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!

May 17, 2026  Seventh Sunday of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Mark 4:35-40, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 127:1-2
“The Holy Quotidian: Sabbath Slumber”
Douglas T. King

Most of my evenings end reading in my study.  I can never read a single book at a time so there are usually three or four books stacked on the wide windowsill by my old mission style rocking chair.  I slip back and forth among the books scribbling and underlining along the way.  As the evening rolls along I can sense my comprehension slipping and I know bedtime is nearing.  The clarity for my bedtime comes from down the hall, where my cat, Sassparilla the Singing Gorilla, will be sitting and staring at me telling me the time has come.

Unfortunately, I am not one of those people that climbs into bed and drifts off to sleep. My head on the pillow most likely corresponds with my head filling with minutia and worry. There is no better time to fret than when I am attempting to sleep.  To distract myself I will put on Turner Classic Movies and attempt to doze off to whatever the black and white film of the evening may be.  It does not often work.  All of this is to say that I am the worst person to speak to how we should recognize slumber as sabbath.  But since I’m in the pulpit with a robe on, you are going to need to settle for me nonetheless.  

In our gospel lesson this morning we hear of a most extreme example of sleeping.  We find the disciples with stormy chaos all around them, a reminder that the sea is a metaphor for chaos in the Bible. They are justifiably panicked.  Jesus is asleep at the wheel in the back of their boat.  The disciples' panic expresses itself in an outcry that is part a call for help and part a judgment, “Teacher do you not care that we are perishing?” I would have been screaming right along with them.  

When Jesus does awake, everything changes in a moment.  He casts out the chaos, “Be silent!  Be still!”  The disciples’ pleading prayer is answered.  And then Jesus asks a question that in my opinion is out of bounds.  “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?” If a group of people, including fisherman who know the water, are afraid of drowning, the fear seems completely justified.  The final twist of this text is that their fear only grows with the calmed chaos.  They are more afraid of being in the presence of such remarkable power than they were of the storm.  But that is a sermon topic for another day.

The question before us this morning is why did Jesus fall asleep.  First of all, a little context is illuminating.  He has spent the entire day teaching before a very large crowd. Lest we forget, Jesus was human.  He was as vulnerable to exhaustion as we are.  This is a concrete reminder of just how close God has chosen to be with us.  And there is a second reason Jesus may be asleep in the boat as chaos rages all around them.  He is teaching the disciples that even in the midst of chaos we need to put our trust in God’s presence.

In this fourth sermon in our series on the “Holy Quotidian” we are considering how our relationship to sleep can reveal the holy.  Ever since the invention of the light bulb, sleep has been on the retreat.  There is always more we can be doing late into the evening; more remote work on our computers; more housework; more television; more endless scrolling on our phones.  And for some of us it is not a matter of not trying to get enough sleep, we just cannot get ourselves to sleep.  “In 2013 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared, ‘Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Problem.’” (Warren, p. 145)  

Insufficient sleep, and the devaluing of sleep is also a theological problem.  Obviously, if we cannot sleep due to some physical reason that speaks for itself.  But our reluctance and/or inability to sleep reveal something about our spiritual health.  At first hearing this may sound incongruous.  What do our sleeping habits possibly have to do with our relationship with the divine?  Well, first of all they tell us something about ourselves.  When we hear of folks bragging about how little sleep they need they are also telling us something about the sense of their personal power.  The limits that apply to others do not apply to me.  When we slip into sleep we are allowing our deep vulnerability to be revealed.  There we lay, completely incapable of defending ourselves, solving any major problems, or achieving any worldly goals.  We might even be snoring or drooling a little on our pillows.  We are hardly at our most powerful or most attractive.  When we sleep, we reveal just how mortal and limited we truly are.  

When I cannot fall asleep it is often because I am too anxious about a myriad of concerns, all my worries about the world and about my life.  How am I ever possibly going to fix everything?  What I do not do is recite the words from psalm one hundred and twenty-seven that I just read. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.  It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives sleep to his beloved.” These words, of course, are not telling us to eschew deep concern for the world or that we are not called to work hard in our lives. These words remind us that we are not God.  And there is a God in our lives who loves and watches over us, oftentimes in ways beyond our understanding.

Tish Harrison Warren notes that “In Jewish culture, days begin in the evening with the setting of the sun. (We see this in Genesis 1 with the repetition of ‘And there was evening and there was morning.’)  The day begins with rest…Eugene Peterson says, ‘The Hebrew evening/morning sequence conditions us to the rhythms of grace.  We go to sleep and God begins God’s work.’” (Warren, pp. 150-151)  Here is the reality it is so hard for us to grasp, God’s grace precedes anything we will ever do.  We are never the first movers, even in our very own lives.  All that we do is in response to God’s loving grace present in our lives.  The question for us is whether we recognize this or not.
 
In First Thessalonians we are told to “pray without ceasing” or in some translations “pray always.”  The author Henri Nouwen has an interesting take on this.  “Nouwen tells us that the literal translation of the words ‘pray always’ is ‘come to rest.’  Nouwen does not overlook the reality that life can be hard and complicated.  All those things that keep us up at night are real concerns.  He writes that the rest he speaks of “has little to do with the absence of conflict or pain.  It is a rest in God in the midst of a very intense daily struggle.” (Norris, p. 6)  

When Jesus is in the back of that boat asleep, the chaotic storm around him and his disciples is very real.  But he also knows that God’s abiding presence is just as real and far more powerful.  When we surrender to sleep at the end of the day there are no guarantees that the anxieties and concerns we are laying down will disappear in the morning.  The guarantee we are given is expressed eloquently in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Laying aside the worries of the day and climbing into bed to go to sleep can be a sacramental act; an opportunity to recognize and welcome God’s transforming grace bearing our burdens with us.  Resting well can be an act of faith and an offer of prayer to the divine.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.  
                 
Norris, Kathleen, Acedia and Me, Riverhead Book, New York, 2008.
Warren, Tish Harrison, liturgy of the ordinary, IVP Books, Illinois, 2016.

May 10, 2026  Sixth Sunday of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Mark 7:24-30
“The Holy Quotidian: Broken Shoelaces”
Douglas T. King

Do you ever have one of those days?  You go to pour the milk for your cereal only to discover the carton is empty.  There is a fender bender traffic jam on the 64 and you are late getting to the office.  To make up for the poor start to your day you decide to treat yourself to a fancy cup of coffee and the barista gets your order wrong.  When you get to work you end up getting into a heated disagreement with a coworker over something entirely inconsequential.

There are things that happen in our day, over which we have little control and they upend our plans.  And then there are things that happen in our day, over which we have control, and we bungle them completely.  The joke with my wife, Marta, is that the smaller the issue is the more likely I am to completely lose my mind over it.  If the sky is falling I am completely prepared to respond calmly and with focus to an actual crisis at hand.  Now, if I break a shoelace tying my shoes in the morning I am likely to run screaming around the room doing a spot on impression of a three-year-old in mid-tantrum wailing at God “woe is me, how could you let this befall me!”

Unfortunately for my spiritual health there are quite a few broken shoelace moments in our daily lives.  The writer Rod Dreher writes, “Everydayness is my problem.  It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through…It’s a lot more difficult to figure out how you’re going to get through today without despair.”
 
As in so many things in this life, we often forget that we have an actual and very real choice in how we respond to broken shoelaces, spats with spouses and all the details of our days.  Today is the third sermon in my series on how the quotidian can shape our spiritual lives.  Yes, even the pratfalls and bungles of our days offer us an opportunity to grow closer to the divine.

When we have a day when everything goes according to plan it is easy for us to be lulled into the notion that we are indeed the masters of our own fate.  Heck, the new client loved my ideas, the kids actually enjoyed the dinner I cooked and somehow I even found five minutes at the end of the day to pick up a book and read.  I’ve got this.  Life is clearly under my control.  

But when things go sideways, we are reminded that not only are all things not under our control but we could use a little help from a lot of different places including primarily from the divine.  We have been given the gift of a God who has chosen to take on human form. Jesus lived through his own share of broken sandals, bickering disciples and much worse.  In this morning’s text we heard the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman.  Jesus was looking for a quiet moment away from the breakneck pace of a ministry of teaching, healing, and confrontations with Pharisees.  Even the Son of God needs a moment to catch his breath.  But it was not to be.  He is once again confronted with the endless need of those surrounding him.  But to make matters worse, this was not even someone from his people.  Now he has a foreigner asking him to provide healing.  Will the whole world be on his doorstep next?  His curt response is not Jesus at his best, in fact it is awful.  “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  

Frankly, I have always loved this text.  It gives me great comfort that even Jesus can be off his game once in a while. But what happens next is what is most important.  The woman is quick to politely yet forcefully respond to Jesus’ rebuke, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  At this point Jesus could have certainly not been listening.  What does the Son of God have to learn from some random, foreign woman, after all, she already has two strikes against her!  But Jesus does listen and what’s more, he repents.  He reaches beyond his tiredness and frustration and preconceived notions of boundaries and finds an opportunity for learning and healing.  “…the demon has left your daughter.”  His broken shoelace moment becomes a time for him to grow in his understanding of his role as the savior to all people.  

Our broken shoelace moments give us the chance to grow in our understanding of how we are called to be disciples of Christ.  Tish Harrison Warren writes this about how she would like to respond to her broken shoelace moments, “I need to cultivate the practice of meeting Christ in these small moments of grief, frustration, and anger, of encountering Christ’s death and resurrection—this big story of brokenness and redemption—in a small, gray, stir-crazy Tuesday morning.”  (Warren, p. 56)

It is easy for us to overlook the potential for little moments in our lives to also be important moments, important spiritual moments.  If we have an argument with someone and realize that the debate was more about our ego than any other issue we have the opportunity to repent and realize that God has called us to live lives of humility, valuing relationships over saving face.  When too many little things go wrong in a day and we doubt that we have the strength and fortitude to carry on we have the opportunity to repent of the notion that we can get by on our own strength alone.  When anything that occurs in our day serves to show us that we are less than perfect, we have the opportunity to be reminded of our God who is perfect, present in our lives, and perfectly loving us every day.
 
I am not sure I will ever stop having a tantrum when one of my shoelaces breaks.  But I hope to grow enough in my faith that one day, after I calm down, I can recognize that I have been given an opportunity to repent and turn toward the one who has promised to bring healing and wholeness to every part of me that is broken in any way.

Thanks be to God even for broken shoelaces. Amen.        
  
Warren, Tish Harrison, liturgy of the ordinary, IVP Books,
 Illinois, 2016.

May 3, 2026  Fifth Sunday of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Leviticus 2:4-13
“The Holy Quotidian: Chores”
Douglas T. King

Anybody worried about what I am going to do with this text?  
I know, me too!  It feels like only Anne Peacock could do something productive with all this endless talk of grain.  But let’s see how we do.

“Lord of all pots and pans and things, make me a saint by getting meals and washing up the plates.”  This prayer is from a monk in a monastery in France in the seventeenth century.  Debbie Fondren wrote “Brother Lawrence was able to turn even the most commonplace and menial task into a living hymn to the glory of God.”  If only it were so for the rest of us.  

This is the second sermon in a series on the holy quotidian, how our daily routines and ordinary living can bring us closer to God.

What we do every day, why we do it, and how we do it, ultimately shapes and defines who we are.  The ways in which we empty the dishwasher, take out the recycling, drive to work, shop for groceries, are actually important.  If we engage in these everyday tasks with continual resentment, we risk becoming resentful people.  If we engage in them in a numb and distracted manner we risk becoming just that, numb and distracted.  And to be honest many of us have quite often approached the daily chores of our lives with some combination of resentment, numbness and distraction.  

Believing that these tasks could function as a way to deepen our spiritual life feels like trying to pull the proverbial rabbit out of a hat.  But imagine if we could do just that.  Not the rabbit out of the hat but deepening our spiritual life in the midst of our humdrum routines.  

The Episcopal Priest Tish Harrison Warren found a way to do this by slightly shifting the first activity of her day.  She used to start her day by scrolling through her phone, catching up on the news, and being entertained on Facebook and Youtube.  
She was first and foremost a consumer.  She writes, “We are shaped every day, whether we know it or not, by practices—rituals and liturgies that make us who we are.”(Warren p.29)

And then one day she became curious about making her bed.  Obviously not curious about how to make the bed, she knew how to do that.  She was just not someone that ever made her bed. I mean after all why bother, you will only be climbing back into it at the end of the day again anyway.  After surveying friends she found out that some of them were passionate bed-makers, so she figured why not give it a try.  And she made a discovery.  
Not a Martha Stewart discovery.  It did make her bedroom look neater but that was not it.

She writes, “After my makeshift sociological study on bed making, I decided that for Lent that year I’d exchange routines: I’d stop waking up with my phone, and instead I’d make the bed, first thing. I also decided to spend the first few minutes after I made the bed sitting (on my freshly made bed) in silence.  So I banished my smartphone from the bedroom.  My new routine didn’t make me wildly successful or cheerfully buoyant
as some had promised, but I began to notice, very subtly, that my day was imprinted differently. The first activity of my day, the first move I made, was not that of a consumer, but that of a co-laborer with God.  Instead of going to a device for a morning fix of instant infotainment, I touched the tangible softness of our well-worn covers, tugged against wrinkled cotton, felt the hard wood beneath my feet.  In the creation story, God entered chaos and made order and beauty.  In making my bed I reflected that creative act in the tiniest, most ordinary way.  In my small chaos, I made small order,” (Warren, p. 28)

Now I am not suggesting that making the bed and connecting it with God’s act of ordering creation is the answer for all of us.  But perhaps it is an example which can spark our imagination.  So much of our lives are taken up by the daily routines of maintaining our physical presence.  At first glance it may seem that those things impede our ability to grow spiritually, taking time and energy from other more ethereal pursuits.  

But as Christians we are deeply and doubly grounded in an incarnational sense of the divine’s presence.  We believe God is in the world.  First of all, the Jewish tradition from which we are born, has a deep faith that God is present in our midst
and that holiness is present in this earthly realm.  That is why the Old Testament is filled with instruction about how to do just about every aspect of our daily life.  Our scripture lesson this morning was a small portion of Levitical law.  It is easy to read through the endless detail of this text and much of the kosher laws and ponder whether God is a bit fussy and punctilious but that is not how we need to hear these texts. These texts are a reminder that God is invested in the daily details of our lives; deeply invested in how we live our lives; how we get through the daily grind; how we flourish or not in this world.

That is why Rabbi Jonathan Sacks refers to the book of Leviticus and all its rules for every aspect of life as “the democratization of the holy.” (Sachs p. 1)  God is present in each and every nitty gritty moment.  Or as Rabbi Sachs says, “The holy is where the transcendent becomes immanent.” (Sachs, p. 19)

And the second way we are grounded incarnationally is in Jesus Christ.  Our belief that God chose to take human form.  Jesus had to wake up every morning, wash his face, scrounge around for some breakfast, and engage in the daily rituals of life just as we do.  In a few moments we will gather around this table and remember a simple meal shared with friends.  The drudgery of our days is just as imbued with the presence of God
as our time together in worship, or when we pray, or any other traditionally labeled spiritual thing we do.  The only difference in any of these acts is how we choose to perceive them.

The challenge for us, is finding ways to incorporate this reality into our day to day, to recognize that existence itself, created by the divine, is permeated by its creator.  The great Jewish scholar, Abraham Heschel wrote, “Just to be is a blessing.  Just to live is holy.”  I hope one day we can be just like Brother Lawrence and be able to celebrate God’s presence in our midst in all things.  I hope we will be able to recognize ourselves as co-laborers with God and our daily actions as an opportunity to participate in God’s glorious creating and sustaining actions.

“Lord of all pots and pans and things, make us saints by getting meals and washing up the plates.”  

Indeed.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sacks, Jonathan, Leviticus: The Book of Holiness, Maggid Books, New Milford, CT, 2015.

Warren, Tish Harrison, liturgy of the ordinary, IVP Books, Illinois, 2016.

April 26, 2026  Fourth Sunday of the Season of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Mark 1:9-11 and Galatians 3:26-29
“The Holy Quotidian: Awakening”
Douglas T. King

There is a topic I can make fifty arguments for and fifty arguments against each and every day.  Depending on the day and which way the wind blows I can land on one side or the other.  So, what is this dynamic and controversial topic which causes my opinion to sway from day to day?

The quotidian.  It is a word that is the antithesis of an onomatopoeic word, a word that sounds like what it is. Quotidian is a word that sounds exactly opposite to what it means.  It sounds exotic.  But besides being an excellent scrabble word, quotidian refers to the stuff of our daily routines, the recurring activities that fill our lives.  For me, every day starts at 6 AM; stretching and then exercising on my old school Nordic Trac cross country skier, shave, shower, breakfast of kale, carrots, chia seeds, and an apple.  Every day.  Every single day. How exciting.  Sometimes I appreciate my daily routines and sometimes they feel like a boring burden to be borne.  
 
Today is the start of a sermon series entitled, “The Holy Quotidian.”  In other words, I will be preaching about how our daily routines and ordinary living can bring us closer to God.

Kathleen Norris writes this, “It is a quotidian mystery that dailiness can lead to such despair and yet also be at the core of our salvation…We want life to have meaning, we want fulfilment, healing and even ecstasy, but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are…We must look for blessings to come from unlikely, everyday places.”

The place to start our quotidian conversation is with the activity we do each and every day at the start of each and every day, waking up.  Sometimes the “how” of our waking up is beyond our control.  The alarm or a young child blares at us and we are wrenched from REM sleep. We reluctantly make the quick swim from the depths of our dreams to consciousness.  Other times, the return to consciousness is gentle and gradual as we slowly awake with the coming of sunlight into our bedrooms.  But every time we awake in the morning we orient ourselves.  We pull together who we are and where we are.  Oh, yes, I am a married lawyer who lives in Ladue.  Or, I am a retired schoolteacher visiting Chicago to see my daughter.  And as we pull together who we are we begin to run through the list of the upcoming events of the day, the meetings, the deadlines, the luncheon date, the schedule of how we will spend our waking hours.  

In remembering who we are and what our day is scheduled to be, evaluations and judgments are inevitably made.  And unfortunately, it is not unusual for those judgments to be less than glowing.  I am vice president in the company, but I should be an executive vice president. Ugh, my day is filled with tasks for which I have no passion to complete and I am not sure I am up to them anyway.  If I could only lose twenty pounds I would not dread getting dressed in the morning.  Why can’t I be a better parent to my children?  It does not take more than one or two of these thoughts to have us starting our day with an ennui driven by vague dissatisfaction with ourselves and our lives.  

The Anglican Priest Tish Harrison Warren has an antidote to this potential malaise.  She notes that Lutherans are taught to begin each day by making the sign of the cross as a token of their baptism.  Why is this important and how does it relate to our getting up in the morning?  

As we begin each day we put on a variety of identities, we have professional identities, personal identities as spouses or partners, identities as parents, identities as friends, all of which can be rich and rewarding, and also disappointing and challenging.  But before we play any of these important roles we have been marked and claimed by the divine as beloved children of God.  We have been claimed by God before we have done a single thing in this world to create an identity of any kind.  And long after many of the ways we define ourselves in this world, have ceased to be, the divine will still claim us as beloved.    

The tangible symbol we have been given to be reminded of our role as the beloved children of God is our baptism.  As Presbyterians we baptize babies because we trust deeply that God’s grace is so powerful, that we are loved so deeply and  completely by God before we have any chance to even make a choice to turn toward God.  Baptism teaches us that no matter what, God loves us.  

When we wake up in the morning and remember our identity as baptized children of God we start our day as a beloved and precious one.  When we wake up in the morning and remember our identity as baptized children of God we are given the gift that we have been forgiven for whatever has come before.  When we wake up in the morning and remember our identity as baptized children of God we are given a fresh start, we are a new creation, the old life has gone, a new life has begun.

Martin Luther challenged each member of his community to regard baptism “as the daily garment which we are to wear.”  So let us do just that.  Let us bring a reminder of our baptism into our daily routine of waking up.  Let us start each day as people that are perfectly loved, completely forgiven, and free to live a new life.

So how do we get there?  We could follow Martin Luther’s example and make the sign of the cross.  But that is not everyone’s cup of tea.  Perhaps remembering our baptism each morning as the water pours over us in the shower.  We could think about that water enveloping us as divine love, as grace-filled forgiveness, as an invitation to a fuller and richer life than we have ever known.  

Every day we have to wake up and then we engage in the ritual of starting our day.  The quotidian.  We cannot escape it.  And every day we define ourselves, whether we realize it or not.  What we can do is seek to imbue it with spiritual significance.  We are just as beloved by God as that adorable Max we just baptized and there is no more important identity than that.  And no better way to start our day.  As you are leaving the sanctuary following worship, remember you are welcome to come to the font here or the old font at the intersection of the two hallways leading to the sanctuary, dip your finger in the water, and make the sign of the cross on your forehead, and be reminded of your belovedness.
 
When we wake up tomorrow morning let us remember we are perfectly loved, completely forgiven, and free to live a new life.  It could become more important than that first cup of coffee.  It could change our day in ways we have yet to envision.

Thanks be to God. Amen.  

Warren, Tish Harrison, liturgy of the ordinary, IVP Books,
 Illinois, 2016.

April 19, 2026 Third Sunday of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
John 12:20-26
“A Love that is Not Parochial”
Tom Are Jr.
 
I wasn’t there, but I heard that Mark Davis made quite the “to do” about his high school graduation. He ascended the stairs to the stage in the gym. He received his diploma, he shook hands with the principal and then an official from the school board. He then walked to the other end of the stage to return to his seat. But just before he descended the stairs, he reached under his graduation gown retrieving a catcher’s mitt.  Mark had been a catcher on the baseball team. David Barnes was not the best pitcher on our team, but after this he was the most well-known. From across the gym, David fired a fastball right over the heads of the graduating class and into Mark’s catcher’s mitt.  With the pop in the mitt, there was a brief moment of stunned silence, which Mark used to yell, “I’m outta here.”

If you choose to graduate like that it’s helpful to have a friend who can throw a fastball, but most of all you need a crowd. This doesn’t work without the crowd.  It really doesn’t matter who was in the crowd, as long as there was a crowd.  

We can’t get too far into Jesus’ ministry without noticing the crowds—the nameless, often voiceless folk who tag along.  Occasionally Jesus is alone, or with his disciples, but often there is a crowd. We don’t know them, but maybe like Mark Davis’s graduation, knowing who they are doesn’t really matter.  

It’s important to point out that this morning’s passage occurs just after Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem—Palm Sunday. When these Greeks arrive, the echoes of Hosanna still hang in the air. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, the Pharisees complain, “Look, the whole world has gone after him.”    

This is surely hyperbole. There has never been a time when the whole world followed Jesus; there has never been a time when the whole church followed Jesus. The whole world has not gone after Jesus, but what seems true is that Jesus goes after the whole world. After all, it’s John’s gospel that says, God so loved the world he gave his only son. God so loved the world.  World love is an essential trait of God.

It’s hard for us to love the world. It’s too big. To foreign. Too crowded. Human love tends to be more parochial. We love closer to home. We tend to love our family, our tribe, our kin. But loving the whole world…. Nobody really does that.  

Jesus rides into Jerusalem and the crowds were waving palm branches.  If it were not for John, Palm Sunday would be known as “branch Sunday” or “limb Sunday” because the other gospel writers just mention leafy branches, but it is John who names them palm branches. Well, that changes things. New Testament scholar, Gail O’Day, says “from the Maccabean period, Palm branches were symbols of national triumph and victory.”[1] Waving a Palm branch was like waving the stars and stripes.  

A little history:  the Maccabean revolt occurred 250 years before John wrote his gospel. It was a rebellion that pushed the occupying Seleucid empire out of Jerusalem and the Jews claimed independence for a minute.  The Maccabees then purified the temple of Gentile contamination, and as they did, they carried palm branches.  Palm branches became a symbol of national triumph and ethnic purity.    

So, it seems that those who flocked to Jesus with palm branches in their hands, were hoping that Jesus would lead a revolt against the oppression of the Roman empire and restore ethnic purity to Jerusalem.

But Jesus then nor now cannot be captured by nationalism of any kind. When one loves the world, to limit such love to the nation is too small. Oh, there is nothing wrong with loving your nation. It is a good and faithful thing to do; but it is something else altogether to assume that God’s love is somehow limited to any nation.

This is true because it’s almost impossible to have such nationalistic loyalties without creating “us” and “them.” Whoever we are, we aren’t them.  

I was having lunch with a friend back in Kansas City. We have known each other for more than ten years. Over our Caesar salads I asked, how’s your family? He said, we are good, but I just got back from visiting my brother, and I got to tell you, his wife is crazy. Really? Oh yeah. None of us can figure her out. And then, forgetting for a moment that I hail from Georgia, he said, of course, she’s a southerner and you know how those people are.  

I said, yeah, I do. It took him a minute.

We do this all the time. We process the world in parochial fashion. We define ourselves in part by saying, well we are not like them, and you know how those people are.

Daniel Miller is a leader in what is known as the Texas Nationalist Movement, which claims to be a group of over 600,000. Their purpose is to encourage citizens of Texas to vote to succeed from the United States of America. He sees himself not as an American; he’s a Texan.[2] Once you are defined by nationalism, it’s hard not to define it more and more narrowly.

In a similar fashion, there are a growing number of folks who identify as Christian Nationalists. They, in broad brush, perceive America to be a nation for Christians, a nation shaped by Christianity, and increasingly, a nation where others, including Christians who do not share their theology, no longer belong.

When we tie God to nationalism, we make God too small. Because God loves the world. All of the world.

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, they waved Palm branches because they assumed he came in the spirit of the Maccabees—restoring political triumph and ethnic purity.

It was then, in this scene of palm waving national and ethnic glory, in a moment of spectacularly bad timing, Greeks show up: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  Philip probably wanted to say, guys read the room. Philip gets Andrew.  Then Andrew and Philip go to Jesus. Uuuhhh.  There are some Greeks who wish to see you. They are, well you know, Gentiles, and you know how those people are. They are not from around here, Jesus. What do you want us to do?'

Jesus neither sends them away, nor invites them in for coffee. Jesus responds, “My hour has come.”

What? In John’s gospel “the hour” is a metaphor for Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It is a metaphor for Jesus’ ultimate work of redemption. Already several times in John’s Gospel, Jesus explicitly says, my hour has not yet come. But when some Greeks come knocking on the door, Jesus says…now’s the time. This is the moment Jesus has been waiting for.  

If I understand the text, Jesus is a savior not of a nation, or a race, but of the world. The world may not be going after him, but he is here for the world, and in this passage, we understand that the world is not just an unknown crowd; the world has a face.

Will Willimon was once a professor at Duke Divinity School and later a Bishop in the Methodist church in Alabama. He was once asked, what do you miss most about teaching in the Divinity school?  He thought for a moment and then said, “The admissions office.” What? The admissions office is there to make sure everyone who gets in is pretty much like me. He said, in the church, we have to live with the whole world.

This made Jesus’ followers uncomfortable. Heretofore, they understood themselves to be practicing a particular kind of Judaism. The followers of Jesus were not Pharisees or Sadducees, they were not certainly not Samaritans, and there was not a chance they were Gentiles—because you know how those people are.

But when the world shows up speaking Greek, Jesus makes it clear, I am here for them too.

There is nothing parochial about his love. His love is for the whole world.

I have a younger brother Gene. He has special needs, and lives in a group home in Louisiana where he is cared for by some of the most saintly people I know. A couple of years ago, our whole family traveled to Natchitoches, La for Gene’s 60th birthday.  Natchitoches is where they filmed the movie Steel Magnolias, if you have ever seen that. It’s also where my brother has called home since before that old movie was made.

During the pandemic I wrote a little book about joy. Gene asked me, Brother, or Bwuddah as he says it. Bwuddah, what’s your book about? I said, well Gene, it’s a church book. He said, Oh. I said, but Gene I talk about you in the book. He got quiet for a minute and then said, My bwuddah, I can’t believe he wrote a book about me.

Well Gene…that’s right.

On his birthday after we finished ice cream and cake, I took a copy of the book and I found the pages where I mentioned him. We sat at the kitchen table of our VRBO and I read to him about him. He just beamed.

About an hour later, I found him back at that table with the book in his hands turning the pages. He can’t read. Not even Go dog go. But he can read his name. He was turning the pages looking for his name. My youngest brother Jim asked him, “Gene, did you find your name?” “Yes.” “Well, you should look for my name now.” Gene said, “Jimmy, the book is not about you; it’s about me!”

Now I don’t know what was going on in his unusual mind…. But I hope he was feeling seen. I hope he was trusting… I see you bwuddah. I can look through all the stuff that stands between you and world. I know you walk through this town pretty invisible to most, just lost in the crowd, but I see you, and you are pretty beautiful to me.

Jesus, some Greeks want to see you. And Jesus says, I’ve been looking for them. I’ve been waiting for them. I’ve had my eye on the horizon all this time.

Because with God there are no nameless crowds, there are just children… no unknown masses, just family. With God, everyone is seen.

We know we can’t be who we are without God. But remarkably, it seems God refuses to be who God is without us…. all of us.
 


   [1] .   Gail O’Day, The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol ix, The Gospel of John (1995) p. 707
   [2] . “Texas Successionist: We May Be Closer than we think” Newsweek, January 31, 2024.

April 12, 2026  Second Sunday of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 14
“Transmogrification Imagination”
Douglas T. King

I have always loved the comic “Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, it tells the story of a remarkably precocious, spiky-haired six-year-old boy named Calvin and his sidekick, a very large stuffed tiger named Hobbes.  Calvin is consistently engaged in mayhem, some of it real and some of it the product of his prodigious imagination.  

In one series of cartoons Calvin invents a Transmogrifier.  As Calvin and Hobbes stand next to a large box with the word “transmogrifier” scrawled on the side, Calvin announces, “you step into this chamber, set the appropriate dials, and it turns you into whatever you’d like to be.”  Hobbes, responds, “It’s amazing what they do with corrugated cardboard these days.”  “Isn’t it?” Calvin replies.  In another strip, Calvin, noting the categories listed on the side, explains the science of it. “All you do is set the indicator and the machine automatically restructures your chemical configuration.  You can be an eel, a baboon, a giant bug or a dinosaur.”  Hobbes asks “What if you want to be something else?”  Calvin answers, “I left some room.  Just write it on the side.”

Ah the imagination of youth.  But the fantastical proposition of what that cardboard box can do is speaking to an underlying hunger that is endemic to the human condition. We have a fascination with transformation; the idea of one thing changing into another. In the Middle Ages people were fascinated with alchemy, the attempt to turn lead into gold.  Any decent magician will enthrall us with some sleight of hand that appears to turn a deck of cards into a live dove.  And we are even more fascinated by how we may be transformed, from the terrifying type of Dr. Jekyll becoming Mr. Hyde or the amazing type of Clark Kent tearing out of his mild-mannered suit to become Superman.  And a gazillion self-help books have made vast promises of transforming who we are in six easy steps.  

On the shallow end of this equation, we desire to be transformed into someone younger, thinner, more capable of negotiating billion-dollar deals.  But there is a deeper level to all of this as well.  No matter how young and thin and rich we are, no matter how perfect and shiny we may appear on the outside, all of us have this place inside of us that feels not quite complete.  When life is hard that place may shout inside of us about just how screwed up we are. When life is good it may be no more than the subtlest whisper hinting that something is missing; or reminding us of some hurt from our past that never quite heals; or a nagging loneliness; or a persistent questioning of purpose.  The author, John Updike, calls this space within us, that he believes only God can address, as, “a pocket in human nature that nothing else will fill.” (Schiff, p. 50)

If we stop and look deep within ourselves there is some part of us that calls to be completed; some way in which we would like to be transformed.  But transformation is hard. We wish it were as easy as a magical elixir in some bottle, or six steps laid out in a book. But it never is.  

Another thing that is hard, is Easter after Easter Sunday.  On Easter Sunday we whip up great enthusiasm for the resurrection.  We dare to believe that perhaps indeed it all may be true.  Maybe the ultimate transformation is possible. Maybe Jesus did rise from the dead. And maybe that promise is good for us as well.  Maybe God’s love is more powerful than all that has ever or will ever ail us; more powerful than whatever feels missing or bent, or slightly askew within us; more powerful than all of our fears, failures, and frustrations combined.  

With brass and timpani filling the chancel, joining with the choir and the organ to belt out all of those major chords of victory, we can leave behind our doubts for a moment and be Easter people.  We can be Easter people who believe that God’s love is more powerful than death and that love is for all of us.  Easter people are not perfect. They are not without their foibles and missteps and lurking concerns.  But Easter people trust that the promise of resurrection is real and is for them.  And Easter people know that if you put that resurrection promise on one side of a balancing scale and everything that is less than perfect in their lives and in themselves on the other side, the weight of the resurrection promise side would thunk down with such authority that the imperfections on the other side of the scale would be flipped out of the room.    

However, that was a week ago.  The brass has left the sanctuary.  Our liturgical calendar tells us we are still in the season of Easter, week two of seven week’s worth.  But it is a little harder to believe it all today.  We have spent another week of living in the midst of what is imperfect and missing in our lives.  Resurrection reality in our midst is a little harder to spot.

If we are going to make our way back to being Easter people again today we need to be reminded about our God’s fundamental identity, which brings us to our text this morning. Psalm 114 is not one of our high-profile psalms.  It does not get the airtime that the 23rd and 46th Psalms do.  It is quietly tucked into our lectionary as an Easter evening text; after the hoopla has died down and we are left to ponder the resurrection a step removed from that initial burst of euphoria.  

It provides two important and specific portraits of the divine.  The first portrait is of just how close God is to God’s people.  “Judah became God’s sanctuary; Israel God’s dominion.” The divine has chosen to completely commit to a rag tag group of tribes seeking to flee from slavery.  God’s focus, devotion, and love is placed upon a small group of folks who would otherwise go unnoticed.  And then we hear, “Tremble, O Earth, at the presence of the Lord…”  In the second portrait we hear of a God of absolute power over all of existence. What may seem immense and immovable to us is a mere plaything in the hands of the divine.  

The juxtaposition of these two portraits is remarkable.  The one, pictures the divine on bended knee, guiding a mostly forgotten and insignificant group of people to freedom. The second pictures an entity of ultimate power tossing around all of creation like a child playing with blocks.

So what does this mean for us?  Why should these two portraits side by side; one of immense power and one of individual concern, matter for how we live?  The end of this psalm tells us of how God’s power is put to use.  God “turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.”  God does not use God’s power to primarily destroy or needlessly dominate, or self-glorify, but to transform in ways beyond our imagination; from inert rock to life-giving water in the desert. God transforms what may appear to be useless into what is most essential; what could be used for violence into what gives life.  And that other portrait teaches us where God’s focus is placed, not on some distant and immense entity, but on a rag tag group of ex slaves, and in our case on our relatively small personal dramas.  

God is powerful enough to transform absolutely anything at all.  And God’s focus is upon each one of us.  Whatever part of you feels like it is broken and beyond repair, God is focused intently upon you and powerful enough to heal it.  Whatever is unnamed but missing within you, God is focused intently upon you and powerful enough to provide it. Whatever subtly haunts you from your past or your present or your future, God is focused intently upon you and powerful enough to sweep it away.  

The innate longing we have for transformation will not go unanswered.  In his novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies, John Updike describes this experience like this.  The character Essie has a physical sensation of God.  “God’s love pressed down from heaven and fit her whole body like bathwater in the tub…like blood in your veins that you can sometimes hear when your ear is pressed against the pillow…(Schiff, p. 60) May it be so for each of us, and it will be.

There is a natural denouement on the Sunday after Easter.  After all of the festival hub bub we find ourselves with the same bumps and bruises that accompany ordinary life.  But the season of Easter is not over.  And God’s powerful gift of resurrection is still encircling around and unfolding within each one of us.  And the imagination of that rascally six-year-old Calvin is not too far from the truth.  There is a transmogrifier in each of our lives.  We can and we will be changed one day, not into an eel or a dinosaur, but into people who own the reality they are completely beloved.  

The season of Easter is not all major chords and joy on tap.  We still carry the imperfections of this life.  But as Easter people we are called to remember that the God who can transform a rag tag bunch of slaves into a free nation; the God who can transform stone into water in the desert; the God who can transform death on the cross into resurrection life can and will transform us into everything we need to be.  

Easter people are called to have a little imagination, to see the possibilities of all that is to come.  If precocious, six-year-old Calvin can see it, With God’s help, so can we.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Schiff, James A., “The Pocket Nothing Else Will Fill.” John Updike and Religion. Ed. James Yerkes, Grand Rapids, William B, Eerdmans, 1999. 50-63. Print.  

                      

April 5, 2026  Easter Sunday
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Matthew 28:1-10
“Unafraid of Becoming the Sea”
Douglas T. King

“Spirit is life like a river unafraid of becoming the sea.”  These words are scripted in gold at the top of a thirty foot tall painting of a luminous and numinous, flowing river displayed in the sculpture hall of the Saint Louis Art Museum.    Like many of you I was awed by the Anselm Keifer installation, “Becoming the Sea.” The moment I entered my breath was taken away by the collection of gargantuan paintings rising up around me.  This one painting particularly captured my attention because those words are from the beat poet, Gregory Corso, “Spirit is life like a river unafraid of becoming the sea”  

It is an evocative piece of verse.  But something struck in my ear as a little different.  I am familiar with some of Corso’s writing and had a friend at school who knew Corso.  Corso led a wild and woolly life.  He was abandoned by his parents in New York City.  He learned to write poetry while he was in prison for stealing a suit from a tailor’s shop for a big date.  You have to love a romantic!  

As I was standing there I pulled up the poem on my phone to see what was different.  The entire poem is this,  

“Spirit
is Life
It flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea”

It is inscribed on Corso’s tombstone in Rome, at the foot of his hero Percy Shelley’s grave.

For some reason Keifer had removed a portion of the poem, “It flows through the death of me endlessly...”  I cannot speak to Kiefer’s artistic intent and choices but I was not surprised that if a portion of the poem would be removed, death would be that portion.  On this Easter morning, like every Easter morning, this sanctuary will repeatedly fill with glorious, celebratory major chords and alleluias, accompanied by the bright and victorious sounds of brass and timpani.  We are full steam ahead with the empty tomb, the risen Christ, and eternal life.  We are riding Keifer and Corso’s luminous and numinous river into the everlasting love of God’s sea. It would be so easy to glide over the death portion.

Of all the gospel accounts of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, Matthew brings us the most drama.  He makes sure we know the defeat of death is no small task.  We get an earthquake, and an angel like lightning, and guards so paralyzed with fear we are told they are like “dead men.”  

The women at the tomb are also filled with fear.  However, with the angel’s plea and urging, “Do not be afraid” they are not frozen like the guards but speed off with fear and joy to share the good news with the disciples. On the way they meet the risen Christ, and even in the midst of worshipping him, their fear arises once more.  But once again they are told, “Do not be afraid” and on they continue with their journey.  

We hear of two distinct responses to resurrection and the fear of resurrection in this text.  The paralysis of the guards and the movement forward of the women.  Clearly, we do not wish to be those guards who are paralyzed by fear.  We aspire to be those women continually moving beyond fear and able to step into the future.

When we gather on Easter Sunday, we are all a bit like Anselm Keifer.  We want to enjoy the victory and flow with that luminous and numinous river into the everlasting sea.  But the reality is there is no journey to resurrection that does not include death.  What this means for us today, is that if we want to experience the transforming power of God’s resurrection in our lives we have to be willing to die to certain things.  Those women were left with the choice of allowing their fear to paralyze them or dying to that fear and moving forward.  Ironically, the guards, being unable to die to their fear, become like dead men.  And those women, who were able to die to their fear, become fully alive, encounter the risen Christ, and continue to move forward.  

In his famous poem, Sunday Morning, Wallace Stevens wrote,
 
“Death is the mother of beauty;
hence from her, Alone, 
shall come fulfilment to our dreams…”

While it is true that the defeat of death itself and the journey to eternal life in the resurrection is entirely God’s purview, we are called to die to the debilitating things in our lives, and thus participate in God’s Spirit leading us to other iterations of God's eternal love.  
We can share in the resurrection countless times in our lives.  The first step happens this morning.  Today we are seeking to own the belief that there is indeed nothing more powerful than God’s love, freely offered to us.  And in recognizing the power of God’s love we are invited to let go of other lesser things that have power over us.  

We all have elements in our lives that inhibit us from living fully and abundantly as God’s beloved children.  For me it is my numerous neuroses, just ask my colleagues.  For some of us we need to die a confounding cocktail of fear and anxiety.  Our worries for the world and our future, as relevant and real as they may be, play on an obsessive loop in our consciousness and hold us hostage.  When we own the reality of the transforming power of God’s resurrection love, we can die, perhaps not entirely to those worries, but to the ways they own our thoughts and actions every minute of the day.  

For some of us we may need to die to ego and entitlement.  When we own the reality of the transforming power of God’s resurrection love we can die to needless privilege and arrogance and be invited into a thoughtful humility.
 
For some of us we may need to die to our obsession over superficial things, our outward appearance, our career accomplishments, our possessions.  When we own the reality of the transforming power of God’s resurrection love we can die to the importance of surface things and recognize what is truly most valuable.

For some of us it is an addiction which holds us tight.  When we own the power of God’s transforming resurrection love we can begin to die to the illusion that we cannot live without the object of our addiction and thus gain the courage to take the first steps toward treatment and freedom.  

What do you need to begin dying to today that you may welcome the transforming power of God’s resurrection love?  What is it of which you need to let go that you may be in the motion of that luminous and numinous river leading you to the sea of God’s transforming resurrection love?  

Death can be a scary thing, both death with a capital “D” and these smaller deaths to the things to which we needlessly cling to in this world.  But the word from the divine is clear, “Do not be afraid.” We need not be afraid of letting go of what hinders us, for God’s transforming resurrection love is well worth the challenge of the change.  

Humor me, while I offer one more art reference this morning. There is a painting at the Met by Pieter Bruegel, entitled, The Dirty Bride. It shows the most unlikely of pairings on their wedding day.  What is most striking about the painting is the Latin inscription inscribed just below it.  In English it translates as “what may not we lovers hope for?”  It speaks to wide-open possibilities, even the most improbable of ones.  When we are willing to die to those things that limit us, whatever they may be, or however they may serve us in certain limiting ways, we can own the phrase, “what may not we children of God hope for?”  

If God can transform death into life there is no part of ourselves that cannot be transformed. There is nothing in our lives or in our world that cannot be born anew by God’s love.  There are infinite ways we can be welcomed into that endless luminous and numinous river that promises us freedom from all of our burdens.

Do not be afraid.

“Spirit
is Life
It flows thru
the death of me(us)
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea”

Indeed.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

March 29, 2026 Palm/Passion Sunday
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Matthew 21:1-11Matthew 26:14-35
“A Story About Us”
Melissa K. Smith

Palm/Passion Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week and the sign that the season of Lent is ending. As we end one season, another begins and in a week’s time we will be in the season of Eastertide – a season of hope, of resurrection, of praise.

Another season began this last week…baseball season! On Thursday both the Cardinals and Dodgers opened their ball parks and are ready for action.

Imagine something with me. Imagine it’s the end of the season and the Cardinals have made it to the playoffs. You are decked out in red, you’ve got your favorite jersey on (of course you can still rep an Ozzy Smith jersey – there is no limit to his greatness), you’re excited and you are all in. You get to Busch Stadium early, you watch warmups, you cheer as the Cardinals run onto the field. At the beginning of the game, the energy is high, the excitement is palpable, and you’re ready. You hope for and expect a win – home field advantage, the fans cheering the team on – how could anything go wrong?

And then the game begins and around the fourth or fifth inning it starts to take a turn that you did not expect. The Cardinals can’t figure out their defense, the pitching is not consistent, and there is no run support. You start to get anxious, it’s getting hard to watch. So you turn away.

At first you start looking at your phone more, then suddenly the long line at the bathrooms or food stands don’t seem so bad. The game continues to not go your way and you find yourself slowly checking out and losing interest.

Or maybe you’re the fan who says “I will never leave – I am loyal no matter what!” But it’s the eighth inning and you’re down by five runs – not even a Grand Slam can solve your run problem. And you find yourself coming up with an excuse to leave – it’s not that you don’t love the Cardinals…you just have an early morning tomorrow or traffic will be awful, right?

Whether it’s the Cardinals or the Dodgers, whether it's baseball or our faith – we’ve all been there. We have cheered, we have drifted, and we have made promises that we are not able to keep.

We see this reality so clearly in the Palm/Passion narrative. Because this reality is not new – it’s the story about us, a story that has been true about us throughout human history.

The Triumphal Entry, Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey with shouts of “Hosana”, is an exciting, thrilling story. It’s always so special to watch the children process in, to wave our palm fronds, and to join in the tradition of shouting Hosana. But then we read the story and we cast our eyes toward the rest of the week to come. How could cheers of praise and shouting “Hosana, God save us” lead to the eventual cries of “crucify, crucify”?

The crowd welcomes Jesus in as a king. The way he was welcomed into the city signifies that the crowd is viewing Jesus as a conquering hero or king. He is the one who came to save. But their expectations of how he would save don’t quite match the ways Jesus actually saves. The crowd was expecting a king who will liberate them from Rome. They have been under the oppressive Roman occupation and are longing for liberation. And Jesus did come to save – but in a different way. He came to save Israel and the world from sin and death by experiencing death.

The crowd is like a character in the Gospel of Matthew. Earlier in his gospel, the crowd admires Jesus. They gather for healing and teaching and are astonished at his authority – but admiration is not the same as commitment to Jesus. Perhaps we are like the crowd – we appreciate Jesus’ words, we agree with parts of his teachings, we go to him when we need something like healing, but we stop short of real change and commitment to him.

And perhaps we are like the crowd after they welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. When the crowd realized that Jesus was not going to start a revolution, their cries of joy and excitement turned to cries of accusation and sentencing. Perhaps we too are like this when we are enthusiastic about our faith up until it becomes costly or confusing. And maybe we have turned away when reality does not match our expectations.

Five chapters later, we see Judas’ scheme to betray Jesus just before the Passover, Last Supper, is celebrated. Throughout Matthew’s depiction of Judas, we see that Judas is increasingly detached from Jesus. The disciples call Jesus “Lord,” but Judas calls him “Rabbi” and Judas acts like a disciple on the outside, but not inwardly. While the disciples are listening to Jesus and learning, Judas is listening to Jesus and plotting. Judas is motivated by greed and makes a series of choices throughout his discipleship journey that separate him from Christ.

The Gospels invite us to hold up a mirror and ask the question the disciples asked when Jesus said he would be betrayed, “Is it me?” Faith begins with honest examination.

But honest examination does mean the possibility that the person looking back at us in the mirror resembles Judas from time to time. Judas was outwardly close to Jesus but inwardly was distant. It’s possible to be around faith, the church, and community and yet still keep a part of ourselves guarded and not open to Christ. Judas chose self-interest over truth. He asks “what will you give me?” showing that he was willing to bend the truth for personal gain and played the bartering game of “what does this cost me?” We may not betray God in a dramatic way, but we do when we negotiate with our values and choose self-interest over Christ. Perhaps we misunderstand Jesus – Judas wanted a teacher, not a king and he was open to guidance but not Christ’s authority.

We do something similar when we accept only parts of truth that we like and when we resist the parts of Jesus that challenge us.

When we say “we are like Judas” we are not saying that we are the ultimate betrayer. What we are saying is that we, like Judas, might not be open to the transforming witness of the Gospel, we may pervert it for our own gain, and we may hold Christ at a distance as we subtly deny his authority.

After the Passover meal, Jesus said, “You all will fall away because of me this night…” Peter is quick to jump in and say “I will never fall away!” But he does. During Christ’s passion, Peter denies Jesus three times. He does fall away. Throughout the Gospels Peter is portrayed as brash and confident. He is ready to make sweeping statements about his faith, but in practice he shies away and hesitates, ultimately denying Christ and falling away.

We too can make big proclamations about our faith – we can be confident in the faith we have cultivated our whole lives and claim that we would never deny Christ. But then life happens and our large statements are tested. It’s not that Peter was lying. He meant every word he said. But he was not able to live up to the faith he believed he had. We too can be like Peter. We promise more than we can keep – our intentions are real but so are our failures.

We are the crowd.
We are Judas.
We are Peter.

The Palm/Passion narrative is a sobering story about us. We have cheered, we have drifted, and we have made promises that we are not able to keep.

That’s our story – one that we need to take seriously and recognize in our spiritual journeys as we venture toward the cross. But God’s story is bigger than ours. God’s story – which takes place in and through our story – is the story of Jesus staying. The crowds betrayed Jesus, yet he still entered the city. He rode the donkey toward his death – towards his saving death. Judas betrayed Jesus. And yet Jesus still sat at the table with him and broke bread with him. He shared communion with him. Peter denies Jesus. Yet Jesus still willingly offers himself on our behalf and forgives Peter.

Jesus is faithful even when we are not.
Jesus still chooses us.

Palm/Passion is a story about us and a story about a savior who meets us in every part of it. As we enter into Holy Week, may we be deliberate and honest in our self-examinations so that our faith can begin, can continue, and can be sustained through the story of the Triune God who loves us, stays with us, and saves us.
 
This is a story we must know deep in our bones. If we know God’s story, it will breathe life into our own. God’s story invites us into life, into salvation, into hope. Let us enter into this story about us and about God this week as we turn our eyes upon the cross and consider the sacrifice our Lord made for us.

Thanks be to God.
 
Amen.

March 22, 2026  Fifth Sunday in Lent
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Ezekial 37:1-14
“The Zero Breeds New Algebras”
Douglas T. King

Years ago, I saw a play entitled, “When I Come to Die.”  It told the story of a man named Damon on death row who is given what should be a lethal injection but lives.  Far from being elated when he discovers that he has survived, Damon is angry and confused.  He had planned to die.  As awful as it was, that was the plan and he had prepared for that.  He had no plan for being alive.
 
Damon is called to meet with the prison chaplain, who believes that it is a miracle that Damon is alive.  He encourages Damon to find a use and purpose for his newfound time.  Damon, angrily trying to process how he has ended up in this precarious place lashes out about the time he has been given. “What you gonna do with it?  Bang on cell bars?  Do a dance?  Do something?”  Imprisoned as he was in body and in mind, Damon could not begin to fathom how this new time given to him was of any use at all.

Whenever I hear this story from Ezekiel of God putting flesh upon those old bones and bringing that community back to life, I wonder if those folks would have been keen on coming back.  I assume some of them would have been a little like Damon, experiencing a dose of anger and confusion to go along with the wonder of finding themselves alive once more.  There is something quite unnerving about these stories of God creating life where all we see is death.  

One of the ways we get by in this life, is we create some boundaries as to what reality looks like.  We figure out the rules of existence.  Gravity keeps things from floating away, but we pay a price for it when a dish slips through our fingers.  If we stay up really late, we are likely going to have to drag ourselves through the next day of work.  Everything that is born will die.  

We come up with a vision of what the world is and our place in it, we draw parameters around it, and we learn to color mostly within those lines.  We put this picture up on the wall and call it “common sense” or “that’s just the way it is” and we get on with our lives.  There is a comfort to be found in the framed little picture, even when the framed little picture is sometimes not that pretty.  We are a people who crave established expectations.  

The ministry of the prophet Ezekiel occurred during the time of the Babylonian exile. Jerusalem falls, the temple is destroyed and many people, including Ezekiel, are dragged from home and forced to live in captivity in Babylon.  All hope has been taken from them.  Their belief that God was present with them in Jerusalem and in the temple to protect them, has been destroyed.  They are not only exiled from their homeland, they no longer believe they have any access to the divine. In the midst of the hopelessness of exile, Ezekias brings a radical vision of hope.  In the midst of a people who believed that their God lived solely in the temple in Jerusalem now fallen and destroyed, he brings word of a God bigger, wider, deeper, and more powerful than any box we can imagine, even a box as large and as fine as the temple.  Bones rise up and are enfleshed and a community is reborn.  Where there was only death, there is now life.

This stark and arresting vision tells us simply one thing, there are no limits on God’s power.  There are no limits on God’s power.  On one level those words are practically trite, yes we know, God is omnipotent, all powerful.  We have heard it before and nodded our heads to it, and frankly nodded off to sleep to it, we have heard it so many times.  

But if we claimed it, there are no limits on God’s power, the implications would leave us somewhere alongside that re-enfleshed and resurrected community of bones in the desert, enlivened like never before.

Ezekiel, who was both a prophet and a priest, was strictly forbidden to be around human skeletons. As a priest it was considered ritually unclean for him to be in that valley of death.  But God and God’s power have little time for purity laws, for rules of division that stand in the way of God’s purposes.  When the temple in Jerusalem fell, the people felt that they were cut off from God because they had lost what they believed was their only access to God.  God has little concern for such limitations. In our efforts to understand the divine, we inadvertently box in and limit the ways in which we believe God can be actively engaged in our midst. And we box ourselves in about the ways in which we can be faithful.

In a world filled with toxic divisions, war, and chaos, limited expectations make sense.  In a time when mainline denominations are shrinking, limited expectations make sense.  We have plenty of reasons to hunker down and limit our expectations and stare at the little picture on the wall of what the “common sense” realities of this world are. Settle for less.  Make sure our dreams together as a community are kept within reasonable bounds.  Keep our hopes prudent and manageable.  I certainly cannot argue with any of that sound advice being drawn from an astute evaluation of the current conditions of the world.

But Ezekiel will have none of it.  He sat with the exiles in Babylon, a nation and a faith tradition destroyed, laid bare, left for dead.  And he was given a vision.  He saw the death of his community and his faith laid out before him and God asked him if these bones could live.  Ezekiel was too afraid to say, that hope could be born in the midst of hopelessness; that life could be created in the midst of death.  But God ordered him to prophesy, and he did. The winds of God’s Spirit blew over that field of death, and the bones came together, and sinew and flesh and skin covered them and they were alive, a community reborn in the breath of God’s Spirit.  

We are given a preview of the resurrection and of Pentecost all rolled into one.  Ezekiel brings us the message that we can throw out those constricted little pictures of life we have up on our walls.  We can throw out the limitations which constrain us and oddly comfort us.  There are no limits on God’s power.  When we continually lower our expectations and box ourselves in, we are denying the power of God.  When we say we do not have enough, enough time, enough talent, enough resources, to be the church in all its glory serving God and God’s children, we are denying the power of God.  When we doubt that each one of us is being healed and shaped by God for remarkable things, we are denying the power of God.  

Now, I have sat in my share of challenging budget meetings.  I have sought to rally folks to serve and have come out a few less than I had planned.  Sometimes when my phone rings and it is someone with some new and very big vision for what the church could be doing, I just want to pat them on the head and tell them about reasonable expectations.  I want to tell them a little bit about how the real world works and help them paint a smaller picture.  But then along comes Ezekiel, and he will have none of it.  

In a poem entitled “A Hard Death” by Amos Wilder, he writes, “…accept no mitigation, but be instructed at the null point.  The zero breeds new algebras.”  To put it far less eloquently, if we are a people that can find hope in a cross, there is no place and no time in which God’s power cannot intervene to change the world.  Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel writes “Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dried bones bears no date because every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live again.”

I started this sermon telling you of Damon on death row and his anger and confusion over being given the gift of life, of more time, when he thought he should be dead.  He was eventually executed successfully, if that is the right term for such a dreadful thing.  But before he died, he was changed by the experience of the gift of new life.  He was not transformed into a choir boy but he found a way to bring comfort to a fellow death row inmate, reconnect with his estranged sister, and find satisfaction in what he could do for others.  

If we claim the reality that there are no limits on God’s power, we too will face some changes.  We will need to leave behind the assumptions that have limited who we are as people and who we are as the church.  If we claim the reality that there are no limits on God’s power, we might need to leave behind the comfort of established expectations and the safety of well-constructed limitations.  We may find ourselves face to face with the mystery of the divine Spirit, free from the boundaries by which we live.  

Now the reality of God’s power does not mean we will not fail in a variety of ways as we continue to be faithful together.  But the reality of God’s power means that we are never beyond God’s reach.  We are never limited in the ways God may transform us as individuals, and as a community of believers.  We are never without hope that new life may pop up in the most unexpected ways; that we can be peacemakers where there is conflict, healers where there is brokenness, providers where there is want.  “The zero breeds new algebras.”  

We are never without the responsibility to dream our dreams and live our lives upon the foundation that there are no limits on the power of God.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.