Sermon: The Fast God Chooses

 

First Presbyterian Church

February 18, 2026, Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

 

The Fast God Chooses

 

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

It’s one of those phrases that is so familiar, we assume by default it must be in the Bible, but it’s not; it’s from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, dating at least back to 1662.  It is part of the burial service, reminding those in attendance that all of us are subject to the same finality as the deceased.  Not surprisingly, a phrase about ashes pops into the mind of many when the subject of Ash Wednesday comes up.  

Ash Wednesday is not an inappropriate time to consider our own mortality.  It marks the beginning of the season of Lent, the culmination of which finds us at a crucifixion site outside Jerusalem, where even our Savior tasted of the pain and indignity of human death.  It is not inappropriate for us to keep in mind our own finiteness, the knowledge that our days are numbered, and that we don’t know exactly what that number is going to be.  At the end of this service, you will be invited to take up a Lenten discipline and to come forward and receive a mark on your forehead or hand, a cross of ashes, and you will hear the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is not at all inappropriate to remember and reflect upon our finiteness on this day.  The challenge is: what will we do with that knowledge?  How will that reflection affect us?

There are good ways to be affected, and there are bad ways.  There are positive ways to carry forward that realization, and there are negative, even damaging ways.  

Matthew cautions us against some of those negative ways.  In these verses Jesus warns his followers against the kind of piety and fasting that damages.  Matthew records Jesus’s warnings in the context of three different kinds of pieties; giving alms, praying, and fasting.  In each case Jesus weighs in against the kind of giving, praying, or fasting that exists mainly to be noticed by others.  As crazy as it sounds, an influential person might well have had a trumpeter at hand to “announce” his gift before the public.  (Today that person would just hire publicists or spin doctors for the same effect.)  Likewise, it wouldn’t have been unusual to see such a person out on the street praying in a particularly ostentatious manner.  (We have “prayer breakfasts” for that now, I guess.)  And a person on a fast might well go about with a face pulled down into a frown, all the better to provoke others to ask “oh, dear, what’s wrong?”

Note that Jesus is not warning against giving alms or praying or fasting; in fact Jesus presumes his followers will give alms and pray and fast – “whenever you give alms,” “whenever you pray,” “whenever you fast.”  But the heart of the matter is why his followers pray or give or fast; is it to receive the praise of others?  To check off a couple of boxes on the Official Good Person Scorecard?  Or is it to give honor to God?  

Isaiah adds a slightly different dimension to the question of practicing pieties like prayer and fasting.  For Isaiah, it’s not just a matter of the public nature of the piety; it’s also about whether the whole life matches up to that public piety.  For example:

If you sit down to your meal, but those who labored to make that meal possible are living in poverty or abuse despite their labor, is that the fast God chooses?

If you pray and sing and make all sorts of joyful noise in worship, but turn a blind eye when others of whatever faith cannot worship in peace without being harassed or even killed, is that the fast God chooses?

Short answer: no.

To the degree that we do not pursue justice in all its forms, to the degree that we tolerate or even profit from oppression or exploitation, to the degree that we assume hunger or homelessness or poverty or lack of educational opportunity or any of the conditions that plague women and men and children around us is "their fault," our fast is pointless or worthless.  It is no service to God whatsoever.  

This is how our mortality, our knowledge of our finitude and limited time, is to move us; to refuse to live with the way things are, to refuse to live in ease because of the oppression and exploitation of others, to loose the bonds of injustice, to set free the oppressed, to share our bread with those in need of bread and on down the list that Isaiah gives us, that is the fast God chooses.  This is our rightful service.  This is what goes hand in hand with the right-minded piety Jesus teaches in Matthew 6.  The piety that comes from our deepest longing, the piety that cares only to be seen before God, the piety that changes the world: this is the fast God chooses.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #166, The Glory of These Forty Days; #---, You teach us 

Sermon: What Is Revealed, What Is Concealed

First Presbyterian Church

February 15, 2026, Transfiguration A

Exodus 24:12-18: 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

 

What Is Revealed, What Is Concealed

 

 

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to drive around town or perhaps across the state on a cloudy day? Not a rainy day, but a cloudy one, when the sun isn't constantly beating down and creating a glare that obscures everything? I know this is a little bit heretical to say, but sometimes cloudiness can be a good thing. 

In the Old Testament a cloud can in fact be a very good thing: it can, on occasion, be a manifestation of the presence of God. 

It happens in today’s reading from Exodus, Moses is making ready to go up the mountain called Sinai to receive instruction from God. Even from the moment the Israelites had first come to that mountain after their deliverance from Egypt (back in 19:9), God had made his presence to Moses there known by the appearance of a thick and dense cloud, from which God’s voice might be heard by the people. Even before that, during the Exodus from Egypt, a pillar of cloud had been the manifestation of God’s protection of the people as they traveled by day, with a pillar of fire taking its place by night. That cloud, in a sense, revealed God.

There are other accounts in Hebrew Scripture of cloud as manifestation of God, but my personal favorite is a little-known account from the little-read book of 2 Chronicles. In this account in chapter 5 the great Temple was being dedicated under King Solomon. At the climax of the dedication, as the priests sang a song of praise, the Temple was filled with a cloud, “so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.” I mean, let’s face it, that’s pretty cool. And again, the cloud reveals the presence of God. (There is a parallel account in 1 Kings 8, but I prefer the Chronicles version because in that story, the cloud fills up the Temple only after the trumpeters have started playing and the choir singing. Music, after all.)

So when we get to the account from Matthew’s gospel today, along with the account of going up a mountain, and the actual glowing transfiguration of Jesus, the bright, welling cloud as a manifestation of the glory of God would not have been unfamiliar to those to whom Matthew was writing. It is a scene in a gospel, but like so much of Matthew’s gospel it contains a host of echoes and resonances with Hebrew Scripture.

Still, though, there is something interesting about a cloud as a manifestation of the presence and glory of God. Clouds, after all, aren’t exactly known for their revealingproperties most of the time. Clouds aren’t translucent; they obscure. The whole reason that the cloudiness makes that drive so bearable is that it obscures the sometimes-oppressive summer sun (or even the sometimes-oppressive wintertime sun). 

And in the account from Exodus, that’s exactly what happens. The voice of God could be heard by the people, but God could not be seen, and when Moses went up the mountain to receive the commandments of God he also disappeared. Not that the people minded; already they were quite content to keep their distance; as early as Exodus 20 they were afraid that if God spoke to them directly – face to face, so to speak – they would die. In their minds, the cloud was protection.

(As for that lovely story from 2 Chronicles 5, the glory of the Lord filling the Temple with a cloud was indeed enough to bring the dedication of the Temple to a halt; “the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud” as verse 14 describes. Not sure if it means the priests were physically unable to stand or simply couldn’t stand it.)

In Matthew, the cloud seems a little different. This event is taking place six days after Simon had made the great breakthrough confession of faith recorded in 16:16: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” Jesus had followed up this confession by giving him a new name – Peter – and by launching into an extended piece of instruction on his forthcoming death. The newly-christened Peter had taken Jesus aside to rebuke him for such talk, only to get it back ten times over – “Get behind me, Satan!” 

Despite that incident, Jesus took Peter up the mountain, along with James and John, where this Transfiguration took place. Jesus himself is transfigured and glowing and shining and dazzling, and then as Moses and Elijah – the law and the prophets, so to speak – appear with him. You get a brief reminiscence of this in the reading from 2 Peter, likely written by a follower of that apostle recording his teacher's recollection. 

After this transfiguration, Peter steps into a role many of us might recognize, maybe, from times of great excitement or stress or fear in our own lives: the person whose mouth immediately starts running despite the fact that his brain is supplying absolutely nothing useful for his mouth to say. (Somehow, 2 Peter doesn't include this part.) And then, when Peter is fumbling around about building booths for Moses and Elijah and Jesus as if this were the ancient Hebrew festival known as the Feast of Booths? That’s when the cloud takes over.

The cloud “overshadowed” them. And, as it was back in the days of Exodus, a voice (the voice of God?) spoke from the cloud, to the effect that the disciples fell to their knees in fear (not unlike their Hebrew ancestors at the prospect of the voice of God). What the voice said sounds familiar – “this is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased” is an exact echo of what the voice from Heaven says at Jesus’s baptism, back in chapter 3. But there is added a command: “Listen to him!” (And don’t miss that exclamation point.) Only at the touch of Jesus (“Get up and do not be afraid”) do they look up to see the cloud gone, Moses and Elijah gone, and Jesus – “Jesus himself alone” in Matthews’ emphatic Greek construction – is there. The cloud, the glory of God, has removed the distractions of Moses and Elijah, the safe and comfortable heroes of the faith Peter and James and John knew, and left them with “Jesus himself alone,” whom they have just seen as they had never seen or heard or understood him before. 

In concealing Moses and Elijah from the overly enthusiastic disciples, the cloud also reveals; Jesus is revealed not merely as an equal to those two, but something completely other, something so far beyond what either of those figures could represent or offer. The Son of God, the Eternal, is revealed by what the clouds conceal. 

As the eminent twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth describes in his The Faith of the Church:

Eternal does not mean "that which has no end" but "that which belongs to the world to come". Eternity is not defined by its unlimited characteristic but by its relation to the world to come, to the glorious kingdom of God.

 

“That which belongs to the world to come” – a world without end. 

At a challenging time for the disciples, when Jesus insisted on his own death and severely rebuked those who could not accept it, these disciples are given a glimpse, however fleeting, of Jesus the Eternal, Jesus of The World to Come. At a time and season nearly impossible for us to bear, we receive this glimpse of Jesus the Eternal, Jesus of The World to Come. Death does not, cannot, have the last word, no matter how dark our despair might seem, how much madness might seem to hold sway in the entire world, no matter how bleak the night. The clouds pull back and conceal what is not eternal, revealing the One who is eternal. And that, strange and puzzling as the story might be, is why Transfiguration Sunday is a day of great hope. 

This is God’s Son, the Beloved, in whom God is well pleased. Listen to him!

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #189, O Wonderous Sight, O Vision Fair; #---, Upon a holy mountain; #11, Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud

 

 

Sermon: Blessed Are...

Grace Presbyterian Church

February 2, 2020, Epiphany 4A

Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12

 

Blessed Are...

 

 

I think most folks in this church is at least vaguely aware that I was a professor, specifically a music history professor, before changing vocations and heading off to seminary. That is in some ways a challenging subject for teaching on the college or university level. Early in your career, as I was, the core class you’ll end up teaching the most is some part of the music history sequence for majors, the one that over two or four terms covers the full sweep of the development of music in the European classical tradition from the Middle Ages up to the current day. 

The reason that the courses in this sequence can be the most challenging of all to teach is that inevitably, you’re going to have some substantial chunk of the population of that class coming to it pre-prejudiced with a particular bias, one that is summarized “why do I have to take this?” A great many music students come to higher education believing that the only thing that matters is their applied study – the lessons they take on their instrument – and any other ensemble playing or singing that they do. As a result, they have a habit of viewing anything that “distracts” them from those studies as a “waste of time.” Whatever core classes the school requires fall into that category without fail. 

You can spot these performers out in their careers. They are often technically brilliant performers, befitting the time and energy they have spent in that practice room. They are also, very often, bereft of anything beyond that technical brilliance. It might be described as having “no feel” for the music, or being aesthetically dull or lacking in interpretive nuance or skill, the kind of ability that is formed not only by knowing the notes but knowing the music, the in and out and how and why of how Bach or Beethoven or Brahms came to write the way they wrote, the kind of learning formed by classes such as music theory and, yes, music history.

I am convinced that something like this applies in the life of the Christian faith as well. For an awful lot of Christians, what matters is the death and resurrection of Jesus. There might also be space for the Incarnation – the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, God-with-us, God in the flesh. But beyond that, these Christians (some so-called Christian “leaders” even) seem strangely disinterested in all the things that come in between those two events in the life of Jesus. 

Matthew would be horrified at that. 

After the baptism of Jesus, the temptation in the wilderness, and the initiation of his public ministry and calling of his first disciples, we read in 4:23-25 that Jesus began to minister to great crowds of people, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of heaven come near and healing all manner of diseases. His fame spread quickly as a result, to the point that people were coming from far and wide to hear him and be healed.

And we then read in 5:1 that “when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them…” Specifically he began by teaching them these thoroughly upside-down lessons known as the Beatitudes, continuing with what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

Notice about these Beatitudes: on some level all of them are formatted “Blessed are… for they will …”.  Good thing, because we can easily look at all of these and, without that “will” qualification, think the poor in spirit, blessed? the ones who mourn, blessed? the meek, blessed? None of those things look at all “blessed” to us, and being persecuted or treated ill for Jesus's sake certainly doesn't look "blessed." Yet in sitting down to hear what Jesus teaches we learn what it is to repent – to “turn around” and see not from the world’s perspective, but from Christ’s own view. 

As is so often the case with Matthew's record of Jesus's teachings, these words have many roots in Hebrew scripture. Perhaps most worth noting today is their connection to today's reading from the prophet Micah, which might not be apparent on the surface. Following the rhetoric of the courtroom that opens this oracle, we come to its core in verse 6, as the prophet ponders what kind of offering would be needed before the Lord; burnt offerings, even the offering of the firstborn are rejected. Instead the prophet reminds the people, 

 

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

 

 

It isn't hard to draw the line from these three "requirements" to the characteristics of the "blessed" as described in the Beatitudes. And yet so many self-proclaimed Christians proceed as if Jesus never said such things, living according to the world’s idea of what “blessed” means, what the world says is important – gaining and wielding power, getting ahead no matter who gets hurt, punishing or killing anyone who gets in the way. Self-proclaimed Christians – even or maybe especially pastors with all the fancy titles and great big pulpits in great big churches – treating with utter contempt those with whom they come into conflict, as if Jesus never said a word about hungering for righteousness or being peacemakers.

Or there is the tendency observed by the late Rachel Held Evans in many Christians, described as follows:

 

“Jesus came to die,” they often say, referring to a view of Christianity that reduces the gospel to a transaction, whereby God needed a sinless sacrifice to atone for the world’s sins and thus sacrificed Jesus on the cross so believers could go to heaven. In this view, Jesus basically shows up to post our bail. His life and teachings make for an interesting backstory but prove largely irrelevant to the work of salvation.

 

 

Like that student wondering why they have to take music history, too many Christians get hung up on the death (and maybe resurrection) of Jesus to the neglect of, well, pretty much everything else about Jesus's life. That is, suffice to say, a woefully incomplete theology. What Jesus said and taught matters. No less a figure than Pope Benedict XVI, of all people, summed up the alternative thus: “Jesus himself, the entirety of his acting, teaching, living, raising and remaining with us is the ‘gospel’.” All of it, beginning right here with these backwards “blessed”s, is our good news. The Christian faith is not a get-out-of-Hell-free card; it is no less than a call to repent - not just to confess, but to repent, to turn away from sin altogether, and see the world from a turned-around perspective. These Beatitudes are a beginning – but only a beginning – to understanding what that means. 

And we must, no matter how awkward or difficult it may be, be very clear that attitudes and behaviors and wielding of powers that is not guided by these teachings of Jesus cannot be reconciled with the gospel of Jesus. Not now, not ever.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #386, Come, Worship God; #731, Give Thanks for Those Whose Faith Is Firm; #525, Let Us Break Bread Together; #700, I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me

 

frozen (over)

 the mississippi river here is

at least a little bit

frozen over

subfreezing

and some subzero

temperatures will do that

even to a 

grand river

like the mississippi

as a result

the river is quite still

and even has some patches

where snow has accumulated 

on top of the ice

the thing about rivers

though 

is that 

in most cases

and especially in the case of

big rivers like this one

is that 

frozen over

does not equal

frozen

there is water under that 

sheet of ice that is

still liquid

still moving

still flowing

and in time that will 

thaw

break up

melt

that layer of ice

especially when

the sun 

comes out to help

it seems like

there's a metaphor in there

somewhere

(especially if you capitalize 

three particular letters)

 

 

 

january 2026

milltown coffee

(with a very nice view

of the river)

moline il

The Ballad of the Democracy Destroyer, or, Let It Slide

There came a man, wealth was his god;

And vain and boastful was his play,

But still the people did applaud

And send him on his merry way

To fame and fortune, wrongly earned.

But he the power of fame had learned.

But when his star began to fade,

Ill fortune raised him up anew.

So to TV he turned, and played

A corporate mogul, strong and true.

But when off-camera, lust ran wild - 

It mattered not woman or child.

But those who fawned him let it slide

And helped his heinous deeds to hide.

Though fame was fun, he wanted more,

So power he ventured next to seek.

He sought it as he had before:

Suck up to strong and crush the weak.

The simpering haters joined his cause,

Ignoring all the rules and laws. 

Though all the girls he'd groped before 

Bore witness and called out his ways,

And others named the Russian shore

As stoking his demented haze,

Still half a nation followed him;

Liberty's light grew faint and dim.

Somehow this nation let it slide; 

Democracy just up and died.

Four years his ego rampant ran

Before the voters turned him out.

But four years on it was his plan

That put plain decency to rout.

Now regained his tainted height,

He turned to put his foes to flight.

A goon squad serving him alone

And minions spouting garbled lies?

Ere long, pretense was up and gone.

See, this is how a nation dies.

But still the ones with legal power

Failed oh, so badly in that hour.

Again the cowardly let it slide

And left him on his throne of pride.

He waged his war yet undeclared

On all who dared to disagree,

And rained foul hate throughout the land

From sea to no-more-shining sea.

E'en as his mind grew weak and pained, 

His minions siezed his power and reigned.

And so we stand at Hell's own gate - 

Or is it Heaven's? But who can tell?

Are we defunct? Is it too late?

Or can this story yet end well?

Will evil be cast out for good,

This nation yet be what it should?

Or, since vain Congress let it slide,

Has this country, at long last, died?

(January 2026)

Sermon: You Shall Be Called "Rocky"

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline IL

January 18, 2026, Epiphany 2A

Psalm 40: 1-11; John 1:29-42

 

You Shall Be Called “Rocky”

 

“Dumb as a bag of rocks.”

I’m guessing you don’t need to be told that this is an insult. It’s a phrase that was popularized on the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory, but that phrase is only one variant of a general theme that might also be expressed simply “dumb as a rock” or “dumb as a box of rocks.” And it’s probably some kind of rhetorical cousin to one I grew up with, “dumb as a sack of hammers” (and no, hammers and rocks aren’t the same thing, but they do share a certain quality of what we might call denseness). 

Mind you, it’s also true that rock can be thought of as solid (that’s the basis of an old favorite hymn, after all – the “solid rock”) the way a rock appears in the psalm reading today, as the basis for a firm foundation. In another pop culture reference, there was an insurance and financial services company that boasted of its solidity and security with the advertising slogan “get a piece of the rock,” paired with a logo depicting no less than the Rock of Gibraltar. 

To be sure, rocks (great or small) have their uses – great foundation material, nice decorations in a garden, skipping them across a river – but you can still see how they might fit into the insults noted above. You’re not going to look to a rock to solve complex mathematical equations or deep philosophical conundrums.

Yet our reading today ends with Jesus, no less, greeting Andrew’s brother Simon, not with “hello” or anything like that, but with the announcement “You are to be called Cephas” (which John the gospel author helpfully translates for us as Peter). The name “Cephas” comes from the Aramaic word for “rock”; “Peter” is the Greek equivalent.

So in other words, the first thing Jesus says to Simon, before Simon even has a chance to speak, is “I’m gonna call you Rock.” Or maybe even better, “Rocky.”

We come to this place as John, the witness in the wilderness, is directing his disciples towards Jesus as “the lamb of God.” Jesus passes by as John is with two of his own disciples and John repeats this proclamation, with the unspoken subtext being “follow him! Go, already!” It’s not impossible to imagine John practically shoving the two disciples off in the direction Jesus was walking. Finally they do follow Jesus, and his first words to them – the first words Jesus speaks in this gospel at all – are “what are you looking for?” The two disciples ask where Jesus is staying, he invites them to “come and see,” and it seems they end up spending the day with Jesus.

We are given no clue what they talked about or did, but it was apparently quite convincing for one of the two, named Andrew. Not only did he immediately go and find his brother Simon; see what he says to him: “We have found the Messiah.” Something between John the witness’s own testimony to Jesus and what Andrew heard from Jesus himself brought Andrew to this startling conclusion, a claim not to be taken lightly in that day and age. 

Now Andrew is mostly known otherwise for being the one to help set the feeding of the five thousand in motion in John 6, by bringing to Jesus’s attention the boy with the five loaves and two fish. In none of the gospels does he come off as one of the “big names”; normally you hear most of Peter, James, and John, and this fourth gospel sometimes makes a big deal of Thomas. But bringing people to meet Jesus, whether it’s the boy with the loaves and fish or it’s his own brother, that’s a pretty good legacy to leave behind in scripture.

But Andrew brings his brother Simon to Jesus and the first thing Jesus does is…change his name?

In John’s gospel, one of the most consistent characteristics of Jesus is that he sees, particularly that Jesus sees people at their deepest level. In the next verses of this chapter, Jesus will greet Nathanael, another disciple-to-be, with the proclamation “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” (insterestingly, this comes just a few beats after Nathanael has made a derogatory remark about Jesus’s hometown). Think also of the clandestine nighttime visit Nicodemus made to Jesus in chapter 3, in which Jesus is answering Nicodemus’s questions before Nicodemus even has a chance to ask them. Or think of the midday encounter with a woman at a well in chapter 4, while Jesus and his disciples were in Samaria, in which Jesus seemed to know all about her, right down to her marital history. John is keenly interested in presenting Jesus as one who sees into the human condition, indeed into the human heart, from the very beginning. 

So what is it that Jesus sees in Simon that prompts him to bestow the somewhat two-sided name “Rock”? (Or maybe “Rocky”?)

After all, this isn’t exactly a common name for us. Oh, the name “Peter” is now, once it showed up all over the gospels and the book of Acts and a couple of small epistles towards the end of the New Testament. I doubt, though, that most parents who name their child “Peter” are really thinking about this Greek word’s original meaning. 

Parents don’t name their child “Rock,” at least not very often. The famous actor was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., long before any Hollywood mogul slapped the name “Rock Hudson” on him. And the former University of Miami football player turned pro wrestler (and now turned actor) Dwayne Johnson made sure to avoid any confusion about its meaning by choosing the stage name “The Rock” for his professional career – no confusion about not being so bright there. For that matter, to be fair, our perception might also be shaded by the movie character Rocky Balboa, as played by Sylvester Stallone in all those movies, who for all his boxing triumph doesn’t really come off as the sharpest knife in the drawer.

So what is Jesus getting at with this new name for Simon? Is it all about firmness and stability? But unlike in Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus doesn’t add on the bit about “upon this rock I will build my church,” so can we be absolutely sure that’s what’s up here? Is there something about, maybe, being just a bit of a bonehead at times?

Why not both?

In this season of Epiphany, the Sundays after the revealing of the Christ first to those eastern Magi, one of the ongoing characteristics of the gospel readings is that in some way each of those scriptures point to something about Jesus being revealed. In last week’s reading the baptism of Jesus was the occasion for that opening up of heaven and the Spirit descending like a dove, pointing to Jesus as God’s beloved son. 

In John’s gospel, especially in the earliest chapters, Jesus is presented, as noted before, as one who sees. What is revealed here is a Jesus who knows us before we know him. Again, later in the chapter when Nathanael is caught off guard by Jesus’s unexpected greeting to him, Jesus responds that he “saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nor is this particularly new to John’s gospel. One can go as far back as Genesis and its account of Hagar, the slave girl of Sarah who had been given to Abraham in an ill-considered attempt to hasten the birth of the son God had promised them. When Hagar fled into the wilderness from her Sarah’s mistreatment, the angel of the Lord found her and spoke to her, leading Hagar to name God as “the God who sees,” even someone as lowly as her.

So Jesus sees Simon. The tricky part is, though, that Jesus really sees Simon. He sees in Simon both the good and the…less good.

He sees in Simon the rock. He sees the faithfulness that will endure. He sees in Simon the dogged determination to remain with Jesus that will provoke him to say, later in this gospel when many followers have deserted Jesus, “to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” He sees the disciple who will be determined to follow him to the very last, no matter the threat.

But Jesus also sees in Simon the rock-headed one. He sees the one who, in Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels, will be the one who catches on to the “Who do you say that I am?” question with the right answer – “You are the Messiah” – only to turn around and blow it by reprimanding Jesus for talking about his upcoming suffering and death, the act that gets him blasted with “Get behind me, Satan!” And Jesus sees the one who, in all his determination to follow Jesus all the way through, still ends up denying Jesus three times.

And, seeing in Simon both “the Rock” and, well, the bag of rocks, Jesus calls him anyway. There’s no thought of casting Simon aside because he was going to be such a pain to deal with sometimes. Simon is called, flaws and all. 

And of course, flaws and all, Simon, or Peter, does hold on for dear life, even despite his own failing and fumbling. Jesus pulls him back from his awful betrayal, and by the time we get into the history of the early church in the book of Acts who is out there in front, speaking boldly for the fledgling clutch of believers in the face of an indifferent world? It is none other than this same Simon. Or Peter, or Rock, or Rocky. 

Same thing happens with us, you know. Jesus sees us, all the way through, flaws and all, and still calls us. Not necessarily to anything quite so lofty as ol’ Rocky’s calling, but we are still called to follow. In a few moments we will be ordaining new elders and deacons, and installing continuing officers, and God sees them and has seen them. Maybe Jesus doesn’t hang a new name on us, except for his own – our mark of being his. But still, in all our weakness and stumbling and flat-out getting it plain wrong and even sometimes being as dumb as a bag of rocks or a sack of hammers, Jesus sees the good parts too, and calls us, and guides us and pushes us and sometimes cajoles us into serving with our whole selves, never leaving us without what we need to serve in the way we are called.

Your good news for today: Jesus sees us, knows us, and calls us anyway, even when we’re more rock-headed than rock.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #263, All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name; #279, Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove; #688, Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart

Sermon: Water

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

January 11, 2026, Baptism of the Lord A

Acts 10:34-48; Matthew 3:13-17

 

Water

 

It is indispensible to our lives. Aside from air, it is the one most basic element that we cannot survive long without. Even food is not quite as utterly necessary; one could live without food for possibly as much as three admittedly horrible weeks, but without water one can only hope for about three days. Our bodies consist of about sixty percent water.

Water also covers about two-thirds of the planet and is life-giving not only for humans. Animals need it as well. Vegetation, for the most part, cannot live without it. Those fruits and vegetables we take in for nourishment will never come to fruition without the right amount of water at the right time. And yet too much water, or too much at the wrong time, can destroy those very fruits and vegetables, as well as the animal population of an area. On the other hand, too little water, or water too late, leaves a land prone to drought or fire, as much of the West Coast experiences on a frighteningly regular basis..

In short, it is virtually impossible to exaggerate how important water is to the health and well-being of this planet and all that lives in it.

Water, though, is not only subject to nature; human interactions can diminish its life-giving power. The city of Flint, Michigan, had no trustworthy source of drinkable water for more than six years due to gross human mismanagement; in our former state of Florida, mismanagement and abuse of the Everglades system has hastened natural decline to surrounding areas that have relied on those waters for their sustenance; and nowadays water is being hoarded for massive data centers for generating interactive "artificial intelligence" applications, water that people in those areas need to drink. For something so important to life on the most basic level, water can end up awfully mistreated and misused in human hands.

Of course, water has a pretty prominent role in scripture as well. Even at the very beginning, water shows up; the second verse of Genesis speaks of how “darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The second and third acts of creation, in the verses that follow, involve separating the waters above from the waters below (that is, creating the Sky) and separating the waters below from the land (1:6-10). But later in Genesis, those waters overwhelm the world in a massive and earth-destroying flood, an element of the story we somehow downplay when telling about Noah and the ark. 

By Exodus water becomes both a barrier and a medium in which God performs great miracles. Most famously in Exodus, we read of God parting the waters of the sea to allow the Hebrew people to cross over, while the pursuing Egyptian army is washed away when they try to cross. A smaller-scale version of this deliverance through water occurs when the next generation of these Hebrew people, now led by Joshua, are able to cross over into the Promised Land as the Jordan River parts before them. 

Water also shows up in much of the poetry and imagery of scripture. Think of the most famous of psalms, in which the Lord “my shepherd” leads the psalmist beside still waters. But the images don’t stop there; think of the shepherd-turned-prophet Amos and his thundering oracle “but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” or Isaiah’s declaration that “waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

Indeed, by the time this fellow John shows up along the Jordan, calling all to be baptized for the repentance of sins [Mt 3:11], water has acquired a pretty prolific stature in the history and story of Israel. 

The story of the baptism is brief; John is baptizing, Jesus comes to be baptized, John is reluctant ("I need to be baptized by you...") but Jesus persuades him to do the work, and when Jesus comes up from the water that voice announces him as the Son in whom God is well pleased.

The meaning and significance of baptism changes between this time, when John baptizes for the forgiveness of sins, and the end of this gospel, when the risen Jesus charges his followers to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” To be sure, repentance is still a part of baptism, but baptism takes on more in Jesus’s commission; it carries not only repentance but also belonging; it marks being in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; it marks discipleship. It marks what comes to be known, over the course of the book of Acts, as the church.

In our reading from Acts 10, Peter has, with some agitation, obeyed a divine imperative to go to visit a Roman centurion by the name of Cornelius, with his family. Cornelius was evidently what was known in the language of the time as a God-fearer, a Gentile who nonetheless feared and prayed to the God of the people among whom he had been dispatched to serve. Finding Cornelius and his family ready and waiting to hear, Peter begins what might be called his go-to sermon, somewhat adapted for the situation. The Holy Spirit, however, had other ideas, and before Peter even got warmed up the Spirit visited a visible and clear manifestation of God’s favor upon Cornelius and his family.

First of all, Peter and the (Jewish by birth) entourage that had accompanied him to Cornelius’s house were floored. This was clearly a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but…these people were…were…were [shudder] Gentiles! It was inconceivable to Peter and all of the rest, in Jerusalem or any other place, that Gentiles – outsiders – could possibly be so favored. And yet clearly God had visited Cornelius and his household. What could Peter do?

Ultimately Peter realized that, if he were to be true to his Savior, he had no choice. “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” he asks. 

Can anyone withhold the water?

There is nothing magic about the water of baptism itself. The Jordan River water in which John baptized was the same muddy stuff in which others fished or swam or washed clothes or any number of other very mundane life tasks. It’s the same stuff as the water that got parted before Moses’s staff, the same stuff that overwashed the earth in Noah’s day, the stuff that falls from the sky or comes out of your tap. And yet in this very basic element, by Jesus’s example and by Jesus’s instruction, is the sign and symbol of belonging to God. Because of Jesus’s submission to the sign of baptism in water, and because of Jesus’s commission to baptize with that same water, it does mean more than something to drink when thirsty. 

Again, the water is not magic. The water does not save you. And yet in the water of baptism we are shown as God’s own. Whether we are baptized ourselves or bringing our youngest for baptism, we are pledging repentance and even renunciation of sin and evil; we are being claimed as disciples of Jesus, living in obedience to what Jesus has taught and commanded; we are showing the mark of the Holy Spirit, no matter where we come from.

That’s a lot of meaning for this most basic element of human existence. 

And maybe the neatest part of all of this is that, while doing a whole reaffirmation of baptism in worship is kinda cool and fun (yes, I’m serious), we don’t need it to remember our baptism. I know, for those who were baptized as infants it isn’t really literally possible to remember your baptism. Even if somebody shows you a picture of the occasion it’s not going to trigger any real actual memories for you. (As I grew up in a different tradition I wasn’t baptized as an infant; I was baptized when I was nine, and even remembering that is pretty foggy at this point in my life.) So no, we are not literally talking about remembering the actual act and occasion. 

But…

We remember whose we are. We remember the God who claims us despite our best efforts and who calls us children no matter what kind of rebellion we try. We also remember that God does the same for a whole bunch of children we would not claim as our siblings except that God does it for us. We remember the water that could not be denied to us, no matter how far outside the pale it might have seemed. We remember repentance and belonging and being marked by the Holy Spirit. And the neat part is, if we’re open and listening and ready to look at the world – the whole creation – through the eyes of the Creator, then all we need to help us remember all of this is…water.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #375, Shall We Gather at the River; #---, Then Jesus came from Galilee; #482, Baptized in Water