Community Vigil for Victor Perez
Community Vigil for Victor Perez
April 4, 2026
By: Pastor Mike Conner
Opening Prayer
A reading from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Let us pray:
Loving Creator, we gather in your presence today trusting that you are always ready to receive us just as we are. As we hold vigil on this sacred ground—ground marked by love and loyalty, bullets and blood—we remember your cherished child, Victor Perez. We seek to honor Victor and those who love him through our presence, our stories, and our tears. We rest in your words of blessing, knowing that even in our grief and poverty of spirit, you are at work in us.
During this hour, may you comfort our hearts and keep the memory of Victor clear and alive in us, so that all that we think and feel may be purified and made useful by love. Help us to renew our commitment to the pursuit of justice and peace—for Victor and his family, throughout the City of Pocatello, and in all of life.
We continue to lament that Victor’s life was taken from us so quickly, so needlessly, and so brutally. For many it has been a long year of sorrow, frustration, and unsatisfying answers. Thank you for sharing our grief, outrage, and pain. Thank you, too, for embracing Victor’s spirit in the light and peace of your eternal presence.
Though you have created us through love and for love, we confess that we often fail to honor the inherent dignity of our neighbors. We are driven by the fear of what we don’t understand and the anger that clouds our judgments. We struggle to address our cultural addiction to violence and to fully acknowledge the harm perpetrated by our practices of policing.
Lead us into your truth, and bless those who are working for accountability and change on behalf of Victor and his family. Give all of us good work to do—the work of building real relationships with those in our neighborhoods, the work of advocating for policies and practices that minimize harm. Guide us onto your path of forgiveness, humility, and renewal.
We ask that your great mercy will have the final word in this story. And may our efforts in love be one way that we carry Victor forward into our shared future.
Lord, in you mercy, hear our prayer.
Amen.
The Good News of God is Meant to Be Sung (Zephaniah 3:14-20)
The Good News of God is Meant to Be Sung
Trinity Episcopal Church
Holy Saturday Easter Vigil
April 4, 2026
Zephaniah 3:14-20
By: Pastor Mike Conner
***
I have two kids, ages 5 and 3, at home, and they have this quirky bedtime habit of asking me or my wife for a story and then, after the story is finished, asking for what they call“the song of the story.” I’m not sure how this got started, but basically what they want is for us to take the story we just told them and retell it by setting the words to an improvised melody. Mostly I think they’re trying to delay bedtime, and yet, there’s a kernel of wisdom in their request. For as long as there have been humans telling stories, there have been humans singing songs, often singing the stories as the primary means of telling them. We learn our letters, numbers, colors, days of the week, and animals through song. In seminary, I memorized the Greek and Hebrew alphabets and the many different forms of verbs by setting them to simple tunes. Our hymns embed theology and biblical narrative in our hearts more effectively than even the best sermons.
God’s good news is meant to be sung. When God’s grace touches our lives, one of the most natural things we can do is to sing about it: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15:21). With tambourine in hand, this is how Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, gave glory to the God who had freed her people from slavery.
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” sang the young unwed Mary when Elizabeth affirmed the presence of God in her womb. And after that holy child was born, the angelic army filled the skies above Bethlehem with song: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.”
God’s good news is meant to be sung.
If we were to survey all the songs drawn from the human heart by the love and power of God, we would have to speak of Deborah’s praise of Ja’el, and the theological poetry of the Philippian hymn and the Johannine prologue, and the heavenly ecstasies of John the Revelator’s angels, martyrs, and strange creatures. We couldn’t leave out Zechariah’s Benedictus or Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis or the songs that shook the very foundations of Paul and Timothy’s Philippian prison cell.
The good news of God is meant to be sung.
Oh, there are the Psalms, chanted by Jews and Christians for thousands of years. There are the Eucharistic liturgies, the Gregorian chants, and the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, and Handel. There are the African American spirituals, those freedom songs by which the Nobodies of the world were uplifted as Somebodies to God. And yes, if I may, we couldn’t forget that great poet from our shared tradition, Charles Wesley, whose many hymns include “Come, thou long expected Jesus,” and “Hark! the herald angels sing,” and even tomorrow morning’s “Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!” And just as there are rests in every piece of music, so even our sacred silences and contemplations have their place in our love song to God.
In every age and culture, in every language and artistic form, the good news of God is meant to be sung.
Zephaniah’s prophecy brought this home to me. Not much is known about him. The Bible says he prophesied during the reign of Josiah of Judah in the 7th century before Christ. Zephaniah’s three chapters of doom, which end with this sudden, stunning passage of joy, seem to fit the religious renewal and political reforms accomplished by Josiah when he came of age. Yet some scholars think these prophecies reflect, instead, Israel’s painful exile in Babylon, and the joy of their return. Others doubt Zephaniah ever existed at all.
What matters to me tonight is not historical exactitude but rather Zephaniah’s response to the movement of God—even if that movement was yet to come, experienced now only as a promise. “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion,” he urges. “Shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” (3:14). In a single verse we have four imperatives all basically saying the same thing: that God’s good news is meant to be sung. Singing is way to thank and tell the story of a God who removes our fear and our shame, who gathers in the outcasts and saves those who cannot save themselves.
But then, in verse 17, something unexpected happens. Zephaniah’s message shifts from what we do in response to God to what God does in response to us. The prophet says, “[God] will rejoice over you with gladness; [God] will renew you in [God’s] love; [God] will exult over you with loud singing!” And then the speech shifts into the first person, and we hear a stanza of God’s own love song for us.
Wait, God singing about us? To us? Over us?
What a mystery that we would bring such joy to our Creator!
And yet this is the good news of our faith, that through God’s faithfulness to the covenant, and through Christ’s death and resurrection, we have been made children of God, and who doesn’t love singing lullabies, happy birthdays, and loves songs to their children? Perhaps all our songs are reflections of, or small distillations of, God’s eternal song. Perhaps when we sing God’s good news we are participating in God’s song that is always already flowing through us. After all, to be inspired means to be filled with breath, and we have in our lungs the breath of the God whose word, whose melody, to us is love.
As John Wesley once wrote in an early Methodist hymnbook: “See that you join with the congregation [to sing] as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find a blessing… Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength ...Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing.”
The good news of God is meant to be sung.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
For the Forgiveness of Sins (Matthew 26:17-30)
For the Forgiveness of Sins
Maundy Thursday
April 2, 2026
Matthew 26:17-30
***
Maundy Thursday receives its name from the Latin word for “commandment,” mandatum. That language comes from John’s Gospel, in which Jesus spends the night before his crucifixion celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples. After the meal, he washes their feet like a household servant and then gives them what he calls a “new commandment:” “love one another,” he says, “as I have loved you” (John 13:34). The love commandment is unique to John’s version of the story. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus also celebrates the Passover meal with his disciples on the night of his betrayal and arrest. But in place of the foot washing, Jesus instead blesses the bread and the cup, identifying them with his own body and blood and creating the sacrament of Communion. In Luke’s story, this moment also comes with a commandment: “Do this in remembrance of me” (22:19).
Tonight I’d like to focus our attention on the table. It has been a little over a year since we transitioned from a monthly to a weekly practice of Communion, a little over a year since we made the intentional decision to center the table in our worship space. Yet maybe we still wonder from time to time: Why is this so important? What’s really going on when we gather around Christ’s table? How, and for what, am I being formed week after week?
In a sermon called “The Duty of Constant Communion,” John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, set out “to show that it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as [they] can.” He took about six paragraphs to make his initial argument and then twenty-two more paragraphs to answer the anticipated objections of his readers, including the objection that, in his words, “constant communion…abates our reverence for the sacrament.” That is, that coming to the table more often makes it less special. Wesley deftly distinguishes between two kinds of reverence, the natural excitement we feel for anything that is new or occasional enough to feel fresh, and the slow accumulation of what he calls “true religious reverence,” which comes from being blessed by faithful practice over time.[1]
Along with prayer and scripture reading, Wesley considered Communion to be one of the three chief “means of grace,” which he defines as practices ‘ordained of God as the ordinary channels of conveying [God’s] grace to the souls of [people].”[2] Because Jesus promised us explicitly that he would be present to us in this practice—‘This is my Body… Do this in remembrance of me’—we can trust that each time we come to the Table, something grace-filled will occur in us and between us. Why wouldn’t we want to experience that as often as we can?
Gustavo Guttiérez, the great Peruvian Catholic writer who helped develop liberation theology in Latin America, once wrote that “the breaking of the bread is at once the point of departure and the point of arrival of the Christian community.”[3]
Here’s what I think he meant by that. As a point of departure, the table confronts us with our foundational responsibilities as students of Jesus. It teaches us that, with God, everyone is welcomed, valued, and fed. We are sent out to declare God’s love for all people, to dissolve all hierarchies of status, power, and wealth, and to ensure that everyone receives their daily bread. This is a difficult calling that requires sacrifice and patience. From one perspective, we celebrate Communion under the sign of the cross, for the kingdom of heaven is not yet.
But as a point of arrival, the table offers us a glimpse, and a taste, of our destiny. There is deep joy here. One day, Christ will return to judge the nations, heal the earth’s wounds, wipe away every tear, and throw an eternal feast for the poor and the outcast, for every sinner saved by grace. Today is that day! if only, it seems, for a moment. Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus knew the presence of the risen Christ when he broke bread with them at the end of a long day, so we too can encounter the real heart of God here. From this perspective we celebrate Communion under the sign of the resurrection, for the kingdom of heaven is already here.
In our Christian tradition there are three primary names for the sacrament: the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, and the Eucharist. They refer to the same thing, but each label produces its own spiritual mood and gifts.
The Lord’s Supper is the most solemn of the three. When we call breaking the bread the Lord’s Supper, we actively recall this as the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples. We meditate on the bread and cup as signs of his broken body and shed blood. In Christ, God has participated fully in our human condition, in our brokenness and vulnerability. In Christ, the Son of God gave up his life for us and for all creation. The Lord’s Supper invites reflection on the cross and calls us to consider Jesus’ solidarity with our pain, his love that outlasts and redeems our wounds, and his invitation to take up our own crosses and follow him.
When we call what we do here Holy Communion we place the most emphasis on our mystical belonging to one another in and as the Body of Christ. This is a feast, a banquet, a party! This is a time to regard one another with reverence, and to commit ourselves to each other in love. At this table we are reminded of God’s own Triune life, the eternal and perfectly unified community that is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When God created humankind in God’s image, God was making us for one another. “It is not good for the man to be alone,” God said when there was only Adam. We need each other to show the fullness of God. Giving and receiving love in perfect freedom is one thing that Communion shows us how to do.
Finally, the name Eucharist comes from the Greek verb eucharisteo, which means “I give thanks.” When we call Communion the Eucharist, we emphasize our gratitude. Just as we say grace before our daily meals, here at God’s table we lift up a prayer of thanksgiving. We say thank you for the whole story of creation and redemption—for God’s faithful love which was, is, and is to come. We say thank you for the goodness of the earth; thank you for God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; thank you for Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; thank you for the Church’s mission; thank you for our hope in the eventual healing of all creation. Great stories are told and retold at the family table. Great toasts are given at wedding banquets. At Christ’s table, we take the long view and rehearse the story of God’s love for creation.
Each time we break bread, we meditate on Jesus’ sacrificial life and death, relish the interweaving of our lives, and express our gratitude. Another way of putting this is that, as Lord’s Supper, the table helps us look inward to the purity of our hearts; as Holy Communion, the table helps us look outward at each other; and as the Eucharist, the table helps us look up in open-armed and open-hearted love for God. Even if we’re not feeling very spiritual some days when we come forward to receive his body and blood, we can be sure that the table is doing its work in, between, and upon us.
The great spiritual writer Henri Nouwen has a beautiful little book called Life of the Beloved. In it he explores how Jesus’ four actions with the bread at the last supper can be seen as a metaphor for the Christian life. Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread. In the same way, God takes, blesses, breaks, and gives each of us.
When we walk with God, there is a sense in which we all are taken, we are called and claimed by God’s grace. We belong to God. Then we are blessed, affirmed as God’s beloved in the context of a community. Then we are free to experience the reality and the surprising giftedness of brokenness. Life and love humble us. Our self-sufficiency or narrow affections have to be challenged by Christ’s radical love. We wake up to the suffering of others. Finally, we are ready to be turned outward in compassion and given to others. Through each of us, Christ offers himself as bread for the world.
As I consider Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Supper, here’s what strikes me. At the beginning of the meal, Jesus acknowledges that a betrayer sits among the group of disciples. At the end of the meal, Jesus predicts that Peter, the leader of the Twelve, will deny Jesus three times, and that all the disciples will desert Jesus by the end of the night. Even so, he passes the cup around to each of them and says, “Drink from it, all of you” (Matt 26:27, emphasis mine). All of you. All of us. Betrayers, deniers, deserters—we will all be forgiven of our sins. Not because we deserve it, but because Jesus freely poured out his life and love for us all. Like the twelve, we have all been caught up in the reconciliation of heaven and earth which Jesus has accomplished on the cross. And like eleven of them, we will be met by Christ at the table on the day of resurrection. No matter what disappointments, regrets, wounds, or failures we carry, there is forgiveness with God. Even when we fail him, he does not fail us.
As the liturgy says, “Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sins, and who seek to live in peace with one another.”
May we each hear and respond to that invitation as the Spirit leads.
Amen.
A New Day (Matthew 28:1-10)
The New Day
April 5, 2026
Matthew 28:1-10
By: Pastor Mike Conner
***
This past Wednesday, NASA launched its first crewed spacecraft beyond low-earth orbit since 1972. Right now, there are four astronauts, three Americans and one Canadian, traveling closer and closer to moon. The goal of the Artemis II mission is to circumnavigate the moon, seeing even its dark side.
I had no idea that this was in the works, and it was only by mere luck that my family and I watched the launch live. I had just brought the kids home from preschool, and they wanted to watch one of their favorite shows on the Disney+ app. So, we got out the screen, clicked open the app, and discovered the live coverage. In less than 20 minutes the rocket would be blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I explained what was happening, and the kids chose to watch it instead. (Yay!)
The rocket steamed on its platform, and the faces of the astronauts flashed across the screen. A voice from NASA led the final ten-second countdown; the rocket ascended into the sky and shed its boosters; the crowds around Cape Canaveral cheered. Sitting there on our couch, we were all captivated: four human beings hurtling toward their dreams, and a gleaming, ingenious technological apparatus supporting them.
I wrote my first ever research paper in the 7th grade. The topic I chose was the Space Race between the United States and the USSR. As a kid, I liked that there was a competitive aspect to it, two nations racing toward the moon. But more than that, I remember the magic of it: people accomplishing something, and going somewhere, utterly unprecedented.
In more recent years, my views have been complicated by an author named Loren Eiseley, our son Loren’s namesake. Professionally, Eiseley was a twentieth-century evolutionary anthropologist. That means he studied human bones and human prehistory, piecing together out of the ancient evidence some picture of the emergence of Homo sapiens as a species. But in his several books of essays written for a nonscientific audience, he ponders the mysteries of human consciousness, spirituality, and love.
One of the themes that Eiseley returns to over and over again in his writings is the deep craving in humanity to follow its curiosity, to expand outward, to visit unknown places and seek answers to the most cryptic aspects of nature. We have a need, a drive, to push the boundaries of what is possible. Eiseley often talks about this in the context of the space craze of the 1960s and 1970s, when that longing to sail among the stars and get at the origin of all things, to settle some faraway planet where we might give ourselves a second shot at Paradise, was at its cultural peak.
But then Eiseley says, in effect, ‘Hmm, this is curious. We seem so eager to blast ourselves into the heights of the cosmos, and yet so reticent to presence ourselves into the depths of soul.’ What does it mean, this mystical scientist ponders, that we who are constantly at war, and ravaging planet Earth, and largely failing to care for the poor and vulnerable, what does it mean that we will spend millions to enter the frontier of space but not spend a moment plumbing the human heart’s capacity for love?
These aren’t questions I recommend pulling out at your next dinner party, but let me assure you that they weren’t academic for Eiseley, who lived through both World Wars, Vietnam, the Cold War, and the cultural turbulence of the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’ll admit that I was brooding on them myself this past Wednesday afternoon while watching Artemis II hurtle into the sky.
Don’t get me wrong, I also got teary in that moment. The bravery of those astronauts is remarkable, and I still have that childlike reverence for space. But even so, the on-air reporting felt like it was trafficking in some out-of-touch and tired commentary. On the ground and in the studio, the commentators were saying this like this: ‘Even though millions of American’s struggle to pay their rent, funding expeditions like Artemis II will lead us toward a better collective future.’ And: ‘This mission has the power to unite our country during a time of division and war just like the first moon landing did in 1969 during the Vietnam War. And: ‘This mission marks a new day for America, a new day for humanity.’
A new day for humanity. That’s the one that really unsettled me.
And I think it unsettled me because I agree with Loren Eiseley, who says that the key to a better world is not out there among the stars but actually in here, in this soft, mysterious organ beating in our chests. It’s because I trust the words of Jesus, who says in the Gospel of Luke, “the Kingdom of God is already among you” (17:21 NLT). As a person of Christian faith, I am confronted this Easter morning with startling news that the ‘new day for humanity’ is already here. It has already dawned. In fact, it began dawning more than 2 millennia ago, when the earth was thought to be flat, and set at the very center of an unchanging universe.
The new day! – Matthew speaks of it right here in his Easter story: “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb” (Matt 28:1 NRSV, emphasis mine). With these words, Matthew transports us back to the first pages of scripture, to the ancient Hebrew poem of creation. God spoke the universe into being, beginning with the creation of light and the separation of light from darkness, the inauguration of time. God worked for six days, crafting the glories of creation, and then rested from labor on the seventh day, enjoying the “very-goodness” of everything that had been made.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had also rested on a Sabbath day. Jesus’s body, dead and sealed away in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, had rested on the Sabbath day. That Sabbath day, a day of strange, aching silence for both people and God, was a hinge. It was the fulfilment of an old day and the dawning of a new day. As the women set off for the tomb in the early morning hours they entered the new day, not only in the sense of the turning of the calendar, but in the transformed relationship between creation and God. This was the beginning of what scripture calls the new creation, the new birth, the kingdom of heaven.
Paul says, “[We] were dead through the trespasses and sins in which [we] once lived… [But] God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins” (Eph 2:1; Col 1:13).
Peter says: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Peter 1:3-4).
And Mary Magdalene, who rushed to tell the disciples on that first Easter morning, testifies, “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).
And Jesus himself, welcomes not only the women but all of us into the dawning of the day with that single, playful word, “Greetings!”
The key to our happiness and our holiness, the secret to our friendship with God and our love of others, is ready to be poured into our hearts through faith. It is the very life of Jesus. It is his Spirit, his grace. His resurrection proves that nothing, not even the cruelty of the cross, could snuff out that grace. His life and love outlast and overcome condemnation, injustice, and death. Jesus promises to greet us in the new day that is right here and right now, not in some far-off time on a planet not our own.
If there is a mission that we are called to make as Christians, it is first and foremost for the discovery of our spiritual capacities: learning to forgive, to love, to make peace, to be patient, to serve without expectation of reward. If, as Paul puts it in Romans 5, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5), what is possible for us? What is the daily adventure of prayer and love that we are called to live? That’s the question that all our ingenuity and resources ought to be aimed at answering. At the very least, that’s the question that the Church should be seeking to answer to the astonishment and delight of others.
Using Matthew’s resurrection story, I’d like to name three truths about what it means for us to live in God’s ‘new day.’
First, we are free to experience the powers of this world, the powers of deception and intimidation, as having been disarmed by the crucified and risen Christ. Out of the four Gospel writers, only Matthew tells the story of the religious and political authorities’ attempt to guard against, and then cover up, Jesus’ resurrection. With Pontius Pilate’s blessing, the chief priests and Pharisees had “sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it” (Matt 27:66). And after the earthquake and angelic appearance at the empty tomb, some of the guards went back to the city to report what happened to the priests. The priests, conferring with the elders, decided to pay the soldiers to lie about what happened.
Yet in between the sealing and the scheming, God’s angel comes. “For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men,” Matthew says (28:4). Like dead men. There is poetry here! At the site of death, at the tomb, Jesus is announced as alive, while the armed guard is revealed for what it really is—an empty instrument of death.
In God’s “new day,” we have nothing to fear. Though oil prices might spike in result to a thoughtless war, though the market may convulse at the whims of AI developers and Silicon Valley billionaires, though the Idaho legislature may continue to make life harder for women, children, immigrants, LGBTQ folk, and the working poor, we are called to trust the Christ who says, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
This doesn’t mean that we will always be able to protect ourselves or the ones we love from harm. Jesus never promises us victory in a material or political sense. But he does promise vitality and integrity in every circumstance. By his Spirit we can announce the truth of every person’s worth. Because he lives, we can suffer for the sake of love with hope.
A second part of living in the ‘new day’ is that our sense of belonging to one another continually expands. Sometimes Christians get this very wrong. We think we need to circle the wagons, enforce boundaries, get really clear about who’s in and who’s out. We can get to thinking that being faithful means not asking questions or taking risks or caring about what happens in the world around us. But these are habits of the old day.
The angel tells the women to “go and tell” the disciples about the resurrection (28:7). And it is in their going that Jesus meets them, that his living presence is confirmed as a reality. He then repeats the angel’s order: “go and tell” (28:10). And what are they supposed to tell the disciples? That they, the disicples, need to get up and go—go to Galilee, because it will be in their going that they will see Jesus.
This theme of going and telling, and of being met by God in the going, is confirmed as the pattern of Christian life at the end of Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus meets the disciples on the mountain in Galilee and gives the Great Commission: “Go therefore,” Jesus tells them, “and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (28:18-19).
Jesus is always going ahead of us; the minute we’re settled into something comfortable and routine he goes a little farther down the road and asks us to follow him. There is no limit to how much we can experience his grace and share his love with others. To be a person of faith means being a person who takes risks, who embraces change without fear, who wants to know where the call will lead next. The reality of the risen life of Jesus can’t be comprehended from the sidelines; it can only be known from within—by going and telling, and being met by Christ along the way.
The new day promises a widening circle of belonging. As John Wesley once put it, “all the world is [our] parish.” We are free to experience everyone as a neighbor, and each dimension of our lives as the arena of discipleship. With Christ, our world doesn’t get smaller but bigger, because our hearts are asked to hold the infinity of God’s love.
Finally, in this resurrection day, we can expect that God’s messengers will foil our expectations. The people God chooses to teach us of love will expose our pride and humble us. All four Gospels agree that the first witnesses of the resurrection were women. In ancient Jewish culture, the testimony of a woman would not stand in court; it had no authority. If the earliest Christians wanted to spread a convincing story about Jesus’ resurrection, they might have chosen more reputable first witnesses: men, maybe someone like the rich man Joseph of Arimathea, whose tomb Jesus had been laid in. But no, it was the women who were the first to see, believe, and testify.
The next group of witnesses is hardly better than the first. Jesus returns to the eleven disciples who, in the hour when he needed them most, had deserted and denied him. Jesus is committed to this ordinary, fallible group. He promises to renew their life of witness; their faithfulness will draw strength from his love and forgiveness, from his power over death.
There is a subtle shift in language here. The angel tells Mary and Mary to “go quickly and tell his disciples” (28:7); when Jesus meets them on the road and essentially repeats this command, he says “go and tell my brothers” (28:10).
My brothers. Still disciples in the new day, but also brothers. Siblings of Christ! Children of God! Think of the shift in understanding taking place in the women as they run to find the eleven. They would not only announce good news to students who had let down their teacher and were being given another shot. They would also announce good news to men claimed by the risen Christ as family. They would tell them, “Don’t be hung up on your failures. He called you brothers! There is forgiveness and love with him. You belong to him unconditionally. Go to Galilee!”
In the new day of the resurrection, Jesus gives us eyes to see everyone as a potential witness. Even and especially those granted the least authority in our systems, even and especially those who have failed and been humbled by their failures. God can work through anyone; no one is beyond the reach of redemption. And those who know the rejection and humiliation of the cross are perhaps most able to convince us that we have been reconciled to God, that the new day has dawned.
Friends, on this Easter morning, we are called to discover the wisdom, compassion, humility, and love that Jesus makes possible in us through his Spirit, through his life which is greater than sin and death. He has procured a new humanity for us in his resurrection. We do not have to wait for the next great technological achievement or feat of human brilliance to bring about the new day. It is already dawning; may it come to a blaze in our hearts as we live without fear, as we draw the circle of our love wider, and as trust the testimony of those whom God chooses to send to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Come To Me (Matthew 1:11, 25-30)
Come To Me
March 22, 2026
Matthew 11:1, 25-30
By: Pastor Mike Conner
I want to express my gratitude for the many people who preached, led worship, and worked with the youth Sunday School class the past two Sundays: Marlys McCurdy, John Gribas, April Mills, Trudy Pink, and others. It continues to be a source of joy and humility that I am able to lean on and learn from others. When other people lead and share their prayerful perspective on God’s Word all of us get to see and to hear the Gospel refracted through the prism of our community. That diversity gives us a fuller sense of who God is, how God works, and what God is up to in our world. So, thank you.
Thank you. Expressing gratitude is transformative. If we do it regularly as a practice, saying ‘Thank you’ can rewire our neural pathways. Our minds can learn to sift for the good even as we take in disheartening news or move through challenging experiences. Over time, we start to anticipate that, even in the midst of failure or opposition or the unfolding of scary events beyond our control, we will catch the glimmer of God’s goodness in our daily lives.
That’s what Jesus is doing here in Matthew chapter 11. He is deep into his Galilean ministry. He has passed through many of its major towns and smaller villages, healing, preaching, and performing miracles. But in verse 20 of this chapter, Matthew writes, “Then [Jesus] began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done because they did not repent” (11:20, emphasis mine).
He reproached them… Even though Jesus had done great things for the people, he was not seeing the change of heart that he wanted to see.
Instead of growing bitter about this apparent failure, Jesus sensed that God was mysteriously at work. Surprisingly, he says ‘Thank you.’ And we would do well to listen, because this is one of the moments in the Gospels where we are brought inside the prayer life of Jesus and get to hear him as he communes and communicates with his Source.
Here’s verse 25 in the New Revised Standard Version: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Here’s that same verse in the New Living Translation: “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike.” And here’s how Eugene Peterson’s puts it in The Message: “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people.”
Infants, the childlike, ordinary people—Jesus thanks God for presenting the things of salvation to them. But the wise, the intelligent, and the clever; sophisticates and know-it-alls? Well, Jesus thanks God for hiding the things of salvation from them.
Jesus saw the prevailing arrangements of power remaining fixed. Gripped by an addiction to the status quo, the dominant culture would not embrace the gentleness and justice of the kingdom of God that Jesus was revealing. Maybe they were afraid of Roman retribution. Maybe they preferred a vision of God that was domesticated and aligned with “the way things had always been.” Maybe it was something else. Either way, this is the first real indication in Matthew’s Gospel that the masses are going to eventually turn their back on Jesus at the cross.
Yet there were a few, a very few, whose hearts were in alignment with the movements of the Spirit, including the twelve apostles. So Jesus thanked the Lord of heaven and earth, whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts and whose ways are higher than our ways, for foiling expectations for worldly success and for overturning the value systems of the world.
God’s work of overturning the world’s value systems is a thread that runs throughout all of scripture. God initiated salvation history by calling Abraham and Sarah, an elderly couple, to leave their homeland and travel in faith to a land yet to be revealed, where they would start a family. God took Moses, a reclusive outcast, and made him the liberator of the Hebrews. God took David, the youngest son of a shepherd, and made him King.
In Mary’s Magnificat, the mother of God sings: “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly / [God] has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” And in the opening chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, we’ve seen how Jesus’ ministry incarnated this great reversal. He, a poor carpenter’s son was revealed to be the Son of God. He welcomed and healed everyone who came to him. He revealed God’s universal love for all people. He saw through externals to the intentions of the heart.
There is a scene in the New Testament book of Acts in which two of Jesus’ apostles, Peter and John, are arrested for preaching about Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple. This happens after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. They are brought before the “rules, elders, and scribes,” including some of the individuals who had a direct hand in Jesus’ crucifixion, and are asked, “By what power or by what name did you do this?”
“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are being asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.’
“…Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus” (from Acts 4, emphasis mine).
Notice the reversal: boldness and joy and moral integrity from those who had no social privilege. Surely this was a sign of their fellowship with Jesus, the one who was crucified and who yet lives. Those who had arrested Peter and John had nothing to say in response to this. As the Apostle Paul writes in First Corinthians, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
“Consider your own call, brothers and sisters,” Paul urges, “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God” (1:25-29 NRSV).
It is God’s will that the good news be the pearl of great price hidden in the field, the narrow way that leads to life, the invisible salt seasoning the world. The only condition to finding it, and living it, is that we come to Jesus as the ordinary people that we are, in need of grace. God has revealed these things to infants. Infants don’t work to distinguish themselves from others. They don’t compete. They don’t manage their image in the eyes of others. They don’t possess anything other than the will to live and the need to be cared for. And they are bold in making their needs known.
Jesus says, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
And anyone, any of us, can do this.
You are never too young, and you are never too old to come to him.
You do not need to be self-sufficient, a straight-A student, or a standalone success to come to him.
You do not need to have it all together or have clean record to come to him.
You do not need to be wealthy or witty, perfect or popular.
You do not need to have white skin or American citizenship, or speak English perfectly, or at all.
You don’t need to know ahead of time where the journey is going to take you.
You don’t need to have achieved all the things you thought you were setting out to achieve at the beginning.
You don’t need to be able to do all things today that you used to be able to do yesterday.
You don’t need to be understood or to understand.
All Jesus asks is that you come to him, really come to him, to his presence, to his humility and lowliness, and that you experience his delight in showing you the source of pure Love at the center of everything, the Love that knows and wants you, the Love that wants magnify itself in the world through you. The Love that Jesus called Father.
What good news! – that to inherit the kingdom of God we simply need to be honest with Jesus about being weary and burdened. We only must feel our need for him and receive his rest.
Friends, whether for the first or the thousandth time, may each of us come to him, trusting it is precisely through our imperfections and false starts and emptiness that the kindness, the mercy, and the pure of love of God are revealed.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
The Bad News Good News (Matthew 10:16-42)
Sermon: The Bad News Good News
March 15, 2026
Matthew 10:16-42
By: John Gribas
When Pastor Mike initially asked if I would be open to preparing a message for today, he seemed a little hesitant. Apparently, hesitant about this particular section of Matthew he would be asking me to explore.
I thought that hesitation was a little odd, to be honest. I mean…it’s scripture. And it’s a very familiar part of New Testament scripture. Not some weird Old Testament passage, sharing about God drowning almost all of humanity, or seemingly directing his chosen people to engage in child sacrifice or genocide, or a talking donkey, or a guy getting swallowed by a big fish, or mind-numbing genealogies, or bizarre purity rules and rituals.
No, this was straightforward New Testament stuff. And not some baffling cosmic fantasy epic scene from the Book of Revelation. This was gospel material. Matthew’s gospel.
No problem, Mike. Piece of cake.
But after I read it and spent a bit of time with it, I started to see why this passage—Matthew 10:16-42—could be a little tricky.
“Tricky, how?” you might ask. Well, I’d say tricky because something I know about preaching—something I recall Mike really emphasizing himself when I was part of his preaching class—is that, whatever you do in a sermon message, whatever approach you take—it is essential that you find a way to share “good news.” That’s the point.
“Gospel” means “good news.” So sharing on this particular section from Matthew’s gospel should automatically mean I am sharing some good news, right?
Last week, Marlys did such a wonderful job of sharing good news. And the scripture she drew from comes right before the scripture for today. Jesus is sending the twelve to cast out unclean spirits and heal every kind of disease and sickness. And Marlys reminded us all that we, like these disciples, can consider our calling and play our part in ministering to a hurting world. To follow in the footsteps of the good shepherd who takes good care of the sheep. That sounds like good news to me.
Also, if we look back to the portion of Matthew 10 from last week, we can see that, in sending out the twelve, Jesus offers quite a bit of reassurance.
He tells them they are to focus on those who are familiar. Fellow Israelites. No need to get uncomfortable by engaging Samaritans or Gentiles.
He tells them they get to do a lot of awesome things. Share the good news. Heal sick people. Even raise the dead!
He tells them they don’t have to worry about payment or budgets or schedules. They can pack very light. People will take care of them. And if they meet anyone who isn’t keen on offering hospitality…no problem. No need to haggle or debate. Just move on to someone else who is keen.
For the twelve being sent out to do something likely a bit out of their comfort zone, and for us here today maybe feeling called to do likewise as Jesus followers, that is a lot of good news.
But there is a definite “turn” after that, starting in verse 16. Suddenly, it stops sounding much like good news. For example, Jesus says…
You are sheep, and there are going to be wolves.
Get ready for some flogging.
You will have audience with rulers and authorities, though you will be anything but the invited guest of honor.
Your own dear friends and family will hate you and betray you.
They call me “devil.” As my student, don’t expect anything different.
If you thought I came to bring peace, think again.
If you want to be considered worthy, love me more than father, mother, brother, sister. And this work comes at a cost. A cross. Your cross. Your very life.
I don’t know about you, but, to me, this all sounds like bad news. Very, very bad news.
And I understand why Mike was hesitant.
But don’t worry. Despite the promise of wolves and flogging and betrayal, there is actually good news here. More than first meets the eye. I guess we could call it the “bad news good news.”
To begin, we need to remember that, in this passage, Jesus was talking to a specific group of individuals in a particular place and time. This group was “the twelve.” Those we know as apostles. The listing and naming of the individual members of this group to start Matthew 10 emphasizes who the chapter is about. Jesus summoned these twelve individual human beings. This message is to them in preparation of their being sent out. If the message includes some bad news…well…it is their bad news.
That might sound rather selfish. I don’t mean it to be. I’m not suggesting that we—we who are not apostles—should read this and think, “Wow. Those guys had it tough. That was some really bad news. Glad that wasn’t me.”
What I am suggesting is that, whether it is bad news or good news, we need to be careful not to just read scripture, note what Jesus said to specific people in a specific situation and place and time, and assume Jesus is saying that same thing to us today, in our specific situation and place and time.
One reason it doesn’t make sense to do this is because Jesus didn’t do it in his own time. That is, he didn’t go around making statements to people with the assumption that what he was saying had some kind of universal application to everyone. Not even to everyone who considered themselves his follower.
For example, consider the gospel story of the man in the land of the Gerasines who was filled with many demons—a “legion” in fact. Jesus cast out those demons, sending them into a heard of pigs. The healed man begged to be allowed to go along with Jesus as part of his ministry. But Jesus’ message and mission for this man was, “Go home and tell the people there how much God has done for you.”
No wolves. No flogging. Just home and a chance to share an unbelievable blessing.
But Jesus’ calling and sending is certainly not always warm and fuzzy, and it was not only the twelve whose calling included some “bad news.” A bit later in Matthew, in chapter 19, a very rich young man engaged with Jesus, seemingly interested in learning more about what it meant to follow. Jesus didn’t promise wolves or flogging. But he also didn’t say, “Go home and share how you have been blessed.”
Nope. He said, “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor. Then come follow me.”
I can’t help but wonder if that rich young man would have preferred a flogging.
When Jesus calls and sends, he calls and sends individuals. He calls and sends them at particular times and in particular ways…because he knows them. Because he knows us. He knows you! That is the point. And that is reflected here in Matthew 10. And that, I am suggesting, is good news.
I noticed something really strange here in Matthew 10. And I think this strange thing actually reinforces the point I am making—the idea that when Jesus calls and sends, he does so from a place of deep knowing and understanding. Here is the start of today’s passage:
“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me.”
So…wolves, flogging, being dragged before authorities. Bad news.
But then Jesus shares something. It appears to be a kind of reassurance. A consoling message to ease their fears. Jesus says, “Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
Okay, I’m a communication professor. I’ve taught my share of public speaking classes. I know that speech anxiety is a real thing. But if I were one of those disciples, I think what I would have wanted to hear for consolation is something like, “Yes, there will be wolves, but I’ll make sure they are toothless,” or, “You will be flogged, but don’t worry. It won’t hurt.”
Come on, does Jesus really think these disciples are concerned about what they are going to say more than being flogged and dragged unceremoniously in front of a group of angry ruler-wolves?
Yes. He does. And he’s right. Because he knows.
He knows these men. He called them. These were fishermen. They knew the daily pain of hard, back-breaking work. Their hands that bore a thousand scars from the rope and netting that cut into their flesh as they dragged fish in were simply the price of making a living. They were common folk. Poor. Laborers. Lower class. Being powerless and even abused by those privileged and in authority was an unchangeable reality.
What they were not is eloquent. They were not orators. I think it makes all the sense in the world that their top-of-the-list worry was, “What will I say?”
And Jesus knew, and he offered them some peace. Some “good news.”
“Don’t worry,” Jesus told them. “The Holy Spirit will be with you and will show you what to say.”
In fact, Jesus actually offered them quite a bit more bad news good news.
He told them that it is possible to be wise like serpents and still remain innocent like doves. That embracing the vulnerability of the call to love did not mean they had to throw out critical thinking or common sense.
He told them that their choice to follow may cause others, even their dearest friends and family, to react in surprising ways. Sometimes very surprising. As hard as that might be, they were not responsible for those reactions. It was not their job to find some kind of ministry “success” with all and that all would understand and appreciate but, instead, to persevere and endure. To keep loving. And sometimes loving means knowing when it is time to move on. And it is okay to do that—to move on to a new opportunity for ministering.
He told them that, as overwhelming and dangerous as the lies and deception and cover-ups of this world seem, the truth of the way of love will prevail. So they should just continue to proclaim that truth. And in that proclaiming, they need to remember their ultimate value to their creator.
He told them to keep their eyes on him, their teacher. Their mentor and model and master. It is tempting to look at broader circumstances—others’ negative reactions, the threat of opposition or penalty, even persecution—and to measure and question the rightness of our efforts in light of these circumstances.
But Jesus seems to be saying, “Look to me. Note the circumstances stemming from my work and ministry. Sadly, this is what happens sometimes when the way of love clashes with brokenness in the world. The rightness of your efforts will be revealed when the love you share is then shared with another—when what you do leads to a cup of water being shared with a little one who needs it.”
I have suggested to you that we should not read this scripture passage and assume that what Jesus said to the twelve is what he is saying to us here, now, and today. And that is true.
But…I do think there are still valuable things we can take away from this passage. Perhaps the most important one is this: Listen for the voice of Christ. Listen for your calling and sending. If and when you are called, trust that it will come from a deep understanding of who you are.
It is quite possible that, somewhere along the way, the calling will come with some bad news. Your efforts aren’t appreciated as you would have liked. Those who were with you at the beginning have lost heart or lost interest. It seems to be requiring more time and effort and giving than you first expected. The impact you hoped for…you are just not seeing it. Maybe the pastor who inspired you and supported you and helped equip you for this calling is suddenly called elsewhere to inspire and support and equip others.
If along the way your calling seems to come with a bit of bad news, remember Matthew 10 and keep listening. I think the voice of Christ will also offer the reassurance and consolation you need.
And that, dear friends, is good news.
Amen.
Send Out Workers (Matthew 9:9-38)
Send Out Workers
March 1, 2026
Matthew 9:9-38
By: Pastor Mike Conner
***
“Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness” (9:35 CSB). Matthew gave us a nearly verbatim summary of Jesus’ ministry back in chapter 4, but there is one subtle yet significant development here at the end of chapter 9. In chapter 4, Jesus began to go throughout Galilee; now, he continues going. This is important because everywhere that he has gone in Galilee, the crowds have been waiting for him, following him, pressing in upon him.
Day after day, the people have come to him carrying the heavy burdens of their need for truth, healing, and acceptance: men with leprosy, a Roman soldier pleading for his sick slave, two demon-possessed men in the graveyards of Gadarene, a dead little girl, a woman who has bled for 12 years, two blind men. They all began as faces in the crowd, yet they were people to Jesus, people worth the gift of attention and care. It would’ve been so easy for him to stop going from town to town once he had experienced the cost of being so open and receptive to the pain of the crowd, of choosing to treat each one as a unique child of God. Yet he was willing. His love was and is always ready to say Yes. He continues going, revealing to us the steadfast commitment and compassion of God.
Now, here’s the thing: If every person in the crowd is indeed a person to Jesus, if being an instrument of healing requires a willingness to be redirected (the leader the sick daughter) or interrupted (the bleeding woman) or imposed upon (the two blind men), then Jesus, by himself, was never going to be enough.
Now, that might sound strange. How could Jesus, the Son of God, who reconciled the world to God through his death and resurrection, not be enough?
Yes, Jesus is the firstborn, the font, the cornerstone of a new humanity, but for his gifts to be offered in history, in every moment and in every place, Jesus needs companions. He needs those around him through whom and in whom he could extend his own life and love. And so, with a tender and fierce love for the world, he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest” (9:38).
It brought Jesus immense pleasure to share his life and ministry with others. His joy really comes through in John’s Gospel, where he says to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. …You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit.”
To be a worker in the fields of God is to be a friend of Jesus, and it’s to do what he did—what he never stops doing through those who share his Spirit. Giving away time and attention, receiving people and their mess without judgment, calling forth the truth of who they are as beloveds made in the image of God.
One of the things I’ve learned about ministry while serving here in Pocatello is that the burdens and the joys are meant to be shared. I can’t do it on my own; none of you can do it on your own. We need one another, and we need God to raise up more workers! This has been on my mind recently for a number of reasons.
Most of you know that our tenant daycare center, Tender Loving Care, has been struggling to make ends meet in recent years, and that things really came to a head in January. When I got the phone call that their board had voted to close the center, I was afraid and overwhelmed by the needs of everyone involved: the teachers who would be losing jobs, the families who would be losing care, the children who would be losing community, and our church, which would be losing a source of necessary income.
But luckily I’m a little wiser now than I was five years ago, and instead of sitting in that panic and anxiety by myself I started making calls, and within a few days, I had the most remarkable people coming alongside me share in the work, the work of the harvest, which, remember, is not about bringing souls in to conversion but about being sent into the crowd to be sources of divine attention and care. As of today, TLC is still open, and they’re even opening up an infant room.
We had a parent town hall meeting on Thursday night, and I got to see someone from the United Way educate parents about the systemic challenges to childcare in Idaho, got to see several parents with grant writing experience meeting with one another for the first time. There are simply more workers in the room than there were even two months ago, and I credit that to God for raising them up. All I did was ask for them: God, if you want this to happen, if you want this center to be saved, send me the next right person, because I can’t do this on my own.
You’re going to hear later about some staffing changes at the church. About a year and a half ago, we welcomed Renzo as our new Office Manager; this month we hired a new Custodian and Caretaker; now we’re searching for a new Bookkeeper, and through each transition, I pray, “God send us the next right person to help us rise to the opportunity and privilege of working in your harvest, of sharing your grace with the world around us.”
And God has been faithful to raise up and send out the workers. Think about our 2023 process to become a Reconciling congregation, our 2024 campaign to put a new roof on our building, or the steady daily needs for leaders to offer care and education to others. Right now, we’re struggling to bring together enough adults and elders to sustainably serve our church’s young people and children, so I’m continuing to pray, “God, send workers into your harvest.”
Because there is a harvest to be had. Kids are growing up in a scary world with failing institutions, a culture at war with itself, a planet careening toward climate disaster. Not to mention all the normal hard parts of childhood and adolescence: difficulties at school and at home, feeling powerless to protect yourself from the hardest changes, keeping alive the spark of your authentic self. We don’t have to address this need on our own; we can pray for more workers. If every face in the crowd is a unique person with a unique set of stories and needs who is worthy, in God’s eyes, of care and attention, then we must do what Jesus tells us to do and pray, “God, send out more workers!”
What would a church be like that prays that prayer over and over and over again?
Well, first, it would be a church that leans into the world and not away from it. It would be a church rooted in the compassion of Jesus, that sees the crowd and doesn’t run away or complain or turn them away but wants to receive and help each person. It would be a church that sees the harvest not as a tally of souls to bring in and convert but as a field of potential relationships to go out and explore. You can only pray to God for more workers if you care in the first place.
A church would also be humble. We can’t do everything alone. Praying every day for God to send out more workers would give us eyes to see the potential for partnerships with other members of our community. Because God will raise up whoever God chooses to raise up. They don’t have to look or sound or believe like us. And that humility would extend to how we see each other. We can be curious about the trajectories of service and call that each of us is on, wondering where and to whom each of us is being sent. We don’t determine this for other people, because God is the one who sends people out, but we can anticipate with joy, and we can speak the truth of what we see in others, we can invite and we can affirm.
So a church that prays for more workers to be sent out into God’s harvest would be a church that loves people fiercely, lives in joyful anticipation of the good works prepared for us beforehand, to borrow a phrase from Paul, and yet doesn’t grasp or control its members. I think we do a pretty good job at this. I see the joy you take in one another.
We would also be, I think, a grateful church, humbled by the power of prayer. If we pray for God to raise up workers for works of healing and love, couldn’t we flip that idea around and recognize ourselves as, at least in part, the fruit of others’ prayers? I think of this in terms of my upcoming ordination as an elder in the Methodist church. I am going to take literal vows this summer to be one who is sent out wherever God calls, but my journey is the fruit of so many other peoples’ prayers—beginning with my grandparents through pastors and youth leaders to friends and colleagues and even all of you. I’ve exercised my own freedom in my story, to both participate and resist God’s call, but maybe one way that grace flows is that someone out there looked out on a crowd of people full of sickness and fear and shame and prayed, “God, send workers into your harvest” – and here I am, and here you are.
Our lives are not our own. The prayers of the saints have sown their own seeds in us. And if God has raised us up to be workers in the harvest, then God will surely trust God to provide for us.
Disciples go out. They—we—disperse. We are sent among the people to be peacemakers, to be merciful. In John’s Gospel, Jesus actually says that we’ll do “greater works” than his (14:12 CSB), which is pretty wild if you think about it. That word “greater” might be understood a few ways, but there’s at least, I think, a sense of doing greater things by a property of multiplication.
It is God’s harvest – the Spirit prepares, gives growth. God’s harvest needs workers, so we pray for them to be raised up and sent. And sometimes, perhaps, we recognize ourselves as the worker that someone else has prayed for, and we get to work. With that frame of mind, we can be a humble, joyful, expectant, and grateful church. And think of what can happen!
Jesus saw Matthew sitting in his tax booth and said to him, “Follow me.” Running a tax booth on a public road would have set Matthew at odds with most members of his community. He was working the occupying empire, for Rome. Matthew was sitting in the isolation of his work, with questionable integrity. But he got up, left that situation, and walked with Jesus. And then in the very next verse we see Jessus sitting down in Matthew’s house, surrounded by tax-collectors and so-called “sinners,” having a dinner party. Matthew goes from being solitary to being communal. Matthew goes from being seated—stuck—in a booth that separates him from his neighbor to being seated—joined—at a table that creates fellowship. By the end of the day, a whole posse of tax collectors and other social pariahs had dropped in to spend time with him and with Jesus. Matthew went from being on the fringes to the very center of the gospel’s movement in the world. God raised him up and sent him out, and through him God would raise up others and send them out.
Greater by multiplication. And it can be so with us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
He Is Our Peace (Matthew 8:18-9:1)
He Is Our Peace
First Sunday of Lent
February 22, 2026
By: Pastor Mike Conner
***
In these three scenes, Matthew describes Jesus’ first journey back and forth across the Sea of Galilee. As a writer, Matthew gives us a clue that we should hold them together in our reflection, seeing them as a unified journey. “Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side [of the sea],” says chapter 8 verse 18. A few paragraphs later comes chapter nine verse 1: “And after getting into a boat he crossed the sea [again] and came to his own town.” From the region of Galilee to the region of the Gadarenes and back again. And in between those narrative bookends, a lot of drama unfolds—storms at sea, demon-possessed men in graveyards, pigs racing off cliffs to fall to their death.
This is the first open-water journey described by Matthew. Throughout the whole Bible, water is both a symbol and a literal means of creation and re-creation. We might think of Genesis chapter 1, when God separates the waters below from the waters above in the creation of the earth. We might think of Noah’s great flood, or the Israelites’ freedom march through the Red Sea, or the many prophetic visions of fresh springs bubbling up in the dry desert as signs of salvation. In water, old realities are dissolved and new realities are born.
Jesus’ journey across the Sea reveals new things about who he is and what it means to walk the road with him. He leads members of the crowd outside their comfort zones, not only onto the great lake known for its unpredictable tempests, but also into a region where people of strange customs worship other gods. And it is precisely because this journey is unsettling that the growth the disciples experience is deep and profound. When we go where we’ve never gone before, we tend to be more receptive to new insights about God, the world, and ourselves.
Jesus’ order “to go to the other side” sparks conversations with two of his followers. The first, an overly enthusiastic scribe, pledges to follow Jesus anywhere. Jesus responds with a word of sobering caution: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (8:20). After this, a disciple comes and asks Jesus to delay the journey across the sea so that he can return home and attend to a need in his family. Jesus, perhaps not to our liking, responds, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” Jesus slows the first man down. Jesus hurries the second man up. He knows exactly how to work with each one of us, no matter what the pitfalls in our personalities might be. And that is a mark of spiritual maturity, being able to receive and counsel others right where they are, not as we think they ought to be.
The story continues: “And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him” (8:23). Those who board the boat after him are—or become—his disciples. Remember, at this point in Matthew we don’t yet have the twelve chosen apostles. We have the crowds who come to hear him speak and receive his healing, and we have people called “disciples” who’ve started to travel with him from place to place in a more committed sense, as students. The boundary between these two groups is rather fluid at this moment in Jesus’ ministry. At any time, someone from the crowd might become a disciple, and a disciple might fade back into the crowd. That is, until this moment, when shoving off from familiar shores forms a real threshold. Who will get in and go? Who will follow? It’s a moment of decision, and disciples are forged in moments of decision.
Once they are out on the sea, a storm blows in and threatens to sink their boat. Jesus sleeps, so the others wake him up and cry out for help. He asks why they have so little faith, why they are so afraid. Then he gets up and rebukes the storm and it ceases. There is language play in the original Greek that is lost in the NRSV’s translation. Matthew describes the tempest as a seismos megas, “a great storm,” and the peace that follows Jesus’ rebuke of it he calls a galēnē megalē , “a great calm.” (We’ll come back to that “great storm / great calm” piece later.) The people in the boat are stunned: “What sort of man is this?” they ask each other.
The boat scrapes ashore in Gadarene. They have landed near a local graveyard. And out of that graveyard two demon-possessed men, fierce and violent, come running. They confront Jesus, asking him what he wants to do with them. With a word Jesus casts the demons out of the men, and the evils spirits enter a nearby herd of pigs, sending the animals into a frenzy that ends when they fall from cliffs into the water. The pig herders run into town to tell about the men, now free from their demons, and the pigs, now drowned in the sea. Everyone seems less impressed by that miracle of healing and more disturbed by the fact that their local economy was disrupted. They ask Jesus to leave at once, which he does. He sails back across the sea to Capernaum.
I believe that this journey “to the other side” and back again is here to shift our definition of security, to redefine peace—what it is and where we find it. God’s people have never been promised wealth, social influence, cultural popularity, or political power. God’s people have never been promised stasis, equilibrium, or an absence of suffering as a reward for their faith. But we are tempted to seek security and peace through these means, through resisting change or gathering material assets.
“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (8:20). Yes, but what does it mean that the one who said this about himself then lays his little head down in the boat and sleeps through the storm? The man who said there wouldn’t be a place for him to rest immediately finds rest in the most unlikely situation!
Starting all the way back with Abraham in the Book of Genesis, the biblical writers emphasize departure and change and the journey as deeply characteristic of faith. God came to Abraham and said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Gen 12:1). Abraham faith boils down to his willingness to respond to a promise and to be led by a faithful God, even though he does not know where he will end up or how he will get there. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” says the Book of Hebrews. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going” (Heb 11:1, 8).
Our security is found in the one who calls us. Our peace is found in the person of Christ. This is why Jesus calls the disciples “you of little faith.” Faith is trust, trust in the presence and provision of the God who accompanies us in all things, who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. They didn’t trust that, because he was with them in that boat, they would be okay. They might be tossed and shaken, soaked through and worried, but they would not be overcome. True peace is not found by staying behind on the safe beaches of Galilee. True peace is not to be identified with smooth waters. “The peace that surpasses all understanding” (Phil 4:7) comes from trusting God to go with us everywhere that God has called us to go.
Following Jesus means embracing the departures and crossings—both internal and external—that God initiates, sometimes directly with a word and sometimes through the shifting tides of our circumstances. Following Christ means releasing our grip on ourselves or on the way things have supposedly always been. It means setting out to grow and change into the persons and the community that God intends for us to be.
This new definition of security is absolutely essential for what follows—in the story and in our ow lives—because Jesus has come so that he might take us to the graveyards of the world. Jesus has been sent to seek and save the lost, to encounter those in every time and place who have no place to lay their heads: refugees and houseless neighbors, the hungry and the sick, the incarcerated and undocumented, those troubled in mind and spirit who have no rest for their souls. He’s can’t wait for the disciple who wants to delay the journey in order to bury his father when there are two men over “on the other side” desperate to be brought back to life right now.
Jesus is all about reaching the unreachable, all about undoing the powers of death. And here I mean death as a force that reaches into life and grips us. Death as addiction, death as systemic injustice, death as the failure of the community to care for its most difficult or vulnerable members. Perhaps those who have no place to lay their heads have had some failures in life; without question, they have been failed—and many times over!
When we follow Jesus, the one who has no place to lay his head, we will be led to encounter others who have no place to lay their heads, those outcasts with whom he establishes divine solidarity. And when we work with him, through the power of his Holy Spirit, to announce the kingdom of light and life in those spaces of death, we will be asked to leave! We will become people who have, so to speak, no place to lay our heads. The powers that are invested in the status quo, that are held in the grip of the past and the present, they won’t like the fact that helping people escape the tombs sends the pigs off the cliff, shakes up the local economy, demonstrates their own failure, their own acquiescence to death. Institutional religions, Home Owners Associations, city councils, state and federal policy-makers—they usually won’t like it!
But the disciples endured the storm on the sea for the sake of those two men in the Gadarene graveyard.
And Jesus endured rejection in that place for the sake of those two men.
If we are going to follow a God who endures the humiliation of having no place to lay his head, if we are going to become little-Christ’s who have no place to lay our heads, if we are going to love those who have no place to lay their heads—then we must learn to receive the gift of his peace, his “great calm” anywhere and everywhere, to experience that peace in him, with him, through him.
This is the work. Jesus is in the business of turning the great storms of life—both within us (signified by demon possession) and without (signified by the storm)—into great calm. The great calm is not a possession, not a set of circumstances, not a masterful spiritual achievement, but a simple fact of trust. We trust the one who gives orders to cross into the unknown, we trust the one with us in the storm, we trust the one who reaches out to touch the wounds and wounded ones of the world.
I’ll conclude with a few more verses from Hebrews that celebrate the essence of faith:
“All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.” (11:13-16)
May we claim the person of Christ as our peace, carrying the cross of his rejection, so that we might see the dead brought back to life, the written off written back in to the great story of God’s love.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
One New Humanity (Ez. 36:22-28, Ephs. 2:8-22, Matt. 5:43-48)
One New Humanity
February 18, 2026
Ash Wednesday
By: Pastor Mike
***
Each of these scriptures testifies to the renewing of our human condition that God’s grace makes possible. During the days of Israel’s exile in Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel declared that the scattered ones would be gathered, and that those who were unclean would be cleansed. A new spirit would be given to the people in place of the old spirit, and a heart of cold stone would be replaced with a heart of warm, beating flesh.
In the days of the early Church, the Apostle Paul expressed what renewal in God would mean for our relationships with one another. Those who are far off are brought near, because God in Christ embraces all people. Hostility is replaced by peace. Strangers become fellow members of God’s household. The fundamental division in Paul’s mind was between Israel, God’s chosen covenant people, and the gentile nations, “strangers to the covenants of promise.” That these two groups could be brought together as one united people through the death and resurrection of Christ means that all brokenness in our social relations can be overcome.
Finally, Jesus calls us away from a practice of love based on merit (I love you because you love me) to a practice of love based on unconditional mercy and forgiveness: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Each of these transformations, from the internal experience of a new heart to the external experience of a new community, are implied in Jesus’ command, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. The word that is translated here as perfection means being mature, complete, whole; it means realizing the purpose for which we are made, just as God can ever only be what God is, which is love.
I have brought these words from Ezekiel, Paul, and Jesus together because they produce a rich and colorful vision of what it means to live as an Easter people, a people filled with the Spirit of resurrection:
From being scattered to being gathered. Instead of living a life of disordered desires, pulled this way and that by things that ultimately distract from what we most deeply want, we can be drawn into our deep personal center, where God’s spirit meets us and tells us who we are.
From a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. Where we have been hardened to the wonders of life or numb to the suffering of others, we can experience a new freedom for connection and joy.
From hostility to peace. Where we have been obsessed with patrolling the boundaries in church or country or neighborhood between insider and outsider, worthy and unworthy, or where these boundaries have been used to push us away, we can experience a radical new openness and sense of belonging to one another.
From love based on merit to the love that is God himself. Where we have reached an impasse with our own anger over the daily violence, deception, and injustice of our times, we can learn to give that anger expression in lament, and be filled with a divine compassionate love that even extends to our enemies.
Who would I be, who would you be, who would we be if our humanity was remade in this way?
Lent is a season to ask that question. It is a season to hunger and thirst for the new humanity which Jesus inaugurated and opened to us.
Lent grew out of the early Church’s sense that the celebration of Easter Sunday required spiritual preparation. That preparation was framed around the movements of baptism. By reminding ourselves of all that God wants to do in us, through us, and for us, we become aware of the things standing in the way of that work, how we resist, domesticate, or sabotage our own remaking.
Which is why Lent is a season, not only of hunger—hunger for God’s will to be done in us—but of self-examination and repentance. Sometimes this takes the form of a decluttering, letting something go so that we can embrace something else, even if what we embrace is a felt lack, a sense of need, that sweetens over the forty days into solitude and silence.
Sometimes this repentance takes the form of commitment, engaging in a spiritual practice or stepping into a vein of service that challenges our resistance to grace.
Through it all, we notice—personally and collectively, Where am I, where are we, being ruled by fear, anger, or greed? By pride, envy, or apathy? We don’t notice those false spirits because God wants us to be ashamed. No, they are instead revealed by an infusion of light, a meditation on the perfection to which Jesus has summoned us. We see what we need to be freed from in the light of what we’ve been freed for.
Scattered to gathered. Unclean to clean. Old spirit to new spirit. Stoney heart to living heart. Strangers to friends. Enemies to siblings. Calculating love to unbounded love.
For freedom to come, our posture during Lent must be one of openness to change and consent to the movements of grace within us. Both Ezekiel and Paul describe the work of conversion as fundamentally the work of God. God says, I will sanctify my great name. …I will take you from the nations and gather you…I will sprinkle clean water upon you. …A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. Jesus has made both [Jews and Gentiles] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility, between us. He creates in himself one new humanity.
God takes the initiative. God does the heavy lifting. God works the miracle.
It is all gift: the remaking of our humanity, the disarming of our resistance. It is all gift, all grace. It comes to those who seek it, ask for it, hunger for it, wait for it. It comes to those who give themselves into God’s hands and say with the old hymn, “Have thine own way, Lord / Have thine own way. / Thou art the potter, I am the clay.”
In a way, Lent intensifies for a season the daily rhythms and tensions of living in Christ and growing in love. We have to have some sense of where God wants to take us. We have to catch a vision for the new creation and begin to long for it, to hope for it, to hunger after it. And then we have to be honest with ourselves about our own inability or unwillingness to embrace it fully. And when we reach that place of hungering for what only God can give, we are ripe for prayer, ready for the outpouring of grace:
Help me, God. Help me to release what I need to release. Help me to take on what I need to take on. Help me to embrace necessary changes for the sake of my soul. Help me to relinquish my efforts to earn or achieve worthiness. Help me to rest in Christ and what he’s already achieved for me. Create in me a new heart. Renew a right spirit within me.
And then, when God arrives to give us the miracle—of a new heart, of a new humanity—we shall live in the land. We shall be God’s people. And God will be our God.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Playdough Sermon (2nd Timothy)
The Playdough Sermon
2nd Timothy
10.19.2025
By: Melody Briggs
Lord, please continue to open our hearts and minds to be used as an instrument of peace, vessels of grace and lights of unwavering love that continually breaks through darkness.
I would like to thank you all for this opportunity of growth today. Sharing in my understanding, and passions discerned from 2nd Timothy.
Believed to be a letter The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy not only as his mentor and friend, but also from a nurturing father figure type role within Timothy’s spiritual development.
Paul's words of wisdom speak from a very nurturing and loving place. And speak volumes to the changing of seasons we all might experience within our own walks or journeys of faith.
This letter reads.. as it continues on speaks and leans into the valued connection Paul had with Timothy as he has watched and walked alongside him transition not only his understanding and teachings, but also to his depth of transition as he has grown from a welcomed child of God much like we all do into now young adulthood and the continued transition of becoming a man. Leading to the end of the passage where all the knowledge and understanding Paul hopes that Timothy will continue to nurture and fulfill within his own heart as he ages and grows into the testament of his faith.
2nd Timothy roughly states…
Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it.
Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it.
From childhood you have known the sacred …
you have been instructed through faith.
And inspired by God. (hmmm)
As children we tend to learn from and experience life from the firmly believed values and teachings of those that love and nurture our upbringings/rearing, as well as our faith and the faith-based practices of those closest to us whether at home or within our communities. Thus, molding and shaping us as we meander… learn. And grow.
Is there a time that you can think back to some of those values… experiences, rearing’s…teachings… and or faith-based practices ….
Something so deeply swelled within you that has tended to stay with you since childhood?
Taking you back in time to those child-like curiosities of the world around us…
Experiences and nuances that tend to still engulf our senses.
My most memorable time of sense filled wonder and awe in the world that I can relate to or grasp from my past… starts roughly around five years of age. Is there an age or memory that has caught your attention?
I was often filled with a wide sense of wonder at that age… a real-life explorer so to speak. Every day was unknown … not knowing if it was banana pancake day or not… And I tended to be amazed and inspired by events like tea parties. Outings... Blanket forts… as well as environments that often felt magical or inspired by a spirit, God like vastness. Leaves swirling all around you in the fall… Rain puddles calling my name through the crisp air just to splash and leap upon… primary church songs about letting my light shine and hiding it under bushels... As well as other songs where we were dancing like crazed warriors.
You all have been provided with a small playdough. At this time, I would like for you if you feel so called to open it… and as you do… maybe you will take the time to open your senses within this moment…
And as you sit there you might start to
To smell it…
To roll some of it across your fingertips. And feel the reminisce of a child like wonder. As you experience its texture. The memories that may be coming to mind…
Now if you will take some or all of the dough and roll it into a ball or a shape…. Possibly rubbing it between your palms into a tube or a worm…. And as you do take time to notice
To Feel.
To Explore. And as you do… think back to maybe some of the values… teachings… and faith-based practices you witnessed as a child.
As you do, I would like to continue on with Paul's letter.
As Paul has described within this letter we as children often need
Reproof
Correction
Training
Reproof:
Reproof biblically is known to be value guided from acts of love. That can identify errors but ultimately promote wisdom and understanding. of consistent teachings, practices… and shared experiences helping to guide within us a sense of purpose.
Correction:
A purposeful and loving process to guide. Reform... Remold us … into a direction and or lean into behaviors of God's will. The meat and potatoes aligning us and our teachable moldable faith driven spirits.
Training:
Deliberate and disciplined practices that often lead to sustainable change and growth. Rooted in truths and the stretching of capacity to be a foundational force through all seasons.
Not only do we need these values as children, but we also need these throughout different seasons of life and within our experiences that challenge not only us but our capacity to seek the truth… to navigate corrections … and define our purpose as well as the vastness and darkness of emotions such as Grief. Shame. Guilt... And Debilitating Fear… The training of not only our minds but also our hearts as we learn to lean into the molding of ourselves, our environments, and the experiences of the world around us.
If you are still molding your playdough… How does it feel now?
Has the smell changed?
Or deepened... maybe?
Is the texture more malleable?
warmer to the touch?
Or are you starting to have sensory overwhelm and possibly needing or wanting a wet wipe due to the chalky texture now coating your palms?
Much like the deepening of the second half of the letter ...Paul leans into the evolution of change that often occurs on not only our journeys of faith. But also, life as we age, evolve, change, remold, and ultimately grow. Paul continues to extend his invitation to be insightfully aware of our need to be open and aware of our minds and hearts amidst our life's seasons.
They are the values and or lessons of:
Convince
Rebuke
Encourage
Convince:
Convince biblically involves relation to the personal experiences, discernments, or the invocation of the Holy Spirit within the openness of the listener and the external actions of the believer. Believers in this context reference those who are gentle in spirit, respectful, and often pray for change and or understanding. Convince the ability to relate with all senses.
Rebuke:
Rebuke is an expression to at times sharply course correct… often with purpose and a way to reflect and bring about repentance and restoration. Utilizing love as a motivator for change.
Encourage:
Support driven given with confidence and a genuine heart. A building up of our scaffolding so to speak either internally and or with the guidance of communal support living as a reminder of God’s truth and grace.
Now as you check into your senses. Your surroundings… your heart and your mind … as it may have wondered…
into thought...
Possibly the openness of curiosity ...
or even more questions…
My hope is that just as Paul has written to Timothy from his heart that you also have had the opportunity within our setting today to tap into your internal wisdom. knowledge ... and change not only in the shaping and molding of your playdough but also to the growth in your own journeys and seasons of change.
When I took time earlier this week to connect to my growth, repurpose, corrections, and remolding if you will … I found myself wanting to lead into the convictions and truth of repair.
This letter from Paul to Timothy feels as if Paul was also speaking to my journey and molding not only from my child like faith of bravely singing songs of biblical warriors or the enveloping softness of worshiping within a community. But deeply to the depth of change I have encountered, and insightful truths I have uncovered and rediscovered as I have transitioned in growth within my current season but also into my changes in adulthood. Oftentimes within our journeys of faith and life we tend to want to skip to the complexities of resolve and or repair. I know I do! It feels good. It's rewarding... It's proof of life's validity. So much so that standing firmly in our truths of knowledge, training, and correction can continue to guide us…
But maybe just maybe Paul’s insights were valid and can speak to us now as relatable insights and a reminder that Repair is possibly the universal truth of the biblical word Encourage: the scaffolding of the internal and the external as a welcoming guiding light for us to lean into the welcoming arms of God’s Love … and Grace in the midst of a convincing world in the middle of a remolding.
So, I hope today is for all of you to continue to connect in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it. From what you have lived through in the seasons of change… and Encouragement of God’s love and hope that fills all of you as you sit here to be instruments of peace ...lights of unwavering love… amidst the changing and remolding of seasons.
My Spiritual Journey
My Spiritual Journey
February 15, 2026
By: Melody Briggs
Good morning, I would like to thank you all for this opportunity to share a little about myself, my spiritual journey of sorts, and some of the lessons I have learned along the way. Some of you may have known me for the few years I have been attending, some of you may even or recall me as a youth attending many years ago, and others of you, have possibly seen me when I have had the opportunity to greet you each Sunday from behind the sound board or busily setting up for church services. In the past few years under Pastor Mike’s direction we have had the opportunity to witness some pretty powerful testimonies from many of us gracing these pews this morning, and their words have bravely impacted my heart and soul. I feel very honored to have the same opportunity today to share a little of me with you. When Pastor Mike approached me about this almost three years ago now… I couldn't even fathom having the bravery or the capacity to one let alone write down my spiritual journey and two even having the skills and tools to share my voice.. My thoughts.. And my experiences, but with some growth … spiritual discernment, and a loving community I am here today to connect with you all on more of a deeper and personal level as I lean into
My spiritual journey started pretty young with strong Methodist roots when I was baptized at Hillcrest Methodist in Boise, Idaho 1981 as a baby. My dad was a band director now retired, hence the name Melody. Growing up our family often moved for new job opportunities in and around Idaho, so did my coloring spots under the pews of the church choirs my dad directed. I attended church on and off in my youth; I was led, and heavily encouraged by my parents as a teen to attend local churches, rallies, the ever growing christian rock band trend of the 90’s … if you know… then you know…Throughout my life experiences at home, and within the church I tend to navigate my world at times as a bit of a tormented spirit. Not just from the torments, laments, and pains that often plague our souls such as self discovery, shame, guilt, and overwhelming fears… Don't get me wrong I have many depths and seasons of all of those too. I tend to have vivid realizations of times and encounters when my actions, words, emotions have impacted others in ways when I was a not so great daughter, sister, partner, mother, friend, neighbor… aquaintence…. And the like. Often those interactions of what are or are not… often ruminate many days.. Months.. And even year… they tend to haunt me in ways that are oftentimes hard to explain, to express, to feel, and to utterly eventually accept. As I am sure such experiences and living can and do at times haunt all of us. Such experiences, expressions, and seasons of pain tend to tether and bind at our spirits weaving intricate shackling webs that act like knotted ropes… or chains.. That can impact and tether our emotions… our behaviors… our ruminating thoughts… and ultimately our outward expressions. They tether us in ways that feel ultimately insurmountable. Utterly hopeless.
For me personally, I started gathering information at a pretty young formidable age from narratives told to me by my mother, from her own moral code, biblical understandings, mental torment, and her values of what christian practices should and should not look like. I was held accountable as a young child for the many looks and expressions that I displayed as often being considered demonic, evil. And the realization that my sheer presence at times invoked a fear in others that would have them leaving a room in formidable pain and disgust. I have been held accountable for the multiple demonic behaviors I tended to exude during my childhood in various ways, while questioning morals, convictions, and conflicts of intrest… These experiences, narratives, behaviors lasted well into my late teens when I randomly brought home a psychedelic poster of creation from a local outing. That devious teen act fueled my mothers convictions of how demonic I truly had grown to be. With increased narratives and consequences. Sometimes increased narratives from unhealed spirits, even those we are blessed to call our parents …can bind to us event tighter …than we could imagine… and can there come a time when those tethers … strangle us and entrap us in ways that surmount far greater than what we think is possible here. It was at this time in my spiritual journey that I attempted to diminish my spirit and my life from pain… from the pain I was causing others ..
And pain I thought I was causing God by existing… by coming into this world as demonic… not as a soul full of unwavering grace .. of compassion… and ultimately love. At this time in my journey I couldn't understand how a loving ominous God who created miracles … worldly beauties…. Parted seas… fed thousands in need… who guided people to mountain tops … and ultimately died for our sins …. Could and would have his hand in the creation and existence of me. My mothers response to my almost successful attempt at my own life… was not seen as an outcry of insurmountable pain that had accrued over time, but rather a means for me finally be held accountable again to right my wrong doings of guilt and shame by publicly insisting that I give a testimony of my sins from a written expression in my personal journal in front of my peers at a youth rally she deemed fit …at the very pulpit in this church.
It wasn't until my exploration of college that I attended a few classes in Austin,Texas at a church conference held in 2000. Where I felt the pull to deep self exploration of connection and ministry might be even worth exploring… It did however take a few many nudges from my local pastor and the Campus Wesley House Coordinator at the time, who thought I might enjoy further exploration in a calling in ministry. I then helped eagerly to create a few foundational classes such as a children's puppet ministry and spruced up a children's area and nursery for youth at Chubuck United Methodist Church at the time after attending. Still trying to navigate and explore if my actions in helping and serving others could outweigh the sins and narratives of my past.
Later. ..as college ended, so did my interest in the church community. As my life took a different route for a job opportunity and personal growth. Life has a way of leading us away in many directions and worldly discoveries…. if we aren't intentional with nurturing a spiritual component in. As I have now realized within my growth as a human. Sometimes there is an underlying pull to spiritual depths of discovery whether we recognize it in the moment or not…. Life kept leading me like a flooded river … flowing in new directions with ever changing currents and times…. New time lines…and fast paced living… Sometimes you just go where the river takes you…I suppose. I got married in 2002 and started raising a family briefly and unexpectedly after in 2004…. Ultimately life led us, my now family of four in 2007 from Idaho to Corvallis, Oregon to help support my husband through graduate school at Oregon State University, and continue with child rearing and the familial support and function of the household. It was a beautiful unexpected opportunity, when a local mom asked if I wanted to join the church choir. I was hesitant at first. But ultimately decided that choirs and church pews do have a way of nourishing the soul, they surely did have a lasting impact from my younger years.. And my love of music. I gave it a go and got more involved within the family ministries of the church there in the early 2000 years from 2007-2009. Near the end of 2010 I got divorced and moved back home to Idaho. I did enroll the kiddos into our local Lutheran Preschool in American Falls, Idaho and helped out some off and on at church there from 2011-2013.
Life threw a couple more curve balls my way and being forced to pivot in new directions as beautiful as is … oftentimes makes it a bit tough to sit and worship with others in a small town. Sometimes even attempting to try and leave the burdens we carry outside of church doesn't always work… they have a way of binding to us as we attempt to heal. Needless to say I didn't attend church much after unexpectedly losing my children in an unexpected custody battle six years after my divorce across state lines. The small town politics within the church and the community started to reiterate some of the deep harbored narratives my mom instilled within me when I was younger of my demonic nature… and fear I instilled in others… as they didn't see me fit to be near their children… If mine were considered better off in another state. It became increasingly harder to be seen as a part of their community… in and outside of church with harsh remarks and unexpected excuses as to my unwelcomeness. This deep longing.. Accumulation of greif.. Shame.. And ever growing fears… and relentless past narratives abruptly embed my curiosity for my spiritual development or even acknowledgement if you will.
My spiritual exploration was at a bypass for seven years, I filled my time with work… working multiple jobs… such as firefighting.. Ambulance runs as an EMT…m numerous college classes… lifeguarding.. Community service … on a journey to possibly attempt to prove to myself if the narratives of my evil nature were in fact truths… was I even capable of love? Or would I just have this deep fear of myself inside of me always… even if I pushed myself physically into socially acceptable heroic acts… it wasn't until I randomly decided one day to try and see how it would feel again to try and walk into a church in 2023 and see if it would or wouldn't fuel the narrative again of unwelcomeness. Here…
I kept pushing myself and attending .. trying to allow myself to feel safe in a community of like minded people again… that the narratives I have tried to run from most of my life in the past might just be the past. By Christmas of that year you all were in need of an added sound board volunteer to pull off the Christmas service for our Interfaith Fellowship here and Pastor Mike asked if I was available to help. I of course said yes and have been trying to pass the sound baton to another soul since, I don't know if you all know this, but us Methodists and christians have a way of seeing someone's spiritual gifts and possible talents even before they do.. Not sure if that is why we have so many committees and gatherings… as just to soak up and learn from each other? I honestly have enjoyed reviving old skills, and sharing in acts of service with you all since. After a little more gentle nudging I have had the opportunity to attend numerous classes Pastor Mike has provided as outreach for our congregation because of my attendance here.
In May of 2024 I was approached by Pastor Mike and our District Superintendent to discern if deeper ministry was a calling for two local churches whom I have frequented over the years. I was grateful for the consideration, and due to various factors physically, emotionally, and spiritually I felt it wasn't where I felt called at that time. This past year due to gentle nudges and support I have had the opportunity to attend Pastor Mike’s six plus week sermon writing course and various book studies, as well as had hard conversations, faith based inquires, and the capacity to hold space for others testimonies and stories which in turn have helped to create and build a cultural shift within my spirit, that it needed to say yes, to try adding a voice and a body to our worship design team.
I then gave my first sermon at the start of Advent last December in 2024 and have been trying to explore my depth… my behavior… my pain… my wandering spirit and soul a little more openly than before. Discerning if there is still a spark for any expanded spiritual enrichment involvement or not? Am I still even a worthy specimen of sharing my voice… Am I as demonic as I was led to believe these past 40 years? Needless to say I am very grateful for the opportunity to be here. To be welcomed.. To be seen.. To be heard and to grow. And to try to ultimately lean in to nurturing my voice within my writing and my heart connecting to others.
It hasn't been until the last two years that I have even remotely had the capacity, the tools, the time, the space, and the unwavering community support to even attempt to face my inner demons so to speak… to the tethering and binding suffocating embrace that they have had on me, while holding me hostage in more ways than I care to spiritually and verbally admit. A deep seated spiritual narrative such as this… hard and deeply wired… isn't something I have been able to completely rewire or run from in the past… no matter how many good deeds I have attempted over the years … no matter how many times I have tried to repent… on this earth.. When you lose sight of your internal worth… your purpose… your navigational moral compass and values you tend to view the world and most interactions differently.. I was taught in life that you are valuable when you are a mother.. When you are a wife… when you are a capable provider…. When you are capable of nurturing love.. Compassion… and connection… And throughout my spiritual and life journey I have lost grips, opportunities, and experiences in some of those spaces… But if I hold onto what I thought was the truth in the narrative that I am evil… at my spiritual core and being…That impacts the way I view myself… my interactions and behaviors with others… Does that make me incapable of ever connecting? In a loving passing way on a Sunday morning to you?
Just as was shared with us in the scripture passage this morning, the journey up mountains and valleys and to the top where the clouds envelope us.. can lead and direct us to have different views …There are some spiritual foundational truths I have learned along my journey… In having the opportunity to worship and discern within my self discoveries with you all … and some metaphors that have helped shape my spiritual understandings and experiences for example … church pews …. Yes the very pews you are sitting in… tend to be essentially forgotten and and often overlooked structural pillars of the church… their craftsmanship and purpose have helped generations of bodies… with their support and function….and have welcomed new views to the souls of their congregants and members through their supported invitation… to such gatherings as choir practices.. Baptisms, worship services, funerals, and the revivals/ renewals of lost and unwatered wandering spirits, unanswered prayers and ….. And ultimately the foundational support they give our bodies and our tears that tend to hold us captive when our words may fail us… literal pieces of wood that support us when we aren't sure we should even be sitting in the presence of our neighbors… let alone a community that just might have the capacity or capability of loving us. Our church building that welcomes each week can at times act like a welcoming home does to our family when they visit. A safe place with a beautiful new roof to shelter us that can be used to protect us and guide us. These very walls openly embrace us in prayer, spiritual growth and connection if we let and allow it. Just as a parent would when nurturing a child in need. …We can and do create a space here each Sunday that can shelter us from harsh storms externally and internally. We may not always be able to take away the pain or harm that has happened … whether at home or at church ..behind closed doors, or corridors and in hallways ... .as It is an inevitable to the human experience to witness harsh realities at times... But this space is sacred …for it is a place where we can have and hold hard conversations .. to lay down our troubles.. Torments.. Frears… and laments … To bravely allow safety .. repair.. And love .. to be welcomed… and to ultimately hold onto hope.
You all have taught me that crowded tables matter. The tables that we have within our church for hard conversations and potlucks matter…They matter because the spiritual narratives … we teach our children.. Ourselves.. Our neighbors… and those that cross our paths have lasting impacts on our spirits and souls whether we like to admit it or not… I still don't honestly and truthfully know if I am evil.. Or if I have committed demonic treacherous spiritual and physical acts that I will try to spend a lifetime trying to reconcile… but what I do know is that by facing those fears and the deep seated binding beliefs and stigmas that we can water and nourish our souls if that's something we chose to do… and that does matter… it impacts the way we believe…the growth of bravely evolving… the way we live.. As actively kind individuals.. The way we give and receive…. it gives us hope as individuals… it fuels our faith in prayerfully serving… and it also adds a beautiful capacity to our lives in ways we otherwise may not have had the courage to face alone.
And finally the biggest spiritual truth I know to be true that I hold deeply every Sunday is that first breath you tend to take as you open a church door to worship and commune in fellowship with each other is truly a testament within itself.. For we do not know what necessarily guides each of us here each sunday… or the depths, journeys, mountains and valleys that each one of us is facing in silence and discernment, but I do know that once your hand touches the handle to walk into a church so does the threshold of your soul… in search of something to nourish it .. whether that is spiritual growth.. A sense of community… the smile of a neighbor to greet you… this very church pew to hold you for just a bit because your legs are too weary from the weight of the past that you carry… or just the comfort of the sound of an old hymn …to ease your cluttered mind.
I do believe in being brave enough to profoundly explore one's spirit. Whether that is weekly in acts of service … diving deeper into spiritual exploration… or just the added support of a sense of community and a warm meal … your spirit wherever it leads you just might have the capacity to grow… to travel up a high mountain top… to hear God’s voice… or to just to hope that you too might be able to experience the warm arms of a stranger in a hugging embrace and warm welcome.
I can honestly say I don't know the depths of my spirit… or my soul… nor do I know if I ever will… I don't even even know if these words of my spiritual journey and life … in thoughts..truths.. And experiences that have shaped and molded me for years …. that I have attempted to put onto paper … and clumsily utter to you.. In an act of repentance of spiritual untether my spirit of sorts … even matters. But I sure hope they do! I hope these words.. This time can be a reminder to you when your spirit is tired… when your soul is longing for something more … that repair is a possibility… that healing has depths and seasons.... Twists.. Turns… knots..and pivots… but that it can happen.. It is possible!… even in the midst of insurmountable pain.. And unwavering depths of grief… and especially amidst the ever hollow void of shame…
That narratives whether our own… or others… have a tendency to be our compass or our beacon in darnkess… through harsh experiences.. They have a way of shaping and restructuring our now present narratives that oftentimes become our truths we live by… Those seasons of uncertainty and unknowns… can be just the realization that we needed that change.. That change and shifting in one's spirit can be a possibility. If we can we can have the capacity to hold on to … and through… to allow ourselves the grace to feel… to connect… to pray.. To discern… to sit in pews… with neighbors and friends and to hold conversations.. Under sacred roofs whether at home or here…That the very walls that hold pain… can also hold peace.. That if we are brave enough to step off the door mat.. Turn the church door handle… and breathe through the confining thresholds of this world.. To our inner worlds.. And the dialogues and narratives that tend to hold us hostage… that we might know for a brief moment… as stated in the scripture.. Verse four.. It is good to be here! if you wish! And know with truth, conviction, and understanding that our spirits are capable of great things… of great transformation.. If we take the time to nurture them.. And allow them opportunities .. to be seen… to be felt… and heard no matter the circumstance. For who knows you might just feel touched as the disciples did by Jesus as stated in Matthew.. For some people are indispensable companions on this journey of life and just as the narratives that shape us so do our companions and community… and they just might surprise you … and have the capacity to touch you..and guide you.. Do not be afraid.. Even if you don't recognize them just as the disciples did not recognize John the Baptist after descending the high mountain. Thank you all for your companionship and guidance on my spiritual journey.
Please Bless us to continue to open our hearts and minds to be used as an instruments of peace, vessels of grace and lights of unwavering love, that continually break through darkness.
Stand With Minnesota (Southeast Idaho Citizens for Democracy Rally)
Stand With Minnesota
Southeast Idaho Citizens for Democracy rally
Caldwell Park, Pocatello, Idaho
January 31, 2026
By Pastor Mike Conner
***
I want to thank Elmer and Iris for the opportunity to speak to you about the moral moment that we find ourselves in. And, as always, it is humbling and inspiring whenever I get to share a platform with Reverend Haydie.
Friends, we’ve heard the call to stand with our neighbors in Minnesota by first standing among them, seeing what they see, and not being afraid to tell the truth about what we see. It is a call to be awakened, moved, even claimed by the suffering of some our most vulnerable neighbors.
If what we read and watch and hear directly about the situation on the ground in Minnesota twists our guts or causes tears to fall, we must listen to our bodies as they call us to respond. Grief is a good teacher.
I would suggest to you that another way for us stand with our neighbors in Minnesota is by standing behind them. We have an opportunity, I would even say a responsibility, to learn from their example and apply their spirit and tactics of moral resistance in our own community.
In my religious tradition, we talk a lot about something called discipleship. Being a disciple means following behind a teacher, learning to say what they say and do what they do. In my case, it is the Christ whose life forms the pattern. I am not permitted to determine my own way in the world like those in this country who, even from pulpits, claim that “might makes right.” Instead I walk behind a Teacher who says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.”
The spotlight has been on Minneapolis these past weeks, but the struggle of ordinary people against the brutalities of ICE has been playing out in places like Lancaster, Pennsylvania; in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; in Portland and Seattle. Everywhere we see the resilience of neighbors who have set aside superficial differences to stand united against harm, who have sacrificed their time, resources, and comfort to stand in the gap for those living in fear of sudden arrest.
We are not short on teachers for this moment, and there is no reason for our community to be unprepared on that sad day when authoritarianism comes knocking on the doors of our most vulnerable neighbors. We can stand with Minnesota by having a teachable spirit as we engage in our own collective resistance.
Here are some things we might learn as we stand with by standing behind:
Today is the day to forge mutual relationships of care with one another, and to enlarge our sense of belonging to one another. We each might ask ourselves, ‘In a typical week, where does my body literally go? What parts of town, what kinds of people do I just never see? When I imagine who my community is, does it include both the socially privileged and the socially vulnerable? Do I see people of many faiths and worldviews, from different generations? Do I know where the schools or daycares or bus stops, courts or factories or business are where I would need to take my body in a moment’s notice to stand in the gap for someone else? Do I feel a living thread of connection between the Temple and the trainyard, the University and the warming shelter, Amy’s Kitchen and the Boys and Girls club. And then, based on that honest self-reflection, we ought to challenge ourselves to bring new neighbors into our awareness and new concerns into our heart. To borrow words from one of Rev. Haydie’s bishops, we stand with Minnesota by weaving “a rich web of underground care.”
Today is the day to resist every false narrative that says immigrants or refugees do not have a place in our common life. To reject every suggestion that those who protest peacefully are domestic terrorists, while those who force their way into homes without warrants are protectors of the peace. To decline stories that say we need to circle up and pursue the interests of our own group, and to champion stories that say we have more to gain when we all stand together. Our hearts are not so small nor our resources so scarce that we cannot make more room, and then more room, and then more room. We stand with Minnesota by telling the better story of our shared flourishing.
Today is also the day for each of us to do the hard inner work of learning to feel the surge of our own anger, of our own impulses toward hatred and violence, without being overcome by them. To learn, through prayer or meditation or training in nonviolent resistance, how to harness that energy and turn it toward acts of compassion and care. We stand with Minnesota by breaking the cycle of harm, and sometimes that starts with our own hearts and imaginations.
And, friends, if we are serious about resisting ideologies that divide us, serious about saying No to policy violence that’s been given the cheap stamp of divine approval, then today is the day to stand with our neighbors in Minnesota by resisting the forces of injustice here in Idaho. There is so much work for us to do right here, right now. The sacred worth and inherent dignity of our LGBTQ siblings and friends is again under threat. We have opportunities right now to restore reproductive freedoms, to resist cuts to education and healthcare funding. Every day we can choose to feed the hungry, house the houseless, and visit the lonely, the sick, the incarcerated. Let us raise our voice not only in solidarity with those who are far away but for the sake of those who are near. Today is the day.
There is a chant being lifted up by crowds across the country that says, We’re not cold, we’re not afraid, Minnesota taught us to be brave.
Today is the day to embrace that stirring to be brave, to say Yes to getting engaged.
The teacher I follow once said, “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”
Every one of you has a place in this struggle. With each of us taking up the work that we are called to do, no matter how small or it might feel when we consider ourselves alone, together nothing will be impossible for us.
Let us stand behind Minnesota—keep working, start walking.
God bless you.
Lead Us Not Into Temptation (Matthew 4:1-11)
Lead Us Not Into Temptation
January 18, 2026
Matthew 4:1-11
By: Pastor Mike Conner
***
The very Spirit that came down from heaven in the form of a dove and anointed Jesus at his baptism now leads him into the wilderness to be tested, challenged. There, Jesus fasts for forty days and forty nights. His body wastes away in its extraordinary hunger. When he is at his weakest, the enemy of God comes and speaks deceitfully to him. This is the diabolos, the devil. This is the peiradzon, the tempter. This is satana, Satan. Three names for this cruel, cunning spirit in Matthew’s passage; three temptations. At the waters of baptism, God the Father had said, “This is my Son.” In the wilderness, the devil says, “If you are the Son of God.” What God speaks as a blessing to be enjoyed, the tempter twists into a reason for self-determination. Before he can step into public ministry, Jesus must answer a fundamental question: Will he, the Son of God, the Beloved, use his privilege and power to seek his own will and preservation, or will he, to borrow words from John’s Gospel, “do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19 NIV)?
This is one of those passages of scripture that is endlessly fascinating. As I sat with it this week, it seemed as if every word opened up lines of inquiry. After all, there are parallel tellings of this story in Luke and Mark to compare it to; there are layers upon layers of Old Testament reference; there are word choices, images, and themes that connect it to other key moments in Matthew. Most sermons eventually require a severe process of selection. The preacher can’t say everything of interest or tell about all the false starts or rabbit trails or fugitive flashes of insight that were a part of study and prayer. I’m standing before you with a lot more that I might say about the Temptation, and with a lot of my own questions left unanswered. But my prayer has been that God would nevertheless use this one sermon as a means of daily bread.
And, you know, that feels like the resonance worth exploring this morning: the connection between the devil’s suggestion, “command these stones to become bread” (Matt 4:3) and Jesus’ teaching: “Pray, then, in this way: …Give us today our daily bread” (Matt 6:9, 11). Between Jesus’ necessary encounter with the tempter and the prayer we are to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” That is, the connection between the temptation and the Lord’s Prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer appears twice in the New Testament. In Matthew 6, it is a part of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. In Luke 11, Jesus offers it to his disciples after they come and ask him to teach them to pray. Many of us learned it when we were very young in this way:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Or like that, but maybe with some Thee’s and Thou’s.
If you’ve participated in our worship recently, you’ve perhaps noticed that we aren’t praying the same version or translation of this great prayer from week to week. This is a relatively new practice for us. Last winter, I preached a series on prayer and thought it would be beneficial for us to experience a fresh relationship with Jesus’ words. My hope was—and is—that variety would help us notice new things, ask fresh questions, and appreciate the substance and usefulness of the prayer. I don’t think Jesus gave us this prayer primarily to comfort us or even to unite us; certainly it is not meant to get stuck as a rote exercise or a source of nostalgia.
You know, it has never occurred to me to wonder before about where this prayer came from. I mean, of course Jesus composed it and taught it—but why, and where? I guess I’ve assumed that he always knew it, or that it leapt spontaneously from his mouth when he sat down to give the Sermon on the Mount. But today I’m hearing all the connections between it and these days Jesus spent in the wilderness:
Our Father, who art in heaven. Well, Jesus encountered God as his Father during his baptism by John, when the heavens were opened the voice declared “Beloved.” Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Here we have the language of kingdoms, which the Deceiver offered Jesus in exchange for his allegiance. Jesus rejected this offer by saying, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.” Give us this day our daily bread. In the wilderness Satan suggests that Jesus access his power to care for himself, to turn stones in to bread. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. A prayer of protection from what Jesus endured for us and in our place.
I want to suggest this morning that it is worthwhile to consider the wilderness as the place that this wonderful prayer was composed. That it was forged not in contemplative stillness but through the fire of extreme deprivation and testing. What if the Lord’s prayer is a tool of resistance, a wilderness resource, a way of enduring our own weakness and limitations, our long days and nights of pain; a shield for holding off despair and desperation; a sword for cutting through the lies that tell us it is time to trust in something or someone other than God. I imagine that Jesus prayed this in the first-person singular “My Father… Give me today… Forgive me… Deliver me…” And by the time he was ready to pass it on to others, he had transposed it out of the singular and into the plural: we, us, our. Not only to unify you and me in our praying of it but to join us to his own voice, his own incorruptible integrity, his own unfailing trust.
What is at stake for Jesus in these three temptations—to provide for himself unnaturally, to entertain oblivion, to seek power and glory for himself? In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, a Catholic Bible scholar named George T Montague says this: “Unspoken, of course, is the assumption that Jesus should use whatever divine power he might have in his own interest, and should he do so in the matter of food, he would in effect withdraw himself from solidarity with his people of old and the people of his day who do not have it in their power to do such things…”[1]
His solidarity with us is what’s at stake. His commitment to be with us in our weakness, with us in our seasons of spiritual or physical hunger. To open for us, in the midst of them, a space where we can trust in God’s love, provision, and protection; a place where we won’t force our own way or sully our integrity out of desperation. And that place is his heart, expressed, I would argue, in this prayer.
If Jesus would have turned stones into bread—and he could have; he and Satan both know this—he would have stepped out of his communion with God the Father, making a move toward self-preservation before receiving a word from God. He would have abandoned his solidarity with our hunger; we can’t magically turn stones into bread, so he keeps himself from that human impossibility, though it means remaining in his hunger.
Jesus goes without food for 40 days and forty nights and then faces down the very heart of evil. Those were his temptations; they are not ours. The Spirit led him into that task; we are taught to pray for exactly the opposite, to not be led into temptation.
And yet, in our own way, don’t we often feel like this is this situation we are in?
Don’t we sometimes feel like we’ve been out here, in our own personal wildernesses, for almost too long? It may not be forty days and forty nights of total fasting, but maybe it’s been a long night of grief, a long year of being in and out of the hospital. Forty days of not being able to pay down your credit card. Endless days of chronic pain. A season of unemployment. Logging on for another day of watching what madness the Idaho Legislature will do next. Logging on to be pierced by the stories of pain: in Minneapolis, in Portland, in Gaza, in Sudan, in the polar regions. Our wilderness might be a dark night of soul, when God’s voice has gone silent. It might be a displacement from community, where we’ve been rejected, or where our own growth in faith and love drives us away from systems of harm.
And as if these wildernesses were not enough, in the midst of them we know who Jesus has called us to become: persons of no-strings-attached love, of costly generosity, of patient trust and continual forgiveness; humble people who seek no glory for ourselves; simple people who don’t participate in exploitation; people of hospitality who are more ready to give than to receive. If we consider all this and how often we “miss the mark,” how easy it is for us to abandon our trust in God because we feel that we’ve been out in the wilderness too long, we ought to rush to take up Jesus’ prayer again and cry out “ Our Father,” know that he is with us in that “Our,” and that he will help us remain steadfast through every testing, because he has already won the victory.
If we are going to persist in feeding people who are hungry, we have to be people whose own hunger for justice does not grow impatient and try to wrestle bread out of stones, but is instead sustained by that prayer, “Give us today our daily bread.”
If we are going to persist in advocating for affordable, quality childcare in a State where 25,000 parents left the workforce last year due to a loss or change in childcare, we have to be people who make our home in the prayer, “May your kingdom come, may your will be done.”
If we are going to persist in building the beloved community that Martin Luther King Jr. believed in; in eliminating the widespread poverty in America that broke his heart; in learning to see beyond what divides us to the promise of our solidarity with others, we have to be people who say, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
With this prayer forged in the wilderness, we deal not with a comforting token or a rote religious exercise but with a channel of communion, a place where we, in our hunger, are met and sustained by the Christ who hungers but is not overcome by impatience, fear, or resentment. With this prayer forged in the wilderness, we will not force our own way. We will not sell our birthright as children of God. We will not sully our hands with the Master’s tools as we seek to deconstruct the Master’s house. We will not live in fear, or entertain oblivion, or numb our compassion by living as avatars in the simulacrum.
Instead, we will abide there, in the condition that so much of humanity lives so much of the time, hungry for bread and for justice in the wilderness, and make of our lives, right there, an offering, an opening, through which God’s power for love can flow.
If the Kingdom of God were to depend on our largesse or our wisdom, our creativity or our readiness to endure discomfort, we would be lost. But thanks be to God that the coming of the Love’s reign does not depend on our natural strengths but on our spiritual humility, our trust in Jesus’ victory over every demonic suggestion.
“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15 NKJV), scripture proclaims.
So let us, through the solidarity and the prayer of Jesus, abide in him, and answer his call to never cease hungering and thirsting for righteousness. “Weeping may endure for a night,” maybe forty long nights, “but joy,” we know, “cometh in the morning” (Ps 30:5 KJV). And “all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3 NIV).
In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] George T. Montague, S.M., Companion God: A Cross-Cultural Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 42.
The Shape and Power of Repentance (Matthew 3:1-17)
The Shape and Power of Repentance
January 11, 2026
Matthew 3:1-17
By: Pastor Mike Conner
***
One of my favorite American poets, James Longenbach, has a poem that starts with this question: “How do you imagine the shape of one lifetime? / A circle, a tangle of lines?” The poet is reminding us that life’s journey does not feel the same to each of us. Depending on our personalities and what we’ve been through, a lifetime might feel like a unified whole, a journey that has brought about a kind of return to or reconciliation with the major themes of our early years. Others of us might feel more fragmented, experiencing life like a “tangle of lines.” And the many forays we’ve made into becoming this or that, loving this and that, don’t harmonize neatly but nevertheless comprise who we are. Surprising symmetry or creative chaos? It depends! And on a morning when we hear in Matthew’s Gospel this good old word repentance repeated three times, I want to modify the poet’s questions to ask:
How do you imagine the shape of change?
Change. That’s what repentance fundamentally means: change at a deep and lasting level. The Greek word for it, metanoia, literally means a transformation of the mind, a shift in how we perceive, understand, and tell stories about God’s world and our place in it. In verse 1 of this chapter, John the Baptist preaches, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” In verse 8, as John criticizes the Pharisees and Sadducees for their religious posturing, he calls them to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” And to clarify his role as the forerunner to a more powerful preacher who is soon to come, he says in verse 11, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me…will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” John’s baptism of repentance is connected to immersion in water, the confession of sins, and the call to bear fruit that aligns with God’s justice. These all speak to cleansing, fresh commitment, and new beginnings. And lest we over-associate this call to radical change with John’s ministry, Matthew places the very same sermon on Jesus’ lips when he emerges in Galilee for the beginning of his public ministry after his baptism and temptation in the wilderness: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt 4:17).
So, again, the question: If we are all called to change in order to begin again with God, how do you imagine the shape that change?
Perhaps this change is like a sharp turning—we’re going one way and then God intervenes and we have to pivot to go another way. That’s the visual I was always given as a kid in youth group. Repentance as a kind of U-turn. What I like about that shape is the way it emphasizes a turning point, a moment when everything was different. It also reveals that we are always moving toward a goal, and if the goal is knowing God and loving God then I have to pursue that with intention even if it means letting those other destinations go.
Or perhaps the shape of change is like open hands, open cup, something like a closed circle that’s been broken open. Maybe where we once experienced ourselves as isolated, self-sufficient, complete, safe in our bubbles or masters of our little universes, a kind of rupture is required. And with that cracking open comes a rush of freedom to release old things and be filled with new things. Maybe repentance feels like release, embrace, waking up to new love. Others can suddenly find a way in, and we can suddenly find a way out.
Or perhaps we’d chart out change as a pair of glasses, as a kind of lens. This is change at our capacity to be present to our lives. Maybe we’re right where we need to be, but we’ve lost the joy of our commitments, lost sight of the beauty around us; we’re rushing past our neighbors, struggling to see our kids or spouses or friends or coworkers as the three-dimensional humans that they are. Perhaps repentance is like the sudden refining of vision, making vivid and beautiful and worthy of renewed devotion what was always already there. We cook dinner, or we take a minute to consider the stars, as if these acts might change the world. Change as a light that illuminates and wakes us up.
A fourth possibility, if I may. Perhaps the shape of change is like a V, going down in order to come up again. This is the choreography of baptism: immersed in the water. Repentance might mean a humbling descent: returning to the earth, seeking solidarity with the poor who are trodden down, giving away our stuff or choosing not to operate out of our privileges, laying aside activity to seek God in silence, serving the visions of others. This is change as a kind of stripping away, a return to simplicity. The trees yielding to the cold air, letting the outer splendor of their leaves go, and trusting the strength of their roots.
And finally, perhaps the shape of change is like the poet’s “a tangle of lines,” a confused and meandering squiggle, that suddenly straightens itself out. This is what the prophet Isaiah envisioned when he proclaimed, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight’” (Matt 3:3). This is change experienced at the level of desire and commitment. I’ve wanted so many things that I’ve gone nowhere. Not knowing who I am, I’ve been stuck in place, or I’ve been running to this and that with no real intention. This is repentance that “seeks first the kingdom of God.” It is “purity of heart.” The gift of a singleness of desire. It’s as if all our confused and congested energy suddenly has an open channel. It doesn’t resolve all the tensions but transcends them. The heart is fixed on God alone.
How do you imagine the shape of change?
Going a different direction? Cracking open? Seeing clearly? Descending? Straightening?
It’s important that we each find our way into the meaning of repentance for ourselves, because it’s not meant to be one of those churchy words that is either overly familiar and safe or overly strange and off-putting. Repentance is a vital reality to be lived, an inescapable part of our life with God.
Notice that there are two voices crying out in this story from Mathew. There is the voice in the wilderness, and there is the voice “from the heavens” (Matt 3:17). Every one of us is created to hear that voice from the heavens as personally addressed to us. We are God’s Beloveds, with whom God is well pleased. We are destined to know ourselves in Christ as God’s most precious children. But to hear the “voice from the heavens” (3:17) in trust and security, we must first respond to “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness” (3:3). We must first prepare the way of the Lord. We must welcome change.
There is so much that keeps us from resting securely in our identity as beloved creatures of the Great Creator. Our own mistakes and regrets, things we’ve done and left undone. The insecurities or harsh words and actions that filled our childhoods. The great losses we’ve endured that don’t make any rational sense. The daily onslaught of the world’s pain: countries at war, children hungry, cross-wearing politicians cutting away the social safety net, climate change.
Given the harsh realities of life, no matter the shape of our repentance, the power of it has to be immense if it is to achieve a lasting rootedness in God, a lasting commitment to grow in love and justice. The power at work in repentance, like the power at work in faith, far exceeds what we can muster through our own will and conviction. This isn’t change that comes by reading a book or listening to a podcast or making a New Year’s resolution. This is change that comes by way of a miracle!
And God has given us the miracle! God has given us Jesus!
Jesus, who has come to bring us inside his Belovedness, who has come to set his way of justice and generosity before us; Jesus, whose privilege it is as the eternally begotten Son of the Father to the hear the voice of heaven – he comes and stands among us and for us in response to the voice of the wilderness. He takes his place among the repentant. He goes where all broken humanity must go before it can put down roots in its belovedness. He comes to the water that cleans, strips, purifies, and claims.
And this is precisely what John the Baptist has such a hard time accepting at first. He cannot understand why Jesus would submit to a baptism of repentance. John sees things very clearly: he needs Jesus’ baptism. Yes—and: Jesus came to redeem us from the inside out, to infuse every crevice of our experience with the light and power of God, to leave no need in us unmet by his grace. So he says to John: “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (v 15). Oh, the kindness of God—that before any of us is ever fully ready for or capable of change, Jesus has already gone ahead of us into the water.
Friends, if God has drawn near to you for the first or the thousandth time, and you stand at the shoreline of a necessary change that is far beyond your capacity or courage, Jesus is there, and he will help you to make that new beginning. Jesus is there, bringing about the miracle of a fresh start, a new commitment, of clear vision, of humbling descent.
As Paul writes in Philippians 2:13, “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (NLT). We can yield to the shape of change, because Jesus’ grace has gone before us.
Hear the voice of the wilderness! The voice of the wilderness says, “Come and be stripped of what isn’t working for you. Come and face why the good fruit is growing. Come and be broken open. Come and see things for what they really are. Come and stand on equal footing with everyone else, with equal need. Come and say I want God to be first in my heart.”
Hear it, and know that Christ is also hearing it; in his faithful response, you will discover your own faithful response.
Ask for his help, and he will help you.
Abide in him, and he will carry you.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Power to Become Children of God (John 1:1-18)
Power to Become Children of God
January 4, 2026
John 1:1-18
By Pastor Mike Conner
***
Here at the starting line of another year, I want to return to speak of something very fundamental, this great gift that John speaks of in the poetic prologue to his gospel: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (1:12).
He gave power to become children of God.
He.
That is, Jesus. The eternal Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, through whom all things have come into existence. He is Emanuel, God with us. Jesus has been born into our flesh and blood and bone. Jesus has entered into our vulnerability and weakness. Full of grace and truth, of life and light, he wants nothing more than to be here, to be close to you and me, no matter how sullen, distracted, anxious, or arrogant he finds us at first. As the book of Hebrews puts it, “The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God” (1:3 NLT). He does this in a baby’s body swaddled in cloth, in a man’s body suffering on the cross. He has come so that each of us might rise to be with him where he is, “close to the Father’s heart” (John 1:18). He.
He gave.
Yes, Jesus is the pre-eminent giver: “From his fullness,” John writes, “we have all received, grace upon grace” (1:16). This is what he does with who he is and what he has: he gives it all to us. His kindness and his compassion, his creativity and his patience. Jesus’ earthly ministry was a ministry of gifts: turning water into wine, feeding the crowds, healing the sick, forgiving sins, calling the disciples into their purpose, and even receiving the love others desired to show him. “Though he was in the form of God,” Paul writes in Philippians, “he did consider equality with God as something to be grasped for himself, but emptied himself…” Jesus pours himself out to bless us and enrich us with love. He is with us in every experience of doubt and abandonment, in every moment of healing and beauty. He is not one who grasps, possesses, or hoards. His openness to us, no matter where we’ve been or what we’ve done, is definitive. He gave his very life away in order to redeem us, and now he gives us to one another in a community of gifts. He gave.
He gave power.
This is the gift for us to linger with today: Jesus gives power. This word in the New Testament, exousia, is about freedom and privilege. There are other words that indicate physical strength, personal ability, or social charisma. One of them is dunamis, which enters English as ‘dynamic.’ But this word, exousia, is about authority, capacity, choice. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus will say, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” (10:17-18). Herod thinks he has authority over Jesus. Pilate thinks he has authority over Jesus. The crowd thinks it has authority over Jesus. But any authority they have to determine Jesus’ fate comes because it has been first given to them by the One who has chosen to humble himself unto death on a cross. The Son of God throws the full weight of his divine privilege into the sacrifice of his life. What mystery is this, that the one through whom all things have come into existence would use power to give away power, and in that gift establish himself as the one worthy to receive “all authority in heaven and on earth,” as Matthew puts it in the closing words of his own Gospel. Jesus freely sacrificed himself for us, died our death, and now meets us in the moments and places of our God-forsakenness. He gave power.
He gave power to become.
This is the power he gives us: the freedom to become—to grow, unfold, heal. None of us is ever “finished” in this life. God is boundless and infinite. With God there is grace upon grace. Which means that our desire for God is never fully quenched, and our spiritual ripening can never be considered a done deal. So he gives us power to become.
Power to become! One of the greatest gifts that any of us can give to another person is the time and space, the affirmation and patience, for them to discover their own identity and purpose in God’s love. The power to become has made all the difference for me. I have had people come alongside me in every season of my life who have seen potential gifts in me and wanted to help me grow. The power to become is what I want to give my kids: the trust, self-compassion, curiosity, and sensitivity they need to receive whoever God has created them to be. As a pastor in Pocatello, I see that the power to become is a gift denied to so many of our neighbors, who, in order to be worthy of acceptance in their faith communities, must foreclose on certain possibilities of self-expression and relationship, certain lines of doubt and exploration.
Jesus does not give us power for conformity. He does not give us power to control others, or to manipulate our circumstances, or to be important and talented, or to depose the leaders of foreign lands with a word. He does not give us power to get things right all the time, to have masterful recall of the scriptures or to spin eloquent theological arguments. No, he gives us power to live our questions, to receive each day as fresh and full of mercy, to embrace new people and ideas and callings, that we might say with the poet Rilke, “I want to unfold. / Let no place in me hold itself closed, / for where I am closed, I am false. / I want to stay clear in your sight.” He gave power to become.
He gave power to become children of God.
Children of God. Power to become…a child! A child of God. We are given the authority that we need to abide in Christ and experience ourselves in him as the Beloved of God—together. Children are dependent on others; children need help; children are impressionable, voracious learners, attuned to wonder. Children raise their arms to be lifted up; they throw themselves fully into whatever it is they are doing. They feel all their feelings intensely. By coming to us as the Word-made-flesh, the Son of God has given us the power to become spiritual children. As John writes elsewhere in the New Testament, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are (1 John 3:1). As children, we are destined for joy in God. As children, we pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” As children, we are seen, provided for, never alone, no never alone.
As the first theologians affirmed so very long ago, God became a human being so that human beings might become God. He descended to us that we might ascend with him. By uniting humanity and divinity in the body and history of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God has opened up the possibility for each of us to have a vibrant, intimate, faithful relationship with our Creator. He gave power to become children of God.
Friends, this is the essence of the Gospel. The power to become a child of God is available to each of us right here, right now. In the words of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist revival in 18th century England, “[I]t is a present salvation. It is something attainable, yea, actually attained on earth, by those who are partakers of the faith.” To partake of this faith, the Gospel invites us to receive him, and to believe in his name.
To receive him means opening the door of your heart to him when he comes knocking, when you sense that he wants something to do with you.
To receive him means being like Mary, and the Shepherds, and the Magi, and the Stable, saying Yes, come, Lord Jesus, I will give you room in my heart and in all my life.
To receive him means setting out to meet him in the places where he has promised to wait for us: in the Scriptures and at the Table, in the company of other believers, and in the face of every despised, rejected, vulnerable, or destitute person in our world.
And to believe in his name?
This simply means to trust him. To trust that Christ is the one who the scriptures and the saints and your deepest longings say that he is: God with us in love and unconditional acceptance and perfect justice. He is the Messiah, the Christ, who died our death, raises us to new life, and gives us the power to be children of God, “close to the Father’s heart.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Called to Remember (Matthew 2:13-23)
Called to Remember
December 28, 2025
Matthew 2:13-23
By: Pastor Mike Conner
***
According to the liturgical calendar that is used to organize worship and discipleship in many Christian traditions, Christmas is not simply a day but a twelve-day season, running from December 25th, the Feast of the Nativity, to January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany. For twelve days the Church’s calendar invites us to meditate on the mystery of the Incarnation, and reflect on how this gift of God coming to be with us in the Christ Child ought to shape our lives. In Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican tradition, the fourth day of the Christmas season, December 28th, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It is a day set apart for remembering the little boys of Bethlehem, two years old and younger, whom King Herod had killed in a sweeping effort to extinguish the Christ.
The Eastern Magi, astrologers sometimes called Wise Men or the Three Kings, had tricked Herod. In faraway lands, they had observed the rising of the Christmas star, had understood it to be a sign that in the land of Israel a King had been born for the Jewish people. The Magi came to Herod’s court in Jerusalem, asking him where the newborn king was to be found. Herod had no idea; he had missed the sign. Afraid of a challenge to his own power over the Jews, Herod asked the Magi to continue their search for the child, and to return to him after finding it, so that he also could go and worship him. This, of course, was a lie. He planned to kill the child. The Magi left Herod’s palace and continued to follow the star, which rested over a humble home in Bethlehem. Entering that home, they bowed before Jesus and blessed him with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. That night, God warned them in a dream not to return to Herod, so they left the land of Israel by another road.
Herod, pacing around his palace and waiting for their return, slowly realized that they weren’t coming back, that he’d been lied to—and he was furious. There is hardly a breath between the eruption of his anger and its devastating consequences. “He became greatly enraged,” Matthew writes, “and he sent to kill all the little boys in Bethlehem in all its surrounding territory two years old and under” (Matt 2:16, my translation).
On Christmas Eve, I preached about Caesar Augustus’ census and the ways that the powers in our world are always trying to reduce our rich, singular lives to data, to names and numbers. The same impulse shows up here in Matthew’s Christmas story. Enraged by his lack of control over the situation, Herod gives an order: ‘Boys two and under in and around Bethlehem. Round them up, and get rid of them.’ But each of these was a singular child with a name, with a family. For Herod, an easy, impersonal order brings about the most painful, personal of griefs—and many times over. And it doesn’t even work. Little Jesus, carried through the darkness of that night by Joseph, slips through Herod’s fingers.
Joseph was warned by an angel in a dream to flee Israel, taking Mary and Jesus to Egypt before Herod’s soldiers arrived. The Holy Family became refugees, forced by the envious violence of their local ruler to leave behind their home and make do on the road, to live for a time as strangers in a strange land. They remained in Egypt until Herod’s death, at which time Joseph was again instructed in a dream by an angel; it was time to return to their homeland. But this was no triumphant return. They came back to live in silence and obscurity in the backwater town of Nazareth in Galilee. And yet, if one listened closely enough, there was still this: “A sound of weeping and wailing is heard in Ramah. Rachel is shedding tears for her children. No one can bring her peace, because her children have been taken from the land of the living” (2:17-18, First Nations Version).
You know, as a pastor I feel a lot of pressure to bring some razzle-dazzle to the Christmas season every year, to use language and ritual to try and help us all connect with the joy and hope and mystery of it. And this story makes me deeply uncomfortable. The massacre of the Holy Innocents is a terrible moment in the Gospels, and it feels so at odds with the spirit of the season. I resisted committing to this text when I saw that December 28th fell on a Sunday this year. But Matthew found it important to include this story in his Gospel, to bring it inside the good news of Jesus. And down through the ages the Church has seen fit to honor these children with a feast day, so that they would not be forgotten. I felt convicted. Maybe I should take the time to really remember them, too.
If Jesus came to bring salvation to our world, if he came to redeem the cosmos, then we need to be honest about the condition of the world. Perhaps we are bummed – or more, wrecked – by this story, and want to keep it at arm’s length, not really even look at it directly, because of all the Christmas stories in the Gospels it is actually the most relatable one, the one that hits closest to home, and we think Christmas ought to bring us some reprieve from the sharp edges of reality. And yet, in 2025 Nigerian children are kidnapped. Gazan children are bombed and starved. American children are hungry and sick with Measles. And the list of avoidable atrocities goes on.
And in every one of these situations there are people playing the role of Herod behind the violence, trying to control the narrative, seeking to stifle our remembering. But the mothers and fathers remember. The community remembers. The soil remembers. God remembers. Should not the Church also remember? And, by its remembering, be liberated from the propaganda and feel-good illusions thrown at us? By its remembering be pressed toward the least of these?
The Incarnation is a profound act of divine remembering. In Christ, God has said to us, “I have not forgotten you. I will never forget you. I will come to be with you, as you are, and bind our destinies together.” And that act of solidarity becomes an example for us to live by in the power of the Spirit.
The Holy Innocents. They were killed by an angry, fearful King. They were killed as a consequence of the Magi listening to divine direction. They were killed to bring to fulfillment a Hebrew word spoken by Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Matthew effectively gives us all three explanations, and not a single one of them would relieve the heart of a mother or father of Bethlehem. So we keep remembering—and we let that remembering do its work in us and in the world. Remembering is a political act, by which I mean it has to do with power and how we relate to one another. And remembering is a spiritual act, something Jesus tells us to do every time we gather in his name. Do this in remembrance of me. Remembering the hard things is important, too. Keeping the channel open, the energy of grief has somewhere to go, and it can make us more committed to love.
So we remember. We remember that those little boys in Bethlehem are members of the cosmos that Jesus has redeemed, and will be vindicated in the last days and raised to resurrected life. We remember that Jesus himself shared the fate of his playmates, sentenced to death on a cross by a sickening collusion of political and religious powers. We remember Mary was there at the cross, crying her tears. Jesus did not, in the end, escape the suffering of the Holy Innocents. To remember them is to remember him, and vice versa. To remember them is to remember all those whose worldly fate he came to share.
A 16th-century painter from the Netherlands named Pieter Bruegel the Elder once painted the Holy Innocents scene. He painted a scene of soldiers raiding a small town and putting its little children to death. Yet Bruegel translated the scene to a 16th-century Dutch village, where the villagers were attacked by Spanish soldiers and German mercenaries. The soldiers in Bruegel’s painting carry the imperial symbols of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, who ruled in Bruegel’s lifetime. Bruegel did what all good biblical interpretation does: it bridges the gap between the world of scripture and the world of the present moment. It says, Look, we are still living inside these stories today!
Emperor Rudolph disliked the painting so much that he purchased it in Prague around 1600. After purchasing it, he had the children in the graphic scene painted over with food items and animals, “so that it became a scene of plunder not a massacre of babies.” You can look at this online. In the center of the painting there is a group of ironclad soldiers all stabbing downward at…a group of chickens! We know that these were not Pieter Bruegel’s original details because his son, Pieter Breugel the Younger, made a copy of his father’s painting before it was whitewashed by the Emperor. The son’s copy, discovered in Vienna, “shows the original details of the massacre.” In our own moment, I’m sure we can think of times when those in high places have reshaped the narratives of war and poverty and human suffering to make them seem less devastating, more palatable or reasonable. The Gospel writer asks us to remember. The Church asks us to remember. The artists ask us to remember. The Herods and Holy Emperors and political pundits ask us to forget.
Christmas doesn’t mean that we escape the world. It means that we are met by a God who enters into complete fellowship with us in the world to bring about a reign of peace from the inside out. So, this Christmas I think God would have each of us remember a person, a family, an other-than human species, or a community that is at risk of being forgotten, that has suffered at the hands of power, but that Jesus came to hold in eternal love and remembrance.
This Christmas, remember someone who has not escaped the world’s sharp edges, who is grieving, who is hurt by the intolerance and violence of the world. Weep for them. Pray for them. Tell about them.
And may the hope of our faith be true for us all. As the Apostle Paul says, We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Cor 4:8-11 NIV).
And elsewhere: What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? …Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:31-39 NIV).
Amen.
Mary’s Love
Mary’s Love
December 21, 2025
By: Elle Mann
Good morning, everyone.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Elle Mann and I am a member here at First United Methodist Church. I’d just like to take a moment to thank Pastor Mike for the opportunity to give one of the messages during this Advent season. April was up first, giving us a lesson about Elizabeth and Zechariah. Then John gave a message on Joseph. Last week Susannah gave a lesson on the meaning of angels through the story of Gabriel. And I have been tasked with the story of Jesus’ mother, Mary.
I do have to say, I’ve been rather nervous to deliver this sermon. When I was first assigned such a person as Mary, I was very excited. But as Susannah said last week, the enthusiasm quickly turned to anxiety in my brain. What angle was I going to take? What direction am I supposed to go in, in order to do Mary justice? Telling her story is a tough task, so I ask you now, before I deliver this message to you, to offer me grace. The stories that each of my fellow lay Advent speakers have given all revolve around words that we agreed on during our meeting a couple months ago; for Elizabeth and Zechariah it was hope, for Joseph it was peace, and for Gabriel it was joy, just like the advent candles we’ve been lighting each week. When it came time to decide on the word for Mary’s tale, we all came to the consensus that the stories, just like the candles, should come full circle with love. Love. God’s law. To love one another as he has loved us. Without exception. Through darkness and doubt. Through the clear, and through the fog.
To fully understand Mary’s story, we have to zoom out to look at the bigger picture. What else was taking place when Mary received the life-changing news from Gabriel? What extra trials did Mary face because of the task that God had given her? And in order to grasp what an incredible advocate of love Mary is, we have to go back quite a ways before Jesus was born. I’m really only going to skim through some of the history of Israel, and the events surrounding his birth and early years. I will touch on just some of the pieces of information that I believe to be relevant to the story of Mary.
Back in the tenth century BC, David and his son Solomon were responsible for establishing the Kingdom of Israel. However, it was not long into Israel’s existence that it split into the North and South kingdoms: where the north was still to be known as Israel, and the South was called Judah. Both of these nations were conquered by different empires. In the North, Israel was defeated by the Assyrian empire, and Judah was taken by the Babylonians (who ended up destroying the Temple,which was going to be a house of God, and a cultural and religious center of the south).
By the time we reach the last two hundred or so years before Jesus’ birth, the land of Israel was ruled over by the Roman Empire. And at the time that Mary was given the message by Gabriel, King Herod was ruling over the people, and the reconstruction of the Jewish Temple was underway. However, the practice of Judaism was only allowed in cases where it wasn’t used to try and change the status quo. It could only be practiced without ulterior political motives.
So, it’s pretty easy to imagine that when King Herod learns from the wise men that the King of the Jews, and son of God, is soon to be born, it immediately sends him into a spiral. He wines and dines with the wise men before asking them to return to him after they have learned the location of this Holy Infant. He hides his true intentions behind the lie that he wants to go and visit the Son of God, to praise him. When the wise men go to Bethlehem and find Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they receive another message from God, warning them to steer clear of Herod as Jesus’ life will be in danger if they return to the Roman king. Thankfully, the wise men listen, and they do not return to Herod, which leads the king to send out his military to round up and kill any son in his kingdom from the ages of 2 and younger. When Mary and Joseph learn of this, through a message from Gabriel in one of Joseph’s dreams, they decide to flee to Egypt, to escape the wrath of the Roman King.
Now why am I saying this? Telling you all something that you most likely already know; as this story is one of the most well-known from the Bible. Why do I need to give a history lesson on the events that lead up to Jesus’ birth if I’m supposed to be talking about Mary?
I think it’s important to understand the historical context, because it helps us understand that Mary was someone who was already marginalized. She wasn’t someone who was part of the ruling majority. Now imagine what that must have been like. Being a teenage girl, who was considered to be a second class citizen by those around her. When she received the message that she would carry and give birth to God’s Son, Mary was engaged to Joseph, who was a descendant of King David. A ways before their wedding, Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, who says this to her in Luke 1, verse 31-32: “You will become pregnant and give birth to a son. You must call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High God.”
Then a few verses down, Mary accepts this endeavor with one simple sentence. “I serve the Lord…May it happen to me just as you said it would.”
This part of the scripture has stuck with me while writing this message. Mary’s trust in God. How she was without a second thought, willing to have faith in him and see his plan through, and to love this child unconditionally. He has asked a lot of Mary, who is engaged to Joseph, but is going to be pregnant long before their nuptials were to take place. God has asked Mary to carry his child, despite all of the scrutiny that she and her fiance (but mostly her) will face. The only question she asks Gabriel is how she could possibly carry the child as she is unwed. After that query is answered, she takes the task on with great bravery and grace.
It is believed that Mary was subjected to ridicule from the people around her, being an unwed, soon to be mother. She was judged by her peers, who believed she was living a life of sin. And what was she supposed to do or say in an attempt to defend herself? Surely she knew that telling people she was carrying God’s son would make her seem delusional. Who would believe hers and Joseph’s story, that Mary, just a simple girl with no title or money, was chosen by God himself to carry the Messiah? People were probably more likely to believe that pigs had learned how to fly; rather than believing that someone with as little to her name as Mary could be hand picked for a task as great as this. But through all of the mess, through all of the low points, with the verbal slander and ridicule that she faced, not once did Mary blink or turn her back on her child that was growing inside of her. Not once. She carried him with her head held high. She was undeterred by the hate that was thrown her way.
When the night came for Mary to give birth, and they made their way to the inn in Bethlehem, Mary was not shaken by the fact that she would not be given the comfort of a bed. And when Jesus entered the world, she did not hesitate to wrap him up and keep him warm and safe.
And when King Herod created a great threat to Jesus’ life, she did not think twice before making the difficult journey to Egypt. Braving treacherous terrain in horrendous weather, while also being on the lookout for any of Herod’s forces trying to take her son away from her. Not to mention the real possibility that they faced hunger and thirst on their journey. Just to make sure that their son could have the opportunity to live a good life, and grow up without the fear of those who would wish to harm him.
Mary went through some of the most treacherous situations one can be expected to endure, all for this child. This child; that changed the entire course of her life, and in a sense perhaps made it much more challenging than it would’ve been if God had not chosen her.
Now some might say that it was Mary’s strength that helped her through this chain of events, and to some extent that is true. Mary is, in my mind, one of the most amazing characters that we learn about not just in this story, but in the entire Bible. And it has nothing to do with title, or power, or her lack of resources. Her strength, her willingness to go down this strenuous path, is rooted in one thing. Love. She could have had everything else, but without the love there’s no saying whether or not things would’ve turned out the way that they did.
Here’s the thing about love. It’s never what it is expected to be. It’s never just smooth and free of obstacles, it’s full of twists and turns and trials that test us. Every single day we are faced with situations where it almost feels impossible to believe that the concept of love even exists. Let’s use smart phone technology as an example: we have more access to the terrors of the world than we ever have before. We can hear about the awful realities of multiple genocides, of gun violence, poverty, and starvation, all just by unlocking our phones and opening the news app. So, in short it’s a lot easier to forget that love is in fact there.
I myself am guilty of it. But recently, when I’ve been caught focusing on the negative, I’ve often found myself thinking of Mary. Thinking of refugees, the parents who have packed up their lives and are fleeing with their kids nowadays, risking everything to offer something better for their children. And I consistently asked myself, what drives that decision more than love? What makes us want to protect the ones closest to us more than love?
We find examples of radical love throughout the world of pop culture. Take Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of the original Hunger Games trilogy. For those who are unaware, this series is very popular among my generation, as the books and films started coming out while I was in elementary school. At the beginning of the book (and I should warn you it is quite dark), we learn that each year, twenty-four children are offered up as tributes in an annual event called The Hunger Games. Where the children are put into an arena, to fight to the death until only one is left standing. I know it’s a really morbid premise, but the entire series is a very important (and phenomenal) read. In one of the first chapters of this book, when her little sister Prim’s name is drawn at the reaping of the Tributes, Katniss immediately runs to Prim and volunteers in her place. She does this knowing fully what the consequences are. She does this so that Prim will be safe, even if it means that she herself never comes home.
There are also examples of radical love in everyday life. A parent or grandparent or sibling or aunt or uncle who tells a young person, “I see you. I love you as you are. I am here for you.” Even if some in their surroundings challenge who that young person is. A person who “pays it forward” at the grocery store, when they recognize that someone might be struggling with hunger. A family that brings food to the food pantry to help their neighbors. Holding the door for someone. When your friend drives all the way out to Inkom after they’re done with work to help you replace a flat tire after a ski day. When you offer to let someone borrow your umbrella when it’s raining. Little acts of kindness such as this are just a few examples of radical love.
Think of Elizabeth and Zechariah, who had hope even though they didn’t know what was going to happen; because they loved their son John, and they trusted that things would eventually be alright. Think of Joseph, who was able to find peace, even when his world had turned upside down, and he was able to help the people he loved find peace, as well. Think of Gabriel, who was able to deliver the message of joy, because he had love for God and his people.
Mary, who had so little to her name, even knowing the risks, chose to love, even though she didn’t always know how everything would turn out. This story defies reason, just as love defies understanding. Mary knew that the only way to bring Jesus into this world, the only way to keep him safe, was to love him radically. Without exception, through darkness and doubt. Through the clear, and through the fog. So, as we go into the last few days before the birth of Jesus, finishing up this Advent season; remember Mary’s strength, remember her will, but most of all, remember everything that happened was a result of her infinite love.
And all God’s people said,
Amen.
For Nothing Will Be Impossible with God (Isaiah 6:1-7, Luke 1:26-37)
For Nothing Will Be Impossible with God
December 14, 2025
Isaiah 6:1-7, Luke 1:26-37
By: Susannah Conner
The Advent preaching team decided to split up the text by following the main characters of the Christmas story. April knew she wanted to preach Zechariah and Elizabeth, John gravitated toward Joseph, next week Elle will preach Mary. That left the angel Gabriel which I was excited about in John’s living room where we were hammering this all out, and by the time I’d gotten into my car to go home I was completely panicked. I don’t know what an angel is.
I mean, we can all conjure the sort of popular fairy tale entity of the same name. We’ve seen Touched by an Angel. It’s a Wonderful Life. Angels in the Outfield. Maybe you’ve read Dante and Milton. Maybe you enjoyed Dante and Milton. I did not. We’ve seen the defining works by Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo. Y’all probably hung some angels on your Christmas trees. But the images in my mind, when I consider the general shape, size, and function of an angel are distinctly extrabiblical. This composite, gauzy superhero isn’t described as such in the Bible.
And I realized, before I could even get to Gabriel and the Christmas story; before I could properly consider the existence of angels; the thing I needed to know, was: What sort of creatures exist? The Bible throws us some real curve balls on this count. In Genesis 6 we find the B’nai Elohim, the sons of God, and the Nephilim, giant offspring of the sons of God and Ahuman women. We don’t hear a lot more about that. What happened to them? Beelzebul, Baal, Satan, Morningstar, demons, malachim, cherubs guarding the entrance to Eden. The seraphs of Isaiah. Winged, fiery serpents in Numbers and Deuteronomy. Jonah’s giant fish and the leviathan of Psalm 74 – the Behemoth and Leviathan in Job! Have you read Job 41 recently? It’s a dragon. It’s describing a dragon.
I’ve talked to some of you about this over the past several weeks and I know for a fact that we’ve got a whole spectrum of belief here, when it comes to the seen and the unseen, so I need us all to agree on a couple things before we can responsibly talk about Gabriel. The first is that the Bible mentions more creatures than you or I have ever encountered on this earth. We just don’t know: We don’t know what some of these passages are referring to; we don’t know what has changed over a few millennia. We don’t know when our word for something is aligning with an English translation of a Greek translation of an ancient Hebrew word. But right out of the gate, we have to be willing to leave the door cracked on what we believe does and does not exist in the vast and unknowable cosmos. That’s number one. We have to agree that there might be creatures out there that we don’t know about.
The second thing we have to deal with is this whole problem with the cultural language around angels. And – as is often the case – translation has really muddied the waters. I mention cherubim and seraphim. It seems like these creatures are where we get the winged guardian image that is so often associated with angels. We heard the passage from Isaiah 6 this morning, the seraphs with six wings attending the Lord on his throne. Celestial beings, employees of God, not human beings, and I don’t see any evidence in the text that our ancient storytellers think these are the same things: cherubim, seraphim, malachim. In the Hebrew bible this is the word translated as “angels”, malak – singular, and it means messenger. This word is used all over the Bible to describe people and entities of all kinds delivering messages. An early, notable story about malachim, translated in your Bible and mine as “angels” is the story of the pronouncement to Abraham that Sarah will have a child in her old age (this should feel very familiar to us where we’re hanging out in the Christmas story). Genesis 18, three men visit Abraham, he provides them hospitality, they give him this message: Sarah will have a son. By the time we get to 19 verse 1, these same guys, two of three, are being called malachim. And when Lot shows them hospitality in the city of Sodom, they have inside information that the city is about to be destroyed. Malachim. Messengers you want to listen to. Who apparently look and walk and act like men who can drink Abraham’s water and eat cakes and calf under a tree.
Do I think these messengers are the same sort of creature as the angel (that’s angelos - messenger in Greek) in Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth? In Luke chapter two, an angel comes to the shepherds by night to tell them about the birth of Christ. “And suddenly there appeared with the angel a great multitude of heavenly host,” stratias, literally “an army.” Named, collectively, in verse 15 as angels. Here’s what I want us to agree to let go of: I don’t think angel is a specific term for a biologically specific creature. I think if you read up on angeloi and malachim, across the old and new testaments, you’ll find – in the places where it’s translated as “angel” – these are words used for a third party who’s delivering big news on behalf of God.
You know Moses and the burning bush? Angel. Malak. In the book of Acts Peter is freed from prison by an angel, an angelos. Burning bush, very different than a guy who can pick a lock. Both messengers from God.
And I think the liberties we take with the idea of angels, as if they were a species, can result in everything from bad theology that hurts other people to thoughtless angelology (real word I just learned) that puts us into a harmless little self-delusion.
The bad theology one, we’ve all heard. When, upon the death of a young person, someone tells the grieving parents that God needed another angel in heaven. That’s obviously not biblical and it’s obviously not helpful. We all try to make meaning when faced with inexplicable loss. But the idea of angels is such a cipher; such a vaguely religious nothing that can stand in for anything, that it can get deployed in harmful ways.
Harmless delusion, on the other hand – that’s me. I love asking God for angels. And I think this is how most people interact with the idea of angels within Christendom. Many of you know my kids, Mike and I have a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old. It was about the time that Adrienne turned three this October that both kids started sleeping through the night more reliably. Up until that point, we’d been sleep deprived for 4 and a half years. We moved here when Loren was three months old, it’s possible, until this fall, that I have never had an interaction with any of you when I didn’t feel like I had a concussion. And when they were both babies and we’d have a jag of really bad sleep or they both had colds, I would lay in bed, desperate for rest, and pray “God, can you please give them each angel? Just two of your smallest angels that you’re not using. To watch over them and help them sleep.” Honestly, if I hadn’t been preaching this story I don’t think I would ever have given this any thought at all. It was just something my addled mind grasped for. Like rubbing a lucky penny. I don’t think I believed it was real, so much as it felt like a way to ask God to put flesh on the bones of my intentions. This is what I want. It is something I cannot do. Give me an angel.
And that’s really just not what angels are. Biblically, cherubim guarded Eden. And the Ark of the Covenant. They didn’t guard people. Seraphim are only explicitly named in our Bible in the Isaiah passage from this morning and the job they’re doing is putting a hot coal in a guy’s mouth. And malachim, angeloi, angels, messengers; It’s a one-way thing. God has something to say, God wants to make sure the hearer hears it. Maybe there is a small, associated task. And, the thing is, this biblical reality is plenty fantastical without embellishment. People will continue to make speculative art about angels that will be beautiful and symbolic and feathered and absolutely mythical. I don’t have any problem with that. But in my personal faith, I don’t want to get the myth confused with the real phenomenon that is described so often, so vibrantly, with so much diversity, from Genesis to Revelation. Messengers. Operating on God’s orders. Circumventing human error. Catalyzing something big.
What we have here, in these scenes from the first chapter of Luke – when the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and when the angel we presume is Gabriel comes to Zechariah – what we have here is God putting flesh on the bones of God’s intentions. Because, human beings, we don’t always know when God is whispering to us in the night, it might take some rounds of misunderstanding, consultation with those wiser than us, time and prayer and discernment. It might take mistakes and doubt and conflict. God speaks to us that way, patiently, protractedly, but ours is a God that drops into time with us, on occasion, and works urgently to bring something specific about in a time and a place. “In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. Her name was Mary.” Angels get very specific instructions. They show up right on time and they will only give their message to the intended recipient. They’re like process servers. And, let me tell you, most people in the Bible who get a visit from an angel are pretty freaked out. Mary is greatly troubled. Luke 1:12 “When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him.” Right time, right place, and really disorienting.
One of the things that’s misleading about the mythical cartoon angel is that it is recognizable. In the Bible, no one seems to immediately recognize a messenger from God when they see it. And when they do know what they’re dealing with, the descriptions range wildly. I mentioned Peter getting busted out of jail, this is in the book of Acts, chapter 12:6-9, “The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. ‘Quick, get up!’ he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists. Then the angel said to him, ‘Put on your clothes and sandals.’ And Peter did so. ‘Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,’ the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision.” Peter walked on water. There are few people in the Bible who are more down with the magical, metaphysical realities of the kingdom of God. Peter’s the guy who walked on water. And Simon Peter was Jewish. He would have received a deep religious education and been familiar with the cherubim and the seraphim and the malachim of it all. And he doesn’t recognize an angel from God even when he’s being broken out of prison under the noses of at least four guards. Must be a dream.
Again, I don’t think the word angel is referring to one thing that looks one way. What makes an angel an angel is what they’re doing. “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people”, at this particular time. This is what’s happening. This is what it means. Gabriel and the angels are busy in this story. They have to tell everyone what’s going on. Zechariah gets met in the temple, Mary at home, Joseph is visited in a dream, our angel army comes to the shepherds after Jesus’ birth. If we remove the angels from this story, we’ve got a post-menopausal woman who gets pregnant, a terrified teenage girl ostracized by her community, and a world that’s received no clue that anything of consequence has happened at all. None of this will work unless God sends some very specific, very embodied messages to the people from whom God is asking unbelievable cooperation. This seems fair, if improbable.
But, for me, the great freedom of being a Christian is that my life is oriented around the God who deals in improbabilities. A God who chooses unlikely people for impossible tasks and brings them along with all sorts of rule breaking and mischief. Why not angels? We’re already celebrating the virgin birth of the God of the universe, who chose to come into time and space, not rich and ruling, but poor, hunted, and without a home. Why would we believe that and stop at angels? When you recognize how often, throughout the Bible, that God just out-plots God’s people and needs to send a clarifying word to keep everything on track, I start to think that messengers of God might be holding this whole mess together. I’ve told you a few angel stories this morning, but we haven’t made a dent in the number of times this happens in the Bible. Hagar, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel, Jacob, Gideon, the women who find Jesus’ tomb empty, Philip, Cornelius; they all lived remarkable lives of faith and they all had to receive a messenger, at one point or another, who kept it all moving. Kept the movements in time with the intentions of God.
And it’s all the same motion. Angels, messengers, Christ; it’s the same thing; it’s the same reaching out. It’s the same God who can’t stand to be apart from you, collapsing the distance in every imaginable way. It’s the same God who captures our imaginations with the improbable and the impossible, because that is the way to our hearts. Miracles, meaning, good news. I don’t know what an angel is. But I know that nothing is impossible with God, so sayeth Gabriel. And that these stories remind us that there will be help for the faithful – inexplicable help, weird help. There will be company for those who step out in faith. Do not be afraid. When you find yourself called to speak truth, lead people, risk comfort, step into the fire, reach out toward God; God has some unbelievable ways of reaching back.
Amen.
Bringing Peace (Is. 11:1-10, Matt. 1:18-24, )
Bringing Peace
December 7, 2025
Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 1:18-24
By: John Gribas
My eldest son Adam can be a serious worrier. He was born in 1992 on Christmas day. For my wife, Lana, and for me, that was a very memorable gift. But despite sharing a birthday with “the prince of peace,” Adam has always been prone to see the glass half empty. To see perhaps a little too keenly and vividly the world’s dangers and threats and darkness and discord.
I remember one time when Adam was about five. He was caught up in some unsettling concern, fretting, wrapped up in worry and frustration and fear. He seemed to be spiraling a bit. So I did what I though a good parent should do in such a circumstance. I got down on my knees so I could look at him face-to-face. Pulling him close to reassure and console. And I said to him, softly, gently…
“Adam. Adam. Hey buddy… Peace.”
Adam stopped his ranting, looked directly at me for a moment, blinked a couple of times, and then said…
“Peace! (Hmph!!) Who thought of that?!”
Wow. Such cynicism from such a young boy. Or was it cynicism? Maybe it was just realism. I mean, this world…sometimes it can be a lot, right? Adam’s world back then in the late 1990s, it really wasn’t that different than our world today. There is a lot to fret about.
Consider the paper headlines or your phone’s news feed. Because of the privilege and good fortune many of us enjoy, we may occasionally allow ourselves to be lulled into imagining that the natural state of things is a broad tranquility, but the truth is every era has more than its fair share of unrest. Jesus reminded his disciples of this. As recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus tempered his followers’ optimistic anticipation for the coming Kingdom of God by foretelling of wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, famines and earthquakes, false prophets, likely persecution, love growing cold for many.
Despite all of this—maybe because of all of this—the overarching message Jesus brought and the message I bring to you today is a message of peace.
Peace. As a faith community, we yearn for it. We pray for it. We receive and experience it. There is obviously a link between peace and the life of faith…the life of the spirit. This link is strongly suggested in scripture. I did a search of the New Revised Standard Version of the bible, and the result listed 250 verses referencing “peace.”
Like my son Adam, I am someone for whom peace does not seem to come naturally. Because of this, I have specific music playlists and use my home’s Wi-Fi speakers to regularly pump peace into my ears and mind and soul. Solitude and quiet walks on one of the trails outside of town—these are also things I embrace and that help to bring a sense of peace. I do this because I love peace! I want peace!
And don’t we all? Really…don’t we all? Come on. Raise your hand if you like peace. Okay. But what, really, is “peace”? If you think about it, there are quite a few variations.
Sometimes, when we pray for peace, we mean “world peace.” We are hoping for the absence of or the end to war and other forms of large-scale conflict. We pray for peace in Ukraine. In the Middle East. Sudan. Afghanistan. Haiti.
Other times, when we pray for peace, it might be in response to a closer, more personal concern. Peace between me and my neighbor or coworker or someone I considered my friend. Peace between my parents. With or between or among my children. We long for “relational peace.”
Still other times, we pray for what we might call “inner peace.” Peace with myself—in my mind or heart or soul. I seek peace when I am internally conflicted. Because of uncertainty in facing an important decision. Because of an inability in light of distressing circumstances to believe that all will be well with me and those I love. Because of pain or failure or shame.
So when we say that we love and want peace, what do we really mean? World peace? Relational peace? Inner peace? I suppose it depends on our circumstances. Sometimes one of these in particular. Sometimes all of these.
Regardless, it seems especially right and good that we pray for peace now, in this time of Advent. This time of anticipation of the prince of peace coming into our world.
We are reminded of this in the earlier reading from Isaiah 11. If we read that passage as a foretelling of the coming of the Christ, then in Jesus’ birth we are encouraged to hope for and anticipate a peaceful existence indeed: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”
Jesus himself, so often throughout his life and ministry, reminds us that he is the prince of peace, the one who offers peace in response to our prayers. In John 14:27, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Yes, Advent seems like a very good time to hope for peace. It is right to ask for it. And we are blessed when we receive it.
But I’d like to take a moment to consider another experience we can have with peace. Something I see reflected in the reading from Matthew, and in the life of Joseph. In my recent reading and reflection on this portion of the Christmas story with Joseph and the angel, I began to see not so much an asking or a receiving…but a “bringing.” Bringing peace.
Consider Joseph. Engaged to Mary. Then discovering that Mary was with child. And he knew the child was not his. That had to be unsettling at the least, and I am sure Joseph was looking for a little peace. What kind of peace? Well…probably all of them!
To begin, Joseph had plenty of reason to hope for world peace. Yes, the Roman empire of that time did bring with it a kind of peace. Pax Romana. A period from about 27 BC to 180 AD. But, despite the name given to the period, the Romans did not think of this “peace” as an absence of conflict and war. Instead, they understood it as a unique time when all of their enemies had been beaten down so completely that they could no longer resist. It was during this sort of “peacetime” that Joseph lived, and he must have known and felt the heavy oppression of Roman occupation daily. Yes, Joseph would have good cause to pray for world peace.
What of relational peace? Well, the news of Mary’s pregnancy had to bring with it some serious tension between Joseph and his fiancé. If the news spread, it would no doubt bring even more serious relational tension between Joseph and Mary and their families and community members. Breaking off the engagement would likely have a similar result. Joseph had plenty of reason to seek some divine help for relational conflict.
For all of us, Joseph included, the simple awareness of world and relational conflict inevitably challenges our inner peace. His difficult situation had to weigh on Joseph’s mind, heart, and soul. This is suggested in verse 19 of our scripture reading from Matthew. “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” Joseph’s compassion for Mary, along with his personal sense of ethics and moral compass, put him in a real bind. What should he do? What was right and good? Joseph, I think, needed some inner peace.
Based on what is included here in the first chapter of Matthew, we don’t know whether Joseph actually reached out in prayer to ask for peace. It does appear that Joseph had a plan, though. It might not resolve any world conflicts, but it might just avoid some difficult relational conflicts and perhaps calm his conflicted heart and mind a bit. The plan was “to dismiss her quietly.”
Apparently, God had other plans. In a dream, an angel of the Lord came to Joseph and shared these plans. Take Mary as his wife. Accept that the child has been conceived through the work and power of the Holy Spirit. Name him “Jesus.” Know that he comes into the world to save people from their sins.
If Joseph had been praying for peace, my guess is that he was not imagining this as the kind of response that would provide it. I’m guessing that for Joseph, and I’m guessing for most of us, the expectation for an answer to a prayer for peace is that circumstances would change. Those nations would lay down arms and establish a binding treaty. Those two people would admit their part in the hurtful situation and would ask forgiveness and offer forgiveness and hug. That weird, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach would vanish and I would feel settled and sure and…at peace.
But the angel’s message to Joseph didn’t promise a change of circumstances. Instead, it offered a new understanding of Joseph’s circumstances. And it asked for a response.
And, as we learn in verse 24, “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife.”
That is all fine and good. But John, you might be thinking, you said you were bringing a message of peace. This sounds like a message of obedience.
Yes, I agree. It does. But stick with me, because I think, at least in this case, they are one and the same.
As I said earlier, we really don’t know if Joseph prayed for peace—prayed for a divine change to circumstances impacting the world or his relationships or his inner turmoil. But we do know that Joseph’s acceptance and obedience in response to the angel’s message did things. Peace things.
I hope it brought peace to Joseph’s conflicted mind and heart. He was in a kind of “no win” situation, trying to figure out how to deal with Mary’s suspicious pregnancy without disgracing her and her family while maintaining his own integrity. The angel’s message, I think, settled things for Joseph.
I have to believe it brought peace to Mary who, despite her own angelic visitation, must have been aware of the likely consequences if Joseph exposed and rejected her. And though their community remained unaware, Joseph’s obedience avoided scandal and unrest and kept the peace for all of them.
What of the larger world? Though there was no obvious, tangible, immediate effect, I think we can all agree that Joseph’s actions were essential to the whole nativity narrative. The narrative that ushered in the prince of peace and, thinking back again to that passage from Isaiah, the hope and promise of this world as a peaceable kingdom.
I even think about the likelihood that Joseph “brought” peace to the little prince of peace himself. I mean, yes, Jesus came as the incarnation of the divine. “God from God, light from light, very God from very God,” as the Nicene creed suggests. But he came…as a baby.
And babies sometimes need some peace. They get hungry. They get cold. They need a diaper changed. They just want to be held and cuddled. And parents bring that.
Maybe it is just a fatherhood connection with the character of Joseph. Maybe it is because I can relate to becoming a father on Christmas. But I kind of like the thought that sometime during one evening in that chilly stable in Bethlehem, Joseph heard the cries of an infant in need, and he leaned over that manger, laid a warm hand on the little one, got very close to reassure and console, and said softly and gently…
“Jesus. Jesus. Hey buddy… Peace.”
Joseph listened and responded…and brought peace.
Archbishop Oscar Romero was an important advocate for human rights in El Salvador. You might recall that Mike referenced him in a sermon not long ago. Romero’s life—which ended in martyrdom—demonstrated peace as an active commitment to the wellbeing of the world, and he made a point of distinguishing this kind of peace from simply the absence of conflict. Romero defined peace as “the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all."
I hope we all pray for peace. I hope that each one of us, at least in some small way, sees an answer to those prayers. And I hope most of all that we—like Oscar Romero, like Joseph, and like the prince of peace himself—are open to the voice of God and willing to respond to that voice. Willing to be the answer to the world’s cries for peace.
As we recognize the need for peace this Advent season…let’s bring it.
Amen.
Zechariah, Elizabeth & the Advent Season
Zechariah, Elizabeth & the Advent Season
By April Mills
11/30/2025
First United Methodist Church
For some of us present today, we carry deep heartache burdened by the ever-persistent sadness that accompanies the absence of a beloved family member. It is a grief felt even more poignantly with the passing of the Thanksgiving Holiday. And though it seems dark, and the ceiling of the world is a wound, there will be stars up there tonight. Our necks arched and the cages of our hearts parted a little wider while peering heavenward, perhaps we harbor hope because sky hooked prayers are guarding us from spite with the same resolve that keeps the universe whole and the moon from slipping. And in the morning these magnificent stars never fail to herd the pale lamb like dawn into our sleeping houses.
The stars above us now were much like the stars above Elizabeth and Zechariah all those years ago. I suppose that this older couple would never consider wishing upon a star, whistling one down like a dog in faith of its shine. I wonder in their longing to be parents if they ever looked up and noticed an exceptionally bright star faithfully moving forward in space and time to shine above a certain manger. A star foretold in the Book of Numbers to come from the house of Jacob. A star poised and ready to answer the prayer of a nation, and later the entire world, that Hope was coming, lamb like, into every home as fluent and loving as milk. None the less, the stars have ushered in a day that forever changed the life of Elizabeth and Zechariah, and if we are lucky, our lives too.
Tradition teaches us that this encounter between Zechariah and Gabriel is part of the Advent season. And in each season, we are all invited to reexamine our traditions to find modern value in ancient sacred scripture. So I invite you now to peer deeper than you ever have before with new eyes and affirming hearts to contemplate the living Word of God as it applies to us today.
Luke, the author of today’s 2nd reading, established early in the text both the timeline of this narrative and the social and religious standing of both Zechariah & Elizabeth—our central figures. Very quickly though, Luke pivots his attentions solely on Zechariah when he writes of an encounter with the Arch Angel Gabriel.
In the encounter we find Zechariah experiencing a crisis of identity after Gabriel reveals he will be a father in his old age. Verse 18, “Zechariah said to the angel How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man and my wife is getting on in years.
Our modern ears might empathize deeply with Zechariah’s dismay. But the telling and retelling of this story may have left us tone deaf to the identity crisis he is surely experiencing. Yes, there were others in Zechariah’s own ancient past who were elderly parents. We all know the story of Abraham and Sarah. But the Story of Abraham and Sarah which Zechariah had traditionally studied many, many times, meant something altogether different for him when applied to his own life in that precise moment. And the result, doubt. Doubt because of his age. Maybe even doubt in his ability to father a child, let alone see the babe raised fully to adulthood.
Dear listeners, this pure moment of vulnerability for Zechariah in the presence of God’s Holy messenger, in the holiest of places a temple, on one of the holiest days in Zechariah’s season of serving as a high priest bear all of the markings of God’s gift of opportunity not at all the curse for doubting. And so God through an emissary blesses Zechariah with the opportunity to engage in silent contemplation—rendering him mute for a time.
From John McLaren, a member of the Center for Action and Contemplation. He writes, “Traditions are cultural communities that carry on, from generation to generation, ideas and practices in which they see great enduring value. Like everything in this universe, traditions are constantly changing. Sometimes they change for the better. Sometimes they change for the worse. Even if a tradition were to stay exactly the same, to be the same thing in a different environment is not the same thing….
We have no choice as to the tradition into which we were born. As we grow older, we must decide: Is this inherited tradition life-giving, death-dealing, or a mix of both? Is it time to migrate to a new spiritual tradition?”
Perhaps after much contemplation it was time for Zechariah to adopt a new spiritual tradition—self acceptance especially in his old age. For Zechariah, this also meant he had to commit to being a new father and make his wife a new mother. And it was so, for we read in verse 24, After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion.
We know from our Bible readings that Zechariah had come around. He spent some time alone really thinking about that encounter with Gabriel, and once he surrendered to the message of the encounter, made up his mind to be a father. Zechariah trusted God to protect his wife while she was pregnant, what’s more knowing the times he lived in and the risks to both mother and child in the birthing process, let alone the survival rate of early childhood, Zechariah believed inherently that both would live—even Elizabeth in her old age.
Finally, the day had come. From Luke 1 verses 57-63 and 76-78, just after John’s birth.
On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “No; he is to be called John.” They said to her, “None of your relatives has this name.” Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.”
Then Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
Because of the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to shine upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
For Zechariah and Elizabeth both, Hope was fulfilled.
Fast forward a couple of years, Zechariah sits after a family celebration. The guests, gone. The table cleared. The left-over food wrapped carefully for another meal, this proud father rests content, feeling the warmth of his wife as she leans gently against him. In this alternate ending, Zechariah is now 88 years old, and his wife Elizabeth, though gray haired, is still beautiful in his eyes. They both listen closely to their grown child, now in his 30s telling of his encounters and message for God. Zecheriah, always contemplative after that fate filled experience with the Angel, listens with one ear, and studies his adult child. To himself he thinks, in all my years, I would never have guessed John to become this kind of man.
Always thinking, Zechariah recalled the day Elizabeth and Mary stood under the portico and both women gasped when they noticed their unborn sons had recognized each other. Zechariah was a little caught off guard by the stray thought. He just realized that John, one of God’s chosen, knew his identity even from the womb. How had he never seen that before?
Then Zechariah thought about all the ways John’s life had been different than a father and high priest would have expected. He was wearing unusual clothing more and more lately. He had also started eating an unusual diet. It was something that appeared to frustrate Elizabeth, who had worked so hard to prepare the celebration dinner. “Of all of the traditional foods I made, foods he loved as a child, why does John only eat honey and locusts now? Elizabeth wondered out loud earlier that day. Clearly, she was a little hurt by John’s new attitude. “It’s only food,” Zechariah says, trying to comfort his wife. “What’s more important is that he is here with us today.”
However at the time, Zechariah was secretly a little worried. Because John was now living strangely in the wild—taking to roaming far away from the relative safety of his home. That more than anything was what scared Zechariah. Being alone in the wild—who knew what influences or events were happening out there, far from the security of the culture John grew up in. But Zechariah was consoled somewhat as he listened to his son talk about recent events.
“Father,” said John, “I have some news for you. I have decided to adopt a new name. I am no longer John, Son of Zechariah. That name is dead for me now. I am being called John the Baptist. The other day, I baptized 20 people in the river Jordan.”
Jolted immediately back into the present, Zechariah was shocked. “Baptized? What is Baptized?” And so John patiently begins to explain how he had contemplated the practice of the ritual bath and made it new. How he used this tradition as an outward sign for followers who’ve repented to declare their faith in God. For the Zechariah of my telling today, this would no doubt be a turning point between father and child. Who takes everything they ever learned at the knees of their religious parents and changes it? What child dares question what they were raised to believe?
“From Reddit: I was born and raised Christian. And…well--I'm pretty sure now that I'm transgender and lesbian. So I don't know. I'm just worried and kinda lost in this whole debate about sin and sexuality and don't really know what to think anymore. Can anyone help?”
Who, who my friends, takes everything they were ever raised to believe and questions it? John did. He questioned traditional clothing and found options that aligned with his identity. He questioned what he ate and drank, and aligned his diet to his beliefs. He questioned his association with community, and went instead to live where he felt affirmed and safe in a different corner of God’s Kingdom. Above all, John questioned some of the dogmatic beliefs and practices of the day and aligned them with God’s Holy purpose to restore the house of Isreal. Can you see the link my friends? Can you see the dot I just connected? There is so much from John’s life that is similar to our queer and trans Christian siblings. I want to be clear before I move on. There is no current scholarly debate over John’s gender, identity, or sexual orientation.
Even so, John holds something else in common with some of the Queer and Trans Christians of our time. John was murdered for his convictions. He was killed because he represented a direct threat to someone in power, King Herod. John upset the status quo because he chose to come out, live his truth, and talk about it openly rather than hide in the closet. A recent news headline from Washington DC illustrates the same story in our own age.
“The National Black Justice Collective (NBJC) mourns the death of Da Queen ‘Dream’ Johnson, a 28-year-old Black transgender woman. She was shot and killed on Saturday, July 5. The D.C. police are asking for the public’s help in solving this case. Dream’s family and local advocates believe this is a hate crime.”
Did Dream Cry out to God? What about John? Did he cry out to God when he was facing his death? If either did, were there words anything like David’s Psalm from the Hebrew Bible?
I am the utter contempt of my neighbors
and an object of dread to my closest friends—
those who see me on the street flee from me.
I am forgotten as though I were dead;
I have become like broken pottery.
For I hear many whispering,
“Terror on every side!”
They conspire against me
and plot to take my life.
Did Dream, and possibly millions of other Trans people pray to God for protection like David did? Is this their prayer now?
Save me in your unfailing love, God,
from my parents who have hated and disowned me.
Save me in your unfailing love, God,
from a community that won’t hire me.
Save me in your unfailing love, God,
from the nurse who refuses to provide care on principle.
Save me in your unfailing love, God,
from the people who want to kill me.
Save me. Save me. Save me.
Where was Dream’s Hope? Where is our Hope now? Are we like David and willing to place our Hope in God truly shouting, “Love the LORD, all you faithful people! The LORD preserves those who are true to him, but the proud he pays back in full. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.”
As a community we have taken heart. A couple of years ago, we made a commitment to be an open and affirming faith. We welcome all to the table every week. We have lifted up leadership, members of the LGBTQ community, who have the bandwidth in their busy lives to contribute to the Kindom of God now, here, present with us today. But have we demonstrated that strength in other areas of this church community? Look around friends, where do we have room to grow? Think about it. In this sanctuary, what spaces can we expand to allow our divine siblings to be seen and included? What are the spaces that subtly exclude them?
May I make a suggestion? Look now at the cover of our program today friends. Look long at the image of Jesus. The title of the art is called Christ Breaks the Riffle.
John calls to you from beyond the grave to consider the weapons that have been used against our trans siblings and children. In some cases yes, it is a gun. But sometimes the weapons wielded against the Queer community are far more subtle. This is the same weapon that was used to justify slavery. The same weapon that was used to justify misogyny. That weapon is in our pews even now. Bright red, and boldly lettered with the words The Holy Bible. It has become for some a sacred weapon that has perverted the Word of God for longer than any one of us would care to admit. It was forged out of more than a thousand years of injustice designed to preserve power in the hands of those who fear change.
Our task as a church is to consider how we can change that narrative now. We should consider things contemplatively, as John did. And usher in small things that change the narrative from fear to hope. Our time is now. As parents, siblings, and Allies, we have access to other options. And by choosing those options perhaps bend arc of the moral universe back towards justice. We have the opportunity to take was has been weaponized, and turn it once more into the tool is should be--hope.
My gift to all of you this Advent Season is a to offer each of you the opportunity to embrace a different way of seeing some of the texts that have been used to harm Queer and Trans people for thousands of years. Though there are so many passages to select from, I would like to read just one passages to you, as an example.
1 Corinthians 6:9
New Revised Standard Version: Do you not know that the wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, male prostitutes, sodomites,
That verse, and many more does more harm than good for our divinely created Christian queer friends, family, and coworkers—let alone this church community. But there is another translation we could adopt.
From the Queen Jame Version: Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor morally weak, nor promiscuous,
In an age where words matter, and what we read influences who we are—it’s time to look at subtle ways we can include everyone. We don’t have to decide today, but we must decide.
Circle back with me once more. I ask you to contemplate this question posed so elegantly by John McLaren: “Is this inherited tradition, a non-inclusive Bible, a life-giving, death-dealing tradition, or a mix of both? Is it time to migrate to a new spiritual tradition?”
In closing, it is my prayer that John’s ministry can still do the job it was intended to do thousands of years ago. As the Arch Angel Gabriel said, “With the spirit and power of Elijah John will go before Jesus, to turn the hearts of parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
This is the Word of the Lord, Amen.