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Published on September 28, 2025 09:19

September 27, 2025

With Joy Unbounding on a Homeward Shore

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Romans 7:14-25

Here is the closing sermon from the gathering of Iowa Preachers Project last week, preached by my friend Ken Sundet Jones.

Grace to you and peace, my friends, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the letter he sent to the believers in Rome, St. Paul provided this window into the degradation that sat festering in the depths of his being. This was no mere thorn in his flesh (which itself is nothing to discount). This was an opening of a grave that let the Romans (and us by extension) see into the exhumed corpse that his encounter with Christ on that road to Damascus prevented from quietly being buried. Wherever else Paul wandered in the diatribe on faith he was sending off to the empire’s center of power, death was the companion to his every word. Judgment had been laid on him with the words, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He couldn’t escape the truth of it: “There’s a power riding me like an ass, keeping me from the good and yanking me into the bad. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Won’t somebody please grab the reins and give me some relief?”

Paul’s frank self-assessment provided a memento mori moment, a stark weather report of the Romans’ own current conditions that made the gospel forecast all the sweeter. The phrase memento mori, which most simply translated means “remember death,” has had a centuries-long presence in the church’s witness. Mostly it was a goad, a dire warning to get your poop in a group morally and spiritually to avoid eternity in hell.

These past few months the idea of memento mori has kept cropping up for me in politics, in theater, in movies, and in music. Last spring, when Ryan and his wife Amanda and I were in New York for Mockingbird’s conference at Calvary-St. George’s Church (that’s John’s congregation), we saw the musical Dead Outlaw. It was my first memento mori moment. In the show, the outlaw Elmer McCurdy, who is damaged by family trauma, lives a dissolute life. At the end of Act 1, a posse chasing him after a botched 1911 train robbery guns him down. The second act is set up when no one claims Elmer’s body. A mortician fills it with a strong preservative to keep it until his family fetches it. Eventually it becomes a curiosity. Elmer’s body is sold to a carnival that puts it in an open coffin, stands the thing on end, and charges admission to their freak show. People stand in line to see the dead outlaw.

Well before Elmer’s demise and subsequent ignominy, the show’s narrator lets us in on the truth of the outlaw’s existence when he sings,

You’re dead / Your mama’s dead! / Your daddy’s dead! / Your brother’s dead! / And so are you! Abe Lincoln’s dead! / Frank James, dead! / Your mama’s dead! / And so are you, and so are you, woo!

While Elmer McCurdy wanted to live, to claim his space, to be seen, the truth of the matter is that all he ever did was run from death, denying its hold on him, and hoping for normal. It was an endless, ongoing death, ever being watched but never seeing his true tormentor, death, like in Ryan’s sermon last night.

Of course, we in the church have known the lingering sticky nature of death as long as we’ve known memento mori. The Gregorian chant Media vita in morte sumus (In the midst of life we are in death) was sung in times of trouble, and Martin Luther did a German translation. It was justly seen as providing hope in desperate times: “In the midst of life we are in death / of whom may we seek for succour, / but of thee, O Lord, / who for our sins / art justly displeased? / Holy god, / Holy mighty, / Holy and merciful Saviour, / deliver us not into bitter death.” Ernest Becker knew something about this when he published his groundbreaking and Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death, where he asserted that the primary motivator for human action is our fear of death and our desire to eliminate its threat. Mine and Hans’s beloved professor Gerhard O. Forde saw Becker’s work as a secular explanation of what he knew of the church’s teaching on sin, original and otherwise. So, like Elmer McCurdy, the very act of running from death entwines us in it. The memento mori serves to stop us in our tracks and bids us to breathe and use those stunning powers of human ratiocination. Think. Observe. Connect the dots: You and death? Who’s zoomin’ who?

The second memento mori of my summer was the movie 28 Years Later. It’s the second sequel to 28 Days Later, in which a virus spreads across Great Britain and turns people into raging, violent zombies. It’s a milestone zombie movie, because in this one the living dead don’t lumber and stumble. They run and race after you with unquenchable energy.

True to its title, the new movie follows previous events by 28 years. In it young Spike lives offshore with his father and ailing mother in a village on the island of Lindisfarne that is protected by a causeway accessible only at low tide. Spike, who has been on his first mainland zombie hunt with his father also contends with a deeply disturbed and dwindling mother. He has heard of a doctor on the mainland, and he determines his mom’s only hope is the cure this rare physician might offer. He takes his mother by the hand and finally finds the mysterious doctor amidst an enormous monument of calcium. Like the main character in Warren Zevon’s song Excitable Boy, who “dug up the grave” of a girl he stalked “and built a cage with her bones,” the doctor has boiled the flesh of every dead infected person he’s found and built thirty-foot columns of femurs and phalanges, and a towering pile of human skulls. He tells Spike he calls it “Memento mori.” The bones give a lurid message: “Deny not the truth. Here you be. Your eye sockets will look out and see but not see. Your fibulas will adorn a post like a direction sign on M*A*S*H, pointing not to home but to the nowhere of nihilism.

The need to be reminded of death is also at stake in Warren Zanes’ book Deliver Me from Nowhere, which is about to be released as a movie and recounts Bruce Springsteen’s inner turmoil following long-sought success with the E-Street Band. Springsteen’s childhood life was as a shuttlecock batted between his cruel and rigid father and his grandmother who doted on him as a replacement for her own daughter killed by a vehicle while blithely riding her bike in the neighborhood. Springsteen, the urgent rocker has an inner coil wound tight and a way of substituting a raucous three-hour show and screaming fans for actual relationships. Now after the success of his album The River and a top-ten single with “Hungry Heart,” the Bruuuuuce of the crowds’ screams becomes a solitary Bruce hunkered down in an orange shag-carpeted back bedroom of a New Jersey ranch house. He acquires a four-track recording machine and proceeds to write.

What comes of it is not what was expected, the massive hit of Born in the USA with its seven singles and his well-formed posteriori on the cover. No, what happened in that back bedroom with home recording equipment was a burst of songs about the underbelly of American life, a sort of litany to the death of the American dream. The album Nebraska is bleak stuff, stark as anything, and not just because it opens with the title song about the real-life Charles Starkweather who killed his way across a swath of the Great Plains in the 1950s with a 14-year-old baton-twirling girl as his accomplice. The song cycle completely refuses to romanticize what is American under Reagan’s tricked-down economics. And in it Springsteen connects to the death inside him, the hopelessness, the lonely inner being that put the lie to the doting fans, it all comes tumbling out as a backward confession of his inability to do the good he wanted.

Soon after recording what he thought were demos but that were released as-is, Springsteen drove across the country with a friend in a 70s muscle car, landed in a new house by himself in the Hollywood Hills and promptly fell apart. He encountered the noonday demon that those of us who’ve lived through a major depressive episode can tell you is a living death. Nebraska, the book about its making, and now the movie are the subtlest memento mori. It declares relentlessly that the surface you see is not the true story.

My last memento mori has no subtlety whatsoever. After the so-called “big beautiful bill,” my senator Joni Ernst experienced the wrath of voters in a town hall who pointed out the deaths they said would come with the bill’s cuts to Medicaid. Her now notorious response was, “Well, we all are going to die.” Kind of a mic-drop memento mori moment with no awareness of how it was heard. Suffice it to say that Senator Ernst chose not to run for reelection.

What are we to make of mementos mori? From St. Paul to Joni Ernst, the reminder is always a challenge to the modern creed that the end, the telos, of life is life itself. And if that’s what life’s about, then you’d better get busy with your scramble to grab more of it. But Paul’s stark confession, the dead outlaw, the monument of bones, and the stark weather of America in Nebraska all bring us to the verge of the grave

The most important question is Paul’s howl of dereliction, “Who will save me from this body of death?” The question indicates this truth: Every sermon is a funeral sermon. Every sermon looks into the grave. Every sermon stands facing west but yearning for the sun to rise in the east. Unlike the other mementos mori, Paul knows the grave and doesn’t leave you in the wallow of failure, fallibility, depression and death. He gives you the answer that he goes on to play in Romans with the same polyphonic virtuosity as J.S. Bach. The answer is the sovereign God, the being who plays the ultimate infinite game, who pours himself out into a body to play a finite game for end-of-the-rope people, for sad cases and human dumpster fires, for Greek and Jew, and of course for you, O preachers, who open your own maws with Whitman’s “Yawp!” while living your solitary lives in the gut-rending contradiction of saint and sinner.

As we send you on your way, what Paul gives is the only thing that will suffice: to call on God to keep providing you with a fleece, to wrap you in Christ the lamb of God, to have him be the sacrifice, a burnt offering on a cairn next to the one you’ve erected of your own accomplishments and abilities that will all come to naught. When Springsteen’s murderer in “Nebraska” is asked why he’d done what he’d done, he answers, “Well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” True that, but Paul declares to you that there’s more. He knows he’s under the power of sin, but he insists for you, here today, and more important, back home, the greater power of him crucified and risen, Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim (to use Jason’s beloved construction). He already has everything under his feet and is using your fleeting days and your ephemeral pulpiteering, your flaws and foibles to make his kingdom.

And so we bless you. We lay hands on you who know the depths of your own sin and need no memento mori. Instead we depart with a first-order promise that gives what it declares: you, yes you, are called and claimed and made into the speechifying presence of God. I hear that where God is, God is wholly there. Open your maws, let loose with more than a mere yawp of wisdom or advice. Instead sing the song of Christ’s self. Be blessed. Be confident. For you, O mortals, are made holy to do this work. The Word will not return empty, but will replace the bleak, the hopeless, the stark, and the Starkweather, with joy unbounding on a homeward shore. Amen.

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Published on September 27, 2025 07:54

September 26, 2025

The Limits of Love

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Thank you to the many folks who joined us live to discuss the first portion of Chris’ new book, All Life Comes from Tenderness.

Here is the link for this Monday’s live session at 7:00 EST.

If you have questions for Chris, let me know.

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Published on September 26, 2025 05:51

September 25, 2025

You Weren't Left Behind; the Promise is Not the Rapture

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Preachers can seldom to point to obvious wins.

However I count it an accomplishment that, several years ago, when the denominational powers-that-be pressed my congregation to complete a “Real Discipleship Survey” a statistically significant number of them protested. “You should ask my neighbor, not me!” one of them replied— to my gleeful pride. I also cherish the memory of a sermon on the Dishonest Manager that elicited heckling from a listener. More recently, I patted myself on the back that I have somehow managed to preach, teach, and pastor totally oblivious to the memes and trending stories of Christian culture; specifically, I had no idea another specious prediction of the Rapture had been augured by grifting soothsayers on TikTok.

According to The NY Times, this prediction of the Parousia was as banal our present dystopian storyline. Jesus apparently announced to a random believer in South Africa that the Rapture had been calibrated to the coming FIFA World Cup. Though I did not initially understand the snarky Christian memes mocking the anticipation of the Second Advent, I figure it’s not too late to point out what is wrong in the popular Christian imagination when it comes to the Fulfillment. After all, Advent— what Fleming Rutledge calls the Eschatological Season— is right around the corner.

A key verse from the Book of Hebrews reveals the disconnect between Christian kitsch and gospel promise:

“So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”

The language of the Second Coming leads us away from the claims of the scriptures.

The End is not the arrival of a heretofore distant Jesus. Just as he vanishes from the sight of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus and just as he offers himself to Thomas after Easter, Jesus will appear. That is, his present presence with us— among us— will be made visible.

The problem with End Times predictions is not so much their scheduling (in violation of Christ’s clear command to abstain from such speculation) but in the way they speak of Christ’s Second Advent in ways that imply Jesus has left us

Our hope rests in Christ’s appearing not coming back.

Quite simply, the gospel never imagines a world in which Christ is absent. He has not gone on a long journey, watching from afar until the clock strikes the End. As Robert Jenson insists, “God is not an invisible and timeless substance but a specific event: the mutual life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Christ is not elsewhere.

The Risen LORD is the one who “happens” to his people—the risen Jesus whose presence structures the very time in which we live. Thus, his parousia is not a matter of coming back from a distance but of appearing from the hiddenness in which he is already with us. This is why it is misleading—perhaps even dangerous—to speak of his return as if he had left. Against the popular imagination fueled by rapture predictions, we must learn to speak in biblical and theological terms.

The Risen Jesus is not an Absentee Landlord who will finally show up to check on the property.

He appears as the one who has been with us all along, even when unrecognized, even when veiled. His appearing is the unveiling of the One who already accompanies us, who is with us “always, to the end of the age.”

The Russian Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov helps clarify this in his book on the Parousia. The Parousia, he writes, is not a single event plotted as the final dot on history’s timeline. Rather, it is apocalyptic—breaking in from God’s eternity into all times and places. Christ’s manifestations throughout the church’s life—the Eucharist in which he gives himself, the Spirit’s work that creates the church, the visions granted to saints, martyrs, and believers—are anticipations and real presences of that one great Appearing that will gather them all up.

Every prayer of the church is no less wondrous than the so-called Rapture.

To every “Come, Lord Jesus,” the Risen Jesus replies, “Behold, I come quickly.”

Christ’s presence is never deferred to some inscrutable date.

It is always contemporary.

Speculation about the End too often imagines the Fulfillment as the cessation or abandonment of all that God has made (minus a frighteningly vague remainder). But the biblical hope— the claim of the gospel— is that Christ’s appearing will inaugurate nothing less than the transfiguration of all things—time, space, matter—into God’s own eternal life.

In Jenson’s words:

“The last judgment is not a mere forensic act but the advent of the End, in which creation is perfected as the theater of God’s Triune life.”

Jesus is not distant now.

Nor is he interested in relocating some of you elsewhere.

The End really is the Fulfillment, the transformation of all things into the life of God— that’s freaking Corinthians, if you don’t believe me.

In the meantime, as I usually say at the altar table, Christ’s being-with-us is not on pause while we wait for the End. It is the world’s present tense. His fullness is happening to us even now, in word and sacrament.

Again, a plain reading of the New Testament rules out the Second Advent as the return of the absent Jesus. In the New Testament, the risen body of Jesus is never spoken of as a private, free-floating reality. It is always and only encountered as baptized believers gathered around loaf and cup. The church is not merely waiting for Christ; the church is the site of his risen body, already given to the world.

The church is not merely waiting for Christ; the church is the site of his risen body, already given to the world.

To speak of Christ’s parousia apart from this Eucharistic reality is to speak of a Christ other than the one the apostles proclaimed.

Just so, against the fever and fear stirred up by Rapture predictions, we confess something steadier, stranger, and far more hopeful.

Jesus will appear.

Not as a stranger returning from exile, but as the Lord who has been with us, hidden, all along. His final appearing will unveil what has always been true—that the world’s End is not absence but presence, not escape but communion, not abandonment but the promise of God made perfect.

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Published on September 25, 2025 06:41

September 24, 2025

The Poor Man’s Name Means "God is on My Side"

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In all of Jesus’ parables, in all four of the Gospels, Lazarus is the only character with a proper name.

This Sunday’s lectionary Gospel is Luke 16.19-31.

Years ago, another Year C in Ordinary Time, I officiated at the wedding of a friend of mine in Farmville, Virginia. After the marriage ceremony was over, I was standing on the sidewalk outside the church, shaking hands with people, when this middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed glasses rushed up to me, thrust her hand out and began pumping my arm up and down

“Reverend, that was so wonderful!” she said. “Your sermon was so warm, lovely and uplifting. Most of the preaching I’ve ever heard is either about money or its all fire and brimstone. Do you know what I mean?”

I didn’t say anything one way or the other. I just smiled and moved on to shake the next hand.

But I could’ve said:

“Excellent! You should come to my church next weekend. Next weekend we’ll be talking about money and hell.”

Did you know Jesus talks about Hell more than Paul, Peter, Isaiah, Daniel and Ezekiel combined? Did you know that in St. Luke’s Gospel Jesus is constantly talking about money?

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Published on September 24, 2025 06:27

September 23, 2025

Depriving Politics of Pathos

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I met Dennis Sanders when he joined the inaugural cohort of the Iowa Preachers Project and during that experience I learned that he hosted the podcast Church and Main. Dennis is a kind and thoughtful leader, and I enjoyed getting the chance to reconnect with him.

As Dennis describes the show:

Church and Main is a religion and public affairs podcast. We look at where religion intersects with 21st-century public life with a focus on the story of Mainline Protestantism, its problems, its strengths, and its future. Join Pastor Dennis Sanders on the journey.

Here is the essay of mine we discussed.

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Published on September 23, 2025 07:29

September 22, 2025

10 Homiletical Maxims from Robert Jenson

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Hi Friends,

Join us tonight at 7:00 EST as we talk with Chris Green about his new book All Life Comes from Tenderness. We will be talking about the section “Crossing the Inner Threshold.” If you don’t yet have a copy, shoot me an email.

Here is the link for the session tonight.

Last week, in Des Moines during our first gathering of the second cohort of the Iowa Preachers Project, a participant commented on the day’s presentations, “That was a lot of Luther.” The emphasis left him wondering about his fit within the group. I attempted to reframe his unease, stressing that because the Protestant Reformation was chiefly a preaching movement, Luther has gifted the church a theology of proclamation. “Only Karl Barth,” I argued, “Has done more theological reflection on the preaching act.” The more I have pondered my comment, however, the less satisfied it has left me. More so than either Luther or Barth, the theologian Robert Jenson has gifted the church with theology intended for gospeling.

At the risk of eliciting the comment, “That’s a lot of Jenson,” here is a quick rundown of ten maxims on preaching culled from Jens’ theology.

1. Preachers: Dare the Ontological Claim

Preaching is not second order discourse; it is— a stumbling block and a folly, surely— speaking for God. Thus preaching is not what it becomes more often than not on a Sunday morning. It is not speaking about God. The content of proclamation is thus neither “information about God” nor explanation of the scripture text. Preaching is the event of God’s self-speech. The nature of preaching is determined by the nature of God, who is “not an idea or a structure but an event—the event that happens as Father, Son, and Spirit”

To stand in the pulpit is therefore to expect the Triune God to make himself present, here and now. To preach is utter what only Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can promise. Paul himself dares this very claim, “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.”

Preaching is not talk about God; it is God talking.

Proclamation is an event of reconciliation, it is God happening through the fragile words of a preacher.

2. Preachers: Deliver a Future, Not a Project

Jenson’s chief insight from Story and Promise onward is also his emphasis most indebted to Luther.

The gospel is promise.

Therefore, preaching is promissory in nature.

Preaching speaks a future into being that is not otherwise available if it is not true that Jesus lives with death behind him. As Jenson writes, “The gospel is promise: because Christ died and rose, therefore you will live.” Paul speaks in this grammar constantly, “Because we are justified by faith, therefore we have peace with God.” The sermon does not exhort or advise; it announces verdicts from God’s future that liberate the listener from his past and opens her present for joyful obedience. The sermon is a word not of demand but of gift, not project but promise.

That the word “preaching” seldom connotes synonyms like “promise” and “gift” is indicative of the church’s theological failure.

3. Preachers: Let the Text Set the Agenda

We call them passages of scripture because the LORD promises to pass through them if we but attend to them with patient faith. Jenson warns against the preacher who attempts to tame the word into a mirror of their own interests. Authority comes not from rhetorical polish but from visible submission to scripture. The way the Bible exercises authority in the church, Jenson writes, is by the preacher visibly struggling to say what the scripture says. This is the endeavor which the Spirit joins. As Jens says, “When the church repeats Israel’s Scriptures as her own, it is not she but the Spirit who controls their sense.” Thus, Paul exhorts Timothy: “Preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season.”

Choosing the hard texts, struggling publicly with their difficulty, lets the congregation see that the preacher is under the same word, not above it. Authority arrives in that very struggle.

4. Preachers: Woo, Don’t Wheedle

The sermon is not cajolery but wooing.

Preaching is a lover’s persuasion of his beloved.

Jenson describes the gospel as “the bridegroom’s word, the speech by which he creates his bride.” God’s Word does not nag or manipulate; it courts. Paul embodies this very posture: “I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” The preacher does not substitute their ideals for Christ’s person, nor project their longings upon the congregation, but delivers the divine wooing word that awakens love and trust.

5. Preachers: Name the “Indeed”

In his Easter sermon, Jenson stresses the adverb of resurrection, “Christ is risen indeed.”

The gospel is not the claim that Christ is risen “in principle” or “in spirit” but indeed. “The gospel ,” Jenson writes, “is the narrative that Jesus is risen and that this is determinative of all reality.” Paul uses the same emphasis, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain… But in fact [indeed] Christ has been raised from the dead” The homiletic task is to carry that indeed into all the places where hearts falter, until hope is shored up against despair. It is to name all the ways in which this promise from the Last Future speaks freedom and hope into our present lives.

6. Preachers: Refuse Religious Realism

Karl Barth famously warned preachers away from focusing too much on sin in the pulpit, and he himself made only one passing reference to Hitler in his sermons during the rise of Nazism. Preachers must not make sin more interesting than the gospel; we must not make the “little man in Berlin” seem more consequential than Christ and him crucified.

That is, the pulpit must not ratify the world’s ways as “realism.” Jenson warns us, “The gospel is never the endorsement of what already is but the promise of what will be.”
Paul likewise refuses the world’s realism, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds.” Preaching names the world’s accommodations—its idolatries, its false inevitabilities—and calls upon the LORD to overturn them again.

The sermon is not the baptism of status quo but the cry for God’s disruption.

7. Preachers: Preach as Though You are a Part of Providence

I lifted up this theme in my kick-off sermon for the Iowa Preachers Project.

Just as prayer is a participation in God’s providential governing of his creation, the preacher must believe that this speaking is a means by which God bends the world toward its promised End. “God is the author of the world’s story,” Jenson writes, “by the way he speaks within it.” That means you, preachers and hearers. That means the sermon itself is taken up into providence, an instrument through which God acts.
Paul claims no less in 1 Corinthians 1:21, “God chose through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”

Precision, courage, and love in preaching matter because God has promised to use this speech as part of his reconciling work in the world.

8. Preachers: Proclaim the Whole Christ

Though much of the church is mired in a period of wisdom preaching, proclamation must never reduce Jesus to a moral example or a spiritual guru. The task of preaching, Jenson says, is to proclaim the concrete person of the risen Christ by re-articulating abstractions like "love" and "peace" as being about Jesus. Jenson insists that the gospel is “Jesus himself in his totality—his person and his history—as the content of God’s promise.”

He goes on:

“A great deal of our preaching and teaching is exactly backwards. So, for example. The preacher will say that what a text from one of the Gospels, about a miracle or parable, ‘is really about is acceptance of people in all their diversity.’ A true sermon would go just the other way: ‘What our talk of acceptance and diversity etc. is really trying to get at is Jesus.’”

This is what Paul proclaims, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The preacher’s task is not to offer fragments of Christ (lessons) but the whole Christ—crucified and risen, present and coming—so that hearers encounter the one who alone is LORD.

9. Preachers: Let the Spirit Create the Hearing

To be charismatic, Christians need do nothing more than listen in anticipation to the corporate reading of the scriptures, ready to acclaim, “Thanks be to God.” That is, preaching is not effective because of the preacher’s craft or guile but because the Spirit makes ears to hear. Jenson notes, The Spirit’s work is that the promise be heard as promise.”

The preacher dares to speak as if God himself will use these words to make new hearers, trusting that the Spirit who inspired the text will also create faith through its proclamation.

10. Preachers: Preach Toward the Table

Whenever the New Testament speaks of the risen body of Jesus, it does so in reference to the community of disciples gathered around loaf and cup. Every sermon therefore leans toward the Eucharist because preaching is not complete until Christ himself is embodied to give what he promises. As Jenson writes in Visible Words, “The proclaimed word moves into the enacted word, so that the promise is not only spoken but given.” Paul echoes this in 1 Corinthians 10:16, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” Preaching is this participation in that neither sermon nor loaf are Jesus apart from the word of promise. Homiletics, in Jenson’s view, aims not at intellectual assent but at embodied communion.

Preaching is proclamation fulfilled in participation.

In the end, these maxims circle back to Jenson’s own conviction, an assertion he owes to Barth, “The proof of theology is in the preaching.” I think the same could be said of prayer. What we say about God lives or dies in the pulpit— or at another’s deathbed. Doctrine must become doxology and promise must become proclamation. Otherwise, they are idle thoughts and hollow vanity. Preaching is not the afterthought of theology but its crucible, the place where the Triune God proves himself faithful by speaking Christ into our midst—again.

And indeed.

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Published on September 22, 2025 08:00

September 21, 2025

Wine into Water

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John 2.1-11

I’m heading back from the Iowa Preachers Project and not on tap this Sunday, but here is a sermon from the vault that fits into our current lectio continua series through the Miracles of Jesus.

Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Six stone jars. Let's round to the middle, say 25 gallons. Unlike my boy's homework, this is the sort of math I know how to do.

If or when the implodes, I could get a gig in a restaurant kitchen. Back in middle school, I was the doogie-houser of home economics. My Italian grandma was a chef. I've got knife skills. I've got all the mother sauces memorized. I'm a pretty good cook. So that's four quarts to a gallon. One quart equals roughly six glasses— cabernet glasses— and that gives you a minimum grand total of 2,160 glasses of wine that had been water.

That's a lot of wine.

Even if I’m coming to your party, that's a lot of wine.

And Jesus makes not three buck chuck. Jesus transforms water into top shelf pinot. Pretty impressive party trick, Jesus. But not to be outdone. Not to be outdone, Jesus' friends, you and I, the church, we've somehow managed to pull off the even more difficult feat of transforming gold-metal wine of grace into the tasteless, odorless, joyless, everyday water of the law.

We've turned the gospel into Iocane powder.

Jesus kicks off the salvation of the world by turning water into wine, but we've pulled off the even more impossible trick of turning his wine back into water. Jesus can turn water into wine, sure, but look at us. We're like David Copperfield walking through the Great Wall of China. We are able to turn Christ's wine back into water.

And Jesus just did that at Cana that one time. That's it. We turn his wine into water again and again and again and again.

I'm sorry. I apologize. I realize this is like a rookie preacher's mistake, beginner stuff. I know it's a bad rhetorical strategy to give away my main point right at the get-go, wine into water. What the heck was I thinking? Forget all about that phrase, wine into water. Think about anything other than “wine into water.” Pretend I never said anything at all about how we turn wine back into water. Whatever you do, do not think at all about how we revert his wine into water.

150 gallons, 150 gallons for drunk people to drink.

That's a pretty impressive sleight of hand. Still though, it's a queer way for Jesus to begin his redemptive work. In John's gospel, Jesus begins his ministry not by preaching or teaching, not by casting out demons or curing disease like in Mark's gospel.

Here in John, Jesus doesn't lift up a single lowly poor person or speak one syllable of truth to power. Instead, in John's gospel, Jesus kicks off his redemptive work by being Mary's plus one at a wedding party. A celebration where Jesus, in a pinch, proves he's an even better bartender than Tom Cruise in the 1988 film Cocktail. It seems like a strange way for John to begin the story of our salvation. And then John interrupts the party play-by-play to report to you that Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory. And notice, John doesn't call the wine that had been water a miracle. John calls the wine that had been water a sign. Miracles are momentary intrusions by God into the natural order. Miracles are ends in themselves, but signs point beyond themselves. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus performs miracles, but in John's gospel, Jesus does signs.

Seven signs.

Signs signify.

We're meant to see here more than a miracle. We're meant to see here more than an ordinary marriage supper. And there's so much here to see. You take the six stone jars, they're a sign. This wedding at Cana, it isn't the sort of wedding where your Aunt Becky buys credentials online for $69.99 in order to be able to officiate the I-do's. This wedding at Cana is a worship service. It's a worship service. Therefore, you can't just show up with your invite, black tie, and gift from William Sonoma. To come to this wedding is to come before God. And according to the Bible, God is not like Mr. Rogers. You're not acceptable before God just the way you are. You have to be made acceptable. You have to be purified. You have to be justified. And so as the guests would arrive for the nuptials, before they'd get handed their program, they would dip their hands into the stone jars to wash away their sin and render themselves ritually clean.

The jars were made of stone, not clay, because clay is porous and the water would get dirty in clay jars. And the whole purpose of these jars is to remove impurity. The water in the stone jars was to justify you, to make you blameless before a holy God. But it didn't work. And not only are those stone jars standing there empty and idle, abandoned,

John tells you there were six stone jars and six, being one less than seven, is the Jewish number for incompleteness and imperfection. It's a sign. And with this sign, John's showing you that this whole system of making ourselves acceptable to God by dint of our own good deeds and religious doings, it didn't work. There's so much here to see.

Giving in to his mother's grumblings, Jesus tells the caterers at Cana, fill the sown jars with water. Do you see? Do you see? Jesus is taking this system of making ourselves blameless and acceptable before God, and he's transferring it to himself. Jesus is taking these means by which we are able to meet God, and he's making himself in charge of it.

It's a sign. John wants you to see here at the get-go of his gospel what you'll hear later in his gospel, that the only way you can meet God is by the gracious doing of Jesus Christ for you. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is your justification, and your justification, it's on the house, by his grace.

And for those of us who are not perfect and without blemish, that's good news. There's so much good stuff to see here. Notice the amount of water, 150 gallons. It's a sign.

The Jewish Talmud specifies how much water is necessary for the ritual of purification, and according to the Talmud, one cup of water, that's eight fluid ounces, one cup of water is enough water to purify and justify 100 men. This is

19,200 ounces of water. My boys are better at that sort of math than me, but that's enough water to justify almost two million people. Which is more people than a first century Jew like John could imagine. You all have ears enough to see here, don't you? This is John showing you that Jesus Christ is able.

Able by dint, not of your own doing, but by nothing but his own merit. He is able to bring the whole world to his father. It's a sign. And John wants you to see what you'll hear Jesus say to the woman at the well, I am living water.

Everyone who drinks of me will never be thirsty again, for the water I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." There's so much good stuff to see here with the wine! Jesus takes the water that was necessary because of sin and he transforms it into 2,000 glasses of the finest vintage vino. It's a sign!

According to the prophets Amos and Hosea and Jeremiah and Isaiah, the arrival of God's cosmic work of salvation will be occasioned by an abundance of the very best wine. John wants you to see that in the incarnation of Jesus Christ into our world, God is making good on God's promise to the prophet Isaiah today. When Isaiah

When Israel languished in exile, convicted of their sin, and convinced that God had abandoned them for breaking their vow to him, God chooses a marriage supper. God chooses a wedding party as the image for how God would redeem his sinful people and reconcile all of creation.

And John wants you to see that with the arrival of God in the flesh into our world, the not yet of God's redemptive work in the Old Testament is here and now. It's a sign. With all these glasses of wine, John wants you to see that the future promised to Isaiah is present tense in Jesus Christ. Therefore, water is only the beginning of what he's about to transform.

Do you see?

It's a sign of what he promises later in the gospel. I have come so that you may have life, have life abundantly. There's so much good stuff to see here. Take the timing.

John tells you that Jesus and the disciples arrived to this wedding party at Cana on the third day. The third day since when exactly? It's an unhelpful, extraneous detail unless what John wants you to see is a hint of when Mary Magdalene will arrive at the empty tomb on the third day, the first morning of the new creation.

Speaking of new creation, this third day in Cana is actually the seventh day thus far in John's gospel. John, who begins his gospel with a deliberate echo of the Genesis creation story, John numbers the days in his gospel just like Genesis 2. And so if you turn to John chapter 1 verse 19, you'll see that's the first day. And then in verse 29, John tells you “on the next day.” And then in verse 35 John says, on the next day. So that's three days. And then in chapter 1 verse 43 John again says, on the next day. That's four days. And when you turn to chapter 2 at the wedding at Cana, John tells you three days later, on the seventh day. This marriage supper at Cana where Jesus arrives as a guest but ends up acting as the host.

“Do whatever he says,” Mary orders the caterers.

This wedding party where Jesus arrives as a guest but ends up acting as the host, it happens on the seventh day.

Translation?

This is no ordinary wedding party at all.

It's a sign.

It points beyond itself.

You're supposed to see here that at the beginning of Christ's work, you're supposed to see a glimpse of the end of Christ's work, the consummation of all things, this marriage supper where Jesus ends up acting as a host.

It's a sign of salvation.

Because at the very end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, the occasion for John to announce the arrival of a new heaven and a new earth, the occasion for John to announce that death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, the occasion for John to announce that good news is a wedding party. John calls the end of all things salvation and new creation. He calls it the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The date of the wedding matters because it's a sign.

John wants you to see a glimpse of your destiny.

And when you realize this wedding party at Cana is meant to point to the marriage supper of the lamb, new creation, heaven, eternal life, the whole kit and caboodle of everything God ever spoke into existence, when you see it's supposed to point to that, then you can begin to laugh at the outrageousness of God's indiscriminating grace. Because here at Cana, Jesus makes the best wine for drunk people to drink. Jesus pours bottomless glasses of top-shelf wine for people too drunk to appreciate drinking it. He takes the water from the stone jars and he transforms it into gold-metal wine for people too drunk to appreciate it. As the master of the feast says to the groom, everyone brings out the best wine first and then the cheap wine last after everyone's gotten drunk, but you save the best wine for now when they're drunk and won't even notice.

Even more crazy?

Even more crazy, the bridegroom and his family, who apparently failed to purchase enough wine for the celebration, they end up getting the credit for what Christ has done. The party planner tastes the wine that had been watered, John says, and he chalks it up to the bridegroom's extravagance. They get the credit that Christ alone merits, as though they'd done it themselves. It's a sign. Surely.

Surely you can see, right?

Earlier this week, one of you emailed me an article you found online. I clicked the link and I quickly praised God it had nothing to do with the LGBTQ issue in the UMC. At least, not obviously so. In fact, it was an ordinary obituary in the Des Moines Register.

Now I realize it might sound odd to mention death in the context of a wedding story, except A) every married couple will appreciate the irony and B) even Jesus here at this wedding talks of crucifixion.

“Woman, what concern is that to me?” Jesus says, “my hour has not yet come.”

The obituary was for a Nebraskan named Ken Fusen. It's one of those obituaries that's more than just an obituary.

It's a sign.

Ken Fusen's sons wrote:

“Ken Fusen was born June 23, 1956, and died on January 3, 2020, in a Nebraska medical center in Omaha of liver cirrhosis. And Ken is stunned to learn that the world is somehow able to go on without him. Ken attended the University of Missouri Columbia's famous School of Journalism, which is a clever way of saying, almost graduated, but didn't.

Facing a choice between covering a story for the Columbia Daily Tribune or taking his final exams, Ken went for the story. He never claimed to be smart, just committed. In 1996, Ken took the principled stand of leaving the Des Moines Register because the Sun in Baltimore offered him more money. Three years later, having blown most of that money at Pimlico Racetrack, he returned to the register, where he remained until 2008.

In his newspaper work, Ken never won a Pulitzer Prize, but he's dead now, so get off his back. There are those who would suggest that becoming a freelance writer in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression was not a wise choice, but Ken was never one to be guided by wisdom. He wrote the book, Heading for Home, with Kent Stock, about the 1991 Norway baseball team that won the state championship in its final season. Many good copies are still available.

Ken was diagnosed with liver disease at the beginning of 2019, which is pretty ironic given how he never drank, never a drop of beer, whiskey, or wine. So eat your fruits and vegetables, kids. Ken had many character flaws. If he still owes you money, he's sorry, sincerely. But he liked to think that he had a good sense of humor and deep compassion for others. He prided himself on letting other drivers cut in line.

He would give you the shirt off his back, even with the ever-present food stain. Thank goodness nobody ever asked. It wouldn't have been pretty. Ken was also a master jumbles solver. For most of his life, Ken suffered from a compulsive gambling addiction that nearly destroyed him and his family. But his church friends and the loving people at Gamblers Anonymous never gave up on him. Ken last placed a bet on September 5th, 2009.

He died clean. He hopes that anyone who needs help will seek it, which is hard, and accept it, which is even harder. Miracles abound. Ken's pastor says God can work miracles for you and through you. Skepticism may be cool, and for too many years Ken embraced it, but Jesus Christ transformed his life. Faith was the one thing he never regretted.

Jesus Christ transformed everything for him. For many years, Ken was a member of the First United Methodist Church in Indianola and sang in the choir, which was a neat trick considering he couldn't read a note of music. The choir members will never know how much they helped Ken. Ken then joined the Lutheran Church of Hope. If you want to know what God's transformative love feels like, just walk in those doors. Seriously. Go right now! We'll wait! Ken's not going anywhere. Yes, this obituary is probably too long. Ken always wrote too long. So we'll close by saying what he would say. God is good. See you in heaven. Ken promises to let you cut in line.

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.”

There's so much top shelf vintage stuff at this marriage supper in Cana for you and I to serve.

How about:

You are justified not by anything you do, but by the gracious doing of Jesus Christ for you. That's here at this marriage supper. So is not only are you blameless before God and acceptable to God, no matter what you've done or left undone, by grace, through faith, you are credited with what Jesus Christ has done. As though his singular faithfulness is your very own doing.

That's in here too at this marriage supper for you to see and for us to serve.

Ditto:

Christ's promise to give you life, abundant life, because water is the least of what Jesus Christ can transform and is transforming and will transform at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

That's here at this marriage supper too, for us to serve the guests of the bridegroom.

And that bridegroom:

That bridegroom, not only is he happy to lavish high dollar wine on people too drunk to appreciate it, in the crazy good fun of his grace, this bridegroom is happy to let all of us cut in line at Heaven's Gate. Miracles abound. God is good and Jesus Christ who is not dead can transform anything.

And it's all available to anyone at the rock bottom price of absolutely free. Our shelves are stocked. We've got so much good vintage five star stuff to serve the Bridegroom's guests, glass after glass after glass after glass.

And yet, these days, we're more interested in talking politics in the pews.

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Published on September 21, 2025 06:27

September 19, 2025

“HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BODY OF CHRIST”

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Ryan Stevenson-Cosgrove is one my partners with the Iowa Preachers Project. A Lutheran preacher in Minnesota, Ryan has a heart for the gospel, an ear for sound theology, and a hand that knows how to write sentences. Here is his presentation from our first gathering of our second cohort— I wish I had the audio of it to share with you.

Well, seeing as I’m in the company of professional forgivers, I’d like to begin with a confession. Often, when I would hear the folks at Mockingbird, or Ken, or Jason complain about the sorry state of preaching, I suspected they were playing it up! To be honest, part of me wondered if maybe they weren’t building straw men to bolster a weak argument. But then, something happened.

What happened was, I took a new call. When I arrived, I got to preach three Sundays in a row. But then, after that, I didn’t preach for a month. And in that month, I heard, at least, nine different sermons, given by four different pastors. And let me tell you, by the time it was over, I was in a sorry state of affairs.

The final sermon I had to sit through was a funeral sermon. My friend’s father had died. And this was the friend whose family let me live with them after our house fire. They did that so I wouldn’t have to miss classes. As you might expect, the man we laid to rest, Jeff, meant an awful lot to me.

Plus, Jeff’s death came unexpectedly. He was only 67. And the pastor had the good sense to acknowledge this. But then, after making this obvious statement, the pastor felt the need to say more.

The pastor admitted that, yes, Jeff was young. And he also wasn’t young. After all, reasoned the good reverend, we could all die at any moment. Therefore, concluded the pastor, we had all do well to get right with God with the precious little time we all have.

At this point, I nearly had to muffle a scream. Didn’t this pastor know that was precisely my problem?!? I wasn’t right with God! I couldn’t sing “It is well with my soul!” In fact, the devil was using that funeral to preach another sermon to me. And after the month I had, I think I succumbed to it.

Every single sermon I heard that month told me what I should believe or do. And let me be clear, on the whole, I basically agreed with everything they said. The only problem was, that was my problem! I knew what I should do or think. But, blast it, like Saint Paul before me, that was exactly what I couldn’t do when I most needed to!

Worst of all, not one of those pastors saw fit to lift a finger and lighten my terrible load! Honestly, they mostly just added to it. And yes, they added to it with good things, but that only made everything worse! In my story state, their admonitions didn’t help me get closer to God. They just drove the wedge further in.

Let me be frank, when you’re your own worst enemy, and we all are moreoften than we care to admit, you don’t have it in you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps! No, when Sin and Death get a toehold, the only thing we can do, even with our best efforts, is just dig ourselves deeper into our own graves! Those pastors’ exhortations that I just believe this or do that threw my problem back on itself: me and myself! My problem was me, myself, and my utter lack of any righteousness or faithfulness!

So, let me ask you, why did those pastors think I had it in me to make anything better?!? And to be honest, after a month of being beaten downwith shoulds and oughts, I began to look enviously at the corpse. At least he got to be dead! I, though—I had to haul my miserable carcass around! I had to try whipping it yet again, in the awful delusion that maybe this time that dead horse might get up and do something!

Let me tell you, it was miserable.

At my wits’ end, I called Ken on the long drive home. I have no doubt that call was laced with obscenities. Ken, for his part, listened and, most importantly, preached. And that, preaching, that alone freed me. Once I had a little breathing room, I could finally ask the real question: why!

Why did I, this poor kid with dyslexia from Nowheresville, Iowa, know better than all those preachers?!? Why didn’t a single one of them get it? They all came from better families! One of them even went to Princeton, Sarah and Jason! So, why, oh why, didn’t they get it?!? And that’s when Ken suggested I work something up for you all.

It was helpful advice, too. As I wrote this, I realized I’ve already touched upon my answer. My upbringing itself taught me the hard way not to put my trust in mortals, in whom there is no help! The rest of those pastors managed to manage their middle-class lives reasonably well. For them, life was mostly manageable. Like Mrs. Ruby Turpin in Flannery O’Connor’s excellent short story Revelation, those pastors mistook God’s forbearance for their own faithfulness.

…However. However, to stop there would be dishonest. Wouldn’t it? For one thing, it would be a dodge on my part. And for another, it would be to give those other pastors too much credit!

The truth is, no one walks a cleared path. Do we? No, those pastors must have met a problem they couldn’t solve. For whatever reason, though, they failed to learn its God-given lesson!

Speaking for myself, my rocky childhood wasn’t enough to teach me to rely on God, either! If anything, it just as often taught me the opposite lesson! The tough times taught me to be tougher. And to be honest, my determinationserved me pretty well, too. Until, that is, it didn’t.

In college, here at Grand View, I ran my life into the ground. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it’s truly a miracle I’m here. And I don’t mean alive. I mean, it’s a miracle I’m even allowed back on campus!

Let’s leave it there, though. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t depravity that drove my life into the ground. On the contrary, it was ambition and righteousness! I never wrecked so much havoc on my own life and the lives of others as when I was driving myself to Princeton! Satan is an equal opportunity employer in that way! Satan is just as adept with virtue as vice. It’s we who are all too susceptible to the mortal sin of hubris, or self-righteousness!

I caught more than my fair share of breaks afterward. As I said, getting to walk away is more than I could have asked for. And given my working-class family, it’s more than a lot of my kin ever received. But my best break by far was the gory details.

Blowing up my own life with aspiration and blowing it up so absolutely taught me two invaluable lessons. First of all, I learned that what I experienced is common. Secondly, since I had wrecked my own life so completely, it was also impossible for me to move on from it. And seeing as those two lessons are true, because they are, I’d be willing to bet you can relate, too.

If you’re here, you probably know a thing or two about what I’m talking about. You can probably fill in the details for yourself. As the Whiskey Priest in ThePower and the Glory realizes, sin is not as original as we think. Either way, I’d be willing to wager disaster has probably struck you, a loved one, or the congregation you served head-on. At the very least, this shipwreck of righteousness has most certainly come too close for comfort.

I would ask you to stay in touch with this uncomfortable fact, too. Because that, finally, is what I suspect those other pastors got wrong. The pastors were all well-meaning to a fault. And all things considered, they weren’t half-bad, either.

Their only problem was that those pastors thought the catastrophes of life were the anomaly, and not the ordinary that they are! In a word, those pastors were working with an imaginary view of life! It’s like Luther said to Philip Melanchthon:

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.

In their minds, those pastors were preaching to people who had all the faithand willpower they needed to manage their lives, and their eternal lives, too! Therefore, their sermons didn’t offer salvation! They offered self-help! And while that has its time and place, it’s utterly suffocating when you’re already suffering from that terrible sickness unto death! When you’re the poor in spirit, no amount of bucking up will help; only the blessing of Jesus Christ can do that!

Those pastors offered sermons full of good advice. And it was all very nice. But it was only nice in theory. In real life, those sermons were cruel! They were nothing short of terminal! They amounted to the chief priests and elders telling Judas to see about his guilt himself.

…Sermons that only offer good advice are bad news. And they’re bad news for everyone involved. They’re bad news for hearers. Sermons that only offer guidance usually just lead to death, be it physical or spiritual.

Speaking for myself, I learned this in middle school! I grew up in a Pentecostal church! I was constantly cajoled to gin up my spiritual life! And after too much ordinary failure, I came to the inevitable conclusion: God and I were at odds. Before I even graduated high school, I knew that once my mom couldn’t make me go to church, I was never going to go again.

Thank God God had other plans. And it bears repeating that all that time I spent running from God never did as much damage as when I was trying to run to God!

Seeing as I’m speaking to professional forgivers, though, it’s you I want to address. Nice sermons, full of good advice, are bad news for you, too. They’re a recipe for resentment, burnout, and in the end, despair. If you’re here, I reckon you know this. If you just want to improve people, you might as well tear up your ordination certificate right now! Spare yourself and the people you serve a lot of heartache.

If you just want the people you serve to improve, go into finances! By and large, we only progress incrementally. But that’s just a fancy way of saying we don’t really get that much better at all! So, if that’s what you want, prepare to be disappointed. And if you would, please don’t take your disappointment out on the people you’ve been called to deliver God’s word. Join a gym, for God’s sake!

What I’d like to propose, though, is that the church is a surprisingly inefficient little operation! But the secret is, that it’s greatest gift! Either way, it’s no accident! As Saint Paul said, God has subjected creation to futility!

However, creation has not been subjected to futility in wrath! No, creation has been subjected to futility in hope! Creation has been subjected to futility in hope that it would be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God! And dear children of God, in Christ, this hope is yours!

That’s not all, either! On account of your calling, it’s the obligation that has been laid upon you! And woe to you if you do not proclaim the gospel! But hurrah for you if you do!

Preaching that begins with God-given futility is the most effective thing you can do! Plus, it’s a lot of fun, too! We pastors have to be so cautious, so often. So, let me tell you, it’s refreshing to, at least, once a week, climb into the pulpit and put caution to the wind! You get to preach the gospel, and let the chips fall where they may!

If you’re here, I suspect you know a thing or two about the fun of the gospel. So, I’d like to talk a little about its functionality. First of all, preaching is the most significant act of pastoral care you will conduct all week. Worship is the largest gathering of members. So give sermon preparation its due time.

As the musician, Jason Isbell, said, his songs got better when he got sober. The main reason wasn’t that he had a clear head, either! No, it was just that he had time to give the songs time! When he was sober, songwriting didn’t have to compete for time with drinking!

So, give sermons their due time! There’s nothing else you can’t entrust to a member to handle, either. Pastors don’t have to do everything! In fact, we infantilize congregations by making our insecurity their problem!

A good pastor knows they don’t have to know everything. And an even betterpastor knows when it’s time to hand off other work and get their hands on the Bible. But if you think I’m playing this up, just talk to a bi-vocational pastor. They’ll tell you how lucky you are to be afforded time for sermon preparation. So, use it faithfully. Ok?

…That’s just a practical consideration, though. So, let me cut to the chase: When you begin with God-given futility, you can actually get something done! When you know you’re talking to real sinners, you will know you have something to say!

Plus, you won’t have to worry about how to say it, either! When you have news, you don’t have to waste time trying to be clever! No, when you have a message that’s so good it actually impacts people’s lives, you can just trust that the newsworthiness of your proclamation will capture attention all by itself!

You don’t have to be compelling! The message is more than compelling enough all by itself! In fact, trying to punch up the Gospel is a good way to get in the way of it! And if I’m honest, when I see I’m a little too worried about being interesting, I’ve come to realize I’m really betraying a deep distrust in the power of the message!

If you think the Gospel needs to be dressed up with a whole bunch of folderol, don’t be surprised when people don’t believe it! After all, we pastors spend the entire sermon gesturing that the message isn’t enough with all ourso-called flair!

A quick aside, I’ve read and listened to enough truly faithful sermons to believe this, too. There are too many voices that say a good sermon shouldsound like this or that, or do this or that. But at its best, that’s just fiddling around the edges. And at its worst, it’s a faithless presumption. Either way, it’s not the main thing!

I’ve heard faithful Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, Disciples, and Lutheran sermons. They each have their own sound! And that’s ok! Don’t lose sleep trying to sound like someone else! It is God’s good pleasure that you preach!

You don’t have to sound like anyone else! No, you have to do something harder. You have to sound like the steward of God’s mysteries that you are! And all you have to do to do this is stay true to the word of God! Then, go ahead and sound like anyone you darn well please! Since you’re here, though, it’s probably best that you sound like yourself!

That said, you are free if you want to adopt another voice! But let me challenge you to try to let the Scripture dictate that! No one else may notice that you’ve assumed a narrative style to preach a narrative. Nevertheless, the internal consistency will witness back to the power of the source material itself! And if nothing else, it’ll buck you up! You’ll climb into the pulpit knowing you’re not pulling any punches!

Now we’re in the weeds, though. So, let me just say, if we do our work, youwill walk away sounding more like yourself. Most of all, though, you’ll soundmore like a good steward of God’s mysteries! And the best stewards are the ones who are free to experiment with as many voices that are faithful to God’s word, God’s people, and God’s servants—in that order.

…But I was talking about the efficacy of God-given futility. When you address your sermons to people who have really run their own lives into the ground, you’ll start to speak to the largest group in the congregation, everyone! And you’ll have something to say to them, too!

This is what makes for missional preaching! Missional isn’t about being clever, winning, or even relevant. No, it’s about meeting people where they actually live! And the rock bottom assumption you can make about anyone with a pulse is that they are either the perpetrator or victim of besetting sin. And more than likely, they’re a confusing mixture of both! I know I am!

People tolerate bad sermons because they don’t know they can demand anything better! What we really believe is that we won’t have to believe! We believe we can white-knuckle some shabby imitation of belief. Or we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we really do believe that this time we can finally get our life together and work God out of a job!

Ultimately, though, that is just despair dressed up in religious garb! The real sin of those sermons I spoke about earlier is that they believed in a fictionalversion of life, and therefore, they didn’t believe in the real and living God! Those sermons, in so many words, preached that it’s up to us. In other words, their baseline assumption is that we’re in this alone! Luther called this treating God no better than a liar.

At the end of the day, it’s preaching a God who is still dead and in the grave! However, that’s not where God is to be found! God is alive and on the loose! Preaching that tells us it’s up to us, walks away from God, and therefore inevitably leads us to our shallow tombs!

…Now, I will grant you, convicting is a part of preaching. But to stop there or end there is to fail to deliver the punchline! And the Gospel is a comedy! The Gospel is the stunning subversion of the expectation of Sin, Death, and the Devil’s reign of terror!

This is the good humor you get to share with the world! You get to free people from the doom of doubt! You get to tell people they’re not alone! You get to tell people that, because Christ lives, and he does, we shall live forever in him and his never-ending love!

This message will come back to you, too, dear preachers! As the creeds teach, often, the best way to believe God’s promises is to wrap your lips around them! The more you preach, the more you will come to believe! But it needn’t be so solipsistic as that.

Preaching the gospel week-in and week-out won’t just make you amorous for it. Although it will. No, preaching the Gospel will get others in the congregation aroused for it, too! When that happens, the sermon will begin to have an outsized impact!

First of all, when you know you’re actually preaching to real-life sinners, you won’t have to be surprised when people act like it! And that, believe it or not, will make you into the kind of pastor who can be surprised when the Holy Spirit works through good-for-nothing members nevertheless! The Gospelcan actually give the joy of this vocation back to you! And it can do that from the biggest pain in your ass!

That’s not all, either! When you know you’re actually preaching to real-life sinners, you don’t have to be afraid of the futility of creation! From now on, nothing can be the end of the world for you anymore! No, that already happened on Good Friday!

If you want to see the zero-sum of futility that creation has been subjected to, you need look no further than the cross! Then, after you’ve really looked, start preaching! And preach recklessly, too! Preach as if you’re already as good as dead! Preach as if you’re already as good as dead because you are!

You can’t fail! But you can’t succeed, either! No, those are categories for the living who still have yet to die. But you are the dead in your sin who live in Christ and his righteousness! So, go ahead and let your corpse be the welcome mat to the congregation’s empty tomb!

With that, the congregation will no longer be a project for your ambition or ego. Instead, it will become a playground for the Holy Spirit! And not only is that when the surprises start and the failures end, it’s also where the fun begins! And I believe Sarah and Jason will back me up on this. But I’ll just speak from personal experience.

My last call was a very precarious one. When I arrived, there were no children. And the budget wasn’t just month-to-month, it was day-to-day. I got my checks on the 5th and 20th instead of the 1st and 15th because, for five months in a row, we had to wait a day to cut my check because there wasn’t enough money in the bank.

Believe me, you can ask Ken; no one tried harder to berate that congregation into vitality. And let me tell you, all it bred was frustration. Instead of loving the congregation for what it was, I hated it for what it wasn’t. Finally, I burnt out. Drained of everything else, I just preached bread-and-butter sermons week after week.

Slowly, the congregation became resilient. Over the course of 13 years, the congregation moved from being on the edge of a part-time call to a full-time call. Then, it became a second call. When I left, they could still afford to pay a full-time pastor with 13 years of experience. And we also started to attract younger families. All the while, the services got more liturgical and the sermons got longer, too.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, though. God wasn’t stingy with crosses, either. For instance, aside from all the normal, everyday suffering, we had a boiler explosion that forced us to demolish the sanctuary. But even that, as Saint Paul promises, worked together for good.

Yes, there’s the money in the bank we got from the insurance company. But the real treasure is that I learned Luther was right! “Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day! The kingdom’s ours forever! Our mighty fortress isn’t our sanctuaries or success. No, it’s God’s faithfulness!

After enough crosses, I can honestly say I ceased to connect my identity to how things were going from day to day. Yes, there were some dark nights. But I suppose I always had this sense that none of it would be the end. And that taught me to hold it all loosely.

There were summers when our youth group was the biggest one at confirmation camp. And there were summers I had to ask the confirmand to wait a year so we could have two the next year. But never was my worth or the power of the Gospel tied up with uncontrollable variables like that!

…I know it drove Ken crazy that I wouldn’t move on. But when you have it all, it’s hard to find a better call. As far as I was concerned, that littlecongregation in a fly-over state was bursting with more promise than I could ever have dared to hope for! And I want you to know, this is what God has in store for you, too.

God isn’t waiting for you to become a better preacher. And for heaven’s sakes, God isn’t waiting for you to become a more successful congregational leader, either! God forbid! God save us from all that unhappy business. No, God has already raised Christ from the tomb by the power of the Holy Spirit! It’s all already done! Te-telestai. It’s finished!

You don’t have to be effective! The futility of ministry is the secret to its success! And in Christ, it’s all yours! I know this can be hard to see. But that’s how God wants it! We live by faith. Not by sight!

So, let me leave you with something that’s been helpful for me when life, the congregation, or especially the sermon isn’t shaking out. It comes from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. This part is from the last movement of the second quartet, East Coker.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate - but there is no competition -

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

This may seem like too small an expectation for the sermon. And I go back and forth on that myself. Mr. Eliot is only writing about poems. But I do know what it’s like to be frustrated with myself and tired of my own voice.

I agree that sermon writing is more of an act of submission than strength. And I know that when I read Luther turn a phrase, I see how far I come up short of him. But maybe, maybe there’s no competition after all. Maybe it’s just a fight to recover what has been lost, and found, and lost again and again.

I tend to agree that these days, the conditions do indeed seem unpropitious. But perhaps, since it’s God’s word, there’s no gain or loss anymore. For us preachers, there’s only the trying. The rest, be it success or eloquence, is not our business.

Hidden in the hustle and bustle, and tucked away in the struggle of slow days in this, the bedraggled church, is the freedom of the glory of the children of God! That’s it. There’s nothing else. It’s just your good fortune that you get to hand on the goods, come what may!

So, get to it! Will ya? Speaking from personal experience, people are killing to hear cheap imitations of it! So, gird up your loins! Get to it! Tie up your dressfor battle! Get hyped! You’ve got marching orders.

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Published on September 19, 2025 07:18

September 17, 2025

Jesus Likes Me, This I Know

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For the evening “Preaching Slam” of the Iowa Preachers Project each of the team leaders (R-J Heijmen, Chenda Innis Lee, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, and Ryan Stevenson-Cosgrove) and I preached on an object in the sanctuary at Luther Memorial Church in Des Moines.

I concluded the evening by preaching on the ship that hangs from the ceiling of the Danish-Lutheran sanctuary, taking Matthew 14 as my text.

Not long ago, I met with a young woman— she’s barely out of college— to plan the funeral for her father.

Her mother, his ex-wife, wanted nothing to do with the affair.

Her Dad, Henry, worshipped at my former parish.

After over a year of aches and pains and doctor visits and elusive diagnoses, a couple of weeks ago Henry learned he had stage four bone cancer.

Only ten days later he died of massive organ failure.

In his last days and in the days after, his twenty-four year old daughter had been left to get the dead where he needs to go and the living where they need to be.

Ministry is not fool-proof even though there is often little room for error.

That is, I knew Henry’s face. I knew his youngest daughter, Rachel, was in my son’s class. But I didn’t know much else about him.

I certainly didn’t know what Mary told me in my office.

After running a successful campaign in his home state of Michigan, Mary told me, her Dad had come to DC to make his living in politics.

And for a time, he was more than six-figures-successful.

But he lost his position at a policy firm during the Great Recession, and in the years that followed he refused to take any job that would pay him less than what he was making before.

He disengaged at home.

He started to drink.

He ran up debts.

And soon he was barely treading water.

That is when I was his “pastor.”

Seven years ago he was discharged from the hospital after a minor illness. He came home to find his wife finally had made good on her threat to change the locks. His belongings were on the sidewalk next to old, wet newspapers.

“It was fall, but he lived in his car for the next six months,” Mary told me, blowing her nose.

That would’ve been right around the time he left worship and, shaking my hand, told me that my sermon was “interesting.” He’d never said a word to me before and that was the only word I let him say. I had moved on to the next set of hands before I even wondered if maybe he’d wanted to talk more.

“We never did find out where he’d gone,” Mary told me, “Where he was living. We’d see him every couple of months. He’d come by the house to take us to dinner or the movies. Eventually, it was just the two of us. My sister didn’t want to see him. She’s too young. This version of Dad is the only version of Dad she can remember. Honestly, maybe it is the only version of Dad.”

She wiped her eyes with her fists, a gesture that reminded me she’s barely older than my son.

“His cellphone was unlocked,” she told me, looking at the carpet. “I sat with him at Fairfax Hospital, and while his organs failed, I found his landlord’s phone number. I called it. All these years he’s been living in a tiny room in a house not far from here. He had fewer belongings than bills and letters from debt collectors. The landlord said that none of the people who’ve lived with him the past seven years knew anything about him, ‘probably not even his name.’”

I swallowed and felt my face flush.

I hadn’t known his name either.

And supposedly, I’d been his pastor for over a dozen years. Talk about a “finite game.” My chances to pastor him, truly pastor him, eventually ran out. And for that reason, his name is on an infinite loop in my head.

“He circled the drain for so long,” Mary wept, “and then it finally pulled him under.”

Preachers know:

At the very back of the Bible, the scriptures conclude with a brief but all-encompassing promise, “…and the sea was no more.” In the Bible, the sea is the opposite of Mary’s womb. The sea is not a space for God. In the scriptures, the sea signifies the world gone wrong. And yet, Jesus can stroll upon the sea in the midst of a squall as easily as he can sit next to a woman at a completely stationary well.

Nevertheless!

Ambulating upon H2O is not the miracle.

The verb Matthew uses means “to insist,” “to compel,” or “to constrain.”

Jesus compels them into the ship.

Jesus wants them in the ship on the sea.

Jesus wants them in the ship on the sea amidst the storm.

Jesus left them at the first watch— dusk. In the middle of the night, when they were twenty five to thirty stadia from shore, three and a half miles from safety, the waves begin to batter the boat.

And the verb Matthew employs means “to torment” or “to torture.”

The boat is being tortured by the waves because the wind— a mighty rushing wind— “was against them.”

At least a third of them in the boat are fishermen.

So they know the danger is deadly.

And they know now Jesus is worse than asleep in their boat; he is nowhere to be found— all night long.

Matthew writes that Jesus does not come to them until “the fourth watch of the night.”

In other words, they are alone in the boat, battered by the wind and the waves from dusk until dawn.

Again, Jesus wanted them in the ship on the sea amidst the squall.

When Christ comes to them at the last watch, their dire straits at first grow still darker. They see him walking on the sea towards them and he terrifies them.

They thought they knew him.

Now they fear what they suddenly realize they do not recognize in him.

They are unsettled that this both is and is not the Jesus they have known.

And failing to recognize him, they project onto him what they believe is all there is to be found in a storm at sea, “It is a ghost!”

Notice, Jesus comes to their battered boat, striding upon the sea, but the storm still rages. Jesus neither rescues them nor rebukes the wind. He instead reveals his true, triune identity: Jesus is the Great “I AM.”

“Courage! I AM. Be not afraid.”

Of course he can stride upon the sea; he can also part the sea in two.

In one of his final “Lectures on Christology” in 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s students transcribed him as having taught, “Jesus is not separate from Christ…Christ’s humanity is his divinity…This is one of the first axioms of theology— that wherever God is, God is wholly there.”

Wherever God is, God is wholly there.

If God is in the water of Mary’s womb, God is wholly there.

If God is in Jesus, God is wholly there.

If Christ is on the sea, God is wholly there.

Of course he can walk on water!

God is not subject to creation as we are subject to creation.

But again—

That God can walk on water is neither a miracle nor a marvel.

“I’m just so sad,” Mary said and started to weep, “He only let me in at the end because, in the end, he had no one to be with him for the end.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

And she looked at me and shook her head.

“No, it’s true. He wasn’t even a good father.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, “I meant it’s not true that your Dad was alone. I may not have known his name, but I know for certain that I put Christ in your Dad’s mouth every Sunday, like Jesus was a stow away in a leaking vessel.”

She stared at me soberly.

“Henry was not ever alone.”

“That’s something, I guess.”

“No,” I said, “That’s everything. I failed your Dad, but Jesus didn’t— doesn’t.”

At the fourth watch, when Jesus comes to them, the storm does not cease. He is present to them in the storm, but his presence with them does not preserve them from the presence of storms. The storm keeps storming. Perhaps sensing the fear of his friends, Peter replies to the figure on the water, “LORD, if it is you bid me to come to you upon the waters.”

Jesus replies, “Come.”

And Peter— his name means “Rock,” remember— sets forth from the ship.

Panicked and sinking, Peter cries out, “LORD, save me!”

“Jesus,” Matthew writes, “stretched forth his hand and took hold of him.”

Which is to say—

Not only can Jesus stride upon the sea, the weight of the Rock cannot pull Jesus under the water.

Peter’s fear and panic is no anchor to Jesus.

Peter cannot drag Jesus down into the deep.

He is unsinkable.

If God is there, God is wholly there.

The next thing Matthew tells us that they are all in the boat together. Does Jesus carry Peter to the boat? Does Jesus simply appear in the boat with Peter as he does behind locked doors on Easter evening? Do Peter and Jesus walk to the boat, side by side, holding hands, on the water?

Matthew does not dwell on any such details.

BECAUSE THIS IS NOT A MIRCLE ABOUT WALKING ON WATER!

“That’s something, I guess,” Mary said.

“No,” I said, “That’s everything…And he’s in the boat with you now too.”

The Gospel of John adds to this story the comment, “Then they were glad to take him into their boat.”

He can walk on water.

But he wants to be in their boat.

He can stride atop the crest of a wave. He does not need to scull against a stirred up sea. He has no reason to sweat the swells and the surf. He can tow them all the way to shore. He can amble along on every froth and ripple and wait for them on the other side.

It is not so miraculous.

Wherever God is, God is one hundred percent there.

Of course he can walk on water!

But God wants to be in the boat with them!

He can walk on water. He can summon Lazarus from the tomb. He can make the sick whole as easily as he divided the Red Sea. But he wants to be in the boat.

He stretched out the heavens like a curtain. He poured the oceans from the cup of his palm. He told the mountains where to rise. He calls into existence the things which do not exist. He is Alpha and Omega, the End with a capital E and the Beginning of all things, but he is glad to be in the boat.

With them.

And don’t forget who is in the boat he’s glad to board.

In addition to all the other questionable types, there is Peter, the first preacher, who is always too quick to open his mouth and who continually fails to live in light of his own gospel proclamation.

But God is glad to get into the boat with this imperfect preacher.

And Jesus is glad to be aboard with you.

This is the miracle. This is the marvel.

Not that Jesus can walk on water.

Not even that Jesus loves you. Or that he died for your sins.

The miracle— the marvel— is that Jesus likes you.

You.

Not as he can make you.

Not as you hope you will be.

Not as you wish you were not.

You!

Jesus likes you.

He can walk on water.

But he wants to be in the boat with you.

With you.

The apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians that “anyone joined to the LORD becomes one Spirit with him.” In other words, Jesus is not himself apart from you anymore than the Son is himself apart from the Father.

Jesus is not Jesus without you!

And how is that even possible?

Because he asked for it!

And his intercessions never fail.

In the Upper Room, on the night before he dies, Jesus prays to the Father, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may my disciples also be in us.”

That is:

On the night he was handed over— the last thought on Christ’s mind— Jesus prays, “Father, I want to be in the boat with_______.”

Father, I want to be in the boat with Luke.

Father, I want to be in the boat with Josh.

Father, I want to be in the boat with Megan and Matt.

“He circled the drain and then it finally pulled him under.”

There is still a tempest raging in me that, as a pastor, I failed him.

Though the waves and the wind tortured them all night long, the disciples rowed towards the other side of the sea in accordance with Christ’s command. In all of the Gospels, this could be the instance of their greatest faithfulness to Jesus’ command. Yet their faithfulness does not protect them from the storm.

Which means, there is no other way to live the Christian life but in the shadow of the cross. Protection from the storms of life is not the promise of the gospel. The promise is that whatever wind is against you, whichever wave rocks you, whenever the undertow threatens to pull you down, you are not alone.

I think we do not emphasize it enough.

Not only does God love you— to the cross and back— Jesus likes you.

Even if you’ve been battered by denominational powers-that-be, Jesus likes you. Even if you don’t like your new call, he likes you. Even if you feel like you are drowning but you have to put on a happy face because that’s what good Christian spouses do, Jesus likes you.

Whether he sits stern or bow, he is glad to be in the boat with you.

Hear me.

This is not a mere metaphor.

The ship hanging above us at Luther Memorial Church is redundant. After all, like you do every Sunday, you are sitting in the nave of the church. The nave is the central part of the church starting at the narthex, where you entered the church, and extending to the altar rail. Inside the altar rail are the chancel and the sanctuary.

You are sitting in the nave of the church, whence derives the word navy.

That you are sitting in the nave explains why the vaulted roof of almost every church is designed to look like an inverted keel.

From the very beginning, the Body of Christ identified itself as a boat.

A boat tossed on a sea of disbelief and ridicule. A boat tortured by waves of oppression by evil and by collaboration with evil. A boat with a wind of apathy against it, with a wind of worldliness against it, with a gale of overwhelm against it.

And also, don’t forget, the mast of a ship is a cross.

This is the boat.

Maybe you forgot and thought you were sitting in the sanctuary. You actually came aboard. And all of you have known the sea. Some of you have had more than one wind against you. Many of you have been tortured by waves far longer than the fourth watch. I know a few of you, and I know you have been rowing and rowing and rowing, thinking you’re the only one in the boat. A few of you, I know, have lost loved ones to the undertow, or you’ve checked them into nursing care facilities— waves that hit about the same.

I cannot promise you, “No storms!”

But I can promise you, “He is glad to be in the boat with you!”

This boat. This creaky ship. This ordinary vessel.

He can walk on water.

But he wants to be in the boat with you: preachers every bit as imperfect as Peter and me.

When I was here last year for the first gathering of our pilot cohort, I had just learned that my incurable cancer had come back and I did not know if I would ever return to this church.

The odds looked good that I was circling the drain.

I was in a bad place.

Except!

I wasn’t really.

I don’t know why storms keeping storming.

But I do know, in the midst of them, there is no better place to be than this ship of fools.

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