November 1, 2026  All Saints’ Day
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9  First John 3:1-3
“Compassion: if there is anything worthy of praise…” 
Douglas T. King

“I am a work in progress…” a member at a former church announced to me as I sat by her hospital bed.  She then quipped, “But these days it seems like a whole lotta work for just a little progress.”  Her million-watt smile, more than eighty years in the making, lit up the room and we both laughed.  She talked about how she thought when she retired, now many years ago, she was done with her learning and growing.  Later she discovered that the process never ends.  As she lay there in that hospital bed, one of many she had been in over the past several months, she said that she had gained the valuable wisdom that everything that happens in life, no matter how challenging or perplexing, can be used in preparation for what is to come next.  She said, “God isn’t done with me yet.”  The look in her eye told me that she gained immeasurable strength from that truth.  

Today is All Saints Day, the day in which we remember those who have died, gone on to a greater shore and been claimed by God as saints.  In all my years of ministry I have done my share of funerals and memorials.  But I have never done one for a saint, and yet every service I have done has been for a saint.  We have a host of remarkable, faithful people in this sanctuary this morning, none of us is a saint just yet, but all of us will be.  

Today is also the final sermon in our series on compassion.  And in this election season we are in deep need of compassion.  Regardless of political perspective we are in deep need of compassionate people, compassionate communities, and compassionate leaders.  So once again we turn to this wonderful text from Philippians on the cover of our bulletin and this call to find in those around us, “…anything worthy of praise…”  

In the first sermon in this series, I spoke of how we might be more compassionate toward one another if we envisioned one another as beloved infants of God, freshly baptized.  Now as we conclude our series we will turn our thoughts to the other end of the spectrum, envisioning one another for whom we will be after we have died and been enveloped in God’s eternal love.  

I adore the transformational promise we receive in this text from First John.  We are told “what we will be has not yet been revealed.”  Thank God that is true for you and for me and for all the ways we fall short.  But guess what, we will not merely be smoothed out around our rough edges.  We are told God will be revealed to us, and we will be like God.  What that exactly means I cannot begin to comprehend.  But what I would infer is that it speaks to the way in which God is described in the first verse of this text, “See what love the Father has given us…”  We will be loving of ourselves and all God’s children the way in which God is loving of us.  

Even the best of us, on our best days, do not yet love the way in which the divine loves. But all of us, on our best days, in our best moments, offer love to others that is some small, imperfect reflection of how God loves.  What is also true is that all of us are capable of behaving in ways that are entirely contrary, even diametrically opposed to God’s loving ways.  

My friend Tom Are, who came to preach for us this past April, tells a compelling story of a funeral he once did.  Funerals are a time when we are reminded of the promise of eternal life we have been given in Jesus Christ. But they are also a time when we celebrate the life of the person who has died.  Oftentimes, there are glorious stories to be shared; tales of a loving and generous wife, or of a gentle and goofy father.  Tales that warm our hearts and inspire us to want to be better people.  But no one is perfect.  And sometimes that imperfection cuts deep.  

Tom’s story is of a service for one of those deeply, deeply imperfect people.  It is a natural reaction for a preacher in such a circumstance to want to sugarcoat the person’s life; to carefully edit their description in such a way that they paint the person as a saint in this life, regardless of how far that was from the truth.  But the man who had died had been horrible to his children and there was no way to get around that fact.    Tom knew that those now adult children would be sitting in the front pew when he got up to speak about their father.  He just could not stand up in that pulpit and lie to them.  

But what to do?  Tom told the truth.  He acknowledged the ways in which the man had failed during his life.  He named how the man’s behavior had deeply hurt those closest to him.  But Tom also spoke another truth.  At that funeral Tom shared an eternal truth.  God was not done with that imperfect man.  As broken and as failed as he was in this life, he was and is and always will be a child of God.  What he will be may not have been fully revealed in this life, but God is not done with him.  And this truth is a remarkable gift to that imperfect man, a remarkable gift to his children, and a remarkable gift to each one of us in all our imperfection.

When we are struggling to offer compassion to someone, we might be reminded of Tom’s story.  We might be reminded of this text from First John.  There may be people in our lives with whom we are challenged to find anything worthy of praise. The reasons may be entirely justifiable, or they may say more about ourselves and our own limited preconception and prejudices. We all have them.  

Regardless of the reason, when we cannot find anything in someone to praise, we are called to recognize that God is not done with them yet.  We often speak of being created by God as if it were in the past tense.  But the divine continues to create within each one of us.  Through the transforming grace of Jesus Christ and the continuing presence of God’s Holy Spirit, our creation continues.  It is as if God is a sculptor and we are the lumps of clay just starting to take shape but far from revealing our ultimate beautiful form.  This gives me great hope for my failures and limitations.  And when we are feeling like condemning someone in whom we can find no cause for praise, it is a stop sign for our black and white judgments.  

As creations of the divine, each and every one of us is worthy of praise or will be worthy of praise when we are made complete in God’s creation.  When we look on others with this reality in mind, we can be open to seeing the faint outlines of what is praiseworthy in one and all, even those we find most troublesome.  We are all rough drafts of one form or another.  And when we choose to look upon one another as those works in progress our eyes can be open to seeing what in each of us, including ourselves, God is using to transform us into saints.  We have the opportunity to glimpse the faint outlines of God’s masterwork in motion.  

We began this sermon series on compassion speaking of how we might imagine all those around us as newly baptized infants.  Now I encourage us to imagine all those around us, those we find easy to praise, and those we find impossible to praise, with their lives completed, fully fashioned by God in eternity.  

As we will sing in our final hymn, one of my favorite hymn lines, “they in glory shine…”  All those deeply imperfect people, “they will in glory shine…”  All those with whom we vehemently disagree, “they will in glory shine…”  You and me, MAGA and the DSA and everyone in between, “we will in glory shine…”  God’s glory will be revealed in each of us, in all of us, in the end.  

Now is the time for us to imagine that reality for friend and supposed foe alike.  One day we all will be formed and polished and perfected in divine love.  We all…will indeed…in glory shine.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.      

October 25, 2026 Reformation Sunday 
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9Matthew 8:5-13 
“Compassion: Whatever is Commendable”
Melissa K. Smith

Have you ever played I Spy with a child? Growing up, I would play with my siblings on long car rides, and it was easy—we were looking at the same scenery in similar ways. But when I was older and playing I Spy with younger cousins and church family, it became a very different and challenging game. I learned that I had to figure out how the younger, shorter, more creative friend was seeing their world—and only then would I have a fighting chance to play the game.

If we were to play right now and I said, “I spy something that is brown…” What would you think it could be?

From your perspective, it could be the baptismal font, the organ, maybe the chair next to Nikki in the choir. But from the pulpit’s perspective—and the choir’s perspective—it could be the Celtic cross that Mark Vago made that hangs in the balcony.

The funny thing about I Spy is that we can all look at the very same room and see completely different things. One person notices the flowers. Another notices the windows. Someone else notices the person who just walked in.

We all have our own ways of seeing the world. We notice certain things, and we overlook others. Sometimes we see what we expect to see. And sometimes, if we are honest, we are very good at spotting what is wrong. We notice the person who made a mistake, the comment that offended us, or the person who does not quite fit our expectations. It can be much harder to notice what is good.

And that brings us to our next word in our sermon series on compassion. This morning we are looking at: Whatever is commendable.  To be commendable means to be worthy of praise, approval, or recognition. Something commendable is something worth pointing out—not because it is perfect, but because it reflects goodness.

Think about the people in your life whom you admire. What makes them commendable? Perhaps it is their kindness, humility, generosity, or the way they show up when someone needs them. Perhaps it is their willingness to listen, to admit when they are wrong, or to do the right thing when no one is watching.

In Philippians 4:8, Paul writes, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable … think about these things.”

Paul invites us to direct our attention toward what is good and worthy of recognition. Not because everything in the world is good, and not because we should ignore what is broken, but because what we choose to notice shapes what we value—and what we value shapes how we live.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus recognizes something commendable in an unexpected person: the faith of a centurion.

A centurion was a military officer in the Roman army. In Galilee, a Roman officer was an outsider, a supporter of the oppressor, and a Gentile, a non-Jew. We can imagine how surprising it would have been for Jesus’ listeners to hear him commend such a man’s faith.
The centurion said to Jesus, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.” And Jesus immediately said, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion responds, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.”

He then explains his rank and authority, showing that he understands authority deeply. And that makes his statement of humility—that he is not worthy of Jesus entering his home—all the more profound. The centurion is not throwing around his power or demanding anything of Jesus. Rather, he is expressing significant belief in the power of Jesus’ Word.

“Only say the word, and my servant shall be healed.”

Today is Reformation Sunday, and every year on the last Sunday of October, we remember the movement that called the church to look again at what it believed and why. The Reformers wanted people to hear the good news of the gospel clearly: that we are saved by God’s grace, through faith, and that Scripture—the Word of God—bears witness to this promise.

The Reformation was, in many ways, a movement about learning to listen again and seeing Scripture through a renewed lens—to return to the Word of God and trust the promise it proclaims.

Theologian Dale Bruner says in his commentary on the passage of the centurion, “Wherever faith in Jesus’ simple Word begins to occur across a culture, reformation happens there.” He then quotes Gerhard Ebeling, a German Lutheran theologian, who asked why Luther’s Reformation became a reformation in deed and not just in words. Ebeling’s answer was that Luther trusted only in the Word and not at all in deeds.

Luther fiercely spoke against the idea that good works alone led to salvation. That missed the point of the Gospel. Luther was not saying that good works do not matter. He was challenging the idea that our good works can earn God’s grace. We do not serve our neighbors in order to make ourselves worthy of God’s love. We serve because we have already received that love as a gift. And when we trust that grace, it changes us. We become freer to serve without seeking recognition, to love without keeping score, and to show compassion without first deciding whether someone deserves it.

That is what makes the centurion’s faith such a fitting story for Reformation Sunday. He trusts the Word, and his trust moves him toward another person’s suffering. His faith is not a way of earning God’s favor. It is a posture of humility and trust that opens him to the power of Christ.

The centurion trusts that Jesus’ Word is sufficient. Luther trusts that God’s Word is sufficient to proclaim the grace we cannot earn. And we, as people who gather around that Word, are called to let it shape not only what we believe, but how we see and treat the people around us.

Jesus recognizes faith in a man whom others might have regarded primarily as an outsider, an agent of Rome, or an opponent. He challenges his listeners—and us—to see what is commendable where we might not have expected to find it.

The Reformation changed the church because people were willing to question what had become familiar and rediscover truths they believed had been obscured. But reform is not only about correcting what is wrong. It is also about recognizing where God is already at work, sometimes in places we would never have thought to look.

We often expect God to work through the people we know, the traditions we cherish, and the communities where we feel most comfortable. And certainly, God works through those things. But the centurion reminds us that God’s work cannot be confined to the boundaries we draw.

Sometimes the person who challenges our assumptions has something important to teach us. Sometimes the person outside our community demonstrates a faithfulness we need to recognize. Sometimes the person we have overlooked becomes an example of the very thing we claim to value.

This is not a call to abandon our convictions. It is a call to hold them with enough humility that we remain attentive to God’s work beyond our expectations.

It is also a call to examine the church itself.

Do our traditions help people encounter the grace of God, or have we become so attached to them that we mistake the tradition for the gospel? Do our words reflect the compassion of Christ, or do they make it harder for others to hear the good news? Do we welcome the people God sends our way, or do we unconsciously expect them to become like us before we recognize the gifts they bring?

Reformation Sunday reminds us that asking difficult questions can be an act of faithfulness. The church is always in need of reform—not because everything it does is wrong, but because it belongs to a God whose grace is greater than our habits, whose love exceeds our boundaries, and whose work continues beyond what we can see.

And that brings us back to Paul’s words.

Whatever is commendable.

It is easy to celebrate goodness when it comes from people we already admire. But what happens when goodness appears somewhere unexpected? Can we name the good we see, even when doing so requires us to reconsider our assumptions? Can we learn from someone whose experience is different from ours?

Compassion is not pretending that injustice does not exist. It is refusing to let our judgments prevent us from recognizing another person’s humanity or responding to genuine need.

The most faithful communities are those that can hold two things together: the courage to challenge what is harmful and the humility to recognize what is good.
The centurion’s story reminds us that we do not get to decide in advance where faith will appear. He gives us a beautiful expression of that trust: “Only say the word.” He does not claim to be worthy. He does not demand control. He trusts that Jesus can do what he cannot.

And Jesus recognizes something commendable in him.

Perhaps that is the invitation for us this week: to trust the Word enough to let it change us. To listen when Scripture calls us to love our neighbors. To remain humble enough to learn from people we might otherwise overlook. And to recognize that God’s grace is not something we earn, but a gift that frees us to live with greater compassion.

So let us play a different kind of I Spy this week.

Let us look for goodness. Let us name what is commendable. Let us listen for God’s Word, trusting that it can continue to reform our hearts and our community.

May we remember the centurion’s words:
“Only say the word.”
Only say the word, and open our eyes.
Only say the word, and reform our hearts.
Only say the word, and teach us to see our neighbors with compassion.
Only say the word, and make us people whose lives reflect the grace we have received.

For the Word we trust is the Word that calls us to see differently, love generously, and live faithfully.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

October 18, 2026  Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Romans 12:9-13
“Let Love Be Genuine”
Douglas T. King

Sunshine, and rainbows, and cotton candy…soft music, champagne and candlelight…there are so many fluffy words by which we talk about and around love, but do not name the reality of love. This is why I do not allow couples to write their own marriage vows because they often end up not being vows.  Vows are not endless metaphors of surface-level happiness.  Vows are promises that call us to remain steadfast through whatever life may bring.
 
There is no doubt that love is an emotion and a powerful one.  The phrase “falling in love” speaks to this.  Love can be something that surprisingly draws us in and overwhelms us. But love is also a choice and a daily one at that.  You may fall in love with someone because of some magical elixir cocktail of traits, the way their laugh sounds like tinkling wind chimes; their off kilter and kooky sense of humor; the way their eyes shine in the moonlight.  But if you choose to build a life together, with bills to pay, difficult decisions to make, and endless routines to navigate, those things alone will not be enough to carry you day after day after day in love.  For love to last over time and all the twists and turns of life, it requires a commitment that is renewed daily.  When you come home from a twelve-hour workday, to find your partner’s dirty socks yet again not in the hamper but on the floor, there are no butterflies in your stomach or sparkly feelings in your heart.  You make a choice to love that person, dirty socks and all.  It is a decision and a commitment.  And that form of love is a deeper and more genuine love than any ephemeral, magic moment.  It requires a generosity of spirit that is demonstrated daily.
 
This is why at weddings we have vows and not fluffy descriptions of love, “I promise, before God and these witnesses, to be your loving and faithful spouse; in plenty and in want; in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health…  For every moment of plenty that is lifted up we are reminded there will be times of want. There will be joy, and there will be sorrow as well.  Days of health and days of sickness.  There will be days of receiving great blessings and days that require sacrifice.  We make a decision every day, whether to love once more or not.  There is an element of love that is a daily discipline like brushing your teeth or exercising.  Love may be initially kindled as an emotion but it lives and breathes in the tangible ways we demonstrate it every day.  And when we choose to love, we choose to demonstrate a generosity of spirit toward the one we love, dirty socks and all.

Our stewardship theme this year is from our text from the twelfth chapter of Romans, “let love be genuine.”  The Biblical Scholar N. T. Wright refers to this section of Romans as “God’s Call to Worship, Holiness, and Unity.” (Wright, p, 700)  These exhortations by Paul, “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.”  All of these things are offering worship to God.  Paul is telling us worship, love of God, is not an hour a week endeavor but a twenty-four-seven life calling.  In all that we do, we have an opportunity to worship God or not.  Just as in all of our relationships each day we have the choice to love or not to love, in our relationship with God, to worship or not to worship.

Love is not always easy, in romantic love it may be those dirty socks on the floor. In our efforts to worship God, hey did you just hear that long and daunting list of ways we are to live every single day to embody our worship of the divine?  It can be a lot.  It can be too much.  It is too much.  

This Romans text is a set of exhortations that makes those marriage vows seem tame. Thankfully, as we face this challenging task we are blessed in two ways.  The first is God’s grace, ever forgiving as we fall short, fall down, get up and try again.  The second is the church.  We cannot begin to live into such a challenging calling on our own.  We need each other to even make the attempt.  We need each other that we may teach and inspire one another; that we may comfort one another when we fail and celebrate one another when we succeed; that we may grow into the disciples we are called to be.  It is the journey before us as followers of Jesus Christ.
 
And that is all the reason we need to bring our very best to being the church together, worshipping God in how we live our lives.  We are told the church is the body of Christ in the world, the provisional embodiment of God incarnationally present with us.  If we do not pour ourselves into being the church together how can we follow Christ?  

But on top of all of that, there is another urgent reason for us to be passionately committed to Christ’s church.  Perhaps the world has never needed the church more than it does right now. Post pandemic we live in a society that is becoming increasingly fractured and isolated and divisive.  There is less and less involvement in community organizations. People are much less likely to know their neighbors.  Much less likely to volunteer.  Much less likely to put the good of the community above their own personal wants.  Much less likely to love the world and those around them.
 
The world needs the church now more than ever, to embody the worship of God by connecting people; caring for people; lifting up the most vulnerable; reminding people to think beyond their own wants; to be the body of Christ. And because the church is the body of Christ, the embodiment of God’s presence in the world, we are called to love the church.

But let’s be honest, loving the church can be a little like loving a spouse for fifty years. We have some glorious moments together; the choir sings an anthem that makes our hearts jump with joy; our faith is transformed by something we learn in Bible Study or Adult Education; we serve together to support Bridge Bread, Isaiah 58, the Saint Patrick’s casserole ministry; the friendships created here deeply enrich our lives.  And then there are the moments that can feel less than stellar.  I say something in the pulpit which you find completely absurd; you get into a disagreement at a committee meeting; you don’t like the cookies served at coffee hour.  

There are countless reasons that it can feel like the church left their dirty socks on the floor.  The human element of the church is far from perfect.  But love is not always, rainbows and sunshine and emotional bliss.  Love is waking up every day and making a conscious decision to embody love, with a generous spirit.

As we begin this stewardship campaign, we are called to remember that we are to love the church as it represents the body of Christ; that love is a discipline that transcends ephemeral high and low points; that love is a daily decision; that love expresses itself tangibly; and that the world needs the church, the body of Christ, now more than ever.

The practical side of stewardship is always true, the church needs your pledge and my pledge to keep the lights on.  There is no magic fairy to pay the bills.  But that should not overshadow the deeper reality that each of us needs to offer the best we can as an expression of love; as a tangible demonstration of our daily commitment to worshipping God by loving the body of Christ and God’s wider world.  

Rainbows and cotton candy are a superficial form of love.  We are called to real, embodied love that demonstrates itself every day in a generosity of spirit, a generosity of spirit toward Christ’s church and God’s world.  Together we can do just that.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Wright, N. T., The New Interpreter’s Bible: vol. X, Abingdon  Press, Nashville, 2002.                     

October 11, 2026  Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9  First Samuel 16:1-13
“Compassion: Whatever is Pleasing”
Douglas T. King

The congregation I served during the nineties in Buffalo, New York was the downtown church of influence and it had its share of movers and shakers.  It also had a wide variety of all kinds of folks.  We had a member named Doris.  Every Sunday, regardless of the weather, nine degrees or ninety degrees, Doris would come to church in a mink coat that had seen better days.  When I say it had seen better days, it was threadbare to the point that one wondered if another animal had spent some time vociferously chewing on it.  I never saw her without it on.  But what was most distinctive about Doris was her makeup. She always wore fire-engine-red lipstick.  And it was not applied with a delicate subtlety. The bright flash of red often traveled well beyond the boundaries of her lips.
 
When Doris died, her sister, who was not a church member, decided to have the service at a funeral home, with an open casket.  Doris was laid out in a demure ivory dress, no ratty mink coat in sight.  And, on top of that, she was sans fire engine red lipstick.  Her lips were painted with a whisper hint of pink hue.  I was heartbroken.  What made Doris beautiful and pleasing, what made Doris, Doris, had been taken from her.  

In cartoon characterizations of what awaits us after death we often get a set of pearly gates and Saint Peter, clipboard in hand, standing there checking people in.  I do not envision that being anywhere close to the metaphysical reality.  But to continue that cartoon image, if Doris showed up before Saint Peter in the manner she was laid out that day, I am not sure he would have recognized her.  And if he did, his heart would have been broken as well.

There is a tale about an eighteenth-century much beloved and well-respected Hasidic Rabbi named Zusya.  I often think about this story.  I have likely shared it with you before but it is worth another hearing.  We are told that Zusya was close to dying.  When his students came to his bedside they found him weeping.  They were confused.  If anyone could die with confidence that they had done right by the divine it was their deeply faithful teacher Zusya.  He had lived as exemplary a life as any of the great figures of the Torah, as faithful as Abraham or Moses.  Did he worry he had not lived up to their example?  Zusya’s response was that he was not worried God would ask him why he was not more like Moses or Abraham.  Zusya was worried God would ask him why he was not more like Zusya.

Our journey to greater faithfulness is ever an effort to grow into being our true selves.  God has not fashioned each of us to be something other than who we are, but to be exactly who we are.  Most of us will not get there on this side of life but we will all be led there in the end, enveloped by God’s transforming grace.  The first stanza of the middle hymn we just sang speaks to that call.  “In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree; in cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!  In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”

Today is the fifth sermon in our series on compassion as we continue to hear those compelling words from the book of Philippians.  Today’s word is pleasing.  In our reading from the first book of Samuel we are told of the anointing of David, who God finds pleasing, to become the next king of Israel.  

Samuel assumes he is looking for someone who is a carbon copy of the current king, Saul.  His eyes are peeled for a tall, strapping man who looks the part of a warrior king. When he sees the eldest son he believes the next king stands tall before him.  “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  “…the Lord does not see as others see…”  The runt of the litter, the eighth son, the biblical number for imperfection by the way, young David is the king the Lord seeks.  As we know, he will indeed be a warrior, but of an entirely different kind.  When he faces the giant, Goliath, he will not use his fists or a mighty sword, David will overcome his foe with a sling shot, a meagre shepherd’s weapon, and a simple, small stone faithfully flung.  He will be a warrior king of an entirely different flavor, unique to who he truly is.  God could see something in David that others could not.  David was not called to be Saul.  David called to be David.

When God looks upon us we are being seen for whom we were created to be, in all our unique glory.  When we look at one another we often have an entirely different set of criteria by which we see each other.  We might choose to negatively evaluate others by who we think they should be.  Sometimes we believe we have a better understanding of how someone should live their lives than they do.  We might choose to negatively evaluate others unknowingly by how much they remind us of ourselves.  Sometimes the people that frustrate us the most share the exact character faults we possess.  We often choose to negatively evaluate others on how different they are than us.  Sometimes we inherently assume those who are different than us are somehow automatically rejecting who we are and how we live, and thus we reject them.  But what we almost always do is see and evaluate people solely for who they are now, not for who they will become when God’s grace has completed them; their true selves, in all of their singular glory.

A simple glance at the divine creation reveals to us that God clearly revels in a vast variety of diversity.  From the arctic tundra to the Saraha desert, from the flat plains of Kansas to the mountains of Colorado…our world is inhabited by as many as two million different species, the divine creation is an exploding cornucopia of difference.

While we often celebrate the vast variety we find in nature, we are not always as good at offering the same appreciation for the vast variety found in who we all are as humans.  We can be fascinated by a duck billed platypus as a creation so distinctly different. But we are not always so intrigued by those people who are significantly different than us in the ways they see the world and live their lives. We can find it challenging to see them the way in which God sees them; to recognize, that imperfections and all, they are on their way to becoming the child of God they were created to be.

When we look upon each other, we need to learn to put on our God’s grace goggles.  To be reminded of the opening line to our middle hymn in terms of all those who cross our paths, those we find easy to love and value, and those who we find difficult to love and value, “In the bulb there is a flower…”  

Then perhaps we will recognize the beauty in ratty mink coats and sloppy lipstick; the value of those who are different than us in political persuasion, sexual orientation, national identity, vision of the world; the beloved-ness of those who annoy the heck out of us.  

God sees us, one and all, as pleasing, as the people we were created to be and who we will become when God’s grace is finally done working on us.  In God’s eyes, every last child of God is pleasing in God’s sight, in all of their remarkable particularity, even those of us, like myself, that have a long way to go before we come close to being who we were created to be.

Let us recognize the bulb in each other, what is pleasing, that will become a flower in each other.
 
Thanks be to God.  Amen.              

October 4, 2026  Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9, Malachi 3:1-4
“Compassion: Whatever is Pure”
Douglas T. King

Whenever I hear the word pure my mind hearkens back to the old Ivory soap ad campaign and its proud claim that it was 99.44 percent pure and to prove it, look, the soap floats.  I was never exactly sure how that was supposed to demonstrate purity.  Of course, technically something that is 99.44 percent pure is not exactly pure.  Pure is a one hundred percent proposition.  Which of course makes this call to purity for us a dicey consideration.  I will not speak for you, but even when I am inclined to imagine good attributes to who I am, purity does not make the list.  And frankly, I am not likely to assume purity as a defining characteristic of any of you.  

Today is our fourth sermon in our series on compassion and this week’s call from Philippians is clear, “whatever is pure…”  

So how do we get there?  This is when we turn to our text from Malachi.  This little book has more than its share of harsh condemnation for us.  But it is also clear about who will do the heavy lifting on our journey to becoming who we are called to be, to stepping into purity.  “For God is like a refiner’s fire and like washers’ soap; God will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and God will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.”  We cannot make ourselves pure. And thank goodness for that, otherwise I would not like our chances.  It is the power of God that will get us there.

I have to say the Old Testament prophets knew how to get your attention.  When Malachi thunders, “…who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” I can feel my anxiety rising.  While the cleansing soap metaphor feels reasonable enough, the refining fire is, shall we say, rather intimidating.  But Malachi’s understanding of God is not quite the same as our understanding of God and God’s grace in Jesus Christ.  

Soap and fire are common ways to provide purification.  The focus is on the fact that God will indeed purify.  When something is purified it is not damaged.  It becomes what it truly is, at its essence.  When gold is purified what is removed is what is not gold.  When we are purified we become who we truly are, who we were created to be.  

Our journey to purity is not set in motion by our actions. It is our being welcomed into following Jesus Christ’s journey of life, death, and resurrection that allows us to take any step forward at all.  Jill Duffield reminds us of this and suggests a shift in vocabulary.  Since pure feels like such an either/or word she offers up the word “holy.”  She writes that we rely “on grace, knowing never in ourselves, through ourselves, or by ourselves will we ever be holy.  Everyone and everything belongs to God and is therefore valued and valuable.  We are not pure in and of ourselves, but we are made holy.” (Duffield, p. 63)

She then goes on to suggest how we might grow to appreciate the purity in others.  “I knew and said I believed that each person is made in the image of God, imago Dei, divine-like.  This meant that every time I looked at myself or another and rated, rejected, or devalued them, it equated to apostasy, heresy, blasphemy. (Duffield, p. 72)  

Duffield then came up with a way to put this belief into an embodied practice.  “It started with an experiment.  Just for a day, when I came across anyone—the clerk at the store, the teenager walking the dog, the annoying guy at the gym, my kids, my husband, coworkers—I would think to myself, ‘Holy!’  Just like Oprah said back in the day, ‘You get a car!  You get a car!  You get a car!’  I would see someone and all-but-voice, ‘You are holy! You are holy!  You are holy!’  It began to feel almost like a superpower, as if my naming them as much as made them so.  A performative word enlivened by God’s living one, echoing the ultimate performative word that created by saying, ‘Let there be…and there was…’  The very word that said we were good, and godly.” (Duffield, p. 72)

And Duffield discovered something else.  As she bestowed the title of holy upon the imperfect people around her, she found it easier to think of herself in such terms.  She was not only more gentle and loving to others, but also to herself.

Imagine if we did just that.  If we viewed both friend and perceived foe not for how we are evaluating their worthiness or lack thereof in the moment but for who God is creating them to be.  The author Kathleen Norris writes of another word that is in this family of pure and holy.  She writes of the word “perfect” and how it is used in terms of our call to be perfect.  In Matthew, Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Whew!  No pressure.  “The good news about the word ‘perfect’ as used in the New Testament is that it is not a scary word, so much as a scary translation.  The word that has been translated as ‘perfect’ does not mean to set forth an impossible goal, or the perfectionism that would have me strive for it at any cost.  It is taken from a Latin word meaning complete, entire, full-grown.  To those who originally heard it, the word would convey ‘mature’ rather than what we mean today by ‘perfect.’” (Norris, pp. 56-57)

As Presbyterians we baptize babies because we believe God’s loving grace precedes our ability to be in any way perfect in our behavior.  I always tell parents that their baby can do no wrong during a baptism.  The congregation loves a baptism even more when Melissa or I are attempting to wrangle a particularly feisty, screaming child.  We as a congregation make vows to teach and cherish that beloved one.  There is so much they need to learn. But once that little one becomes an adult and disagrees with us that promise does not seem to apply.  Perhaps we need to be reminded that these vows are for a lifetime, even if the baptized one grows up to see the world differently than we do.  We are ever called to teach each other and embody the meaning of God’s grace.  At nine months, nine years or ninety years, we are still bound to one another by our baptismal vows, and with God’s grace, maturing in the faith together.

Today, around the world, we will all come to this table as invited guests.  We are, one and all, hardly worthy of the invitation by any standard of how Jesus lived and died.  And yet, he is the host, and he can see the potential purity in us, the holiness in us, the mature perfection in us, who we were created to be, and who, with God’s grace, we will be.  

May we learn to extend that grace-filled vision to one another.  None of us are worthy enough to come to the table. Yet, we are, one and all, in God’s eyes, holy and invited.  As we gather around this table across the entire world, let us look at one another as holy, and when God’s love is done with us, pure.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Duffield, Jill J., Appreciate these Things, WJK, Louisville,  2025.
Norris, Kathleen, Acedia & Me, Riverhead Books, New York, 2008.
 

         

September 27, 2026 Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9Luke 10:25-37 
“Compassion: Whatever is Just”
Melissa K. Smith

Two people can look at the exact same thing and see something completely different.
A person walking down the street might see a stranger. Someone else might see a neighbor.

One person might see a problem. Another might see a person who needs help.

One might see an inconvenience. Another might see an opportunity to love.

What we see—and perhaps even more importantly, how we see it—shapes the way we live.

In Paul's letter to the Philippians he says, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, pure, pleasing, commendable… think about these things.” Paul is talking about the things we allow to occupy our minds and shape our hearts. Our sermon series this fall is looking at each of these words, and today we are exploring whatever is just.

The Greek word for “justice” is δίκαιος (dikaios). I remember in my first semester of Greek in college learning that the word δίκαιος meant both justice and righteousness. Discovering that those words are related threw both definitions into reconsideration and it gave me the motivation to look more carefully at what is just and what is right – and what is meant by the word that is used.

The parable of the Good Samaritan begins with an expert in the law testing Jesus and asking him what he must do to inherit eternal life. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, it is Jesus who names the Greatest Commandment. But in Luke’s gospel it is this expert in the law who names it.

26 [Jesus] said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But the expert “wanted to vindicate himself” and asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

The Greek word that is translated and interpreted as “vindicate” is δικαιῶσαι – the same root word for “whatever is just”. But what this man is asking Jesus is not right or just – and that is probably why the translators for the NRSV interpreted the word to mean “vindicate”.

Jesus uses this as an opportunity to share a parable that re-orients that question. In this familiar story, a man is beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest sees him. A Levite sees him. A Samaritan sees him. All three see the same thing. But only one acts on what is just. Only one allows what he sees to move him toward compassion.

The Samaritan doesn't simply see a man lying in the road. He sees a person whose life and dignity are worth protecting. The text said he was “moved with compassion”. The man saw injustice. He saw someone beat up, left for dead, and receiving no help. He did not see his societal enemy. He did not see an inconvenience. He saw an opportunity to be a neighbor.

What the Samaritan likely does not know is that there were two missed opportunities by two likely sources of support. First, a priest walked by. This is fortuitous – surely someone who serves God could serve a wounded traveler. But he didn’t. He passed by on the other side and offered no assistance.

Thankfully, a Levite was passing by shortly after. One scholar explains that “the tribe of Levi was responsible for oversight of the central sanctuary of Israel by assisting the priests, preparing sacrifices, cleansing and caring for the sacred courts and vessels, serving as porters, gatekeepers, singers, and musicians, and also by interpreting Torah.” Surely this Levite would have the skills and desire to care for the man who was left for dead. But he didn’t. He too passed this man on the other side.

The societal hierarchy in post-exilic Israel had the Priest at the top, the Levite next, and then all the people. In Jesus’ story, the logical next person to walk towards the man lying on the road is a person, a Jewish person. Perhaps someone not dissimilar to the expert testing Jesus.

But not only does Jesus not name the obvious next person, he names an absurd suggestion – the idea that a Samaritan would be in this story is unexpected – but the fact that in Jesus’ parable this is the next man who is suggested…that solidifies the man on the road’s fate. Surely a Samaritan would not stop to help. As one scholar puts it, “to Jews, Samaritans were not simply outcasts, they were enemies.” But as we read and as we know, the Samaritan is one the one who stopped, who helped this man, who tended his wounds, and ensured his continued care.

During the pandemic, I was working at my home church in Los Angeles. Because of the relatively good weather year-round, we were able to worship outside in an open tent. There was one particular Sunday when we invited our Executive Presbyter to come and preach. He had not yet put his robe on, and he was walking around saying hello to congregants before worship. He was wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, and looked very professional. And pretty quickly, a congregant came running up to me and said, “There's a stranger in our tent. He doesn't belong here.” He wasn't the only person who noticed that there was someone they didn't know in our midst—and apparently, that was a problem.

Instead of a preacher, they saw a stranger.

Instead of a welcome guest, they saw someone who didn't belong.

They looked quite surprised when Rev. Sarmiento walked onto the chancel in his robe moments later. Now, there was nothing inherently wrong with not knowing who this man was. There was nothing wrong with noticing that someone new had entered the tent. But what struck me was how quickly a person had been categorized as stranger, outsider, and someone who did not belong before anyone had even met him.

The expert wanted Jesus to tell him where he can stop caring for others. “Who is my neighbor?” Where does the classification of “neighbor” end? Is it just the people on my street? My subdivision? My zip code? Who counts? Where does the boundary fall? Who am I actually responsible for? Who belongs inside the circle of my obligation—and who is outside it? In other words: What does justice require of me?

In our pandemic tent, the congregation was more focused on who was in and who was out – who belonged and who did not.

Paul urges the Philippians to see the world through a lens of compassion – through a lens of whatever is just. And in the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus is inviting us to let our new vision influence the way we act. The Samaritan isn’t colloquially named “good” because he saw the man. He is “good” because he stopped to care for the man. He let his compassion move him to just and righteous action.

Presbyterian Minister Fred Rogers taught the world what it means to be a neighbor. On Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mister Rogers had a neighbor named Officer Clemmons, played by François Clemmons. One of their most memorable moments was also one of the simplest. On a hot day, Mister Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to cool his feet in a small plastic wading pool. They sat side by side with their feet in the water, then used the same towel to dry them. It may not sound remarkable, but the episode first aired in 1969, when racial segregation remained deeply entrenched in American life. Viewers saw a white man and a black man sharing a pool, talking as neighbors, and sharing a towel. Mister Rogers and Officer Clemmons helped demonstrate what it means to be a neighbor while expanding America’s view of who our neighbor is.

The expert asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus doesn't answer by drawing a smaller circle. Instead, he tells a story about a Samaritan who crosses a boundary of religion, ethnicity, and hostility to care for a wounded stranger.

My college professor, Rev. Dr. Jim Edwards, puts it this way: “For Jesus, one does not have a neighbor; one is a neighbor, or better, becomes a neighbor. The parable does not require hearers to convert enemies into friends, to do everything for everyone, to solve the problems of the world. To be a neighbor is not a condition one inherits, in other words, but a choice one makes to render the tangible assistance one is able to render to those in need of it, and to render it irrespective of ethnic, religious, cultic, or racial differences.”

Becoming and being a neighbor is our call to love and our call to justice. The Greatest Command is to both love God with all of who we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our next question need not be “who is my neighbor” but “how can I become a neighbor?”

Paul tells us to change our perspective, to dwell on and think about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable. He tells us to view the world with a lens of compassion. And it is Jesus’ command that we are to love – to let our new sight ignite our action to go out and tangibly love our neighbors.

May we do justice as we look upon the world God so loves. May we become a neighbor. May we be moved with compassion and respond with action.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

September 20, 2026  Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9, Psalm 8, First Corinthians 12:12-26
“Compassion: Whatever is Honorable”
Douglas T. King 

In sermons I have been known to quote esteemed philosophers and poets, theologians and scholars.  Today I am turning to an alternative music band.  Hey, you take inspiration from wherever it comes.  I know very little of their music.  If I am not listening to Broadway soundtracks and classical, I am more likely listening to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.  But this band, The New Radicals, has one song with an extremely catchy chorus that is always floating in the back of my head.  Do not worry, I will not sing it for you. I would ask David to sing it but he refuses to lower himself into pop culture.  The final line of the chorus is telling, “We only get what we give.”  In our interactions with others there is wisdom in that.  “We only get what we give.” When we speak about honor there is wisdom in that for us.  “We only get what we give.”  

Today is the second sermon in our series on compassion as we once again heard that remarkable text from Philippians and its call for us to think about, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise….”  We continue our journey to be a community of compassion today with whatever is honorable.  

Honorable, such an old-fashioned word.  Other than as a title for judges, I cannot say I hear it very much anymore.  I cannot recall the last time it came up in a personal conversation.  I certainly do not hear it in our political conversations.

So how do we live lives that are honorable?  Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth offers us a pathway.  Corinth was a diverse and energetic city dominated by a thriving trade industry.  This meant that any time you brought three people into a room there were likely four different opinions on any issue.  Paul’s letter makes reference to a variety of debates and disagreements in their community.  In response to that he  gives us this evocative text of bodily imagery.  Envisioning the community as a single body is powerful.  There can be no doubt of the inherent inter-relatedness and interdependence.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  It is a much needed reminder in this time of increasing isolation in our culture.

But the text takes us a step beyond our interdependence.  It challenges us to reorient who and what we see as most valuable.  “…the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect…”  In Jesus’ day, this would have been the working class fisherman, women, Syrophoenicians, tax collectors, and prostitutes with whom he interacted.  In our day it would include a list of folk, some of whom we already honor and some of whom we do not, depending on our own personal perspectives.  

Who needs to be honored? The die-hard MAGA faithful and Democratic Socialists. Tradewives and Transgender activists.  Whoever makes you grind your teeth with resentment, clothe them with honor.  Blech.  For many of us we are about to start grinding our teeth down to nubs at the mere thought of this.  We are proud of ourselves for being polite at cocktail parties with those with whom we vehemently disagree. But honor?  The Oxford English Dictionary defines honor as, “to offer respect, to hold in esteem, to offer deference, to give credit to…”  Are we ready “to hold in esteem, to offer deference, to give credit to” those people who are ruining our country?  Sounds like a tall order to me.  

But if we keep two important ideas in mind it might start us on the journey to getting there. The first is this metaphor of the body we receive from Paul.  We are inherently interdependent.  It is an essential and intentional function of God’s creation.  Intense tribalism is ever a path to tragedy that dishonors the divine.  We ignore this at our own peril. We remember the catastrophic, humanitarian crises, in Bosnia, Croatia, Rwanda. God’s heart has been broken countless times, by tribalism run amok.  We need each other to survive, to thrive, and most importantly to live as God has called us to live.  To borrow an old bromide toxic division is cutting off our nose to spite our face.  

The second idea that will help us on this journey is found in our reading from the eighth Psalm.  The language soars as it alludes to the wonders of God’s created universe as a reflection of divine majesty and glory.  And then we hear about little old, you and me. We are told we are “A little lower than God…”  Really?  And we are “crowned with glory and honor.”  Have you met us?  The Jewish scholar, Konrad Schaefer speaks into this absurdity. “How small the human is when compared with divine greatness, yet how great by God’s favor!...In awe of one’s immense smallness in this grandiose spectacle, the gaze turns on the self as one becomes aware that the human, small and insignificant, a breath and a shadow, is a marvel of the universe.” (Schaeffer, pp. 23-24)

If God, the creator of the universe, can bestow honor upon very screwed-up me, how can I not bestow honor upon every last one of God’s children?  What level of titanic temerity would I need to possess to believe that God can honor me and yet another person is too far below me for me to honor them?  “We only get what we give.”  Or, acknowledging what God does for us, we are called to give what we get.

What I know about myself is that I would like to be thought of as honorable.  I would like to be honored by others.  And certainly our text from Philippians calls us to be just that. Here it is in a nutshell, honorable people honor all people.  Honorable people honor those with whom they disagree.  Honorable people honor those who annoy the heck out of them. Honorable people honor those who no one else chooses to honor for whatever reason. “We only get what we give.”

We would all like those who disagree with us to honor us. We would all like to be honored, even when we are disagreeable and/annoying.  We would all like to be considered honorable.  “We only get what we give.”  That nineties pop song announces it is sung to an angsty fourteen-year-old.  And I can appreciate that.  Some days I feel like an angsty fourteen-year-old.  The song speaks to a variety of ways it can feel like the world is falling apart on both a personal and global scale.  It says, “But when the night is falling, you cannot find the light…But when the night is falling, you cannot find a friend, you feel your tree is breaking, just bend, you’ve got the music in you…”

In our current climate we can all feel like that tree on the verge of breaking.  In response to all of the discord we can feel ourselves becoming rigid, brittle, in our worldview; in our heart; in our attitude toward others.  We can feel like taking our toys and going home.  In the midst of all of the divisive headwinds, how do we find a way to bend; how do we keep our hearts open to faithfully engaging with the world and all who cross our paths?

I would change one word in this song, instead of, “you’ve got the music in you…”  I would say, “you’ve got the Spirit in you.”  God’s Holy Spirit will remind us that the divine has placed honor upon us, one and all.  God’s Holy Spirit will remind us that we are all intentionally created to be dependent upon one another, one and all.  God’s Holy Spirit will remind us that whomever we believe deserves less honor, God has called us to offer greater honor.  The only way for us to live in honorable community together, is to offer honor to all.  “We only get what we give.”  Indeed.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Schaefer, Konrad, Berit Olam:Psalms, The Liturgical Press,
 Minnesota, 2001.

September 13, 2026  Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9, John 18:33-38, John 1:1-5, 14
“Compassion: Whatever is True”
Douglas T. King

A group of young middle schoolers gather in a basement room blessedly out of earshot and eyesight of parents.  It is one of their first attempts at a party that is not about cake and silly party games.  There will be no pin the tail on the donkey, but they do have a game in mind.  Truth or dare.  Everyone is trying to be nonchalant but there is a combination of excitement and anxiety in the room.  Will someone admit to having a crush on someone?  Will someone kiss someone else?  Choosing either truth or dare comes with its own vulnerabilities and risks but truthfully admitting something we have yet to reveal to anyone is perhaps the more intimidating choice.

Our parents teach us to always tell the truth as if it were always that simple.  But we grapple with how to speak the truth and what are the deepest of truths throughout our lives.  It is easy to hear Pilate’s “what is truth?” response to Jesus as the guffaw of a snide political despot who has the power to announce what is true whether it matches reality or not.  But the question is one that is worthy of our consideration, particularly in a social climate that struggles to share a collective understanding of what is true.  

Today is the first sermon in our series on compassion that Melissa and I will be preaching over the next couple of months.  As I said in my chapel bell article this week, for the entirety of this series the first scripture reading will be our remarkable text from Philippians describing what the call to compassionate faithfulness in a diverse community looks like.  How can we be compassionate in a world that reflects less and less compassion?  

Presbyterian minister, Jill Duffield, has written a compelling book about how we need to be reminded of how to be faithful together.  She argues that this Philippians text is a call to remember the old Southern response to each other, “appreciate it.” In other words we are called to deeply appreciate one another.  She writes, “I’d like to think that a generosity of spirit might be a means of resistance to the contempt that threatens to render all of us extinct.  Perhaps appreciation could draw us into a curious proximity that reveals our inextricable and our much-resisted need for one another.” (Duffield, p.2)

Our journey toward that appreciation, toward compassion, begins with the first call from our Philippians text, “whatever is true…” and perhaps Pilate’s question.  The first time we hear of truth in John’s gospel is in that glorious, cosmic description of Jesus Christ that concludes with the line, “full of grace and truth.” It makes me wonder if Jesus is completely full of both grace and truth, then grace and truth are inexorably linked; perhaps in the deepest sense of both of those things one cannot have one without the other.  There is no truth without grace.  

Let me lay out my pathway to that conclusion.  Each one of us has our sense of what is true and what is not.  Some of which we would likely all agree.  The sky is blue on a sunny day.  And some of which we very well may not.  President Trump is either saving or destroying America.  Each of us brings our own limited, mortal perspective to what is true and untrue.  But all of us would agree that God’s truth is the ultimate truth, the deepest truth.  

Now, I am not nearly wise enough to parse God’s deepest truth in all matters.  And frankly those that confidently claim to know God’s deepest truth in all matters make me nervous.  But there is one area where I will confidently and unequivocally claim to speak of God’s deepest truth.  Each and every one of us is a beloved child of God.  In the most quoted of all the verses in John, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” “God so loved the world…” that is you and me, and the people down the street, and the folks in China, and Peru, and Iran and every last corner where people are just trying to get through their days.  That is the deepest of truths of which I will consider no rebuttals.  This is why we have a large baptismal font in the center of our sanctuary with, “You are beloved” etched in the bottom of the bowl.  This is a truth that will not be denied.

But here is the thing about that deepest truth of God’s love for each and every last one of us, it would not work without being accompanied by grace.  As convinced as I am in God’s love for all of us, I am equally convinced, that there are times for all of us, when we are not all that lovable.  In the midst of the foibles, mistakes, and limitations each of us possesses, none of us is loveable all of the time.  And yet, with grace, God loves all of us, all the time, just the same.  The deepest truth is always linked to God’s grace.  

And this is when we pivot to compassion and appreciation.  We often refer to each other as children of God.  But I wonder if we should tweak the metaphor.  What if we would refer to each other as infants of God, freshly baptized, foreheads still damp?  Even those with whom we vehemently disagree; even those folk who repeatedly get under our skin for one reason or another, an infant of God, deserving of grace.  

Jill Duffield writes, “I pictured, for just a moment, each and every one of us as babies. Beautiful.  Treasured.  Beloved. Dependent.  Guileless.  Helpless.  Fully grown, but still full of possibility, still needy infants.  And, at least for a moment, doing so transformed what I saw and changed what I noticed.  Maybe even for a moment, it allowed me to imagine I might want to care for everyone around me, not only the ones with whom I agree.  For a moment, I felt the urge to embrace them instead of holding them at arm’s length.”
(Duffield, p. 17)

During the first portion of our baptism liturgy we always say, “Let us remember and rejoice in our baptism as we celebrate this sacrament.”  With that cooing baby before us, and that reminder of divine love in our ears, rejoicing and celebrating is an easy ask.  I wonder if we added a line to that liturgy.  Something like, “Let us remember and rejoice in the baptism, of all the infants of God’s beloved-ness, even and especially with those with whom we disagree.”  Maybe it is a little clunky but it speaks to the grace and truth Jesus came into the world to bring.  

I remember being on the streets of San Francisco years ago with my mentor in ministry and his mentor in ministry.  We were three generations of clergy who had spent the week studying scripture and preaching.  We were approached by someone who was clearly a professional pan-handler.  She was poised and perfect in how she sought out money from all who were passing by.  Now we all know the best way to care for those who are unhoused is by supporting the agencies who can provide systemic and sustained solutions.  But my mentor’s mentor reached into his wallet and gave her a generous gift.  As we walked away my mentor queried his mentor, “somebody’s daughter?”  “Yep. Somebody’s daughter.”  He did not see that woman for how she might have been out hustling; for how she might spend the money;  for how she represented a huge, intractable, heartbreaking problem in our society.  He saw someone’s daughter.  Perhaps he saw her as God’s daughter as well.  

Imagine what our world would be like if our first frame of reference in every context, from someone cutting in front of us in traffic, to those whose politics makes our skin itch, to geopolitical adversaries bent on dominating and destroying one another, was as a beloved infant of God.  Perhaps it is pie in the sky to imagine world leaders living in this frame of reference.  But if you and I are seeking to be followers of Jesus Christ this is just what we are called to do.  

It is a deep and abiding truth of God and God’s grace that all God’s children are indeed beloved.  And when we are tempted to believe we have some other truth that supersedes this truth and allows us to judge another, I am reminded of a quote by the former pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, John Buchanon. “…When it comes to ultimate truth, the most appropriate posture is modesty, silence, reverence, not propounding, shouting, condemning, excommunicating.” (Norris,  p. 378)

Those early days of truth or dare were an opportunity to begin exploring one aspect of becoming adults.  The question for us is do we dare to have a level of mature Christlike compassion that allows us to live into the grace and truth of being disciples that recognize both friend and supposed foe alike as beloved?  Will we dare to embody God’s deepest truth?  May it be so.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.
 
Duffield, Jill J., Appreciate these Things, WJK Press,   Louisville, 2025.
Norris, Kathleen, Acedia & Me, Riverhead Books, New York, 2008.

 

September 6, 2026  Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Genesis 1:1-2:3
“It is All God’s Work”
Douglas T. King
Genesis 1:1-2:3

More heart attacks occur between 8:00 and 9:00 A.M. Monday mornings as people prepare to start the work week than at any other time.  Some Doctors claim that job dissatisfaction is a greater cause for heart attacks than high cholesterol and fatty diets. Psychologists argue that workaholism is a major source of marital breakdown.  The United Nations International Labor Organization once labeled job stress as “one of the most serious health issues of the twentieth century.”  One sociologist notes “Everywhere I go it seems people are killing themselves with work, busyness, rushing...Work addiction is a modern epidemic...”(Fox, pp9-14)  

Happy Labor Day weekend everybody!

Despite the gloominess of the previous statements, work is indeed a good thing.  Humans need work.  We need to engage our abilities in accomplishing tasks.  Our bodies and our minds need to be challenged, to be given opportunities that let us focus our energies.  Some of the most difficult times of life are when a person is unemployed or recently retired and they lose their sense of purpose.  Sometimes we need to create our own work, whether it be through hobbies, or volunteering or whatever else may give us a chance to be engaged in the world.

Some of the problems that work can cause in our lives are not to be blamed on the work itself but our attitude toward our work.  If we are working only for external rewards, our efforts may feel hollow and futile.  If our work functions solely as a means to make money, we will never be paid enough for all our time and effort and we will always be seeking more.  If our work functions as a means of receiving praise from others, no matter how well we perform and how much we are praised, we will always be beset by insecurity and the sense that we are underappreciated for our efforts.

Now I am not saying that our motivation for work has nothing to do with paychecks and pats on the back, but when such external rewards become the sole motivation for our work we run the risk of finding the work itself meaningless.

We need to take a step back and focus on the wider picture, on the nature of work in all of creation.  We just heard about God at work fashioning all of existence.  Perhaps we need to change some of the language which we use to label our work.  Instead of speaking of our job perhaps we should speak of our role.  The theologian Matthew Fox notes that “A role has a sense of play to it but also a sense of seriousness:...it implies participation in a drama;...the origin of the word role is the old French rolle, which referred to the roll of parchment on which an actor’s part was written.  Drama is the news of an unfolding creation story.  Everyone has a role to play in that drama, and that role is our work.
”(Fox, pp. 106-106)  

We could also take a lesson from children, who love to play at a variety of working roles, slipping into the joy of being a firefighter, or a police officer, or a cook.  Somehow as we grow up we lose this valuable insight into the playful nature of the different roles we perform.  

Regardless of the vast variety of forms and worldly functions our jobs and our lives take, they all share one universal purpose.  Each of our roles is part of the grand drama of God’s continual creation of our world.  Genesis may say God rested but it was not for long.  Whether our role is to create legal contracts, or care for a home and a family, or teach Word and Wonder, or volunteer at Isaiah 58, we need to recognize that what we do can be a small but essential part of God’s activity in our world.

Our work, the activity of our days is sacramental.  It is a reflection of God’s sacred ever-creating presence in the midst of our ordinary living.  We have been created in God’s image and given gifts of creativity and intelligence and perseverance.  We may not be creating worlds, but each of us does indeed help to shape some small part of the world by the work we do; by the way we are present in the world.

The work we do is done in response to the work our God has done for us, and is doing for us.  We work in a spirit of gratitude for all that we have been given; in gratitude for this world which has been created; in gratitude for the individual talents which have been bestowed upon us; in gratitude for the role we have been given to play in this drama of the continuing creation of the world by the divine.  

Now, of course there are limits and caveats to all of these grand thoughts.  Persons trapped in work where they are being exploited certainly have little to celebrate.  
As well, persons with work which harms other people in some way are not likely to be contributing to the best of God’s divine plan for creation.  But all other work offers the opportunity to be a part of God’s greater creative work.

I can tell that some of you are sitting out there thinking, “Oh sure that is easy for you clergy to say with your neat and tidy called to serve the Lord in the church job, but I’m an accountant, or a custodian or an investment banker or retired, where does that fit into God’s plan?”  Whatever our job or role may be it serves a purpose in our community.  Each of us is dependent upon the other for goods and services and so much more.  And when we serve each other the best we can using the gifts we have been given, whether it be in a nine to five job or in our volunteer work or in the way we care for our family and friends, we are indeed playing a role in God’s continual creation.  God’s work is far from completed in this world and therefore neither is ours.  When in any way what we do serves the human community we are a part of God’s plan, for what is more important to the divine blueprint than providing for God’s children?

During these days when our headlines are filled with war and tragedy and toxic division it can be hard to reconcile the beautiful elegance of the Genesis creation story with the broken reality we find living in the midst of this world.  All of this suffering cannot be and is not the last word of God’s creative work.  God continues to be at work seeking to bring healing and wholeness to our world.  Jesus Christ is present in the midst of all our human pain and toil, suffering beside us, working beside us, and offering healing grace.  The Holy Spirit is at work around and within us lifting us up and leading us forward.  And if we are to be faithful followers of our Creator we too must recognize our role as healers in this creation.  We have not been gifted with talent and resources by our God to be passive participants in this world.
 
Realizing that our work in all its iterations is part of God’s plan ups the ante.  When we face challenging decisions at work such as those that pit ethical considerations up against profit margins we cannot leave our faith and its implications outside the office door.  When we are retired and have time and talents going unused, we cannot forget God’s call to find the face of Christ on all of those around us and respond accordingly.  No matter what role God is calling us to play, each of us is called to be faithful to the way of Jesus Christ.  Each of us is being called to carry our Sunday Christianity into our weekday lives.  Each of us is being called to be compassionate agents of healing in the midst of wherever we are, whatever our role in the world.
 
Enjoy the day off tomorrow, go for a walk in the park, 
read a book, take a nap.  And when you go to work on Tuesday, do not go in thinking about the money you will make or the praise you will receive, think about your role in the grand drama.  Think about your work not as a burden to bear but as an activity done in gratitude toward God for the talents you have been given.  Seek joy in what you do, and seek out the opportunity to offer joy to others. God wants nothing less for each one of us.  God expects nothing less from each one of us.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Fox, Matthew, The Reinvention of Work, HarperCollins, New  York, 1994.     

August 30, 2026   14th Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 23; Exodus 3:1-8a
“Look more closely. What do you see?”
Anne Peacock

Exodus 3:1-8a
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. 7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey…

Last year a group of us went forest bathing. This Japanese practice, called Shinrin-yoku, is a sensory immersion in nature offering space for prayer, silence, reflection, and healing. We each chose a small, scrolled-up piece of paper tied with a ribbon. Inside was a message to reflect on then or to open later. I forgot about this scroll of paper but found it just a few weeks ago while struggling to come up with a title for today’s sermon. Untying the ribbon and reading the message, the sermon title was revealed! It says, “Look more closely. What do you see?” Artist Georgia O’ Keeffe says, “Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” Moses had time!! Besides being a professional sheep herder, I’m pretty sure that Moses was a professional forest bather! Living and working alone in the mountains for 40 years after running from Egypt, he likely spent lots of time studying the movements of clouds, smelling herbal aromas and wild onions, noticing even the tiniest flowers, and of course counting sheep.

The Hebrew word for shepherd shares a root with the word for companion, or close friend. The LORD was Moses’s shepherd and companion, even if Moses wasn’t ready to be acquainted with him. Might God have tried to get Moses’s attention earlier? Perhaps he waited until Moses was open to seeing and hearing him. God is patient and persistent when we don’t answer – even if it takes 40 years!

The word professional originally had a very different meaning. At its root, a professional is one who makes a profession of faith – faith in something larger and wiser than him or herself. Away from the bustle of the marketplace, experiencing a slower way of life and rhythm of walking, listening to the music of the birds and sheep, insects and wind; noticing the beauty of nature…maybe Moses learned to be more deeply aware, and perhaps God was preparing the soil of his heart to be open to God’s call.

When I was a student at The College of Wooster, my piano professor invited Steve and me to dinner and greeted us outside. Mid-sentence, his face immediately turned, and his nose shot upward and dramatically sniffed the air. With great delight he exclaimed, “Do you smell the mock orange?” This reminds me of what a wild creature might do. In his book “The Wisdom of Wilderness,” Gerald May speaks of wild creatures as being “completely, totally themselves. They do not pretend to be anything else.”

He goes on to share a time when he observed a stag in the heart of Washington DC. As the deer nipped at branches and nibbled at grass he frequently stopped and stood still for a long time. “In these extended stillnesses he was smelling the air, listening to the sounds, looking, seeing all around and feeling the ground beneath his hooves.

The vigilance of the deer is not only to detect danger, but also to detect goodness: food, companionship, water, sunlight, shade, and sky. To do this well (the deer teaches) we must take many times to stand very still in the midst of what we are doing. Lift our head, look, see, and smell what is around us, perk our ears, listen and hear, in a stance of openness to God to learn how to be who we really are and to receive God’s invitation.

There is a saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”  How about: “When the pilgrim is ready, the way appears.” I like to think of Moses as a pilgrim preparing for his call to return to Egypt, confront the Pharoah, and lead the Israelites to the promised land. We are all on our own pilgrimage. But to journey towards new life, it’s up to us to notice God. In Phil Cousineau’s book “The Art of Pilgrimage,” he states that many pilgrimages begin with the calling of a dream. But there is another call, “the one that arrives the day when what once worked no longer does.” It arrives in various forms – an itch, an offer, a ringing, an inspiration, an idea, a voice, a knock, … even a burning bush.

The nature of fire is an image for the heart. I wonder if God’s voice burned within Moses’s heart, awakening his senses? Are we awake enough to notice the fire of longing; of God’s love? There are times in our lives when we overlook rather than look. We miss hearing God’s voice or seeing our own burning bush. I will never forget the time I argued with God while walking a labyrinth. A labyrinth is an ancient tool to still the mind and open the soul. It is a path for pilgrimage which symbolizes the spiritual journey. While slowly moving around the turns of the path, I heard God say, “Find your voice.” I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that message, but I walked it again the next day to hear more. This time God said, “Go back to your music.” I laughed at God and, thinking I knew best, said, “That would be great, but I’m okay where I am.” I was minding my own path; not ready to follow God’s path for me. Somehow God found a way. Music, a piece of me that had been hidden for so long, was bursting forth. I had no choice but to gradually uncover that gift from God and allow it to shine. Moses had many gifts which were hidden while shepherding yet later uncovered when fulfilling his call; he demonstrated the capacity to wait patiently in Egypt for God to act. He trusted in the outcomes, took risks and spoke truth even when it was not understood or heard.

Gregory of Nyssa, one of the most influential philosophical theologians for both the Eastern and Western traditions, describes the transformation taking place in Moses. “After he passed some time in this kind of life as a shepherd, an awe-inspiring theophany occurred. A theophany refers to an intense manifestation of the presence of God that is accompanied by an extraordinary visual and multi-sensory display such as a burning bush. Other examples of theophanies include the appearance of God at Mount Sinai in cloud, lightning, and thunder, the liberation of the Israelites at the parting of the Red Sea, and the Pentecost story.  A Buddhist koan practice calls these moments “un-understandable” and invites us to meditate on things that don’t make rational sense, such as a bush that is never consumed. Christians may then go beyond the surface of scripture, allowing the text to come alive and God’s message to break through.

Gregory of Nyssa continues his story of Moses’s theophany: “At high noon a light brighter than the sunlight dazzled his eyes… ‘I will go and see this great sight.’ As soon as he said this, he no longer received the marvel of the light with his sight alone, but (which is most astounding of all) his hearing too was illuminated by the rays of light. The light’s grace was distributed to both senses, illuminating the sight with flashing rays and lighting the way for the hearing of undefiled teachings.”

The form of Jewish mysticism called Kabbalah is often referred to as the soul of Judaism. In this practice, mystics specifically seek the ecstatic experience of God, not merely knowledge about God. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Mystics want to taste the whole wheat of spirit before it is ground by the millstones of reason.” All people can be mystics and have experiential connection with God if we remove our shoes and take off whatever stands between ourselves and God’s love. God does not come to us because we dared to look – God has been here all along.

“The voice from the mountain forbade Moses to approach the burning bush burdened with lifeless sandals,” as Gregory of Nyssa describes them. (The symbolism of the sandals is that of where one’s feet have been and are going.) The fact that Moses’s sandals were ‘lifeless,’ suggests that Moses, like all of us, exists in a state of lifelessness. Moses must remove the ‘lifeless sandals,’ to experience the living God.”

Much of my life I didn’t feel, see, hear, or fully experience the life I was living. I was also wearing “lifeless” sandals. Only until I awoke to God, turned aside and followed his voice, did I find true joy. How did God awaken me? A longing summoned me to pray by listening in the silence and, through this silence, a path was illuminated that I yearned to follow. I continue this path because in my heart it feels right and I trust my heart’s voice. Spiritual practices such as the Prayer of Awareness, as John Philip Newell says, “allow us to wake up to what is already there.”

When I visited my dying father we listened to his favorite music, sang hymns, and shared a Prayer of Awareness. I asked him, “What do you see?” and thought maybe he would say the clock on the wall, but he closed his eyes and responded with words I can only describe as coming from an un-understandable place, or as the Celtics would say, “a thin place,” where the veil between heaven and earth is lifted. When I asked my dad, “What do you hear?” he said, “laughter and cheering.” I asked my father if he would like to be in this place; he paused, then said, “Yes.” This journey with Dad was a pilgrimage and we were on sacred ground. When asked, “What is the deepest meaning of pilgrimage?” the great Buddhist Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hahn answered, “The capacity to return home from a sacred journey and recognize your own back yard as sacred ground.”

Had Moses forgotten about the Israelites during his 40 years of self-exiling and shepherding? If so, God reminded him when he revealed himself to Moses. God told him he has seen the misery of his people, God heard their cry, God knew their sufferings, and God called Moses to help deliver them from the Egyptians toward new life.  Moses argued with God thinking, who am I to be charged with this task?  God persevered and Moses finally saw him, heard him, and responded, “Here I am.” Barbara Brown Taylor says, “What might we be commissioned to do if we paid closer attention to God?”

Before we enter into a Prayer of Awareness, I would like to share Lynn Smith’s description of her floral arrangements. She says they “depict God speaking to Moses through the beauty of nature and the power of fire, giving him strength to lead his people forward, and as a reminder that in the darkest of days, the Spirit is there to guide us, warm us, and lead us if we just listen.”

• First we will take one minute to hear with the ears of our heart. The sound of the chime will begin and bring us back. Notice your breath and the sounds of traffic on Clayton Road. Listen more deeply. What do you hear?
• We will now take one minute to see with the eyes of our heart. You may wish to gaze at the floral arrangements, the burning bush artwork on the front of the bulletin or simply close your eyes. Look more closely. What do you see?

May you carry Jan Richardson’s Blessing at the Burning Bush in your heart as you journey along your pilgrimage. God will be with you.

You will have to decide if you want this—
want the blessing that comes to you on an ordinary day
when you are minding your own path,
bent on the task before you that you have done
a hundred times, a thousand.

You will have to choose for yourself
whether you will attend to the signs,
whether you will open your eyes to the searing light, the heat,
whether you will open your ears, your heart
to the voice that knows your name,
that tells you this place where you stand—
this ground so familiar and therefore unregarded—
is, in fact, holy.

You will have to discern
whether you have defenses enough to rebuff the call,
excuses sufficient to withstand the pull of what blazes before you;
whether you will hide your face,
will turn away back toward—
what, exactly?

No path from here could ever be ordinary again,
could ever become unstrange to you
whose seeing has been scorched beyond all salving.

You will know your path
not by how it shines before you
but by how it burns within you,
leaving you whole
as you go from here
blazing with your inarticulate,
your inescapable yes.

Member Spotlight: The Crabtree Sisters

The Crabtree sisters, Lily 17, and Cate, 14, are dynamic as a team yet they each possess and display different talents and interests. Ladue Chapel members have been fortunate enough to see the young women grow up as active church participants.

Lily, a senior at Ladue Horton Watkins High School, loves to sing, read, study French, and ride horses. Cate is in eighth grade at Ladue Middle School and is passionate about dance and performing in school musicals. 

The girls’ parents, Tom and Laila Crabtree, have always encouraged and supported the girls’ involvement in Ladue Chapel activities. Both Lily and Cate sang in the Children’s Choir and still perform in church. They both served as acolytes and have helped with many programs for Ladue Chapel children, such as Vacation Bible School and Word and Wonder Sunday School. 

Lily is in the a capella choir “Vive Voce” (Life and Song) at school. She plans to study education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, hopefully in the Honors College. She says the hands-on opportunities at the School of Education are what convinced her to apply. “Mizzou has strong connections to many Missouri school districts. So many, that it enables some students to secure teaching jobs even before graduation!” 

Meanwhile, Cate is studying dance five nights a week. The teen loves dance as a form of individual self-expression and as a team endeavor. Her studio focuses on classical dance, rather than competitions, which is perfect for a serious dancer like Cate.

Together, Lily and Cate enjoy spending time at their extended family’s farm in Mount Sterling, Missouri. Lily is usually in the barn with the family’s two pet pasture horses, while Cate is bouncing on the farm’s trampoline with her cousins. 

Lily’s departure for college will be a big change for her family. We at Ladue Chapel will miss seeing her every week at church. But Cate knows that she and Lily will always share a strong bond in faith and as sisters.

August 23, 2026 Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
1 Corinthians 12:12-31Romans 15:14-21, 16:1-2 
“Holy Hands: Road”
Melissa K. Smith

Have you ever had someone hand you something and say, “Can you make sure this gets to them?” Maybe it was a letter. Maybe it was a package. Maybe it was a set of keys. Maybe it was something small and ordinary that didn't look particularly important. But the moment someone puts it in your hands, something changes. It isn't yours, exactly. But it has become your responsibility. You have been trusted with it. And so you carry it a little differently. You make sure you don't lose it. You make sure it gets where it is supposed to go. You make sure nothing happens to it along the way. Because someone has entrusted something to you. There is something beautiful about that kind of trust.

One of my dear friends who lives in Scotland wanted to crochet a stuffed animal for my daughter. So Mairi made it, and then she gave it to my sister when she visited her in London. My sister then gave it to my brother when she visited him in Boston. My brother gave it to Phoebe when he visited last week. From Scotland to London to Boston to St. Louis, this stuffed animal was made with love and carried with responsibility to get from Mairi’s hands into Phoebe’s hands. Well, in her mouth…

Hands can do so much. They can build, hug, pray, soothe – but they can also carry. Our sermon series, Holy Hands, comes to an end as we encounter Holy Hands that were on the road carrying the Gospel as represented in the Letter to the Romans. Paul entrusted a woman named Phoebe with authority, responsibility, and leadership as he gave her the letter he wrote to the church in Rome and asked her to deliver it.

Throughout these weeks, we have been looking at the stories of three women in the New Testament, Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, and Phoebe, and asking what their lives can teach us about the ways God uses ordinary people to carry the good news of Jesus into the world.

We began with Mary Magdalene. Mary went to the tomb expecting to care for a dead body, and instead she became the first person sent to announce that Jesus was alive. She carried the news of resurrection. Then we met Priscilla. Priscilla reminds us that the gospel isn't carried only from pulpits or sanctuaries. Sometimes it is carried across a table, in a home, through a conversation, from one person to another. She carried faith into the ordinary spaces of life. And now we come to Phoebe. And Phoebe gives us one more image of what it means to have holy hands.

Phoebe was someone who was trusted to carry something. At the end of Paul's letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae…” And then he asks the church in Rome to welcome her, help her, and receive her as someone who has been a faithful servant of the church.

Paul doesn't tell us very much about Phoebe. We don't know how old she was. We don't know exactly what her life looked like day to day. There is a book called Finding Phoebe written by Susan E. Hylen that tries to discern who Phoebe was by parsing through what roles and social status women had in New Testament times. The author writes, “Who was Phoebe, and what did she do? What was involved in being a deacon or benefactor? She obviously traveled a long way from Cenchrae (near Corinth in Greece) to Rome. And she is sufficiently important for Paul to include her in his letter. But these two verses [in Romans 16] are the only time she’s mentioned. What sort of role did Phoebe have, either at her home church or during her travels to Rome? Wouldn’t it be interesting to know more about her?”

When we named our daughter Phoebe, many of you asked where the name came from. As I said, “It’s from the Bible!” there were many confused looks. And I completely understand. The sixteenth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans lists name after name after name. By the time you get to the end of the theologically rich book, I wouldn’t blame you if you skimmed through the names. Phoebe doesn’t have a unique story for us to remember and share. She is mentioned once – but those two verses tell us so much.

Paul tells us that she is a deacon, a servant leader in the life of the church. He tells us that she is a patron, someone who is a benefactor of and advocate for the church. But perhaps most importantly, Paul tells us that he trusts Phoebe. He has entrusted her to carry his words, his letter, his theological masterpiece to the church in Rome.

Her delivering this letter was not simply asking her to deliver mail and drop it off at the church, turn around, and go home. Paul asked Phoebe to deliver this letter, and in so doing, she was charged with reading it, preaching it, and interpreting it for the church in Rome. Phoebe’s holy hands carried a letter that contained the Gospel that needed to be shared as Christianity was spreading its wings further west.

In Romans 15, Paul summarizes and explains his ministry and his plans, shedding light on the significance of the letter Phoebe is carrying. Paul longs to share the Gospel with the world. He says, “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the good news of Christ.”

Paul is not just writing theology to share with a church he has never visited. Rather, Paul is pouring out his heart and his passion for Christ to share the Gospel and spread the love of Christ. This letter is all about creating community, practicing generosity, and inviting Christians who have received something from one another to give something back. And right in the middle of all of that, there is Phoebe.

From Mary to Priscilla to Paul to Phoebe, we see a movement of the Gospel that has been carried in hands and passed on to one another. Mary carried the news of the resurrection to the disciples. Priscilla carried the gospel into her home and helped raise up leaders to go and share the good news. Paul carried the gospel across the Mediterranean, bringing it to Europe for the first time. Phoebe carries Paul’s letter to Rome. The Roman church received this letter, and eventually we see generations of Christians receiving the gospel. We are here today because somebody kept carrying the Gospel.

Liz read for us a passage from another of Paul’s letters, from First Corinthians. In this passage, Paul describes the Body of Christ and names that there are different parts of the body – all important, different, and essential. The Body of Christ is the image for the church reminding us that every member of the body has a role to play. As we see in this passage, the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” The body is charged to work together.

The three women we have studied these past few weeks have shown us the importance of doing their part in carrying the gospel. Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, and Phoebe all had a part to play in sharing, spreading, and carrying the Gospel. None of them had to do everything on their own. What they needed to do – and what they did – was faithfully carry what God placed in their hands.

Phoebe’s calling was not Paul's calling. Her hands were not Paul's hands. But the work of God needed her hands. And the same is true for us. You don't have to have someone else's gifts. You don't have to have someone else's confidence. You don't have to have someone else's platform. You simply have to consider, “What has God placed in my hands?”

At the beginning of this sermon, I asked you to imagine someone placing something in your hands and saying, “Can you make sure this gets to them?” That is, in some ways, the story of the church. Someone handed the faith to us. Someone carried it far enough for it to reach us. Someone taught us, welcomed us, prayed for us. Someone showed us what the love of Christ looked like. Someone placed something holy into our hands. And now it is our turn. Not all of us will carry the same thing. Not all of us will carry it in the same way. But all of us have a part. Because we are one body, with many members, many gifts, many hands.

The question is not whether we have something to carry. The question is whether we are willing to carry what God has entrusted to us. The gospel has come this far because holy hands have carried it. May it go farther because of ours.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

August 16, 2026 Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 119:33-40Acts 18:1-3Romans 16:3-5
“Holy Hands: Home”
Melissa K. Smith

What do we need to worship here at Ladue Chapel? If we wanted to have worship exactly the way we like it—what would we need?

Well, we need pastors. We need David. We might need a guest musician or two. And we especially notice in the summer how much the choir adds to our worship, and how much we miss them when they aren't here. We need greeters and ushers to welcome us when we arrive, to welcome visitors and guests, and to make sure we have an order of worship in our hands. Because we are Presbyterian, we need our pulpit, our baptismal font, and our communion table. We need Scripture. We need music. We need hymnals.

And, increasingly, we need microphones and cameras and livestream equipment. And when the sound doesn't work or the livestream goes down, we are reminded very quickly just how much we depend on the people who make those things work. We need technicians who make sure you can hear what is happening here in the sanctuary—and that those who cannot be here in person can still worship with us at home.

But even with all of these things, we still don't see everyone who makes worship possible.

We don't see the Session and the Worship Committee making sure that Communion is ready for us each month. We don't see the Property Committee making decisions about speakers and microphones and cameras. We don't see the hours David and the choir put into preparing music. We don't see the time that goes into studying Scripture, wrestling with a text, and putting together a sermon. We don't see all the work that happens before we ever walk through these doors. And maybe that is because we are accustomed to looking at the stage.

Think about a theater production. When the curtain opens, our attention goes to the actors. We see people under the lights. We hear the music and we watch the story unfold. But behind the curtain are stagehands. They are moving sets and hanging lights. They're running sound and managing equipment. They're making sure that when something needs to happen on stage, it happens at exactly the right moment. We don't usually notice them. And that's actually the point. The best stagehands are almost invisible. Their work makes it possible for someone else to stand in the spotlight.

There are a lot of stagehands in the story of Scripture. We remember the people whose names are in the spotlight. We remember Paul, traveling from city to city, preaching the Gospel, establishing churches, and raising up new leaders. We remember Peter, the rock on which the church is built. We remember Timothy, the young leader whom Paul mentored.

But there are other people whose hands are working just outside the spotlight. People who welcomed, who taught, who encouraged, who opened their homes. People who prayed. People who made it possible for someone else to do the work we remember.

Priscilla is one of those people. She is one of the stagehand holy hands of the early church. We don't get a long biography of Priscilla. We don't have a book of Scripture written by her. We don't have a record of a great sermon she preached. But six times in the New Testament, we encounter her name. And every time, we catch a glimpse of someone whose quiet, faithful work helped make the ministry of others possible. Priscilla and Aquila were a ministry couple who opened their home, shared their faith, welcomed others, encouraged leaders, and helped nurture the early church. And when we pay attention to Priscilla's story, we begin to see that the church has always been built by holy hands that don't always stand in the spotlight.

And sometimes those holy hands are found in the most ordinary place imaginable: Home.

What if home became the center stage for faith?

For Priscilla and Aquila, home was a refuge, a classroom, and a church.

Home was a refuge for them as displacement and uncertainty were part of their lives. They had been expelled from Rome and forced to begin again. But wherever they went, they created a place of belonging. And they ensured that Paul belonged, too. They welcomed him into their family and became his friends, companions, coworkers, and supporters as he established the church.

Home was also a classroom. Later in the book of Acts, Priscilla and Aquila encounter a preacher named Apollos, who enthusiastically proclaimed the Gospel. Scripture tells us that he was speaking boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, “they took him aside and explained the Way of God more accurately.”

They didn't publicly embarrass Apollos. They didn't tell him he was wrong and leave him to figure it out. They took him aside. They welcomed him into their home, into conversation, into deeper understanding. They helped him grow so that he could go back out and help others grow.

Home was where they taught. Home was where they learned. Home was where they prepared others to serve.

And finally, home was church. Paul writes to the Romans, “Greet also the church in their house.” The church was not confined to a building. Worship, teaching, fellowship, prayer, and discipleship happened around their table and within their walls. For Priscilla and Aquila, the boundary between church and home was intentionally porous. They brought their faith home. And perhaps that is one of the invitations Priscilla offers us today as she calls us to consider what happens when we bring our faith home.

We sometimes think of church as the place where faith happens. We come on Sunday to sing, pray, hear Scripture and a sermon, receive Communion, and then return home.

But what if faith does not end when we leave? What if the rhythm of worship shaped the rhythm of our homes? What if our kitchens became places of prayer, our dinner tables places to practice gratitude and forgiveness, and our living rooms places of welcome for someone who is lonely or grieving? What if children could ask hard questions about God at home and know they would be taken seriously? What if Scripture lived not only on the pages of the Bible, but also in the conversations around our tables? What if faith was not something we came here to perform, but something we carried home to practice?

One of the stage-hand holy hands in the history of the church was Saint Monica, the mother of Augustine, one of the great theologians of the early church. Monica is remembered for her persistent prayer. Her son Augustine lived a wild and restless life and turned away from the faith in which he had been raised. Tradition tells us that Monica prayed for him for years—persistently, patiently, faithfully. And eventually Augustine returned to faith, was baptized, and became one of the most influential Christian thinkers in history.

We remember Augustine. But behind Augustine was Monica. Behind the theologian was a mother who prayed. Behind the public ministry was a private faithfulness that no one may have seen.

Monica and Priscilla both had holy hands—hands that held up the church and raised others up to continue sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Their hands were behind the scenes, praying, loving, teaching, welcoming, encouraging. And just because we are focused on the stories and legacies of Augustine and Paul does not make the work of Monica and Priscilla any less important. Their work was different. And it was necessary.

That is true for us, too. Some of us will serve where everyone can see—standing before the congregation, leading music, preaching, teaching, serving on committees, or welcoming people at the doors.

But some of the most important ministry we will ever do may happen where nobody else sees it. Around a kitchen table. In a hospital room. On a couch with a grieving friend. At bedtime with a child. Over a cup of coffee. In a phone call to someone who needs to hear, “I'm thinking about you.” In a quiet prayer for someone we love. In the ordinary places of our lives, our hands can become holy hands.

Scripture tells us that when two or three are gathered in Christ's name, Christ is there among them. And here we are—far more than two or three, with microphones and cameras and music and bulletins and committees and choirs and sermons and all the things that make worship possible.

But the presence of Christ does not depend upon these things. Christ is present here. And Christ goes home with us. So perhaps the question is not simply, “What do we need to worship here at Ladue Chapel?” Perhaps the deeper question is, “What do we need to make our homes places where the Gospel lives?”

Priscilla and Aquila remind us that a home can be more than a place where we rest from the world. It can be a place where faith is nurtured. A place where people belong. A place where questions are welcomed. A place where forgiveness is practiced. A place where Scripture is shared. A place where people are prayed for. A place where the weary can rest. A place where the next generation learns what it means to follow Jesus. A place where holy hands are prepared and sent. The church has always been built not only by the people in the spotlight, but by the people behind them.

The kingdom of God has always depended upon holy hands that are willing to welcome, teach, pray, encourage, nurture, and serve.

We have the chance to be Priscilla in one another's lives. We have the chance to open our homes and our lives to the work of God. We have the chance to let Sunday worship spill over into Monday morning. To let the prayers we pray here shape the prayers we pray at home. To let the grace we receive here shape the grace we offer there. To let the table we gather around here remind us of all the tables around which we can welcome others. And perhaps that is where our holy hands begin. Not always on a stage. Not always in a pulpit. Not always where everyone can see. Sometimes they begin around a kitchen table. Sometimes they begin in a quiet room. Sometimes they begin with a hand on a shoulder, a meal shared, a lesson taught, a prayer whispered. Sometimes the most important work of the church happens where nobody is watching.

But God sees.

And God takes those ordinary hands—our hands—and makes them holy. So may this place be a place where we are nourished. May our homes become places where faith is lived. And may we leave both with hands ready to welcome, hands ready to serve, hands ready to teach, hands ready to pray— holy hands, ready to carry the Gospel into the world.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

August 9, 2026 Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Jeremiah 31:1-6John 20:1-18
“Holy Hands: Tomb”
Melissa K. Smith

I am not often aware of my hands. If I want to grab something, I do. If I need to type, text, or handwrite, I can. Though, every winter my hands make themselves very known with chapped knuckles, and playing basketball in high school I was aware of my hands every time I broke a finger, and washing my hands a thousand times a day when we brought Phoebe home from the hospital was also quite the awareness exercise.

But watching Phoebe, my four month old daughter, learn how her hands work, has made me newly aware of all the things her hands can or will do. She’s learning that her hands can grab things, pull things, and hold things. It’s a lot of work!

At night, one of the ways we pray together before she is swaddled, is with our hands. I take her hands into mine and we talk about all the things she will do with the hands God made. One day those hands will feed her and others, those hands will pray, those hands will hug, those hands will pull others up, those hands will write important words. And one day, my hope as a pastor and mother, is that those hands will hold the Bible, and she will read and know the gospel.

But before the gospel was written down, before it was bound into pages, before it was preached from pulpits or studied in classrooms, the good news was carried.  It was carried in bodies and voices, across roads and into homes, through conversations and communities. The gospel moved because people moved.

Throughout the New Testament, the gospel moves again and again through the hands of men and women. For the next three weeks, we will be navigating through our sermon series called Holy Hands. God places holy things into ordinary hands, and by God's grace those ordinary hands become holy hands. We will meet women whose hands carried the gospel in remarkable, and often overlooked, ways.

Today we meet Mary Magdalene, who carried the news of the resurrection while grief was still fresh. Mary Magdalene was charged with a message to share.

Before the digital age, messages traveled in many ways. Couriers carried them from city to city. Pigeons delivered them through the air. Smoke signaled important events. Drums carried messages across great distances. Later came telegraphs and Morse code. Go back even farther and humanity relied on runners. Think of the messenger from Marathon who ran to Athens announcing victory, or Paul Revere's midnight ride warning that the British were coming.

But on the first Easter morning there were no pigeons, no drums, no smoke, and no coded messages.  There was only a grieving disciple. A faithful woman who had come simply to mourn her Lord.

It is a story we know well. Every Easter we hear of the women making their way to the tomb before sunrise. We proclaim together, "He is risen! He is risen indeed!" We celebrate that death could not hold Christ. It is the story at the heart of our faith. And it is a story first entrusted to Mary Magdalene.  John tells us, "Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed."

Mary immediately ran to Simon, Peter and the beloved disciple. Together they hurried back to the tomb. John can't resist mentioning that he outran Peter. John looked inside. Peter walked all the way in. They examined the linen wrappings. Scripture says they "saw and believed."  Then they went home; but Mary stayed.

John writes, "But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb."  She remained after everyone else had left. As she wept, she looked into the tomb and saw two angels sitting where Jesus had been laid. They asked, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She answered, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." In her grief, Mary stayed. Her hope was fading, but her love kept watch.

Then she turned and saw Jesus. She did not recognize him until he spoke one word. Until he said her name. Mary's encounter with the risen Christ was deeply personal before it ever became public. She recognized Jesus because she knew him.

Every one of us has our own story of coming to know Christ. Some of us have known him since childhood. Some met him because someone else's faith pointed us toward him. Some discovered God's presence in seasons of heartbreak or uncertainty. However our story began, each of us has our own encounter with the living Christ.

Mary cried out, "Rabbouni!"—Teacher. In that moment everything changed. The one she believed dead was alive. The tomb was no longer the end of the story. Then Jesus entrusted her with a message. "Go to my brothers and say to them..."

In that moment, Mary's holy hands were given a holy task. She was entrusted with the resurrection before anyone else. The first hands to carry Easter hope back into the world were the hands of a grieving woman. Mary became the first messenger of the resurrection.

John tells us, "Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, 'I have seen
the Lord.'"

Those simple words contain the whole gospel.

The Greek verb translated "I have seen" (ἑώρακα) is in the perfect tense. It describes an action completed in the past whose effects continue into the present.

Those words became something Mary carried. The resurrection was no longer simply an event she witnessed; it became a hope she held and a message she could not keep to herself. That is what holy hands do—they receive God's grace, and then they carry it into the world.

Jesus rose on a particular morning in history. And because he rose, everything is still different today. Death has been defeated. Hope has entered the world. The resurrection continues to shape our lives.

Mary was not chosen because she was polished or prepared. She had not written a sermon. She had not rehearsed her testimony. She was still crying; yet she was entrusted with the greatest announcement in history. "I have seen the Lord." That was enough. That is good news for us.

Every one of us has been given something holy to carry. Maybe it is a word of hope. Maybe it is forgiveness. Maybe it is compassion. Maybe it is simply the quiet assurance that Christ is alive. God continues to place holy things into ordinary hands. Sometimes we hesitate to speak about our faith because our stories feel unfinished. We wonder whether we know enough, whether our words are polished enough, whether our faith is strong enough.

Mary reminds us that God does not wait for perfect messengers. God sends faithful ones. So what does it look like to carry the good news when our own hearts are still grieving? What does it look like to proclaim hope when the world's news feels overwhelming? What does it look like to testify to Christ when our faith feels fragile?

Mary shows us.

She kept showing up. She stayed at the tomb. She listened for the voice of Jesus. And when he called her, she went. Jesus entrusted Mary with the good news. Today he entrusts it to us.

Who in your life needs to hear your story of where you have seen the Lord? How will your words, your actions, your compassion, and your faithfulness proclaim the resurrection? May we, like Mary, receive this holy trust with open hands.

And may God use our ordinary hands to carry the extraordinary good news that Christ is alive.

Long before the gospel was written in ink, it was carried in holy hands. And today, before someone reads Matthew or John, they may first read the gospel in us.

Mary’s holy hands carried the news to the disciples.

And now God places the gospel into our hands.

Will you hold your hands out with me? I want to share with you how Phoebe and I have prayed at night – and invite you into this prayer.

These hands bless.
These hands serve. 
These hands comfort.
These hands forgive.
These hands carry hope.
These hands carry Christ.
These ordinary hands become holy hands wherever they carry the love of Christ into the world.

So go with your holy hands. Carry the good news with your words, your compassion, your courage, and your faithfulness. For Christ is risen, and the world needs each of us to say, “I have seen the Lord.”

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

August 2, 2026 Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Matthew 14:31-21Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21
“Holy Hospitality”
Carol DeVaughan

A couple of exegetical points before I read this story from Matthew’s gospel: first, this miracle story is the only one that is in all four gospels. That should alert us to the value placed on it by those early writers. And, secondly, if you read the first part of chapter 14, you’d know why Jesus needed to withdraw and pray, regroup. His cousin and the “preparer of the way” prophet John the Baptist had been killed in one of the nastiest stories of acting on a whim that exists. So going on retreat seems a pretty human response.

When I was a girl, my family lived several miles out from town, just off a main highway.
Occasionally, especially during the summer, a person would come to our door asking for something to eat – at that time we called them “hobos.”  My mother would tell them to sit in the yard, and she would fry eggs and fix toast and take it to them with a glass of milk.

After they had eaten, they would bring the plate back to the door, say “Thank you,” and disappear again.  Sometimes they would ask if there was some work they could do to pay her back for the food.  She might let them chop some wood or some other small chore outside.

I asked my mother how these folks knew that she would feed them.  She told me that they had a way of marking or indicating a place where they might be fed.  It was one of my first lessons on our responsibility to respond to another’s need.

Today we read Matthew’s version of the loaves and fishes story. Each of the gospel writers presents the story in a unique way, emphasizing points according to the point or context of the writer.

It’s been a long, tiring day. Jesus and the disciples want to retreat, to mourn, to rest, but the crowds have followed. The disciples want the crowds to go away, but Jesus has compassion and ministers to them.  One writer has said that it shows that Jesus’ compassion for people was not abstract, but compassion based in the real, a compassion that cares deeply about the most basic needs of all people.

Jesus did not feed the 5000; he told the disciples to do it. There is no little boy with 5 loaves and 2 fish in this version, although that is what the disciples reported having. Jesus took and blessed what they had, and it was more than enough.

I think this story is about more than personal charity. There is a societal element. Our individual response is certainly important – bringing food to donate to food pantries, filling our “Scouting for Food” bags, and donating school supplies. This gives us a personal connection to the need that is out there.

But sometimes it is easy to think that is all that is required – “we are good people; we help.”

Sometimes there is such an enormity of need that we are paralyzed – starving multitudes in Africa, or even those overwhelming our social systems right here at home. 1 in 5 children in Missouri experiencing food insecurity. Jesus said, “You feed them.” Obscene school lunch debt in most of our schools. Jesus said, “You feed them.” Our ability to respond seems so meager as to be not even worth trying.

Maybe that is what the disciples were feeling – the enormity of the crowd.  

If it had been a half dozen or so, they might have felt compelled to do something.  But 5000 men plus women and children – that’s a major stadium-full with no concession stand to be found!  If they could just send the crowd away, the enormous need was out of sight.

The disciples felt they had nothing, especially compared to the need all around.  But in God’s holy power, they had more than enough.  What a witness of working together, of sharing, of opening the way for the miracle to happen. Jesus’ miracle made the feeding possible, but the disciples were the active agents, and in fact, Jesus said, “You feed them.”

God has entrusted us to be the body of Christ – the hands and feet through which God’s work is done in the world.  God does not work alone, but through people – you and me.  Remember, later in that wonderful depiction of the final judgment, Matthew quotes God’s question about what each one has done for the “least of these.”

But if we look no further than what we as individuals can do, we miss the larger imperative, miss the larger question, the societal, justice issue of inequality and our resistance to facing it and really admitting our duplicity in allowing unjust policies that hurt real people.

When Jesus said, “You feed them,” it became a moral imperative to take our responsibility as a society seriously. Where revenue comes from and how it is spent is the responsibility of all of us. And it is up to each of us to look at the big picture, beyond how some policy just impacts me personally. How does the income inequality keep getting larger?

This story is about more than sharing out of our abundance, although that is important. It reminds us, as the Psalmist said, that God is “good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made,… that God gives food in due season.”

Whether you read the Old or the New Testament, the commandment is clear – as disciples we are not to hoard what we have, but to share with those who need.

We follow a God of unbelievable abundance, and we are to reflect our God in the way we live, in the way we respond to the world.

This is election week, and I am certainly not going to tell you how to vote. I do tell you TO vote, and also to consider how your vote helps all of God’s people.

It is appropriate that this story comes on a Communion Sunday – for this is a Eucharistic story.  We Presbyterians consider one of our main points of faith, that God’s grace comes to us not through any merit of our own and then we live our lives in a response of gratitude.

The foreshadowing of the Lord’s Supper here shows that Jesus was sponsoring more than just dinner. It is a foreshadowing of the fulfillment of God’s vision for the creation.

So let’s all add our loaves and fishes and be part of the bringing of the Beloved Community.

Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Luke 13:10-19
“This Divine Moment”
Douglas T. King

The Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh writes this about being fully alive in the present moment.  “To return to the present is to be in contact with life.  Life can be found only in the present moment, because the past no longer is and the future has yet to come…The place of our appointment with life is in the present moment.”

There has often been a distinction drawn between the Buddhist focus on the present moment and the Christian focus upon what is to come, eternal life, Christ’s return, the full arrival of the kingdom of God.  And there have been times in the history of the church when this has been the case, when the church has told its people to ignore whatever suffering they are experiencing in this life because everything will be better in the life to come.  
The French existentialist, Albert Camus, was critical of the church and its preoccupation with the afterlife which he claimed undermined its ability to be ethically engaged in the current concerns of the world.  Camus was correctly raising the concern that too often holiness has been defined as disengagement with present day realities.

This focus on the future presents another risk as well.  The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr notes that “The future is by definition the unsayable and the uncontrollable, filled with paradoxes, mysteries, and confusions…If you surrender to the fear of uncertainty, life can become a set of insurance policies.  Your short time on earth becomes small and self-protective, a kind of circling of the wagons around what you can be sure of and what you think you can control—even God.”

The Jesuit, Jean-Pierre de Caussade presents an antidote to these risks.  In his book, Abandonment to Divine Providence, he discusses how holiness can be found in the midst of the mundane activities of our everyday lives.  Caussade argued that even the parts of our lives that are distasteful and boring are important moments in our growth as Christians.  “Every moment is given to us by God and so bears God’s will for us.  Thus, when we accept what we cannot avoid, and endure with love and resignation things which cause us weariness and frustration, we are on our way to holiness.”

He described the “sacrament of the present moment.”  “Just as Christ, in the Eucharist, is visible to the eyes of faith under the appearance of bread, so to the faithful Christian it should be evident that God’s will is truly present, though disguised, in what might otherwise be dismissed as ordinary and commonplace.”  Caussade taught that we might imagine each moment of our lives as a veil or shadow behind which the will of God awaits our discernment.  The present moment, this very second, the smallest unit of time imaginable, this is the mustard seed, this is the treasure offering abundant growth that often goes unrecognized and overlooked.  

Life is filled with millions and millions of mustard seed moments.  Some of them are lovely and meaningful, the graduation of a daughter from college, a twenty fifth wedding anniversary with a beloved spouse, a breathtaking sunset shared with friends. Inevitably, there will also be plenty of tedium moments.  We will stand in line at the grocery store.  We will get stuck in traffic.  We will get up in the morning and brush our teeth for the ten thousandth time.  There will be numerous moments that feel like throwaway moments, a useless passing of time.  And there will be moments we would do anything in the world to throw away, moments of sorrow and pain, hospital moments, pink slip moments, moments of conflict with those we love, and moments when we are hurting and cannot even quite name why.  

But there is not one single moment of our lives when God is not intently present.  The divine is ever inviting us into deeper relationship, ever offering us healing and transformation.  Perhaps offering us the opportunity to learn patience while standing in line or recognizing the beauty of creation as we are stranded on the 64 by the zoo.  And perhaps those hardest of moments like at the bedside of a loved one under the care of hospice we can recognize that God is present in our midst suffering beside us, and we can somehow see God’s glory even in the midst of our grief and confusion.  

Caussade believed that the way to happiness and holiness in the midst of our very imperfect lives is attention to every moment as a distinct revelation of the divine in our midst.  

Matthew and Mark place the parable of the mustard seed in the midst of lengthy teachings by Jesus.  But Luke uses the parable in a different context.  He places the parable of the mustard seed immediately following Jesus’ healing in the synagogue, on the Sabbath, of the woman who had been crippled for eighteen years.  Any moment can be a mustard seed moment, a revelation moment.  Any tiny moment can reveal the large grandeur of God and grow our faithfulness.  Do you think that woman who had been suffering for eighteen years had any idea that moment of God’s healing was about to occur when it did and, on the Sabbath, a day when healing was not even considered lawful?  

God’s glory can be unveiled at any time.  Each moment is a tiny mustard seed with the potential to transform itself into an experience of divine revelation; a moment of divine healing and transformation.  There are no moments in which God is not deeply present.  There are only moments when we allow our perception to being open to recognizing divine presence, and moments when we do not.   Let us recognize how precious and holy each moment is and keep our eyes peeled for the glory of God.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.  

Du Caussade, Jeanne Pierre, Abandonment to Divine Providence,
 TAN Books, Charlotte, 2010.
Rohr, Richard, The Naked Now, The Crossroad Publishing Company,
 New York, 2013.                            

Wesley Theodore “Theo” Wedemeyer could be the poster child for lifelong members at Ladue Chapel. Theo is a “cradle Presbyterian,” thanks to his parents, Susan and Denny Wedemeyer. He was baptized at Ladue Chapel and enjoyed singing in the Children's Choir. He later was confirmed and participated in many youth group activities, along with his twin sister, Claire, and their older sister, Ann. (Both sisters live in St. Louis.)

Theo appreciates the many quiet and not-so-quiet opportunities available to deepen one's faith at Ladue Chapel. “I'm very grateful to all of the people at church who helped shape my faith; I had so many great role models.”

Theo lived in Boston and Chicago for more than twenty years after graduating from Miami University of Ohio. He met his wife, Piper, at a Chicago pub she owned, the Bucktown Pub. Piper was a lifelong Chicagoan until Theo whisked her away to the Gateway City. Now, he and Piper enjoy the blessing of raising Marlowe, their nine-year-old daughter. Marlowe is continuing a Wedemeyer family tradition by singing in the Children's Choir and being an active part of Monday Music and More at church.

The young parents stay busy watching Marlowe play field hockey and soccer, and they enjoy seeing her dance. Theo and Piper also enjoy a competitive game of tennis with each other now and then.

The family likes regular quiet time together by turning off the television almost every evening and relaxing by reading.

Get to know Theo! He worships weekly with his mom from a front pew. You may also meet him as you enter church because he often serves as a greeter.

July 12, 2026Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43Romans 8:18-25
“What Should We Do About the Weeds?”
Carol DeVaughan

One of my favorite cartoons is an old Peanuts one in which Lucy is disgusted with Charlie Brown and finally declares “Charlie Brown, you are the crabgrass of life!” You know, that green grass-like stuff that we do not want in our lawns.

Decades ago, some highway planner, concerned about the erosion of the red clay soil along roads in the South, came up with a plan to import a sturdy vine from Southeast Asia known as Kudzu. This plan was quite successful – too successful, as it was discovered kudzu was very, very sturdy and invasive – worse than our bane of honeysuckle. Before long the vine not only covered the roadside, which was good, but also the surrounding trees and electric poles, road signs, everything.

So now the problem became how to get rid of it. One solution was discovered in the spraying of Roundup, then a fairly new product from Monsanto.

Soon after I settled in St Louis, I saw a brief write-up in the Post about the owner of a hot dog shop in eastern North Carolina who had noticed a utility pole nearby covered which looked like Jesus on the cross. (I have a photo if you want to see it later.)

“I glanced at it, and it looks like Jesus. You can’t spray Jesus with Roundup.” The St Louis article went on to say that, although the writer couldn’t speak for the people here at Monsanto, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t want their Roundup sprayed on Kudzu Jesus. He continued, “Besides, the folks there kind of like the symbolism. It doesn’t matter what you do, Kudzu is going to be around. Ain’t that a lot like Jesus?”

Within the 13th chapter of Matthew there are several parables intertwined – the sower, kinds of soil, seeds, treasure planted in the field. All of these hold important truths for us in this day and age, just as in Jesus’s. Today I’d like to focus on the weeds and our role in who is in and who is out, a pertinent and timely question for us in the church today.

In this parable are amazing insights into the life of the church. The church is a mixed-bag reality. Ted Wardlaw has written commentary on both of these parables. He compares those who want to weed the field to those of us today who try to use behavior or theological or biblical certitude as litmus tests.

We find ourselves faced with how narrowly or broadly to draw the boundaries. Who shall we let in, and who is out? Who is accepted by God and who is not?

Then Wardlaw makes an important point – even as we ask those questions, “we assume it is our job to draw up the specifications regarding the wideness of the church’s welcome. How wide, really, can it be, and still be the church?”

In the parable, the master gives the servants a hard answer – “Let both the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest.” And so the question for us, how do we do that? How do we live among the weeds, not knowing exactly when the harvest will come or if the wheat will survive? And of course, this all assumes, we assume, that we are wheat and not weeds!

How do we know when to spray the kudzu or the crabgrass? How do we have that kind of infinite patience that seems to be required as evil surrounds us? Yet we think we should not just be passive and let anything goes.

Hard as it is, we are not the ones to do the judging. We are to offer a kind of radical hospitality that includes everyone – whether we really like it or not. We are to show God’s love indiscriminately.

It’s so often hard to think that way. Some people try to isolate so they don’t “catch” what they see as infectious evil around them. Some try to destroy what is around them to create a safer space. Some are unable to recognize that others may consider them toxic and try to avoid them. We are so sure we are good wheat, we are right, correct, have God’s viewpoint down pat. One of the scariest things I hear from folks these days is “I know I am right.”

But what if, in the call for infinite patience, in the practice of not trying to judge, in constantly working to share God’s love, we are in fact helping eliminate the out-of-control growth of the weeds? What if the saying that we help plant the seeds, but God brings the harvest is true? Sometimes all we can do is trust that God knows what God is doing, even when we can’t see it.

Rachel Held Evans wrote in one of her essays about an experience that was revelatory for her in her journey from strict conservative evangelicalism which has all the answers to a more progressive belief system.

She says she walked into a world inhabited by flesh and blood humans who didn’t stick to the atheist/Muslim/feminist/gay/liberal/poor/skeptic/foreigner script, a world less characterized by black and white certainties.

She writes, “I thought I was called to challenge the atheists, but the atheists ended up challenging me.

“I thought God wanted to use me to show gay people how to be straight. Instead, God used gay people to show me how to be Christian.

“I thought the world needed my answers, but it turned out, I needed the world’s questions. I needed to learn how to doubt well, listen better, and be humbled by how little I know.

“The world, it turns out, is not all weeds. There is evil growing, certainly, and fear and hate and prejudice. But I’ve found life sprouting out of all sorts of unlikely soil, wheat enough for a lifetime of harvests. … God, it seems, is rather stubbornly committed to extracting me from the notion that this is all about being right.”

We Christians believe that for the sake of the whole world, flaws, evil, weeds and all, God will accomplish God’s purpose. We don’t have to understand it. We certainly don’t have to decide who is wheat or weeds, nor do we have to try to eradicate what we judge to be weeds. Rather we should doubt well and learn to live with ambiguity and uncertainty.

But here is our certainty. Through Jesus Christ, God’s will for creation will be completed and fulfilled, and we will be part of that. That is God’s promise and we can trust in it.

July 5, 2026  Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 133
“One Nation Under God”
Douglas T. King  

“One hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beer…” Everyone of a certain age has either sung it or suffered through it at some time in their lives.  Back in the day, joining in this awful song was one of the ways time was passed on those endless family road trips.  When I am on a long car trip, I choose to torture my wife by singing along to theatre soundtracks like “Rent,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and “Hadestown.”    All the lyrics, permanently etched upon my brain, have crowded out less important information like my social security number and the names of the twelve disciples.
 
Psalm 133, which we just heard, is the second to last of the fifteen psalms of ascent, the traveling music of the pilgrims to Jerusalem.  But instead of keeping track of a dwindling beer supply, these brief, easily memorized psalms, allowed those journeying to festal celebrations in Jerusalem a chance to be shaped by their faith tradition.

The structure of the psalm is fairly simple.  It opens with a celebration of an experience of family cohesion, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” and concludes with claiming that experience as a blessing from God, “For there the Lord ordained God’s blessing, life forevermore.”  In between we are given two visible metaphors upon which to ruminate.

Aaron, Moses’ brother, was the first high priest.  The oil running down his beard and collar is a sign of economic prosperity and personal well-being.  Using it so extravagantly
was a sign of generous hospitality.

The second image of dew symbolizes productivity and renewal.  This productivity is not so much in the sense of human effort but rather an arrival of helpful resources beyond human control, a divine gift if you will.  The mountain the dew is found upon, Hermon, is located at the northernmost reaches of the boundary of the nation.
 
The final line of the psalm “For there the Lord ordained God’s blessing, life forevermore” speaks to what one scholar calls the divine “creation-blessing.” (Brueggemann, p. 48)  This idea that God has fashioned the entire world to provide for us in amazing ways and being placed in the midst of it is a privilege to be cherished together.
 
I do find biblical texts like these unrealistic.  Sure, I wish our life together as a community was one long Coca Cola commercial with everybody holding hands and singing songs.  But this text is not a description but a text of proscription.  This is a text calling us to recognize the value of unity and its blessings offered to us and to live into the fulfillment of that unity.  

Too often in our culture, unity is built upon being over and against some other group.  We unify in the battle of blue versus red.  We unify as a nation over and against another nation.  And Christian Nationalism preaches not a gospel of inclusion but one of exclusion.
 
But this text paints a different picture of unity.  First, we hear of Aaron, the high priest. He is the ultimate insider.  Then we hear of the dew on Mount Hermon located on the farthest edges of the territory of the nation.  And finally, we hear of God’s blessing upon the entire world.  Unity in this psalm is a movement continually outward.  The unity of a distinct group allows that group to reach out beyond its borders to others.  We get an example of this in the wedding liturgy during the prayers for the bride and groom when it says, “Make their life together a sign of Christ's love to this broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.  Give them such fulfillment of their mutual love that they may reach out in concern for others.”  What binds us together calls us to widen the circle.

This weekend we celebrate two hundred and fifty years of this remarkable American experiment.  We are reminded of how a rag tag group of colonies chose to unite together to form a nation founded on democracy and passionate free speech.  Over our history there have been glorious eras when we have stood together, battling fascism during the Second World War.  And there have been dark eras when we have been torn asunder, such as the Civil War.  But in each of those darker moments when it has felt that our unity as a nation was at stake, we have found a way forward together.

I fear we face another moment in our history when the state of our union is in question.  When there was once spirited debate, we now experience toxic attacks rarely allowing for substantive discussion.  The voices on the extremes are raised the loudest.  Gerrymandering and social media political isolation bring no encouragement of compromise or quest for mutual understanding.  The days of adversaries like Tip O’Neal and Ronald Reagan sharing a cocktail at the end of a day of political debate no longer exist. Political historians teach us that one of the significant factors in the fall of the Roman empire was an inability for political factions to engage in respectful dialogue.
 
So, why discuss this in a sermon?  Leave politics to the politicians and religion to the clergy.  But I am not preaching a political perspective, I am preaching about God’s call upon our lives to live in unity.  And the promise we have received that with unity comes divine blessing.  That call in the 133rd psalm was upon the nation of Israel to be a model and blessing for all the world to receive, a blessing that continues to widen the circle of unity.
 
Now I am not suggesting anyone need lay down their strongly held beliefs.  What I am proclaiming is that God has called us to place our common bond as children of God as a priority in how we engage in living together as a church, a community, a nation, as the world.

This does not mean we need to perpetually hold hands and sing Kum Ba Yah.  Healthy churches, communities, and nations, all need to engage in spirited debate about the best way for them to move forward.  But God has called them, one and all, to move forward together with loving respect.    
   
Years ago I had an experience that gave me a new understanding of what unity may look like.  For many years, every December in New York, the composer Phil Kline has been hosting what he calls a “free outdoor participatory sound sculpture,” entitled “Unsilent Night.”  What the heck is that?  Kline invites the public to gather and hands out a bunch of boomboxes and mp3 players with a variety of themes of one of his electronic compositions. The idea is for all of the players to play together as they march through the city.  He counts down one, two, three, play, and the music begins.  One year I joined the adventure starting in Washington Square Park.  When Kline called out play, everybody hit their buttons.  Of course, simultaneous is a relative thing with groups and it was clear the players were all starting at slightly different times.  As well, the person standing next to me hit the wrong button and the first thing I heard was the opening chords to a heavy metal AC/DC song.
 
But soon we were on the move and making our way through the village on our way to Tompkins Square Park.  The music swirled around us as the crowd of artists, aging hipsters, and adventurous stockbrokers journeyed.  As the group ebbed and flowed with traffic lights and different walking paces, the musical piece was on the move itself and constantly changing.  At times it was seemingly pointless cacophony and at times it was a magical symphony.  Random onlookers joined the journey because they felt the energy of people gathered together in common purpose.  
 
As we walked by a bar, a young man on his way in paused to take in the scene.  He called out imploringly, “What’s it all about?”  Nobody offered him any explanation
because I am not sure we had one to give.  But if I had a second chance I might have responded, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”

The reality of all human community is that it will always be far from cleanly harmonious.  It will certainly never unfold in lock-step fashion.  As we continued our march we ran into an older gentleman, who seeing the crowd before him, announced with cranky conviction, “Get out of my way, I am headed for coffee!”  There is no such thing as seamless unity on this side of heaven.

When I think about the pushing and pulling within congregations, communities and our nation, I say there is nothing wrong with the cacophony of the democratic process.  God has created us in all our diversity with the ability to express ourselves.  The risk is when our political perspectives overshadow the respect we offer to our fellow children of God.  Our circles grow smaller and smaller and our blessings dwindle.  We are called to continue to try and walk in the same direction, each of us with a soundtrack playing a different variation of the same tune, perhaps not quite in sync.  What may be lost in purity of theological boundaries, or socio-political purpose, we more than make up for in sharing the journey of faithfulness and growing God’s blessings.

So, I do not know if we ever will all be together with oil dripping down our beards, sipping dew off of mountains and singing hymns.   But if in all of our debates we never lose sight of our call to honor and respect one another as beloved children of God, perhaps that cacophony may just sound more like a symphony to the divine.  And may those blessings flow down on the United States of America and all of God’s world. May  there be 250 more years of this remarkable American experiment.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.        
     
Bibliography

Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg, Minneapolis,1984.
 

June 28, 2026  Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Exodus 17:1-7
“The Long Way Around”
Douglas T. King  

Moses named the place Massah and Meribah which means quarrel and test.  I have often thought that Massah and Meribah would be good names for twin teenagers.  And this story in Exodus has all of the pathos of the tug-of-war that occurs between teenagers and parents.  

We all know, either raising teenagers or being one ourselves at some point, that the teenage years can be a little adventurous as we make our way from childhood into adulthood.  And they should be.  It is an in-between time.  It is a journey from the known parameters of childhood to the unknown parameters provided in the freedoms of adulthood.
 
And what we have in our story from Exodus is a people in the midst of the in-between.  For many generations they had lived as slaves in Egypt.  Their entire community had been circumscribed and controlled by a mighty empire.  Their choices were few.  The expectations upon them were clear.

And now their lives have been completely turned upside down.  Yes, they have received this miraculous gift of freedom, and a promise of a home and nation of their own.  But at the moment, they have been led into the unknown of the wilderness.  The text says they journeyed by stages, frankly it might as well have said they were traveling in circles.  We are told several chapters earlier that God specifically did not bring them directly to the Promised Land because they were not yet ready.  They were not ready to be a nation.  They were not ready to live as God’s chosen people just yet.  

Today we hear tale of the growing pains.  This is one of many accounts where the people whine and complain and wonder if life would not be better back in Egypt.  I particularly like these kind of stories because they have a strong ring of truth to them.  These people have received so much in this act of liberation and yet they find it so difficult to trust in what is to come next.  

I get it.  I totally get it.  No matter how many undeserved and unearned blessings I have received, it does not take much provocation at all for me to whine and complain to Go; to be anxious for what will come next; to doubt that God is sufficiently present with me as I move forward in this life.  I think we all carry a little bit of this in us.  We find ourselves living in between two high falutin’ theological terms, justification and sanctification.  

Justification is the idea that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have been reconciled to God.  Whatever mistakes or shortcomings which we have played out in our lives have been forgiven.  We are offered freedom from whatever weighs us down, freedom from the guilt and regrets we carry, freedom from the ways we have been bumped and bruised by this life.

And then there is sanctification.  Sanctification is when we respond to this remarkable freedom we have been offered by growing into the followers of Christ we have been called to be. Sanctification is when our lives reflect the light of God’s graceful and merciful ways on those around us.  

I don’t know about you but I am pretty keen on the justification.  I love the idea of being freed from all of the muck and dreck of my mistakes.  It is the sanctification that gets a little trickier.  It is not that I do not want to be a reflection of God’s love.  I am just not all that good at pulling it off.  I have received this promise that I have been forgiven and freed from my sins but I still live like I am trapped by my sins.  In the midst of having received this amazingly liberating gift of justification and having not yet responded with the life of sanctification I could be offering in return, I whine about where and how God is present in my life.  I throw up my hands and complain to God about how lost I am.  

You see this freedom we have been offered is a brand-new mindset for many of us.  We are not quite ready to live as the Children of God we are.  It reminds me of when I was learning to ride a ten-speed bicycle.  My previous bicycle’s brakes worked by pedaling backwards.  The new brakes were on the handlebars.  On more than one occasion, as I was learning to ride the ten speed, I would be furiously trying to break by backpedaling, to no avail.  Riding around in my backyard I became intimately acquainted with several bushes which crossed my path.  Lucky for me I was bumping into things in my backyard and not on the local highway.  My backyard was a much safer place to learn how to ride a ten-speed.

And the same is true for these freed Jewish slaves.  Before they are ready to enter the Promised Land they need a time and a place to learn how to be the people of God.  The Jewish Scholar, Avivah Zornberg writes this about wandering in the wilderness.  

“Their ‘crooked road’ into the wilderness gives them, paradoxically, a freedom to think, to ask their subversive, sarcastic questions.  It gives them, also, the outrageous freedom to ‘zigzag,’ not only geographically but intellectually, emotionally.  The road that is akuma (‘crooked,’ ‘devious’) threads through places of vision and faith adjacently, places of doubt and revision…These discontinuities cannot be avoided, or dispelled.” (Zornberg, pp. 204-205)

So what does that mean?  Sometimes we need to get lost.  Sometimes we need to wander around a little bit.  Like it or not, we may not be quite ready for what is to come next.  God may have plans for us that take us in directions we do not see coming.  But the journey will provide blessings yet seen.  

I am reminded of an old story by Sue Monk Kidd in her book When the Heart Waits.

“When I was a child, my parents hired a woman named Sweet.  Sweet cared for my brothers and me as if we were her own.  One summer day we went to visit my grandmother.  While we were playing in the backyard we found a wheelbarrow full of rainwater, and in the rainwater were hundreds of tadpoles, the three of us ran to the kitchen, asking Sweet for three jars.  Grandmother appeared at the door and said with a laugh in her voice, ‘Why Sue, girls don’t catch tadpoles.  Why don’t you come with me and I will teach you to play chopsticks on the piano.’  So the two boys ran off to the joy of the wheelbarrow and I ended up on the piano bench.

“Several days later, Sweet and I headed off for one of our frequent visits to the city park which was only four blocks away from my home.  The park was a special place to me and I could not go often enough.  I was surprised when Sweet took my hand and we headed off to the park in the wrong direction.  Sweet said, ‘I think we will go the long way this time.’  The long way, her words sounded like a curse on my ears.  Why would anyone go the long way?  I made a scene but Sweet would not relent.  So we headed off on the eight block walk to the park, the long way.  Soon we came upon a ditch, filled with rainwater, and full of tadpoles.  And Sweet pulled out of her pocket, a small mason jar, holes already punched in the lid, and said to me, ‘Now aren’t you glad we came the long way?  There aren’t any tadpoles the short way.’  I hesitated but Sweet put the jar in my hands and soon I was elbow deep in the brown water with the rich dark brown life darting to and fro.  That remained one of the most glorious memories of my childhood.

“I grew up and moved away, and forgot about the tadpoles, until recently, when I ran across a line from a poem by Thoreau, ‘we went to heaven the long way around.’  The line caused me to think about the wheelbarrow, the mason jars, Sweet, and the tadpoles.  And I still recall how musical Sweet’s voice sounded to me as she said, ‘Now aren’t you glad we came the long way.  There aren’t any tadpoles the short way.”  

God’s people have always struggled with being led through the unknown, the long way around.  The ancient Israelites complained about being led from Egypt around in circles in the wilderness while they thirsted for the Promised Land.  The young Sue Monk Kidd made a scene about her lengthened journey as she anxiously awaited the park.  Each of us faces times in our lives when we are lost in some way and desperately want to understand what is coming next but still cannot see it. Justified but not quite yet sanctified.

Sometimes the long way around is part of God’s plan.  Sometimes getting lost along the way is how we are prepared for what is to come.  We may quarrel with God about it, at least I know I do, but it is the nature of journeying through this life of faith.  The one thing I think we can hang on to in such times is that though the journey may be longer than we like, and more confusing than we want, God is present with us on every step; present with those Israelites, providing them water to quench their thirst, present with Sue Monk Kidd, in the compassion and kindness of Sweet, leading her to tadpoles; and present with each one of us, providing us with blessings along the way.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.
 
Kidd, Sue Monk, When the Heart Waits, HarperOne, San Francisco, 1990.
Zornberg, Avivah Gottleib, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, 
 Image/Doubleday, New York, 2001.

June 21, 2026 Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Matthew 10:26-31, 34-39Romans 6:1b-11
“Questionable Reassurance”
Carol DeVaughan

I know that Doug and many other preachers do not follow the lectionary. But for me, especially when I was preaching every Sunday, I found the lectionary a useful discipline. And relevant for today, following the lectionary forces you to deal with texts you would rather not, texts you would like to avoid. Such as today!

I mean, really, it’s a curve ball on this day when we honor fathers and those who fill the role of father. “I have come to set a man against his father.” “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Although the daughter-in-law/ mother-in-law part may ring a bit truer – I am a mother-in-law, and while I have a lovely, wonderful daughter-in-law, those in-law relationships can sometimes be tricky to navigate.

These uncomfortable verses follow directly Jesus’ reassurance that God cares for the lowly sparrow and for us.

It’s a good example of the many challenging texts contained in the Bible.

Because the Bible is so much more than “Praise God! God loves you. Alleluia!” And that really is important for us. After all, I feel as if we live much more of our lives in the problems than in the “alleluias.”

This 10th chapter of Matthew contains Jesus’ instructions to his disciples as he prepares to send them out on their own. Jesus does not want them to minimize the challenges they will face. Disagreements within one’s family are certainly a big challenge, painful, impactful as other disagreements are not. I have been reading materials by folks who have grown up in a more evangelical or fundamentalist faith tradition and then found their way to a more progressive world view. It is difficult, and estrangement from one’s family is often the result.

We are aware of thanksgiving dinners or other celebrations in which political topics are avoided because of differences in viewpoints.

Differences in understanding faith can cause similar estrangements.

In Romans Paul offers a kind of reassurance in admitting that he too often does what he knows he shouldn’t and doesn’t do what he knows he should. Ouch, that does feel familiar!

“Should we continue in sin that grace may abound? How can we who have died to sin go on living in it?”

There’s a kind of weariness in Paul’s question that seems very real to me these days. I question my ongoing attempts in letters to politicians expressing disagreements and concerns with actions that seem so opposite of what Jesus would require of us. I know, for those politicians here in Missouri, I am in the minority, and I can almost hear them scoff at my pleas on behalf of those who are different, my remonstrances about the cruelty I see being perpetrated on folks.

And, yes, it is correct to call it “sin” when we stray so far from Jesus’ command to love God first above all and to love our neighbor – who, as we are reminded in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, is anyone who needs help, especially when it is within our power to provide it. The “me and my friends first” is counter to being a disciple.

Jesus uses the very personal and startling metaphor of family to make the point. Following Jesus can be costly, even in the closest of personal relationships.

After hearing those words, it is hard to think back to Jesus’ reassurance that we need not fear, that God cares for every hair on our head.

One commentator, in pointing out the disconnect between the palpable threats of the world enumerated in Jesus’ words and the “safe” world most of us inhabit, asks “What compromises have been made to secure such safety?”

Opposition to following Jesus is real and present today just as back then. Following Jesus calls for a tough-minded courage in those who fully understand the risks. This passage asks us to live in an odd theological tension: God cares for the sparrow and numbers the hairs on our heads. And God asks for an all-encompassing claim of fearlessness to faithfulness in the face of real resistance.

On this Father’s Day, I am remembering my own father who has been gone for over 40 years. I count myself very fortunate in both good parents I had.

My dad was a Presbyterian elder back in the day when you were elected and served until you died, although the rotation system did come in before he died. He believed in remaining true to his conscience and not being afraid to speak his truth – which often put him at odds with another “pillar” of the church, who happened to be his lawyer, and they maintained a respectful friendship in spite of their often opposing world views. When the session cut the budgeted amount to go to world mission, Dad started sending a donation directly to the denomination to benefit that effort. He didn’t cut his local pledge, just put additional money where his heart was.

One night after he picked me up from the weekly youth group meeting, I talked about hearing of persecution of Christians around the world, and I commented that we did not face those same challenges in our country. He said, “Maybe if we were really living as Christians, we would.”

And as we now experience, the definition of “Christian” has indeed become a flash point of disagreement for many.

That is what Jesus is talking about. That is what loving God first above all is about. We must not fear, but we must be realistic. Truly following Jesus will be challenging, yet that is what we are called to do. And not halfway, but all in!

So, take courage, trust in the leading of the Holy, lean on your fellow siblings in the faith, and believe that – as the popular saying goes – “Love Wins!”

June 14, 2026  Third Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Mark 2:1-5, 11-12
“It is Ever a Team Game”
Douglas T. King

Years ago my friend Dean Thompson told me the story of his visit with a parishioner of his, a professor from Cal Tech.  The man in the hospital was dying of AIDS.  He asked Dean to rehearse his faith for him.  Dean, in his weighty voice, told the man of the promises we have been given by God.  When Dean completed his proclamation of the promises the man looked into his eyes, sighed and said "I'm too weak to believe that now."  Dean returned the man's gaze, looked into his eyes and said, "Then maybe you need
to lean on my belief right now."

My friend Bob Dunnum tells of a conversation he had years ago with his mother-in-law Ruby Hooper.  Ruby was beginning to slide more dramatically into the morass of Alzheimer's.  She had not been sleeping well, was worn out, and so, the conversation was disconnected in many ways, and it was hard to say for whom it was more difficult.  
In those days she was remembering her childhood, and she thought Bob was her brother.  She kept saying the same things over and over again. Sensing Ruby's weariness after a while he took her by the hand.  "Maybe we could have a prayer together," Bob said.  And she looked at him plaintively and said, "I'd like that, but I don't remember how to do it."  Bob replied, "Then how about if I do it for both of us?"  And as he prayed she drifted off to sleep.

About fifty years ago Noel Mostert wrote a non-fiction work entitled Supership.  The book tells the true story of a remote island located nearly 1500 miles southwest of Cape Town.  It had been dubbed by some as the loneliest island in the world.  He tells of a young boy who lived in a remote fishing village on the island.  He had sustained a serious leg fracture that was going to require surgery beyond the capacity of the village doctor.  The next day a boat was readied to take the child to Cape Town, and the boy was brought to the docks.  But before he was taken aboard, as he lay on a stretcher at the wharf, every other man, woman, and child in that small village appeared on a nearby hill.  Each one came down to the harbor, took the boy's hand, kissed him, and sent him off on his journey to wholeness with Godspeed.

There once was this man in ancient Palestine who was paralyzed.  We do not know whether he believed he could be healed of his affliction or not.  We do not know what he believed about anything.  Throughout the tale he does not speak a word.  What we do know is that the people around him believed he could be healed and they were prepared to do whatever was necessary to make it possible.  Four of them carried his limp body as the others directed traffic.  When they could not get to Jesus they were not deterred,
they scrambled onto the roof with the paralyzed man in tow.  We do not know, but it is entirely possible that at this point the man wanted to halt all of this nonsense and return home.  What we do know is that these crazy, gullible, faithful people around him had no intention of giving up.  They dug through the mud and twigs and thatch of the roof to bring this man to Jesus.  

Jesus' first response is not to this paralytic man who is being lowered into his very midst.  He responds by looking upward to the people straining with the ropes, slowly lowering the man down.  The text says, "When Jesus saw their faith," then the paralytic man is offered forgiveness of his sins and healing for his body.  

What intrigues me is this group that sweated and strained and believed enough to get this man to Jesus. What fills me with hope is Dean's steadfast offering of belief in the midst of another's suffering and weary belief.  What strengthens me is Ruby Hooper finding peace and sleep listening to Bob's gentle prayers.  What lifts me up is every member of that small village coming down to the docks to lay hands on that injured boy awaiting his journey.

Whenever there is a discussion of homelessness someone always makes the point of how thin the line is between those of us who have a place to live and those of us who do not.  A chill inevitably runs down our spines as we calculate what combination of factors could put us in a similar situation, the loss of a job, divorce, long term illness, addiction, mental incapacity.   Many of us take comfort in the fact that even if we were hit with a series of calamities we have a network of family and friends who would protect us from homelessness.  

But there is another kind of homelessness to which we are perhaps more vulnerable. Spiritual homelessness and the thin line that separates belief and disbelief.  It may arise in the obvious tragedies in our lives, the same ones that put us at risk for actual homelessness, the loss of a job, or a divorce or an illness, leaving us feeling somehow betrayed by God; or it may arise from a long-term ennui that leaves our faith dull, lifeless, listless, as our disbelief weighs heavy upon our chests; or it may be a realization that we have never really believed in all of this Jesus thing, this improbable story of a God taking human form, a God being crucified, a God conquering death.  There are so many ways to lose our faith, to lose our ability to pray, to be broken beyond the point of recognizing the existence of God.  

That is why the endeavor of faith is always a community activity.  We need each other to keep the faith alive.  Some Sundays we show up here and we are not even quite sure why because belief and faith seem distant.  I assume that there is not a day of worship that goes by where there are not people in this sanctuary who have lost
or at least misplaced their faith.  

Why do we come on those days?  Some might say it is out of habit, but I think we come especially on those days because we need to hear that others believe.  When our faith is unsteady, we need to hear other voices rise up and firmly affirm their faith.  When we see no vision of God’s glory, we need to hear voices singing to the glory of God.  
When we can find no prayers of our own, we need to hear the prayers of others.  

Just as I am sure that on every Sunday in this sanctuary there are people struggling with belief, I am also sure that on every Sunday there are people here whose steadfast faith carries us all.  There are always women and men who are grappling with the deepest issues of their lives and yet they stand on the bedrock of their faith in God and know they will not be moved.  

There are times in our lives when our faith is weak and we are like lost children looking for our way, in need of a hand of guidance...a hand to lift us up or lower us down to a place where we can be touched by God.  And there are times in our lives when our faith is strong and we have a hand to offer to others.  

Thank God for the community of the church which believes even and especially when we disbelieve...which seeks to carry us to Christ through all obstacles.  When we may lack the strength to make the journey on our own, thank God for the community of the church which is constantly seeking to bring us to a place with God where we can find grace, and healing, and wholeness.

Thanks be to God, indeed.  Amen.    

Second Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Galatians 5:1, 13-14, 22b-23
“Let Us Bear Fruit”
Douglas T. King

There is a wonderful, perhaps apocryphal, story among preachers that crystallizes the way in which we sometimes misuse scripture in our preaching.  It is about a preacher who reads a text about Paul traveling on a ship and then the preacher proceeds to preach on the great “ships” of the church, stewardship, fellowship, worship, etc.  It is a cautionary tale that perhaps what one preaches should have some actual tangential connection to the scripture which is read.  

Well, this morning I must admit I started in the worst way in selecting this text from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  Not being closely tied to the lectionary, if I am not in the midst of preaching a series, I sometimes wander in search of an appropriate text.  As I considered
what the context for the church was on this day the first thing that popped into my mind was the Strawberry Festival. This led to our text from Galatians.  Strawberries, fruit, fruit of the Spirit, get it?  Yes, I am ashamed to admit that is how we got to the text this morning.
 
But let me say even the cheesiest of connections can sometimes prove illustrative, and even possibly be the work of the Spirit, so do not give up on me just yet.  As some of you know, the book of Galatians is often referred to as the Magna Carta of Christian liberty. It has received this grand nickname because throughout the letter Paul explains that our reconciliation with God is not found by fulfilling a laundry list of proscribed cultic rituals and good works.  

Paul tells the church in Galatia that it is solely our faith in Christ which reconciles us to God.  In the midst of a culture of so many behavioral expectations used in an effort to earn God’s acceptance, it is an offer of sweeping freedom.  In Paul’s church there are no outsiders who must conform to the ways of the past.  Through grace we all step into a remarkable freedom.  However, the other side of the equation of freedom is how we find our way forward now that we have been freed.  In the section of chapter five we heard this morning, Paul is addressing this question.  How do we live together in community if our primary focus is not found in fulfilling the law?

Paul runs through a catalogue of vices of which I have to say I am not entirely unfamiliar, and then he offers the fruit of the Spirit, the outward characteristics which demonstrate the Spirit of God at work in our midst; “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

We are reminded that this Christian faith of ours only gains its traction in community.  It is only in the midst of shared life that we can begin to discern how in tune we truly are with the Spirit of God.  This has always been my issue with the great Christian hermits.  I cannot dream of living out their commitment to God through intense asceticism, but I have always wondered how well they could measure their love of God without the context of actually loving the children of God.  It is all well and good to sit alone in a room somewhere and ruminate on how much one theoretically loves God and thus loves all of God’s children.  It is entirely another matter when you are cut off in traffic, or your neighbor is running their leaf blower at seven in the morning, or God forbid, someone disagrees with you about what kind of cookies should be served at coffee hour.
   
Between advancements in technology and how we learned to live during the pandemic, it has become far too easy to isolate ourselves or be very selective in how and when we choose to live in community.  And the pride we take in self-reliance can exacerbate the issue.  We can fall under the illusion that our need for community is merely another lifestyle choice and not an imperative to our mental and spiritual health. In 2023 the Surgeon General produced a report on isolation and loneliness, “it is more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health.  It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementias, stroke, and premature death.  The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day…”
This is a sobering analysis to say the least.  

Which brings us back to the Strawberry festival.  It is not an event which exactly transforms the created order.  It does not bring peace to our warring world.  It does not repair all of the homes still suffering from the effects of last year’s tornado.  It does not do a lot of things.  But what it does do, is intentionally bring us together. It is another opportunity to see if the fruit of the Spirit abides here at Ladue Chapel.  It is one more time to see if “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” are present when we gather together.  

It is important to remember that Paul is not ordering us to live out these ideals, he is not proscribing them for us.  What Paul is doing is describing what a community where the Spirit reigns looks like.  He is painting a picture for us of how life in community, where the Spirit resides, reveals itself.  Paul is not creating a new law of rules.  In Galatians we are being offered total freedom.  He is telling us not to live our lives out of fear or guilt or beholden-ness to some set of rules handed down by God.  Paul is offering us the opportunity to live lives that are motivated by gratitude for the Grace we have already received in Jesus Christ.  

When we open our hearts to this reality we are given the freedom to live in the Spirit; to live in community in a self-giving manner; to find ourselves being generous with each other not because we must or because the people around us are perfect and easy to love, but because we just cannot help ourselves knowing how generous God has already been with us.

In the pastoral prayer I pray at weddings there is a line speaking of the couple.  It is a reminder that the blessing they have received is a blessing to be multiplied.  “Give them such fulfillment of their mutual love that they may reach out in concern for others.”  The blessings we may find in this community of faith, the fruit of the Spirit, allow us to bear fruit out into the wider world; to care for those beyond our own immediate community, to bring “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” perhaps at Isaiah 58, or one of the many worthy agencies our stewardship dollars support, or wherever our hearts may lead us.
 
So, take your temperature at the Strawberry Festival this afternoon or the next time you are surrounded by the people of God and see if your heart is touched with love, and joy, and peace, and patience and all the rest of the signs of the fruit of the Spirit.  If we are not there just yet it is not because we are not following the appropriate rule book or because the people around us are not worthy.  It is because we have yet to recognize the gift of freedom God has given us and thus welcomed the Spirit into our midst.
 
Paul is calling us to find our freedom and in responsive gratitude we cannot help but reach out into community to be of loving and faithful service to one another.  It may sound a bit far-fetched to us because we know all too well the weaknesses and limitations we and others possess.  But trusting in this freedom is not about trusting our abilities.  It is about trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit to transform who we are individually and who we are in community.  So, as you are enjoying your strawberries this afternoon keep your eyes and heart open for a far more important fruit and the Spirit which promises its arrival.
  
Thanks be to God.  Amen.       

May 31, 2026 Trinity Sunday
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
John 5:1-9   Isaiah 65:17-25
“What Now?
 Carol DeVaughan

I appreciated Doug’s comments about Trinity in this week’s Chapel Bell. And while I don’t want to focus on the theological concept today, I do want us to keep in mind one aspect of Trinity – that of the community illustrated within the Godhead.

I have had many conversations over the past weeks and months about the importance of community within our faith lives. My sermon at Presbytery a couple of weeks ago centered around our drawing together and working together to strengthen ourselves and our witness and effectiveness toward God’s vision for the world.

Before the pandemic, we took “in-person-ness” for granted; since the pandemic we continue to struggle with concepts of community in virtual spaces. There certainly are advantages – those who are physically unable still can participate; travel time and expense are much lessened. But for me – as a total extrovert – I need people! And I would argue the church was created for community; God did not intend isolation.

Isaiah’s lovely image of God’s vision is just that – God’s vision of a world in which all are united in diversity and interdependence. Even our disabled friend in John’s story is out in public – for 38 years!

Thirty-eight years back from today would be 1988. Some of you may not even have been born then. But if you were, think back to that year and all the years since. What if your life had been on hold since 1988. What would be missing? I didn’t start seminary until the next year, so my present life wouldn’t exist. Jobs, marriages, children – none of that. Just lying there waiting for the next day and the next and the next.

A bit of background to set our stage – the Pool of Bethzatha, or Bethsaida, lay along the main path leading to the Temple. Around it were 5 porticos or waiting rooms, in which people with various ailments would lie. The legend was that an angel would come periodically and stir the waters, and the fortunate one or so who got in first while the water was stirring would be healed. So, naturally you wanted to be in front of the crowd to be able to get in first.

But our friend had been lying there for 38 years and hadn’t made it yet. When Jesus asks the man what’s going on, the man gets pretty defensive. He has whining down to an art! “No one will help me. If I try to get into the water, some meanie pushes in front of me, and I miss my chance.” And apparently in 38 years he hasn’t gotten any better at it.

In fact, just lying there is an option. Maybe he has developed a community of like-minded complainers. Maybe he has become the local expert on the system. He recognizes the regulars. He knows who could be trusted. He knows who could be bribed, which employee might be willing to assist in moving a mat a bit closer, especially for a sizeable tip. He could tell you which seller of animals had never had one of his animals rejected by the priests. He might even have worked out the probabilities of when the angel might show up to stir the waters.

He could probably recognize new faces, first time visitors. Probably was seeing the second generation of healing-seekers. He could offer insight from his years of observation on the best way to get to the front. His problem had become his lifestyle. He had built his life on being the victim, on being unwell.

And so Jesus’ question to him, which on the surface might seem absurd, is in fact the correct question – “Do you want to be healed?” Do you really want something to change?

A doctor talks with someone who has a health problem exacerbated by smoking or other unhealthy life habits – “Do you want to be well?” A counselor works with a couple who keep repeating their mistakes with each other – “Do you want a healthy relationship?” A teacher talks to a student who has failed a test and admits not studying for it at all – “Do you want to pass?” Do you want to be made well or whole?

Often our answer is an unqualified “Yes!” But too often it is a whine or an excuse: “Lord, I’ve been lying here for 38 years and no one will help me, or someone always gets in my way. I can’t help it; it’s not my fault.”

Sometimes our answer is driven by fear that if we give up “the way we’ve always done it,” the system and patterns we know, even when we know them to be faulty, we may be worse off than we are now. Or if we “rock the boat” we might lose our community.

We might decide that just lying there, being inactive, being passive, is an acceptable way to live into God’s new heaven and new earth, God’s promise of life abundant. Or the seductive idea that God will take care of everything for us.

What if we decided we have a role in stirring the waters? What if we are part of God’s plan for healing in the world?

There’s a story of an urban church with a stained-glass window showing an elaborate depiction of the golden new Jerusalem nestled in the clouds. Some members of the congregation thought the window should be taken out because it was too much of a contrast with their inner-city context of slums and drugs and poverty and violence.

But then they realized they could see their actual city buildings through the overlay of the vision of the Holy City.

And they began to talk about how that vision of God’s new Jerusalem could come to earth to dwell with humans. What should they be doing to live in that reality, to work toward that reality?

We need the hope and vision, and yes, the energy, of God’s reign to help us through day-to-day living. But it must be more than a passive hope, more than pie in the sky by and by, more than lying alongside the healing pool waiting for someone to notice. We need one another, and others need us. We need to appreciate others in all their diversity, their oddness, their differences from us – that’s the basic foundation of community, of God’s vision for the way the world is supposed to work.

We have the invitation and the promise of Creator, Savior, Spirit to take up our mat and walk.

Do you want to be made well – or do you want to just lie there?

May 24, 2026Pentecost Sunday
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Acts 2:1-13 and Psalm 104: 24-34, 35b
The Sovereign God of Creation is Speaking –
Is the Church Listening?
Deborah Krause, Eden Theological Seminary


Move 1 Origin Stories – More Benchmarks than History
Anniversaries and holidays are often anchored with stories of how it all began. Anthropologists call these “origin stories.” For marriages we focus on the stories of how we met, the day we were married. For holidays and festivals, we focus on stories that mark how this special day bears character, qualities, events, and details that mark it distinctively as the beginning of our family, organization, community, or nation.

In my family, my parent’s wedding day is a great example of an origin story. My mom and dad were married at Summit United Presbyterian Church in Mt. Airy PA, outside of Philadelphia on a Friday afternoon, June 13, 1952. The distinctive element of that day, other than being Friday 13, which held my mother’s verve both to tempt fate and look for a bargain in the reception hall fee, was that it poured rain all day – a non-stop gully washer. Those seemingly gloomy details, Friday the 13th and rain, in my family lore were not used to cast a pall over my parent’s marriage, which went on to create four children, 7 grandchildren, and lasted for 64 years, up until my father’s death, but to illumine my parent’s charmed ability to always turn a frown upside down, and enjoy life, and more so at a bargain, even when the sun wasn’t shining.
 
Origin stories, more than a record of beginnings, bear the values, commitments, and virtues of what they commemorate. In telling the story of how we began, we are grounded in our shared identity and purpose.

Pentecost Sunday is an annual festival of the church. It too has an origin story.

Move 2 – Church’s Origins as told by Luke in Acts 2 informed by Ps 104
Unlike the story of Jesus’ birth for which the gospels of Matthew and Luke give us different origin stories, the New Testament writings record only one distinctive story of the origin of the church. That story is found in Luke’s second volume to his Gospel, a writing we call the Acts of the Apostles.

As an origin story, Luke’s commemoration of the birth of the church is highly programmatic. None of its features are merely accidents of history – they are iconic elements of ecclesiology – that outline Luke’s particular theology of the church.

Firstly, Luke grounds his story of the birth of the church in the celebration of Pentecost – the Jewish festival commemorating another origin story about the giving of the Law to Moses and Israel on Mt. Sinai 50 days following Passover. In this beginning, Luke defines that the church is tied to the larger story of the sovereign God of creation and the people of Israel. In this, Luke casts the origins of the church as a part of God’s larger creative and redemptive work in the world. As the Psalmist in Ps. 104 celebrates, the Lord is the creator of all and provider of all resources for living. Luke is bold to imagine that the church in its mission is an agent of this very same redemptive and creative work of God.

Secondly, Luke casts the story of the birth of the church in Jerusalem on Pentecost as a global event. Yes, the event itself happens in Jerusalem on the festival of Pentecost, but Luke highlights in an extensive list of geographical regions how that celebration has assembled Jewish people of the diaspora from all over what Luke and other ancient writers would have considered the world. As such, the festival of Pentecost in Jerusalem as recounted by Luke sets the stage for an event of global impact that takes place among a gathered people assembled in one place.

With all these significant elements in place, the stage is set in Luke’s origin story for the sovereign God of all creation to reveal God’s self. This is what Biblical scholars call a theophany – a sonic, visual, multi-sensory immersive experience in which God is specially and powerfully present.

The Pentecost story is not the only theophany in the Bible. Think of Moses’ call at the burning bush, the liberation of Israel from Pharoah at the parting of the Red Sea, the tearing of the curtain of the temple from top to bottom at Jesus’
crucifixion. You get the picture. Theophanies are stories not only steeped in dramatic events, but also in the significance of God’s presence and purpose.

After Luke has established the revelatory nature of the Pentecost story – the theophany plays out.

• From heaven there comes a sound, like a rush of violent wind – filling the space where the people are gathered. 
• Then, divided tongues of fire appear among and above the people gathered.
• Finally, the disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages (in other words, in languages not their own) as the Spirit gives them the ability. 

To underscore the miraculous nature of the story– Luke, illumining the global character of the event, enumerates just who is present. The regions, ethnicities, and nationalities might sound like a checklist: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phyrgia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Rome, Crete, Arabia – but what these geographical touch points dramatize is nothing short of a cartographical compass rose -- North, South, East, West -- of what for Luke would be a map of the entire world.

According to Luke, Jewish people are gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world. Jesus’ followers – the disciples (now become apostles) are also Jewish residents of Galilee. How would they be able to communicate with people across so many cultures and languages? And yet, as the crowd exclaims, “in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

The theophany, so intentionally described by Luke, is an event of the sovereign God of creation, in the power of the Holy Spirit, communicating universally across differences of language, culture, nation, and ethnicity.

The church, according to Luke, is born from an event in which all the barriers of division in the world dissolve and everyone, despite our differences, can join in a common hearing and understanding of the sovereign God of creation’s deeds of power.

Move 3 – A Story about Speaking or Listening?
Historically, the church in retelling the story of Pentecost has focused on the element of language and speaking.

Visual Art of the story – understandably – emphasizes the confounding specter of the tongues of fire. Educational materials have picked up on this. Sunday School curricula have resourced crafts for making tongues of fire headbands, although no Sunday School instructor ever has felt sufficiently prepared to explain to children, let alone adults, exactly what a tongue of fire is or what it means.

If we attend closely to Luke’s telling, however, the visual elements of fire and the dramatic elements of multiple languages are not really the focus of the story. Instead, Luke emphasizes the elements of hearing and listening. In the text he employs verbs and nouns related to hearing and listening twice as many times as those related to language and speaking.

Understood this way, the miracle of Pentecost is not about speaking in different tongues. The miracle of Pentecost is about people of diverse cultures and countries all hearing one another, each in their respective languages. Pentecost, according to Luke, is a miracle of listening and a miracle of shared understanding across all that divides us.

Move 4 – The Difference between a talking church and a listening church
According to Luke’s origin story of Pentecost, the Church was born to listen and understand, overcoming divisions of nationality, language, and culture to be a diverse but unified agent of God’s redemptive work in the world.

Think of it, if the church in the power of the Holy Spirit could truly live into this calling, just what a powerful agent of God’s mission of love in Jesus Christ we could be!

The problem is – we in the church have largely missed the memo. We have been quick to take up the work of proclaiming and professing, which of course is part of our purpose, but have too often neglected the call to listen and hear.

What this neglect begins to look like is local congregations more invested in our practices of worship, fellowship, and the maintenance of our buildings than we are in our community engagement and mission. We focus on rehearsing our story and confessing our creeds, but miss the work of listening to God’s people in our communities. Our theological schools have focused on the formation of preachers and teachers but have neglected skills in community leadership and mission.

What this also looks like are national denominations more ordered toward conserving our forms, structures, and resources and less committed to global ecumenical and interfaith partnerships in mission.

A glaring illustration of this can be seen in the 2025 decision in the national structures of the PCUSA to drastically cut global mission workers – thereby dramatically reducing our capacity to listen for testimony to God’s redemptive work as it is happening in different parts of the world. In light of Acts 2, this decision seems to be a reckless dereliction of our calling to be a globally engaged and listening church. As General Assembly approaches this summer in Milwaukee, let us pray for the discernment of our delegates in their deliberation of stewarding our denomination’s resources to be faithful to who God has called the church in the power of the Holy Spirit to be in the world.

Move 5 – Re-engaging our Origin Story – Becoming God’s Listening church in the world
As we celebrate the story of Pentecost today, and as we embark upon the season following Pentecost, Luke’s origin story grounds the church to our calling – to be a diverse and globally engaged community listening for testimonies of God’s deeds of power in the world.

As we focus on this posture of being a listening agent of God’s redemptive work, we have a powerful model of how to move in the world – the ministry and mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who moved across boundaries of class, caste, nationality, ethnicity, ability, and gender,  as an agent of God’s redemptive work by listening with compassion -- to the woman who had a hemorrhage from whom he heard her whole story, and the Samaritan woman whom he engaged in dialogue about her life,  by hearing the anguished cries of the Gerasene Demoniac who was cast aside among the tombs, by listening to the sadness of the rich man devoted more to his belongings than to God, and to the anger and grief of his dear friend Mary when her brother Lazarus died.

God has given the church this listening and compassionate Jesus to follow.

Our world, much like Luke’s world, and Jesus’ world before it is one crying out for the compassion of God. The gift and challenge of Pentecost as Luke tells the story of its origin, is that we – the church in the Holy Spirit, following in the ministry and faith of Jesus Christ, are called to be bearers of God’s compassion in the world. We are called to listen for testimonies of God’s presence in the stories of those we meet in the world – across differences of identity, age, nationality, class, ethnicity, and culture.

The promise of Pentecost is that as we do so we are nothing less than agents of God’s redemptive work in the world.

For this high calling and for this holy purpose, let the church say, thanks be to God! Amen!