman UMC’s. It is not the United Methodist Church’s. It doesn’t belong to Christians in our country alone. This is a worldwide table that unites people of many identities, many nationalities, many ethnicities - and in this table, we can celebrate what makes each of us unique - but there is no “mine” and “yours” - there is no “winning” or “losing” - there is just shared identity as children of God. And Children of God are called to love one another. Children of God cannot come to this table and continue the cycles of violence against other children of God. And so the very act of coming to this table, when we take it seriously, is an act of breaking cycles of violence.

And so my prayer for us today and every day is that weapons would be beaten into plowshares, that we would count all as loss in Christ Jesus, that we could have holy and God sized imaginations, and write a different ending than the endings our world would write - may we break the cycles of violence and be a people of peace.

May it be so. Amen.

Write Your Own Creed Sermon

Write Your Own Creed Sermon
Preached Sunday, September 27, 2026

Today we are going to do something a little bit different - we are going to write our own creeds. The word creed comes from the Latin word credo which means, “I believe…” What do we believe as Christians, collectively and individually? Creeds help shape our faith.

From the earliest of times, people of faith have strived to articulate what they believe about God who is, at least in part, a Holy Mystery. We can never fully know God - and yet, to write down or to orally recite together what we believe about God helps not only unite people of faith by showing we believe together - it also helps pass on the faith to the next generation.

The Shema in Deuteronomy might be one of the earliest creeds we have in the Bible. And that is often quoted simply as “The Lord God is One.” Right after that short declaration of faith, the Scripture gives these instructions:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength. These words that I am commanding you today must always be on your minds. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up. Tie them on your hand as a sign. They should be on your forehead as a symbol. Write them on your house’s doorframes and on your city’s gates.”

This short affirmation of faith is meant to be passed down, generation to generation, to help the Jewish people know their God. Many have it on little scrolls outside their homes. And still many others recite it at least twice a day. This short creed becomes not just a statement about God, a fact in their heads, but a way of faith that shapes their whole life.

Both Scriptures we read today are also early affirmations of faith that the Scripture writers quoted. They weren’t just the words of the letter writer, but words of early liturgy or hymns, that the early church used in worship to teach one another about who God in Jesus is:

Colossians: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.”

Philippians: “who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.”

We have 9 Creeds or Affirmations of Faith in our United Methodist Hymnal. The oldest one is the Nicene Creed which was the result of an Ecumenical Council and is generally accepted or adopted by most Christian denominations. The churches were struggling with Jesus’s relationship with God - they came down with “Begotten, not made” - meaning that Jesus and God were always one.

Let’s say that creed together now - turn to page 880 in your United Methodist Hymnal:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,
Eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
Begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic* and apostolic church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen

The one that we are probably familiar with most is The Apostle’s Creed, in fact, I know you recited it last Sunday and perhaps like me, you grew up reciting it every Sunday. It has a lot in common with the Nicene Creed with some, what may seem like to us small, tweaks, but were important to the writers of the creed in expressing who Jesus is.

The rest of what we may call “Creeds” in our hymnal are technically affirmations of faith. The difference between a creed and an affirmation is approval by an Ecumenical Council over time. But that’s splitting hairs that, to be honest, I don’t care too much about. For our purposes, we are using creed and affirmation interchangeably.

So let’s look at an Affirmation of Faith together. Let’s look at A Statement of Faith of the United Church of Canada together, number 883 in your hymnal - let’s recite it:

We are not alone, we live in God’s world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God’s presence,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

One of the things I love about that statement, especially since it’s written in more modern language for us, so we can understand it better is…when we look at it, when we read it, say it - we know something about the people who wrote that and recite it - that God’s renewing power is important to them, that they are called to love and justice, and that God is always with them - with us.

And here’s another thing about the power of creeds when they are said in a church community… when we say them together, even if we struggle with one part of the creed, even if we have doubts about one statement of belief…there is another person in the congregation who is passionate about that same part, who is assured and positive about its truth in their faith and life. And, just perhaps, you are the one who is passionate about another part of that statement that your fellow worshipper struggles with. For example, growing up, I didn’t understand the line “the resurrection of the dead” from the Apostle’s Creed - I believed Jesus was resurrected but what was this universal resurrection? I said it for many years although I didn’t understand it - until that day when it was finally explained to me in a way that clicked, and funnily enough, it has become an integral part of my faith of which I am passionate about. When we say the creeds and affirmations together, it emphasizes the importance of Christian community and support, that we are stronger together, and that we carry one another through.

So today, I am going to invite each of us to consider writing our own creeds. What do you hold to believe about God, Jesus, the Spirit, and Christian faith and life? Some of you may remember all the way back to the last six weeks of summer when we did a “God is…” sermon series. That was a kind of six week long affirmation of faith. But today, you are invited to consider your own beliefs that you currently hold dear, that you are passionate about, that you have assurance of, that carry you through.

Now, listen, I know some of you are putting way too much pressure on yourselves right now or thinking “I can’t do that.” Take the pressure off yourself. I would love it if you shared your written affirmation with me or with others in your life - but you absolutely do not have to do that. This can be for your eyes only. It also doesn’t have to be definitive. All of our faiths are a work in progress. If I wrote a statement twenty years ago, ten years ago, five years ago, or even last year - each year my creed would be different because my faith is constantly evolving and growing. Instead think about what you are currently leaning into about who God is and how you live out your faith. Notice what comes easy and what you struggle with. So there is no pressure to get things “right,” there is no pressure to write a definitive affirmation of faith for all time, there is no pressure to have flowery language or be a poet - simply be yourself. Each and every one of you has beliefs about God and faith. That’s why you’re here in the pews today.

Also, in an effort to make it easier on you, you all got a worksheet in your bulletin today that will walk you through it…

And in a moment here, we are going to have some “extra” special music. We’re going to take about ten minutes to start this work now with music ongoing. You don’t have to complete the work in this time, but it does give you a good start. If you need a writing implement, raise your hand and an usher will bring you one.

Let’s pray:

God, Jesus, Spirit,
We believe in you.
Help us now as we strive to search our hearts and articulate our faith.
May this not be a chore or an onerous task - but a revelation.
Speak to us through our own words.
Show yourself to us through our thoughts.
Move within our hearts and minds as we ever strive to know you - and as we attempt to put the holy mystery that is faith into words so that we would be able to grow in our faith and share it with others.
Amen.

Call to Worship for all Saints Day

Leader: Today we gather to remember and give thanks.
People: For those who let the light of God shine through them.
L: For those who taught us about God’s love.
P: For those who shared God’s love with us.
L: For those who loved God and neighbor as self.
P: For those saints in our lives who showed us how to do the same.
L: Today we gather and give thanks and say now in our hearts the names of those saints who come to mind:
(Pause)
L: Thanks be to God.
All: Amen.

Call to Worship Inspired by Philippians 3:4b-14 & Matthew 21:33-46

Leader: We gather today in worship in the hope that:
People: We would be shaped by Jesus.
L: In the vineyard:
P: May we produce fruit.
L: In the world:
P: May we break cycles of violence.
L: In our own circles:
P: May we stop fighting over what’s “ours.”
L: In all things:
P: May we know Christ and the power of his resurrection.
L: And so we gather today in worship in hope!
P: May we be one with Christ and with each other.
All: Amen.

“Jesus is Lord” a sermon on John:12-18 & John 14:6-10

John 14:6-10
A Paraphrase of John 12:12-18 by Meredith Miller
“Jesus is Lord”
Preached Sunday, September 6, 2026 

Today is the final Sunday in our “God Is…” sermon series. This series is based off the book “Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn’t Need to Heal From” by Meredith Miller which explores key attributes about God that children, or people of any age, need to know and trust about God so that we can have an abundant and life-long relationship with God. Thank you for journeying with me as we’ve worked through God is Good, Good is Powerful, God is Just, God is Joyful, and God is With-Us.

And now, I have a question for you - which God?

This may sound strange to our ears - especially asked here in a Christian church. But the question would not have been strange in the ancient world. When talking about God the question would not be “Do you believe in God?” but “What gods do you worship and what are they like?”

We see this spread throughout the Old Testament as Yahweh God, the God of the Israelites, is proving over and over that They are different from Ra, Molech, Baal, Asherah and others. More powerful, not bound by borders, not accepting of child sacrifice, a Good God who is Powerful, Just, Joyful, and With-Us. A God who is different from all those other gods and that makes this God worth following. The first commandment in the 10 Commandments is “Have No Other Gods Before Me” - not “I am the only God” but “Don’t put any others before me.”

Some people make distinctions between the “Old Testament God” and “The New Testament God.” At times they really seem like different gods, don’t they? How could the same God who told Joshua to murder all the residents in the land, including men, women, and children be the same God who told us to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, and turn the other cheek?

Now, there is definitely some understanding of history and who gets to tell it at play here, also some historical and Biblical criticism that the historical events as portrayed to us in Judges & Joshua don’t align…and, I am going to tell you how I approach this struggle of Old verses New Testament God:

We, as in humanity, constantly get who God is wrong.

That’s been part of what we’ve talked about in this sermon series. We struggle with a God who is Good because we picture a God who delights in smiting us, sending us lighting bolts whenever we get something wrong. We struggle with a God who is Powerful because we think power is all about control and obedience. We struggle with a God who is Just because our world is so unjust and we grow comfortable with the oppression of others as a given, so God must be comfortable with it too. We struggle with a Joyful God because we think religion must be somber and serious. We struggle with a With-Us God because the noise of our world and lives has blocked so much of our ability to listen to God.

So too, did the Israelites struggle with knowing who God is. When all the other Gods accepted child sacrifice, why wouldn’t their God? When all the other Gods approved of the slaughtering of enemies and establishing nationalist and tribalistic borders, why wouldn’t their God? If all the other Gods had idols made out of them to be worshipped, why wouldn’t their God?

And so, the Hebrew people in the Old Testament, constantly got who our God was and is wrong. Their misunderstanding of God is reflected in the Biblical text - Human fallibility. We also see in the text, example after example, miracle after miracle, of God trying to show the people who their Yahweh God was and is.

And we, humanity, whether it was back in the times of the Old Testament or us here in 2026 - we constantly put other idols before God. And instead of wrestling with those things as idols, which means false god, it’s easier for us to tweak our understanding of who God is to make it so that God is okay with those things.

Meredith Miller says this about the idols of “money, power, sex, status, family, violence, nationalism, or tribalism”: “These idols are deeply connected to our current culture, using the conversations of the day to hide themselves in plain sight. These idols take the form of pervasive lies about who God is, lies that twist God’s character and deceive us about what God is like.”

I think one of the most pervasive lies about who God is in our world today is the heresy of Christian Nationalism which conflates God and Country as equals and makes Jesus a mascot for a certain country or empire versus Lord of all.

And so we ask - “Which God?” For there are many things and ideologies that are not of God, that people make into their God. They may even use Scripture to justify their idol - but the God they paint is not a God who is Good, Powerful, Just, Joyful, and With-Us.

And so, because over and over again, the people of God constantly got it wrong, they kept on trying to understand and know who God was and is but the idols and gods of the day kept on getting in the way, God sent God’s self in Jesus to be the ultimate revelation to us of who God is.

Jesus, the incarnation of God, begotten not made, God who took on flesh - this means Jesus was and is always God. Part of God. One with God. God loves us so much. God delights in us so much. God wants to be with us so much - that God became one of us. To come down to earth. To live as a human. To walk among us. To touch us. To speak to us. To hear us. To truly be one-of-us. God came in Jesus to us to be with us, because God wanted to be seen and known by us.

God wanted to show us, definitively in Jesus, who God was and is and will always be.

If we want to know who God is - we must look to Jesus.

Philip and Jesus had this conversation in the Gospel of John. We heard it read today. Philip has asked Jesus “How can we know the way?” Really that means, you either are what you say you are, God, the Messiah, our Savior - or a dangerous person who is gonna get us in trouble with Rome - how can we know how to follow you? Jesus replies, “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

If you have seen Jesus. If you listen to his words. And look at his actions. God the Father, God the Creator of the Universe, God the Divine, will be revealed to you for they are one in the same.

These verses are not saying “believe in Jesus” as in - you’re in or you’re out depending on whether you confess that Jesus is God. What Jesus is saying here is, if you want to know who God is, what kind of God our God is, if you want to know if you can trust God, if you want to know if you can claim this God as your God - you only have to look at who I AM, for I am the Great I Am.

And so if you ask - Which God is it who is Good and Powerful and Just and Joyful and With-Us? The answer is, this God is Jesus, Jesus who is Lord, Jesus who is Lord of All.

There are so many stories in the Gospels that point to who Jesus and thus who God the Father was, is, and will always be.

This morning, we are looking at the Palm Sunday story, of Jesus’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem.

Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem was not the only parade happening that day. One was a parade of the empire and declaring that Caesar was King. And one was a peaceful protest, lifting up Jesus as King.

On one side of the city, Pilate rides into Jerusalem for Passover to squelch any uprisings that the Passover festivities may bring. He comes with military fanfare. He comes riding on a war horse, decked out in the symbols of the Empire. He comes with power and prestige and foreboding to remind the Judeans that Caesar is King and they are under his rule - so don’t go getting any ideas.

On the other side of town, Jesus and a whole lot of people were getting other ideas. Whereas Pilate entered at the main gate, Jesus came to the city through a back entrance. Whereas Pilate entered on a war horse, Jesus entered on a donkey. Whereas Pilate came to remind them that Caesar was King - Jesus rode in to shouts of, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord-- the King of Israel!" That is - Save us, the King of Israel! The shouts that Jesus was King - were shouts that Caesar was not.

That is one thing that this passage reveals to us about Jesus - that Jesus is King, and Caesar is not. Caesar was the King of the Day. Rome was the Empire of the Day. Now in 2026 we have Kings of the Day and Empires of the Day. But Jesus - Jesus is King for Eternity, The Kingdom of God will last beyond an empire. And it was a Kingdom of Love and Justice.

Moreover, in the battles between the Empires of this World and the Kingdom of God - and quick aside - I am going to define the Kingdom of God as Meredith Miller talks about it with young kids, and we talked about it in our God is Just sermon, the Kingdom of God is fully here on that that day when it is on earth as it is in heaven, “all the good and no bad, all the joy and no sad. It’s where everyone knows they are unconditionally loved, and they treat others well because they know they are too.” That day is already here in part and we experience the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God in our midsts because Jesus has already won. A king at war would ride in on a warhorse, as Pilate did. A God of peace, who had already won, who had already established a peaceful eternal kingdom, rides in on a donkey. Miller says, “God is the sort of king who relies neither on violence nor force to get God’s way, but rather one whose presence brings peace.”

It also shows us another contrast - Rome and Caesar use violence, force and power to achieve their aim. Jesus uses sacrifice. Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King - but the only crown that was ever placed upon his head was a crown of thorns. Jesus sacrifices himself for his people - Jesus brings victory through humility, not violence.

And out of that sacrifice, out of humility and death, Jesus brings life. Right before Jesus entered Jerusalem, he raised Lazarus from the dead. And it is in Jerusalem that he will die, rise again, and break the power of sin and death over us all - and I mean all. The power of empire is contained within borders and conquests. Jesus’s power, God’s power, God’s Kingdom, Jesus’s Lordship - knows no bounds and for is every corner of the earth, every nation, every peoples.

Which God? The God who is revealed in Jesus who is Lord of all.

And so now, as in every week of this sermon series, we will talk about faith practices, spiritual disciplines, that we can adopt to lean into this attribute of God - that Jesus is God revealed, and Lord of all.

And first, we have to admit that if Jesus is Lord, our idols aren’t - and even that we have idols. And we do. We all do. We turn to idols out of fear, out of a desire for security - idols promise us protection, prevention, provision. Idols promise us that everything will be all right as long as….

As long as we have enough money.
As long as we are smart enough.
As long as we follow this political party or leader.
As long as we have a gun.
As long as we are married.
As long as we….

Fill in the gap for your idol or idols. And yet, we are called to place our trust and faith in Jesus, not in idols.

Trusting in Jesus though is not a prevention strategy to stop bad things from happening to us or those we love. Miller says, “Those fears may indeed be realized, and yet they won’t consume us. As God has proved time and again in the stories of Scripture and in the lives of those who have put their trust in Jesus through the years, even when the worst happens, it will be okay, somehow, because of who God is. The God who is good, powerful, just, joyful, and with us is really and truly Lord. Jesus is Lord.”

And thus, all other things are not.

Identifying and naming the things that we are tempted to put our trust and hope in that are not Jesus, is in and of itself, a worthwhile - and hard - spiritual practice.

Another way we can lean into Jesus’s Lordship is celebrating Christmas and Easter - and I truly mean celebrating the Incarnation of God in Jesus and Jesus's resurrection. This isn’t a bash on Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. That can be a part of your family traditions if it’s right for your family. And, emphasizing the actions of God in these seasons and holidays, roots us to the two most powerful and important actions that our God ever took to reveal God’s self to us. Spend time in the Scriptures related to these stories, talk about them with the children in your life, limit the busyness and consumerism of the seasons and allow yourself to wonder and marvel at God’s loving and immense actions for us.

And as you are time in Scripture reading the stories of Christmas and Easter, spend time in Scripture regularly. But perhaps read it through different eyes - don’t read it with the eyes of “how should *I * act?” but instead “Who is God?” How is the God who is Good, who is revealed to us in Jesus, being made known to us through these Scriptures?

And speaking of studying the Bible and Jesus’s Lordship - starting this week, Wednesdays at 11am, a Bible study group here at the church is going to spend six weeks on a book called “Jesus is Lord” and wrestling with that and the Scriptures. You’re all invited.

And the last spiritual discipline I am going to offer up today, is to treat the beliefs of others with respect and curiosity. Whether the beliefs of those others is Christianity, a different religion, or no religion. In the Old Testament people would ask, “Which gods do you worship and what are they like?” Today, we often yell at one another about differences in religion and draw battle lines, metaphorical and literal, between ourselves and those of different faiths. When we treat others with respect and curiosity, we invite others to treat us in the same way. When we listen well to what others believe and why, we open the same door for us to share about what we believe and why - to share with our words and actions to reflect a God who is Good, Powerful, Just, Joyful, With-Us, and revealed in Jesus who is Lord to all the world.

This doesn’t mean a covert way to convert people. This does mean that we get to reflect Jesus to all we meet.

And now, as we end this sermon, and this whole sermon series on God is… My prayer for all of us is - that all of us would spend our whole lives coming to know who God is. That we would never stop seeking to know God better. That we would come to trust God with our whole being, and that we would help lead children to know who God is and that they can trust God. And by leading others to know God, we ourselves would continue to grow in that journey as well. Holy God, may we know and trust you.

Amen.

“God Is With Us” a sermon on Exodus 13:17-22

Exodus 13:17-22
“God Is With Us”
Preached Sunday, August 30, 2026 at Boardman United Methodist Church

“The best of all, God is with us.”

These were the final dying words of John Wesley, theologian, preacher, and the founder of the Methodist movement. I am struck by the beauty and profundity of these dying words. To have “best of all, God is with us” on our lips and hearts at the moment we cross from this life into the next. It reflects a life filled with the experiences of God’s presence, a deep trust in God’s Goodness and in God’s Power over this life and the next.

Best of all - God is With Us!

As we continue our “God Is…” sermon series based off the book “Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn’t Need to Heal From” by Meredith Miller, where we talk about key attributes of God that children, and people of any age, need to know about God in order to trust God and have a lifelong, fruitful and abundant relationship with God. We’ve done God is Good, God is Powerful, God is Just, and God is Joyful.

And now we have come to, perhaps the best of all - God is With Us.

Many people spill a lot of ink and spend a lot of time arguing trying to prove the existence of God. I don’t think God’s existence can ever be scientifically proven. I don’t think there is ever any line of reasoning or logic that could convince someone to have faith in God. The best “proof” we have of God existing - is those experiences we can’t explain, where reason fails.

The experience of a With-Us God.
This isn’t quantitative. You can’t back it up with facts or point to newspaper headlines. It’s more anecdotal but once you have experienced it - you know it:
The peace that passes all understanding that washes over you.
The feeling of the Spiritual presence watching over you, holding you, wiping away tears, in your times of grief or fear.
The courage that seems to come from a source beyond you as you stand up for the oppressed or choose a more life giving path for yourself.
The person who experienced God walking with them towards healing or sobriety.
The experience of Divine joy that courses through your entire being.
The beauty that moves you to tears.
And more.

Sometimes these experiences are big and obvious - and sometimes there are what Meredith Miller describes as “quiet nearness” or “courage for the day.”

What experiences of God’s presence with you - God-With-Us - have you experienced?

Karl Rahner, a Jesuit priest and one of the most influential theologians of the 20th Century once said, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or [they] will not exist at all.” How I interpret this quote is that, as cultural Christianity declines - and by cultural Christianity I mean the kind of faith that leads people to attend church because is the status quo and provides a measure of respectability in society but lacks a heartfelt conviction of the Divine - so as cultural Christianity declines, those Christians who remain are Christian because they have had an experience of God With Them.

Often when we think of a mystic, if you think of mysticism at all, you picture a shaman or guru who spends all their time on a secluded mountain top, communing with God. Maybe you think of the Christian saints like Teresa of Avila who had these intense out of body experiences or Hildegard of Bingen who heard heavenly music and saw heavenly images in her mind’s ears and eyes. They are certainly mystics but I want to simplify this definition and help you see that we all have the capacity to be mystics. Shannon K. Evans, Feminist Catholic Theologian, defines a mystic as, “someone who has experienced a glimpse of the eternal and chosen to pursue more.”

“Someone who has experienced a glimpse of the eternal and chosen to pursue more.” A glimpse of God with Us - that’s all it takes to change the trajectory of our lives and make us not just those who claim the name Christian - but people who spend their whole lives following the way of Jesus in the hope and trust that we will, again and again, continue to catch a glimpse of the eternal - and we will catch that glimpse, we will experience God, because - God-Is-With-Us.

And yet, many of us struggle with the idea of God being with us - perhaps because we expect God to come with trumpet sounds and a choir of angels versus in the still small voice. Perhaps because we live our lives consumed with endless tasks, productivity, and just…the noise of our world. Endless radio, ads, TV, news…we don’t learn to listen and to pay attention to the subtle but steady presence of God in our lives. Perhaps we struggle with God-With-Us because we have come to believe a form of deism - a faith that God exists but is far away from us and all creation, not involved in our lives - many of the Founding Fathers had this view of God. That God was real but distant and not interacting with us. To me, that would not be a God who is Good. Perhaps still, we struggle with “God With Us” because we do not feel worthy of God being with us. We have come from a culture of Christianity that often talks about sin as a separating force from God. Perhaps you have heard of the “bridge” metaphor of faith - where humanity is on one side of a great chasm that is sin - and God is on the other side. The cross acts as the bridge to bring us closer to God. While this metaphor highlights the importance of the cross as a means to enter into relationship with God, it wrongly illustrates that we are separate from God. We are never separated from God. God is always with us. When God created this world, God breathed the Holy Spirit into us. God is only ever as far away as our next breath. And nothing, not even our sin, separates us from God.

Genesis tells the story of sin entering the world through disobedience to God. There were consequences to that act of sin - but separation from God was not one of them. The first thing God does after that first sin, is God comes and looks for Adam and Eve, asks them what’s wrong, and personally sews clothes to cover them.

Theologian and writer, Cole Arthur Riley writes about this in the book “This Here Flesh.” She says:

“On the day the world began to die, God became a seamstress. This is the moment in the Bible that I wish we talked about more often. When Eve and Adam eat from the tree, and decay and despair begin to creep in, when they learn to hide from their own bodies, when they learn to hide from each other - no one ever told me the story of a God who kneels and makes clothes out of animal skin for them.

I remember many conversations about the doom and consequence imparted by God after humans ate from that tree. I learned of the curses, too, and could maybe even recite them. But no one ever told me of the tenderness of this moment...

When shame had replaced Eve's and Adam's dignity, God became a seamstress. He took the skin off of his creation to make something that would allow humans to stand in the presence of their maker and one another again.”

God does not abandon us in our sin, our poor choices, our shame and self-imposed exile, God comes to us and sews us clothes. God comes to us and is always extending an invitation for us to be in relationship with God. As United Methodists we call this prevenient grace - the grace that comes before we even know that there is grace to be had. From the moment we are born, God is whispering love into our ears, into our souls, inviting us to be in relationship with God. God is always with us, even when we are sinning, even when we are missing the mark, choosing actions that fail to love God and love neighbor as self - God is still with us. Psalm 139 declares that there is no where we could go, even down into the depths of Sheol, that is, the early Jewish understanding of the afterlife, that God would not be there.

Last week when we talked about “God is Joyful” I said we so often misunderstand what God was doing in the act of the Incarnation, that is, taking on flesh in Jesus to be among us. I’m going to repeat myself with a little more embellishment added on because it bears being said again:

God wanted to take on flesh, and enter into this world in the form of Jesus, because God loves us. Because God delights in us. Because God takes Joy in us. Because God wants to be with us and for us to know that God is with us. God wants Goodness, Love, and Joy for us. The angels at the birth of Jesus proclaimed Good News of Great Joy! Remember that Scripture says that Jesus shall be called “Emmanuel” - that literally means “God-With-Us.” Taking on flesh, becoming incarnate, Jesus coming to us was not some cosmic chore. God didn’t give a deep sigh and say, “I guess you’re making me come down there.” The incarnation was not Jesus as the driver of the car and we the misbehaving kids in the back seat. The incarnation wasn’t God pulling over to reprimand us. God sent Jesus because we needed help, yes. God sent Jesus because we couldn’t save ourselves, yes. God sent Jesus because we kept on missing the point of who God was and is, yes. AND. God wanted to be among us. Jesus came because God wanted to be seen by humanity. To be among God’s good creation. To delight and find joy in this earth and in each other alongside of us, WITH us… Jesus gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit, and Joy is evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, because God never wants to be far away from us. God delights in us SO MUCH, that God finds it an absolute JOY, to be with us.

God taking on flesh in Jesus is a giant affirmation of God’s desire to be with us - and God has the power to always be with us. A reminder that Romans 8 tells us that nothing can separate us from the Love - that is the very presence - of God: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We often look at the New Testament as evidence of God’s presence with us - and I’d like to turn now to Exodus and the paraphrase we read in worship today of the Israelites in the desert. God was with the Hebrew people as they were freed from slavery in Egypt. God went ahead of them as a visible pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. It always stayed in front of them - guiding the way. Until, that is, it moved behind them to block the armies of Pharoah and offer protection. God was ahead of them, God was behind them, God surrounded them, God was with them.

This story reminds me of the beautiful prayer of Saint Patrick:

“Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.”

The story of God as the pillar of cloud and fire also reminds us that God is with us in all places - in safety and in danger, in gardens and in the desert, in all lands. In the time of the Israelities, gods were very localized. They often belonged to a specific tribe or nation on a specific place of land. That god’s power extended to the borders of the nation it was a part of and not beyond it. Not so with Yahweh God who transcends borders and travels with God’s people wherever they are. It is a reminder to be careful to not classify which nations of our age are Christian or not - God pays no attention to borders and will break down and transcend any barrier to always be with God’s people.

God’s presence is with them - it leads them - through the desert, yes. And God’s presence continues to lead us today as we listen to how Jesus wants us to live and make decisions for our lives based on those teachings. God’s presence also reshapes the Hebrew people. They are no longer enslaved and controlled - now they are God’s people. How will they live as such? How will the way they live honor God and neighbor? God is with them, really and truly with them, present with them - so how will they live in light of this? And so God gives them the Law in the desert so they may live as a holy people. God’s presence continues to re-shape us today. If someone encounters the presence of God in their lives, and they are not changed, I am not sure it is really God that they encountered. God’s change isn’t about control but about shaping ourselves to live lives that better love God and love neighbor as self. This is not all sunshine and roses, for often we have to prune or release those self-serving notions and tribalistic tendencies which keep us from fully loving as God loves. And yet - if we truly believe and know that God is with us, if we have encountered glimpses of the Divine, how does that change how we live our day to day?

So let’s talk now about spiritual disciplines, practices that we can adopt for our lives to help make us aware of God’s presence with us.

One such practice is to listen to the birds.

I have the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone. I know I’ve talked to some of you who use it as well. It was created by Cornell University and when you open it, it uses your phone’s microphone and location to help identify the kinds of birds that are chirping around you. In our day and age, so many of us have lost the ability to not only differentiate one species of bird from another but to even listen to the birds at all. They become background noise for us - and we don’t listen. Intentionally listening to the birds, and marking them for the unique and special species that God created them to be, helps us hone our listening skill to - not only delight in God’s diverse and beautiful creation - but to just listen in general and to pay attention, to pay attention to the natural world, God’s creation, which is so often a medium through which God speaks to us and makes the Spirit’s presence known to us.

Another spiritual practice to connect us to God’s presence is setting up a ritual of prayer. This may be a specific prayer prayed at the same time every day. It may be a specific place we go to when we long to feel God’s presence. Either way, it is the intentionality of saying the words, or going to a specific place, that opens our souls up to the awareness of God. Maybe you pray a prayer every day as your kid gets on the school bus. Maybe you have a certain bench on a walking path or in a garden where you go and sit to open yourself up to God. Whatever it is, intentionality and an expectation to encounter God, helps us be open to the encounters of the Divine that are always happening in our lives - taking ordinary moments and seeing God’s presence in them.

Or perhaps you wear a reminder of God’s presence with you. Many of you wear cross necklaces - let that weight around your neck remind you of God’s presence. Let it not just be another piece of jewelry but a tangible reminder of our With-Us God. For others it may not be jewelry but a tattoo, a wooden cross in a pocket, or a tiny Jesus figurine on a car dashboard.

And my last suggestion today is to adopt the Prayer of the Examen - attributed to Ignatius spirituality, it is a prayer that helps us reflect back over our days, over our lives, to see God’s presence in hindsight that, over time, opens our awareness of God with us in the presence. There are a lot of different ways to pray the examen - I’d invite you to simply google it. A short, and easy way to begin praying it is, at the end of your day, or perhaps the start, look back over the day and see where God was present - whether noticed in the moment or not. Thank God for those moments. Look back over the day and see where you fell short - where you messed up, missed the mark, got it wrong. Ask God for forgiveness and to help you do better. And then look forward to what lies ahead - ask God to make God’s self known to you as you navigate it.

God is With Us - God is Always with Us. And we can open ourselves up to being more aware of God’s presence with us. I started this sermon by quoting John Wesley’s dying words - “Best of all, God is With Us.” I’d like to end this sermon affirming that together, I will say “Best of all” and together we will respond “God is with us.”

Best of all
God is with us.

Best of all
God is with us.

Best of all
God is with us.

Amen.

“God is Joyful” a sermon on John 2:1-12

Philippians 4:4
Zephaniah 3:17 (NLT)
A Paraphrase of John 2:1-12 by Meredith Miller
“God is Joyful”
Preached Sunday, August 23, 2026 

God is Joyful!

I won’t lie - the last two weeks of this sermon series were doozies for me. We are doing a “God is…” sermon series based off the book “Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn’t Need to Heal From” by Meredith Miller, where we talk about key attributes of God that children, and people of any age, need to know about God in order to trust God and have a lifelong, fruitful and abundant relationship with God. We’ve done God is Good, God is Powerful, and God is Just. Talking about God’s power in a world that abuses power and God’s justice in a world that is so unjust are very important topics - and, they are doozies. And so, I was, and I am, very excited this week to talk about: God. Is. Joyful!

And - just as we struggle with God being Good, God being Powerful, and God being Just - we also can struggle with God being Joyful.

Christianity is a serious religion. The topics of faith; of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; of life and eternal life; of how to live and follow Jesus - they are really important. And somewhere along the way, and a church historian could pinpoint this for us but we aren’t getting too much into the weeds today - serious and important became synonymous with somber. Church became a place that was not well lit, the air heavy with incense, and self-flaggelation - both verbally and physically - became intertwined with our understanding of God. And joy, laughter, and mirth - became besides the point. Or even frowned upon. Think of the church and attitude in the town in the classic Footloose - we became the church of no dancing! Despite David dancing before God in joy and ecstasy. We began to think that if we were having fun, we must not be doing the Christian thing or following God.

And yet. We worship a God who is Joyful.

Now, “joy” is one of those words that can have multiple definitions so I am going to define what I mean by Joy.

First - for us as humans to be joyful:

Joy is a Fruit of the Spirit, as listed in Galatians, and is evidence that the Holy Spirit is present in our lives. This joy can be expressed in two different paths:

One - Through laughter, mirth, humor - that is, taking delight in this life, and being able to appreciate the quirks of our existence and relationships
And Two - joy that is a deep well of hope. That is, even when happiness and laughter seem far away, trusting that God is Good and God is With You, and that allows us to have an inner joy, even when it isn’t bubbling forth, because we know that God holds us and all of creation in God’s hands

Now - what does it mean for God to be joyful? By this I mean that God delights in creation. God takes delight in you. In me. In each and every one of us. God’s joy is like when a child says “Again! Again! Again!” as they are being spun around the room! Or being made a silly face at. Or doing a crazy dance. The child takes a lot longer than the adult involved to grow tired of the delight. They could be spun around in a circle over and over and over and over again and laugh and laugh and laugh - the experience is completely novel, their delight is obvious, their joy is overflowing. God’s joy when it comes to us as God’s creation - is like that child. God never ceases to delight in us - to say to us as we go through life, and love one another, and experience joy - God says to us, “Again! Again! Again!” God is never jaded at the delights of God’s creation. God isn’t blase about human laughter. God doesn’t get bored of our existence. God isn’t lacking a sense of humor or fun. God created fun! God created humor! God created us - you and me and all of humanity - with the ability to laugh, to delight, to rejoice. Because our God is a Joyful God.

Now - a disclaimer. Following a God who is Joyful and practicing the Spiritual Discipline of Joy is not the same thing as always being happy or a religion that promises happiness. There are certain streams of thought in Christianity that can lead us to believe that if everything is going our way, if all is well, if we are well-off and healthy, if we are happy - it is because we are following God correctly. I often call this the heresy of the prosperity Gospel and it falls into trying to control God, treating God as a magic genie, as I talked about in the sermon on God is Powerful.

It is not - if we obey God, we will be happy and taken care of. It is - there is joy inherent in being created as beloved children of God, trusting a God who is joyful, and serving that God through loving our neighbors as ourselves - even when it’s hard. We can find joy in serving one another. We can find joy in working towards that day when God re-makes the world and all things are made right. We can find joy in trusting in God’s vision of the world, a world filled with Joy and Love. We can find joy, even when we are in the midst of sadness, grief, or pain. In the book, Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are At the Heart of the Spiritual Life, author James Martin says, ““[Joy] does not ignore pain in the world, in another's life or in one's own life. Rather, it goes deeper, seeing confidence in God…in Jesus Christ—as the reason for joy and a constant source of joy.”

Because Joy is an inherent part of who God is - God created us with an immense resilience and capacity for joy. Sometimes joy bubbles out through laughter, smiles, and happiness. And sometimes joy is a deep well, beneath the surface, but still present within us.

So let’s talk more about how Jesus shows us that Joy is an inherent part of who God is.

Which brings us to the wedding at Cana - the paraphrase of which I read today. In the Gospel of John, this is the first miracle attributed to Jesus, turning water into wine. When we talked about God’s power we said that Jesus didn’t walk on water, and Jesus didn’t multiply the loaves and the fishes so that people would obey him. Jesus performed these miracles so that people would know exactly what kind of God the God revealed in Jesus is. Whenever Jesus performs a miracle we should ask what this miracle is revealing to us about God’s character. Every miracle is an invitation to better know God and enter into a relationship with Jesus.

So why would this be the first miracle in the Gospel of John? And what is this miracle of water into wine telling us about our God?

This is the second chapter of John! All that John has told us about Jesus so far is that Jesus is the Word who took on Flesh, the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it - that John prepared his coming, calling him the Lamb of God Who Takes Away the Sin of the World, and that four disciples started to follow him - to come and see what Jesus was about - that he was the Annointed One, the Messiah.

That’s all in John Chapter 1. It’s not more than 9 paragraphs - And then - and then - the very next scene we have is the wedding scene! John is setting the stage for who Jesus is! The scene after the wedding is when Jesus flips table in the temple - we talked about that last week - showing us that our God is a Just God who gets angry over injustice. But before we even get to that we get…Jesus at a party.

The Rev. Sarah Speed was inspired by John 2 to write a poem entitled “Start With a Wedding.” It goes like this:

When it comes time to write my obituary for the local paper, please do not start with my résumé. Do not start with my career or my worldly accomplishments (however small they may be). Do not take up space writing about my alma mater or outlining the entire family tree (we know who we are). Instead, spend your precious little word count on how beautiful it all was. Write about the dinner parties and the fireside chats. Write about the evenings we spent on the front stoop counting fireflies. Write about summers in the mountains and the garden that we grew. Write about the seasons we cried out to God, and the prayers that God answered. Write about the nights we danced, and the days we laughed. When it comes time to tell the story of my life, please take a lesson from the Gospel of John, and start with a wedding. Start with a miracle. Start with the fact that all of it held joy.

End quote.

Because starting with Joy is exactly what John wants to convey to us about Jesus - and thus, about who God is. This wedding is not an interlude, as it is so often treated as, just a break before Jesus gets back to the real work of ministry, the real holy stuff . This miracle is the whole point. None of the other stuff that Jesus is about to do would matter if there wasn’t joy in it. God wanted to take on flesh, and enter into this world in the form of Jesus, because God loves us. Because God delights in us. Because God takes Joy in us. And wants Goodness, Love, and Joy for us. The angels at the birth of Jesus proclaimed Good News of Great Joy! Taking on flesh, becoming incarnate, Jesus coming to us was not some cosmic chore. God didn’t give a deep sigh and say, “I guess you’re making me come down there.” God sent Jesus because we needed help, yes. God sent Jesus because we couldn’t save ourselves, yes. God sent Jesus because we kept on missing the point of who God was and is, yes. AND. God wanted to be among us. Jesus came because God wanted to be seen by humanity. To be among God’s good creation. To delight and find joy in this earth and in each other alongside of us. Jesus gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit, and Joy is evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, because God never wants to be far away from us. God delights in us SO MUCH, that God finds it an absolute JOY, to be with us.


And so - we start in the Gospel of John with a wedding, a miracle that kept the celebration going, and a revelation of a joyful God.

Meredith Miller offers this commentary on the miracle at the wedding at Cana: “Joy is an end in itself, because it is a marker of God’s presence. We often look for God’s presence to do something, change something, fix something. Sometimes that's the case. However, sometimes God’s presence is simply meant to be enjoyed. Perhaps our hesitancy about joy reveals that we don’t think God actually delights in us, so we can’t imagine a God who is fine with our just plain having a good time. But that seems to be the case in this story. Jesus is there to help his community have a good time.”

End quote.

So let’s talk now about how we can practice spiritual disciplines to help us being in relationship with the God who is Joyful.

First - have fun! Whatever that may look like for you. Playing with kids or grandkids. Painting, drawing, crocheting, dancing, running, singing, making music, doing puzzles, reading, going on dates - with friends or partners or spouses, play a boardgame - just have fun! Enjoy this life. Enjoy your life. Share your life and have fun with those you love. And yes, this is a Spiritual Discipline. When we live lives where there is room of joy, laughter, and fun - we are living as people who know that our God is joyful and delights in us. We cannot limit what we count as a Spiritual Discipline to only “churchy stuff” like prayer and Bible study - those are good! And it leads to a very narrow definition of what areas of our lives are touched by God’s Grace. God transforms all of our lives - so have fun - and knowing that joyful living is holy living.

Second - Lift one another up. Use your words, every single chance you get, to tell those you love that they are loved and delighted in - by you and by God. In reference to a parent practicing this spiritual discipline with their kids, Miller says “There is simply no such thing as delighting too much in our children on God’s behalf.” That’s true for all of our relationships. This will help the knowledge of a joyful God take root not just in your heart, but the heart of those you love.

And thirdly - and lastly for me to talk about today - is practice generosity.

Woah! Don’t worry, I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you and change a sermon about joy into a sermon about giving…and, when we come to understand our God as a joyful God, we are also convicted to share our more than enoughness with others so that all would have enough. The original commandment for the tithe in Deuteronomy to give ten percent, was so that the temple could throw a giant feast where all could come and eat and celebrate - especially the widow, the orphan, the last, the lost, and the least. We give because we believe that the whole community deserves to experience God’s abundance. Being generous also helps us avoid the pitfall of viewing money as the source of joy and fun, rather than a God who is abundant and joyful. Live generously, because there is always more of God’s joy - and God’s care - to go around.

God is Joyful! God delights IN YOU! God wants you to experience joy in this life. A life filled with joy, rooted in the God who turned water into wine, who kept the celebration going, who is Joyful, is a holy life. May all our lives be full of holy joy.

Amen.