“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.

"God is Just" a sermon on Leviticus 25:10, Hosea 5:10, Matthew 21:12-13

“God is Just”
Leviticus 25:10
Hosea 5:10
Paraphrase of Matthew 21:12-13 by Meredith Miller
Preached Sunday, August 16, 2026 

We are continuing with our sermon series, “God is…” that explores key attributes of God that children - and adults - need to come to learn and know about God so that we can trust God, so that we can have a lifelong and abundant relationship with God. So far we have explored that God is Good. And that God is Powerful. In each sermon I have asked if - or actually admitted as such - that we adults really struggle with knowing and trusting these things.

We struggle with knowing a God who is Good when we have an image of a human-like god Zeus - always walking on eggshells in case a bolt of lightning is coming our way. Versus a God who is Goodness and Love itself and extends that Goodness and Love to us with every breath.

We struggle with knowing a God who is Powerful in a world that primarily views power as a means of control of others. God’s power is not about control. God’s power means no force in this world or beyond is able to separate us from the love of God.

And so today I will say - we also tend to struggle with knowing that God is just. How could we not in a world with so much injustice? The disclaimer for today’s sermon is that, most likely, there will be parts of this sermon that make you uncomfortable. I invite you to sit with this discomfort. The Gospel should make us uncomfortable because Jesus did not come to protect that status quo. Sit with the discomfort and pray through it. Now, disclaimer aside -

I think a lot about wanting to protect the innocence of my children in this world. I want them to keep on believing as long as they can that the world is full of kindness and love and wonder. And the world IS full of kindness and love and wonder. It is also full of pain and injustice. And, as kids age, they do become aware of this. The kid who is mean on the playground, the man overheard on the news belittling people, personal and familial hardships and struggles, the first active shooter lock down drills in preschools and Kindergartens. Even as I think about my children and wanting to shelter them as much and as long as I can - I know that too is a form of privilege based on class and race. My friends who parent Black children are forced by society to talk to their children about injustice and prejudice at a much younger age. My one friend said her son was 3 years old the first time a racial slur was hurled at him like a weapon. And in the last couple of years, more than 6,300 children under the age of 18, some as young as 2 months old, have been detained by ICE in Detention Centers here in the United States. Nearly half of those children have been held at Dilley Detention Center and 97% of them have no criminal record. Children’s TV show creator and advocate, Ms. Rachel, has been interviewing the children in Dilley to bring attention to their plight of lights left on 24 hours a day, worms in food, unclean water, and rampant illness due to those conditions - not to mention the psychological effects, separation from other family members, and fear. My heart breaks and I weep as I read about children as young as 5 years old, including autistic, nonverbal, and ill children, living that nightmare. As I tuck my own 5 year old into bed at night, I pray for those children who are being treated as so much less than the children of God that they are. Who are being oppressed - whom injustice is committed against them.

I weep for these children. God weeps with them too.

As children have a burgeoning awareness of the wrongness of the world, we as adults know all too well how unfair, cruel, and unjust the world can be. We live in a sin-sick world where the imago dei, the image of God, is too often ignored in the lives of our neighbors, especially our most vulnerable neighbors, and injustice is done against them - and by them I mean the last, the lost, and the least. Those whose lives and existence are pushed to the margins. The poor, the outcast, the disabled, children, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, or anyone deemed as “other.”

In this midst of all this - how can we believe in a God who is just?

I think we need to know God is just. That is the only way we can have hope. And the only way we could love God and have a relationship with God. In our unjust world, I do not want to worship a God who is not Just.

God is Just.

We must hold tight to that Just-ness and trust in that yes, God sees the pain and injustice in this world. That yes, God cares about the pain and injustice in this world. And yes, God is going to do something about it, too. We read in Scripture that God plans to remake the whole world to be the way it was always meant to be - good and just. Meredith Miller says she describes this New Creation to children as, “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.” It is as Julian of Norwich describes it, “all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Scripture is also full of evidence of God’s Justice - we find that God is always concerned with the plight of the oppressed and works to make the world right again.

The first Scripture verse we heard today was from the book of Leviticus - and Leviticus is a hard book to work through in Scripture and there is a lot in there that’s good and a lot that needs to be put in its cultural context. But the basic gist of Leviticus was - after being freed from Egypt - how were the Hebrew people to live as a people set apart, God’s holy people.

And it is here that we get the radical - for then and now - commandment of Jubilee.

Every fiftieth year is to be the year of Jubilee - a “super Sabbath” with feasting and rest for people, animals, and land.

Land was also returned to original owners (such as those who may have had to sell them because they fell on hard times), and any enslaved people were also to be made free. This helps stop the cycle of permanent inequality. We know that wealth and poverty are affected through generations. Some people are simply born ahead in the social game than others due to the plight and injustices their ancestors faced. With Jubilee, God seeks to end the cycle of inequality and injustice.

Miller puts it like this: “It’s as simple as this: Our God is an Exodus God, so we will be Jubilee people. God goes first to rescue us; we respond by being restorers for one another.”

Basically, every 50 years, things were supposed to be made right. The playing field was leveled back out. Sadly, the commandment of Jubilee has been long left unpracticed in our world and would certainly not be a popular take with politicians, wealthy land owners, those who exploit the work of others, and all the economic systems of the world that put profit over people. But even though Jubilee is not in practice, our God is still a just Jubilee God - one who works to break cycles of injustice and inequality and make things right with the world.

When Jesus goes to the temple in Luke 4, he reads from the prophet Isaiah which echoes the commandment of Jubilee: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that the captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.” This year of the Lord’s favor is a reference to the year of Jubilee. Jesus is coming to continue the work of Jubilee and Justice in the world. He is telling the crowds listening to him that his work involves a radical re-working of the status quo on behalf of the oppressed. We may not realize it, but this is the same thing we pray for every week when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” That is a radical and powerful prayer that prayers for the overturning of all of earth’s structures and systems of injustice, inequality, and oppression. It is praying for that day when all shall be made well and all are equal at the feet of Jesus.

The second Scripture our liturgist read today from Hosea is probably less known to us and sounded strange. Again, it’s only one verse so I’ll read it again here and then give the backstory: “Judah’s leaders are like those who move boundary stones. I will pour out my wrath on them like a flood of water.”

Normally I am not a fan of descriptions of God’s wrath due to the way that we confuse it with a punishing petty god like Zeus - as mentioned earlier - we struggle to believe God is really good. But also - what are boundary stones? What’s the context here?

Boundary stones are just what they sound like - they were physical stones that marked one family’s land from another’s. Moving a boundary stone would be, in essence, stealing another person’s land. So who was moving the boundary stones? It was not the poor or the powerless, it was the rich and the powerful who thought they could steal from their neighbors and get away with it. Those with more power and wealth, taking advantage of those without, in order to gain more power and wealth - widening the gap of inequality and justice. Sounds nothing like today’s world, right? God is not just angry because someone moved a rock - God is angry that injustice is being done - that the powerful are oppressing and harming their neighbors for their own material gain - and getting away with it.

I want a God who gets angry over that sort of thing. We should all get angry over that sort of thing.

This is the same God we see depicted in Jesus in the paraphrase I read today when Jesus got mad at the money changers in the temple who were taking advantage of the poor. Jesus didn’t overturn tables simply because things were being sold in the temple. He overturned tables because the poor were being taken advantage of by the very people who claimed to represent God.

God’s anger is not arbitrary - it’s connected to God’s Goodness - in that God gets angry when we treat each other in ways that deny the Goodness of God in the world and in each other. In ways that oppress the beloved children of God, especially the poor.

So yes. Our God is a just God who sees and cares about injustice in our world - and who has done, is doing, and will do work to right that injustice and make the world as it should be.

In the meantime, in our world filled with injustice, how do we lean into God’s Justness and learn to trust God and partner with God in justice work. What spiritual disciplines can we foster, what can we do, to practice Just-ness in this world?

First, is to stay the course. In his book, The Justice of Jesus, Joash Thomas says, “Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ While I believe this to be true because of God’s goodness, I also believe that for centuries now the arc of the Western church has bent in a different direction. If that sounds harsh, just ask our Black neighbors, many of whose ancestors endured slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow segregation, all of which were widely embraced and given theological cover by Christians. Just ask our Indigenous neighbors, whose ancestors were victimized by genocide, erasure, and church-run residential schools. Or ask my ancestors, whose land, culture, and way of relating to God were for centuries usurped by colonial Western powers backed by the Catholic, Dutch Reformed, and Anglican churches. Because of my own privilege as a male, upper-middle-class immigrant from the Global South, it took me until 2020 to fully realize the Western church has a history of repeatedly failing our poor and oppressed neighbors.” Joash goes on to talk about the backlash pastors and churches who work for God’s Jubilee Justice for our neighbors face and how, so often, many have the privilege of dropping out of the long and arduous work of justice. Justice is not an easy road. It is one that bookmarks all of creation - from the Fall to the New Creation. We must stay the course, working with one another to continuously carry on for the sake of the oppressed.

Miller talks about how she is tempted to fade away from justice oriented activity with her family because of the slowness of the work. She says, “Perhaps we resist because we know too much about the slowness of justice, the resistance to justice, and the reaction against justice-seeking.” But even then we can cry out with the Psalmist who says, “How long, O Lord?”

The work of justice is always ongoing and it takes a lot to make things right again. By trusting in our God’s Justness, in the vision of God of Jubilee and the New Creation, we can continue coming back to the work of Justice, working towards that day when it is on Earth as it is in Heaven.

The long work of justice can look like many things: It can look like talking openly, with children, with each other, within congregations and communities, about injustice and justice in this world. We so often want to hide or protect children - and adults - and ourselves - from the injustice of the world. But if we don’t talk about it - then those who experience injustice can feel ignored and ostracized and even oppressed by those who claim a Just God but don’t acknowledge the injustice right in front of us. It can cause a false sense that God does not care for the plight of the oppressed. And for those kids who experience suffering - they will not come to know a God who cares and loves them intimately.

As we talk openly about injustice, we will often face pushback or criticism from those who perpetuate or benefit from injustice. Anytime we read history or hear a story, we can practice the spiritual discipline of Justice by asking, “Whose story is being told and whose is missing?” By asking this question, of history, and of one another, we can open ourselves up exploring the whole story of injustice together as neighbors, moving past political conversations and dividing lines to a place where all voices are heard and listened to, and lifted up to the God who is Just.

The last spiritual discipline of Justice that I want to lift up today is serving. Being the hands and feet of Christ. And serving without saviorism. That is, recognizing that we do not come to bring Jesus to those who are less fortunate than us - Jesus is already with them - as Jesus is with us. Instead we listen to the needs of those we serve without pre-conceived ideas of what is “right” for them, coming together as fellow beloved Children of God who have much to teach each other.

The work of Justice in an unjust world is hard. Trusting that our God is a Just God in a world of Injustice is hard. The journey of justice is a long and rocky one. We will not always get it right. In fact, we often won’t. And yet we can commit ourselves to truth-telling, to confession, to reparations and repairs - to coming together as the people of God to trust that our God is Just, and so, we are capable of doing the work of justice together with Christ and our fellow beloved children of God until 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.”

May it be so. Amen.

Call to Worship for end of "God is..."/Woven Sermon series

Leader: God is…
People: Good!
L: God is…
P: Powerful!
L: God is…
P: Just!
L: God is…
P: Joyful!
L: God is…
P: With Us!
L: Who is this God of whom we speak?
P: Jesus is Lord.
L: Let us worship our God who is revealed to us in Jesus.
All: Amen.

Call to Worship Inspired by "Surely the Presence"

Leader: We gather together for worship this morning, trusting that:
People: Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.
L: In this sanctuary and everywhere we go, may we trust God enough to say:
P: Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.
L: As we awake and as we fall asleep, may our refrain be:
P: Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.
L: As we breath, as we live and move each day, may we always remember:
P: Surely the presence of the Lord is with me always.
L: Let us worship our With-Us God.
All: God is with us! Amen!

Affirmation of a Joyful Faith

Affirmation of a Joyful Faith

We believe in a Joyful God.
We believe that the Creator of the Universe delighted in the act of creating, and continues to find joy in all the works of God’s hands.
We believe that God called us Very Good, that God continues to delight in us as a loving parent ever rejoices over a giggling child.
We believe in a God who said there is a time for dancing; a Savior who turned water into wine; and brings communities together in mutual celebration and rejoicing.
We believe that the Spirit continues to move among us and longs to open our eyes to the gifts of God’s Goodness & Grace - that we would see with eyes anew how every laugh, every hand held, every wrinkle from smiling - is a gift from our Joyful God.
We believe that the ability to find joy in this world, to trust God, to rejoice, to have hope - is an act of resistance against evil and oppression and a sign of the Spirit’s abiding within us.
We believe that God wants us to serve with Joy - and out of our generosity and service, there is a deep joy to be found in loving God and neighbor as self.
We believe that God has envisioned a world for us with no more Death, tears, or pain - and that New Creation will be a place of abundant life, laughter, joy, and community.
We believe in a Joyful God - may we respond in kind with rejoicing.
Amen.

"God is Powerful" a sermon on John 6 6:22-59

Paraphrase of John 6:22-59
John 6:16-21
“God is Powerful”
Preached Sunday, August 9, 2026

God is Powerful.

This is the second week of our sermon series, “God is…” based on the book “Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn’t Need to Heal From” by Meredith Miller. In the book she pictures faith as a web that is woven together - and webs have anchor strands. These 6 anchor strands are what a child, or any person, needs to know about God first in order for them to know God, trust God, and have a lifelong relationship with God. These six anchor strands make up the topics of this sermon series over our six weeks. They are: God is Good (that was last week), God is Powerful (today), God is Just, God if Joyful, God is With Us, Jesus is Lord. And I’ll admit to you, out of these six weeks - today’s theme is the one I struggle with the most. I think a lot of us struggle with “God is Powerful.”

Inherent in this struggle is what we as theologians call theodicy - that is “the problem of pain.” If God is all Good, all loving, all powerful - how can there be so much pain and suffering in this world? Many, many theologians and just every day followers of God have attempted to answer this question in various ways. In his book, “When Bad Things Happen To Good People,” Rabbi Harold Kushner wrestles with the problem of pain and concludes that while God is all Good, God’s power is limited by the constraints of creation. Pastor Ben Patterson proposes that God’s power is tied to other attributes of God which shape how God exercises power. He says, “There is God’s power: Can God do what is best? God’s wisdom: Does God really know what is best? And God’s love: Does God care? Does God really want what is best? God’s power, God’s wisdom, and God’s love are infinite.” In other words, God’s power is tied to a wisdom and a love that are also beyond our understanding.

I think another way to approach the question theodicy as it relates to God’s power, is - do we inherently misunderstand what power, especially God’s power, is? Human power is used to control others. Human power is used to get one’s way. Human power is used to do what one wants, without consequences or repercussions, or without taking into account those with less power.

Human power and God power are not the same. For God’s Power IS connected to God’s perfect Goodness and Love and in Goodness and Love there is no control. God does not control us. This has always been really important to me in my understanding of God. In seminary, I spent a semester doing an internship with a domestic violence advocacy center. People, mostly women but men too, could come to us and get help filing an order of protection or get resources in the trauma-informed space within the court house while they waited for their case to be heard. Often, they would look at us and ask some form of, “What should I do?” And often, every fiber in my being wanted to yell “LEAVE HIM!” I wanted to tell the person in front of me exactly what to do - but early on, the person who trained me told me, “And how does that make you any different from their abuser who controls their every move and tells them exactly what they can and cannot do?” An act of love is offering free will, it’s offering a choice. Love is not about control.

A hallmark of Wesleyan, that is United Methodist, theology, is free will. As humans, we are completely free to make decisions without being coerced by God. We can accept - and even reject, God’s love and grace - out of our own free will. Often, the rejection of God’s love and grace and the freedom to exercise our own power, causes suffering in this world - for ourselves and for others. And yet, it was our choice.

God’s power cannot equal God’s total control over all of our choices and their consequences, because that would cancel out God’s Goodness and Love.

What if we came to view God’s power not as about control but in light of my favorite passage of Scripture from Romans 8:

“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.”

God is Powerful - meaning that there is no power, no other source of power, that could ever separate us from God. This is, perhaps, the most apt answer I have found to the question of theodicy - to be clear, I am not sure the problem of pain and suffering can ever have a completely satisfactory answer in this life - but this is where my theology and my relationship with God goes - God is powerful and that means that no hardship in this life, no force of power, no evil, nothing - can separate me from God. God is always with me. Even in, and especially in, pain and grief. God cries with the suffering. God cries with us - God wipes away our tears - and nothing could ever remove God from our sides.

This realization that God’s power is about always being with us also should bring us to the realization that we should stop trying to use God.

Another reason we may struggle with God’s power is that, when we are suffering, or when someone we love is suffering, we pray to God for a very specific outcome or intervention and then get upset with God when our prayers are not answered. This kind of relationship with God treats God as a magic genie or a vending machine. If we ask, rub the lamp, pray, our wish will be granted. If we just punch in the right numbers and feed in the correct amount of money, we get what we want. If we just pray right, ask right, live “right” as a Christian - then surely God will answer our prayers…

This is a diminishment of God that hurts our relationship with God - and yet, it may be the logical conclusion that stories we tell and hear when we are children about God’s power leads us to.

God parts the Red Sea! Wow!
God feeds manna in the desert! Wow!
Jesus walks on water! Wow!
Jesus multiples the bread and fishes! Wow!

Children’s Bibles are full of miracle stories, the awesome powers of God, because wow is a great place for children! But for children, and adults, we cannot simply stop at the wow.

Meredith Miller says, “If we stop at wow, it only makes sense that misconceptions about God and God’s power take root…God may become a genie (and prayer is the way we rub the lamp). Kids will come to see the purpose of God’s power as happiness insurance and crisis prevention. The purpose of knowing the powerful God is to access God when you need help...Therapeutic deism imagines a far-off god whose purpose is primarily to make our lives better, happier, more comfortable, or less tragic. When our conversations with kids about God’s power stops at wow, we play into this particular misunderstanding of God.”

End quote.

Stopping at the wow could also turn God into a superhero. Superheroes have power and as Uncle Ben told Spiderman, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” And so superheroes must use their power to intervene in the lives of normal folk and save the day. When God becomes a superhero, what happens to a person’s faith when God doesn’t swoop in and save the day? It often damages it immensely.

God as a genie or a superhero are actually about us using prayer to control God. And God cannot be controlled by any power - including ours.

No, every time God performs a Wow! Miracle in the Bible - it is not just to awe, it is for a purpose to reveal who God is so that the people of God can better know God. I am going to say that point again: Every time God performs a Wow! Miracle in the Bible - it is not just to awe, it is for a purpose to reveal who God is so that the people of God can better know God.

In other words, God never uses God’s power of miracles so that people will be awed and obey God. God never uses God’s power of miracles so that people will be awed and be in God’s control. God’s power has nothing to do with obedience and control. In Scripture, whenever God shows God’s power through miracles, there is always a reason - mostly so that people would know the kind of God that God is, trust God, and enter into a relationship with God.

God parts the Red Sea - so that they would know that God has power over chaos, over nature, and values freedom from slavery and oppression for all God’s people.
God provides manna in the desert so that the people of God would trust that God is a God who cares for their bodies and is a God of abundance, even in the desert.
Jesus walks on water - harkening back to the parting of the Red Sea, and just as Jesus calls out “It is I” - echoing - I AM - the answer from the burning bush in Exodus. So that people would know that Jesus is the God of Scripture and the God of comfort in our fears.
And Jesus multiples the loaves and fishes - just as in the giving of manna, it shows that our God is a God of abundance, a God who cares for our physical bodies - it also shows us God’s power as an invitation.

An invitation to partner with Jesus - like the boy came and gave his lunch - so that our actions, partnered with the power of God, may do more Good than we could ever imagine.
An invitation to come to Jesus and be filled - not necessarily always with bread, but with a loving and Good relationship.
An invitation to know who our God in Jesus is, an invitation into a relationship with Jesus.
God wanted a relationship with the people of Israel.
Jesus wanted a relationship with the crowds.
Our God wants a relationship with us, with you and me.

This relationship with Jesus is not a controlling one. It is not one where God uses God’s power to control us, to force us into obedience. It is not a relationship where we try to use prayer as a coercive form to get God to use God’s power for our will. It is instead a relationship of trust in God’s power, that no matter what we are going through in this life - no matter what storms rage in the sea of our lives, no matter how our stomachs growl, or how hungry our souls are… To trust 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 ever have the power to separate us from God’s love, God’s Goodness, the power of God’s presence in our lives.

And so, God exercises God’s power to always be with us and to extend an invitation for us to know the God of all creation - how do we respond? How do we come to better know the person of God?

We lean into our relationship with God in many ways - today I would like to suggest prayer. And not prayer that is focused entirely on asking God for what we want, like a genie or a vending machine, but prayer that opens the invitation for God to show God’s self to us. Prayer that invites God’s power into our lives and the lives of those we love without demands or control. Prayer that talks to God, that opens up a constant conversation with the God of the Universe who has used God’s power over and over again to extend an invitation to us, to me, to you - for us to know God.

Talk to God about things you are thankful for, for things you are awed by. Talk to God about what makes you scared or worried. Talk to God about the people in your life who are scared or worried.

Prayer isn’t always talking - prayer can be art, drawing, meditating, breathing.

Pray with your breath, paying attention to it, and attuning yourself to God’s constant presence with you as your breath is always with you. You can let your very breath be your prayer. This is a form of prayer that I find works for me to help connect me with God’s presence. I pray as I breathe in and out. Something like this:

“Inhale:You are with me.

Exhale: I am not alone.”

Let your prayer be a relationship with God - a relationship that is removed from control. A relationship that isn’t constant asks or expectations about how one will act. Healthy relationships consist of many types of conversations - think of all the things you would talk about with a trustworthy, loving friend, and enter into prayer with God. This is not about having the right words. This is not about asking in just the right away. This is not about quick-fixes or even fixes at all. This is about being in relationship with the God who has the power to be with us and remain with us and love us - in all scenarios.

I’ll end with sharing one story about a mom and her son, Riley, who had nightmares. This mom wanted to pray that her young son’s nightmares would stop…she also didn’t think her kid’s nightmares would really stop. How could she pray for her son in the middle of the night in a way that would comfort him and draw him closer to God? And so she prayed: “God, we know you care that Riley is having bad dreams, and we are asking You to help. We want You to give him good sleep, with only good dreams. But even if they happen again, help him know You are here and he is not alone. Help him know You are bigger than the scary dreams, that You are with him and You love him. Amen.”

And so here is my prayer for us all today:

God, we know you care for us.
And yes, we do often ask for your help.
And whether that help comes or not, may we know that we are never alone.
May we know that you are always with us.
May we know that you are bigger and more powerful than all our fears and struggles.
May we be in relationship with you so that your power would draw us closer to your love.
Amen.