Sermon: Lamps

First Presbyterian Church

November 8, 2026, Pentecost 24A

Matthew 25:1-13

 

                                                      Lamps

 

I don’t think I am unduly telling tales out of school to observe that some scripture passages are more challenging for preachers than others.  Not to say that any scripture is ever all that easy to preach, mind you; even a favorite like Psalm 23 presents a challenge to the preacher if only because it is so well-known and beloved that it can be hard to find something to say about it at all.

But there are passages that are challenging for different reasons.  Some passages are challenging because of what they have to say.  Sometimes it’s puzzling, sometimes it’s a hard word to hear, and sometimes (especially if you wander over to Revelation) it's just flat-out difficult to make any sense of it.

And then there are passages like this parable from the beginning of Matthew 25.  This presents a different kind of struggle; the struggle to create a sermon on a passage when you can’t shake the memory of scriptures like the ones you’ve just heard, even some from this very gospel, that point to some very different conclusions than the scripture at hand today.[i]

It just feels…off. There's no "good guy" in the story, so to speak. I just wish the story was as easy as our first hymn made it seem.

The point here is not to dismiss this parable.  For one thing, the Revised Common Lectionary insists on bringing it around once every three years, and who knows how much Christian education curriculum will also include this story.  Besides, it’s not our place to toss out scripture that disturbs us.  There is something to be learned from this parable.  It might also be, though, that after decades or even centuries of reading and hearing it, there might also be some things the church needs to unlearn as well.

It’s perfectly appropriate to come away from this parable having learned that we don’t want to end up like the foolish bridesmaids, lacking oil for their lamps and hunting for a 24-hour Casey's in first-century Israel. Calling them "foolish" becomes a problem, though, when we remember scripture like 1 Corinthians 1:27, "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise," or 3:18, "If you think you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise." Scripture tends to take a dim view of what passes for human "wisdom"; see, for example, the parable character in Luke 12 who proposed to build bigger barns for his unexpected harvest, only to have God label him a "fool' when telling him "this very night your life is being demanded of you." The "foolish" in scripture aren't always who or what we think they are. Perhaps the one actually "foolish" thing they did was go off looking for oil instead of simply staying and waiting for the bridegroom, no matter how dark it got.

On the other hand, the "wise" bridesmaids are not necessarily objects for our emulation either.  Nowadays that extra oil might qualify them more for an episode of Hoarders or Doomsday Preppers or some other “reality” show and less as examples for our emulation, or at least like that would-be barn-builder in Luke 12. At minimum, it’s one thing to be “in,” but there is simply too much weight of scripture against them to celebrate anyone who plays a role in keeping others “out,” particularly when we get to the parable at the end of chapter 25, the one where those cast out failed to help "the least of these" when they had the chance to do so.  The parable cannot become an excuse to turn into hoarders of the gifts of God, whether physically or spiritually. (It's worth noting that the word here translated as "wise" is not the word usually found in scripture referring to wisdom; this word has shades of meaning that could also be translated as "prudent" or even "shrewd", which certainly would cast a different light on those bridesmaids.[ii])

We might also want to re-think what it means to wait for the Lord.  Somehow it seems to have snuck into the collective subconscious on this parable for many decades or even centuries that the foolish bridesmaids were somehow at fault for falling asleep, and therefore not being ready for the coming of the bridegroom.  Of course, the problem with this is that the parable explicitly tells us “all of them became drowsy and slept.” (25:5).  The so-called “wise” bridesmaids were just as conked out as the foolish bridesmaids.  Yes, we need to “keep awake” as Jesus says at the end, but that can’t be what brought shame to the "foolish" bridesmaids if the "wise" bridesmaids did it too.

(While we're at it, what's with the bridegroom arriving for a wedding banquet at midnight? And where's the bride in all this? And refusing entry to invited guests? That would get heaped with scorn in a culture that was all about hospitality.)

We need to steer clear of any interpretations of this parable that foster or encourage an “us against them” mentality.  There is no “insider” vs. “outsider” contrast here; no “Christian” or “un-Christian,” no “saved” vs. “lost” in the way we church folk tend to define things.  All of the bridesmaids are part of the same wedding party; they all are invited guests.  Only the lack of lamp oil (and the choice to go chasing after it) causes the foolish bridesmaids to be left out.  Now this ought to chill us a little bit, but Matthew has already cited Jesus as saying this same thing much more clearly and explicitly in chapter 7; “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Mt. 7:21) There are many who talk the talk, to put it in modern slang, who will find themselves on the outside looking in because they didn’t walk the walk.

So what do we learn from this?  No matter how difficult or challenging the story might be, is there something we should be taking from this parable as a positive instruction for our lives?

The Australian theologian William Loader puts it this way:

 

It is about sustaining the life of faith. … Having had lamps in hand which burned well once is no guarantee they will burn in future. Having the status of being Christian, even being a light bearer, means nothing if it is not a continuing part of our being. Many who were first will be last (20:1-16). Matthew is interested in enabling people to live in a relationship with God which has continuing significance and continuing life.[iii]

 

Light bulbs have to be replaced (even the fancy energy-efficient kind, eventually).  Flashlights need new batteries.  The oil in our lamps needs to be replenished, and regularly.  And I dare say that the one sentence applies pretty well to churches as well as individuals.

That oil, that fuel for a life lived in Christ, is not replenished by spiritualized words and lofty-sounding pronouncements.  It is not replenished by calling ourselves “Christians” over and over again (or denouncing those we disagree with as un-Christian).  It certainly is not replenished by checking off lists of do’s and don’ts, carefully drawing lines to make sure “we” are “in,” and “they” are “out.” 

We refuel our lamps by plunging into the work of God. We refuel by entering into worship, not as an accommodation to our whims and tastes, but as a profoundly needed encounter with the God who drives us out into the world to do God’s work.  We refuel not by brandishing the Bible as a club with which to beat “outsiders,” but by diving into the scriptures to understand God’s call upon us, to seek in Jesus’s life and work (and in nothing else) our own life and work.  We refuel by opening ourselves to the unpredictable and unsettling movement of the Holy Spirit, who calls us in ways we cannot expect or predict. 

In the end we do wait, but not passively. We act because we are called by a merciful and gracious God who wants no one left out.  We serve, because we know what is to be the foolish bridesmaids, fumbling in the dark with empty lamps, but also because we know what it is to be the “wise” bridesmaids, fearfully refusing our treasure to those who need it so much more, hoarding the very Spirit we were meant to share.

We wait by feeding and clothing and welcoming and visiting, but we also wait by questioning why there are so many who need feeding and clothing and welcoming and visiting.  We wait by offering our thoughts and prayers in times of tragedy, but we also wait by demanding action to prevent those preventable tragedies and taking action to prevent them from ever happening again. We wait by being the body of Christ, by walking the walk as well as talking the talk.  Anything less is a robbery of the God who calls us out of darkness into light, who calls us to love God with all we have and to love neighbor as self. 

With lamps trimmed and burning, with lives fueled by God’s love moving through us into the world in word and deed, we wait.

For the work of faithful, active waiting, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #378, We Wait the Peaceful Kingdom; #350, Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning; #712, As Those of Old Their Firstfruits Brought

 

 

 

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[i] These examples and more from David Henson, “The Breaking of the Bridesmaids: Rethinking a Problematic Parable (Lectionary Reflection),” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2014/11/the-breaking-of-the-bridesmaids-how-scripture-undermines-a-parable/ (Accessed November 4, 2014).

[ii] Leigh Benish, "Enough Oii for Whom?" The Christian Century "Sunday's Coming Premium" email resource, accessed 2 November 2026.

[iii] William Loader, “First Thoughts On Passages From Matthew In the Lectionary: Pentecost 22,” http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtPentecost22.htm

 

Sermon: Saints

First Presbyterian Church

November 1, 2026, All Saints’ A

Psalm 34:1-10, 22; Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3

 

Saints

 

It is one of the quirks of the Protestant liturgical calendar that Reformation Day and All Saints’ Day fall on consecutive days, October 31 and November 1, respectively. They would seem in many ways to be quite different occasions, maybe even incompatible in the eyes of some. The Reformation of course marked, in the long term, a reaction against and ultimately departure from the larger church and many of its practices, and most (though not all) Protestant groups disposed of the practice of venerating saints in their attempts to distance themselves from the practices of that larger church. In other words, most Protestant church traditions don’t acknowledge “saints” in the formal sense.

But of course, we do have “saints.” We may not use the title, but we most certainly do have “saints.” And you know of whom I am speaking.  We as a congregation have borne the departure of Linda, Bev, Kay, and Ted since last year at this time.  I did not have the chance to meet any of them (except for Linda, at the luncheon the church gave in her honor), but the roles they played in the life of this congregation will linger on in the memory of many of you.

The word “saint,” though, is still intimidating to us. We might, at our imagination’s most vivid moments, conjure up a scene something like that found in the reading from Revelation, in which the “great multitude … from every nation” exults in the salvation of God while rejoicing and praising and worshiping constantly. It’s a glorious scene to be sure, but not necessarily one in which we see ourselves; as the one elder describes them as having come through the “great ordeal” (likely a reference to early examples of persecution of the early church), we realize that, generally, that’s not us – we have not experienced persecution for our faith.

As for the reading from Psalm 34, it can sound awfully intimidating, or perhaps more of a challenge than we feel ourselves ready to meet. How often do we feel like we could accurately quote just that first verse? Do we really "bless the Lord at all times"? Can any of us truthfully say that God's praise will "continually be in my mouth"? Sometimes these psalmists set an extremely high standard, and while we might be uplifted by the poetry and musicality of it all, we might also feel just a bit overwhelmed by it and end up feeling a long way from being any kind of "saint" even if the psalmist isn't using that word to describe the singer. (The really odd part is that, according to the tag at the beginning of the psalm, David didn't write this at an obviously glorious time, but after he had been forced to feign insanity to get away from a foreign ruler. Doesn't seem like an obvious moment for such a psalm.)

But that’s where the account from 1 John comes in. Written to a church that has apparently suffered not persecution but division, this letter focuses on getting through such trials as we do face, and doing so in a way that gives off visible evidence of being those who are “called children of God.”

This very short passage still makes that point we need to hear; we really are children of God, even if the world doesn’t see it. But then, if the world doesn’t know what God looks like, how would it know what a child of God looks like? What we will be, we don’t know; but what we know is that on that day, whenever it may be, that God is at long last visible and revealed to us … “we will be like [God], for we will see [God] as [God] is.” This is the hope we have in us.

Of course we don’t get there by our own superhuman will. All that goes into becoming whatever we will become is a gift of God, as the Apostle Paul would jump in to remind us at about this point.

So, we go forward. We “press on." One thing this reading reminds us is that, to borrow another popular phrase, “the best is yet to come.”

The risk of an occasion like All Saints’ Day is that we get caught up in glorifying the past. That’s particularly a risk for a church like ours, where that list of those who have departed from us in past years can seem overwhelming and even crushing, and we are tempted to get caught in s potentially paralyzing nostalgia for those days when those departed saints were filling pews all around the sanctuary.

But the “glory days” of the body of Christ are not back there. They’re not behind us; they are still ahead. Anything in this earthly life is not going to be “glory days,” folks. We may not know what the future of this congregation or any other congregation is going to be, but we know what the future – what the hope – of the body of Christ is.

And so, toward that hope, we press on, "saints" or otherwise.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #326, For All the Saints; #730, I Sing a Song of the Saints of God; #506, Look Who Gathers at Christ's Table; #729, Lord, I Want to Be a Christian.

Sermon: How Not to Give (or Live)

First Presbyterian Church

October 18, 2026, Pentecost 22A (Stewardship)

Matthew 19:16-26

 

How Not to Give (or Live)

 

It’s a curious story, and as is often the case, Matthew tells it particularly curiously.

It is told in the gospel of Mark, which was written before Matthew, but this author provides some details and wording that Mark does not, resulting in particular lessons for us that are emphasized to a degree that they are not in Mark (or in Luke, for that matter, which also tells this story; Luke is the only gospel that refers to this man as the “rich young ruler”).

I’m guessing the outlines of the story are familiar, “rich young ruler” or not. The young man comes to Jesus asking about eternal life; Jesus, after a sly remark about being called “good,” instructs the young man to “keep the commandments,” emphasizing the later commandments about interpersonal relations; the young man says he has kept those all his life, and Jesus instructs him to go and sell all he has and give it away to the poor, and to come follow him; the young man goes away sorrowing, because he has a lot of stuff. The story is capped with some dialogue between Jesus and the disciples, dialogue that includes that famous line about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God (and that leads into the account from Matthew 20 that we heard a few weeks ago, about the day laborers and the vineyard owner).

The outline is indeed familiar, but Matthew does include some distinctive details. For example: while Mark and Luke merely depicting the man asking what he had to do to receive (or “inherit”) eternal life, Matthew phrases the question differently; “what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” I suspect Matthew’s version might resonate even more strongly for us modern-day Christians; whether Christians admit it or not, so many times the practiced theology of so many, both churches and individuals, uncovers the secret, even unspoken conviction that we are just fine with Jesus, or Jesus is just fine with us, if we do a few prescribed “good deeds” for some poor unfortunate soul.

Both Paul’s letter to the Romans, where we spent a few months, and the forthcoming anniversary of the Reformation, much of which was inspired by Martin Luther’s intensive study of precisely that book, call out the lie inherent here. Our salvation is by grace – God’s grace – alone; no deed of ours will ever contribute one whit to our “being saved.” (The later letter of James will remind us that if indeed we are saved, our lives will show it in the deeds we do, but those deeds reflect our salvation; they do not procure it.)

While Jesus could easily have pursued that theological argument, he was far more interested in the soul of this young man asking this (evidently sincere, but still misguided) question. His return with the prescribed commandments (with his own formulation summary, “love your neighbor as yourself”) draws forth (again distinctive of Matthew’s account) the stark admission of emptiness from the young man – “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” All the rigorous rule-keeping and the hole in the soul is still there.

Jesus’s challenge to the young man is not a universal proclamation; it is specifically directed to this individual. It is not an order that every follower of Christ sell every possession. What it does do is challenge our understanding of what we hold dear. For some it is indeed their “many possessions.” For others it might be a particular possession, or simply accumulation of wealth.

To be sure, there are certainly non-physical or tangible things that can possess us the way this man’s possessions possessed him, and on another week, given the awful and horrific headlines that besiege us every day, those things probably would have taken over this sermon.

For now, I know Jim has been waiting for this “stewardship sermon.” We are rapidly approaching that Sunday (November 8) on which we ask of you a pledge of financial support for this coming year of the church’s life.

Preachers hate, and (I do not overstate this) – I mean hate – preaching stewardship sermons. (A preacher who claims otherwise is not to be trusted.) In no small part they are profoundly uncomfortable to preach because it’s impossible not to be aware that part of what you are seeking in preaching a “stewardship sermon” is … your own salary. And it’s frequently impossible not to feel that your own salary is probably too large a portion of the church’s budget. So yeah, it’s uncomfortable. It’s also not terribly thrilling to acknowledge that much of the budget that the stewardship campaign seeks goes toward decidedly mundane things: paying the electric bill, keeping the grass mowed, getting the copier fixed so these bulletins can be printed, getting those furnaces downstairs inspected as required (that was this past Thursday) and so forth. Not exactly the stuff of thrilling oratory, no matter how practical or necessary.

And yet, those mundane things, keeping our fiscal house in order and the bills paid, are utterly necessary, and doing so involves a pledge to keep our priorities in order, to avoid being so consumed by some possessions or other that we do not contribute to the upkeep of the body of Christ, that we avoid the “I” that so consumed this rich young man questioning Jesus and remember the “we” that gathers here in this space weekly, as well as those members of the “we” that can no longer be with us physically but most certainly remain part of “we” in spirit.

By no means do I encourage you to give in order to “save yourself.” That’s not Jesus’s message to the young man, and it’s not Jesus’s message to you. By no means do I encourage you to give in order to assuage any guilty conscience you might feel. That doesn’t work either, and is no less guilty of being “works righteousness.” By no means do I encourage you to give for any reason that begins with “I” or “me.” Give for “we.” Give for the edifying of the body of Christ. Give for the work of ministry. Give for the proclamation of good news.

Honesty compels me to acknowledge that this time of year – this “stewardship campaign” season – will not be the only time we ask for money or other donations over the course of a year. You know this; why pretend otherwise? For example, the PC(USA)'s Christmas Joy offering will be coming along soon, and there's also our denomination's disaster relief work in the wake of Hurricane Isaias. And that's just two examples.

I have no doubt that your well-demonstrated generosity will rise to these occasions, but first our generosity must rise to the call of taking care of the basics. Pledge cards aren’t fancy or thrilling, but pledging does call upon us to avoid the self-centered trap of the rich young man, and to pull together as the body of Christ, each contributing and giving and supporting to the best of her or his own ability.

For bearing witness, helping those in need, and keeping the lights on, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #692, Spirit, Open My Heart; #708, We Give Thee But Thine Own; #697, Take My Life

 

 

 

 

Sermon: It's a Trap!

First Presbyterian Church

October 11, 2026, Pentecost 21A

Matthew 22:15-22

 

It's a Trap!

 

 

 

One of the most recognizable and most quoted bits of Star Wars film lore is a simple three-word exclamation, spoken in Return of the Jedi by an admiral in the Rebel fleet upon learning that not only had they not caught Imperial forces unprepared, but that the Empire had a brand-new Death Star powering up and ready for them. Upon seeing this, Admiral Akbar, a distinctly non-humanoid character, exclaims "It's a trap!" And for that line, Admiral Akbar is one of the most-quoted characters in Star Wars lore.

Were Admiral Akbar lifted out of Star Wars and plopped into today's Matthew reading, he would have multiple opportunities to let out his famous quote, some of which are obvious to pretty much all the readers of this passage, and some of which require a bit more work to detect. (Some of them might even illuminate our upcoming stewardship campaign, too.)

The first clue that "it's a trap!" is the composition of the squad who approaches Jesus in the first place. Under normal circumstances, the Pharisees and the Herodians would have nothing to do with one another. The Herodians were not necessarily a religious group, and they were open in their support for the Roman-installed puppet king Herod, and by implication the Roman Empire who propped him up. By contrast, the Pharisees were an extremely religious group (you probably know the type) and were practiced in the p.r. of opposing Rome, but not so loudly as to get Rome riled up. That these two groups were appearing together before Jesus at all was plenty enough reason for Admiral Akbar to exclaim "it's a trap!" (and we see in verse 18 that Jesus is well aware of this trap).

Admiral Akbar would be yelling out again pretty quickly once he heard the opening statement of the Pharisee-Herodian cabal. Verse 16 is a classic bit of buttering up, some deeply insincere flattery spouted forth as if Jesus were susceptible to such a thing. If they truly believed what they were saying, they would know very well that it wasn't going to work on Jesus. Cue Admiral Akbar again: "it's a trap!"

A clearly sprung trap is what we see in verse 17. "Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" Admiral Akbar would be spewing out "it's a trap it's a trap it's a trap" on a seemingly endless loop by this time. Sure enough, in verse 18 Jesus calls out the cabal for their "malice" - no pulling punches here! - and then springs his own trap on them by asking them to produce "the coin used for the tax."

This is a part of the trap that Admiral Akbar might not catch. Jesus's phrasing here sets this particular tax apart from all the other random taxes the people might have imposed upon them from Rome or from the Temple or from anywhere else. The particular "tax" referenced here is one that Rome reserved especially for those lands it had taken by conquest. It was, in effect, an "occupation tax," one that Rome levied on its conquests to pay the salaries and expenses of those soldiers and other officials doing the local physical work of occupying a territory.

In other words, Judea (and many other regions taken by the Roman Empire) were paying a tax to fund their own occupation by Rome. And to further the aggravation, such tax (roughly equivalent to a normal day's wages) could only be paid with this particular coin. No other currency would be accepted. So you had to go through the hassle of getting one of these coins before you could pay the "occupation tax." No wonder many in such occupied territories never paid it and hoped the Romans wouldn't notice.

So, by inducing his questioners to produce this particular coin, Jesus had trapped them into revealing that they were apparently OK with paying this tax, since there was literally no other use for this coin. Admiral Akbar might respond with a variant of his usual phrase, but in a much more admiring tone - <slowly> "now THAT'S a TRAP!!!"

There's one more potential trap in this passage, but it's a lot more subtle, and might be the one that modern readers and scholars of this scripture are more likely to get caught in. Jesus finishes the conversation by asking them whose image was on the coin, and when they correctly answered "the emperor's" in verse 21 Jesus springs his get-out-of-the-trap card: "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." It's enough to get the Pharisee/Herodian cabal to beat a hasty retreat, to be sure. Still, though, we moderns (as well as many generations of the church before us) might well be trapped by the particular interpretation of the scripture we want to see.

It's not hard to come up with a scripture like Psalm 24:1 - "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it" - and jump quickly to the conclusion that "hey, we Christians don't have to pay any taxes!" The trouble is that even before we get to Matthew 22, we've been through a passage in Matthew17:24-27 that doesn't let us off the hook so easily. In that passage the collectors of the temple tax show up wondering if Jesus was one of those tax-skipping types (leaving aside the fact that Jesus literally had no income). Peter answers straight out of fear "yes, he does" and then goes running to Jesus, who oddly enough seems to know exactly what's on Peter's mind. He uses an illustration about whom kings assess taxes on (hint: not their own children) to acknowledge, in a way, that the claim is correct; the children of God really don't "owe" the empire. And yet, in the next breath, Jesus suggests that "so that we do not give offense to them," Peter should go and literally fish a coin out of the lake via a fish's mouth and pay the tax with it.

Jesus doesn't see any good in an agitating, performative, but not very effective way of sticking it to the Empire. Left unspoken but implied is that if you are truly following Jesus, you're going to offend the empires you live among soon enough (that goes all the way back to chapter 10). If you're going to offend the empire, do it in a way that means something and does people some good in the process. Admiral Akbar might be wondering at this one: "it's a trap?"

One could argue that there's one more trap inherent in Jesus's final answer. Remember that the coin used to pay the "occupation tax" literally had no other use anywhere in the Roman Empire; all it could do was pay that tax. Why would God want such a thing? It truly was the emperor's in that sense, and frankly, it's best to let him have it. Give God the actually useful stuff; your time, your abilities and efforts, and yes, your financial resources as you can.

This might be a place where we get tripped up today. We may occasionally get tripped up (or trapped up?) by our sentimental attachments to certain things, even certain things about the church, and confuse our attachments to those things with things that the church can actually use. Or perhaps society has conned us into thinking some of its own obsessions and infatuations are something we need to offer to God. Even Admiral Akbar might have to concede, "yeah, it's a trap."

Let's put this bluntly in stewardship part one: aside from our own time, energy, presence, and work for the church, the most useful thing we are going to be able to give to the church is money, or something that can be redeemed for money, the stuff that enables the church to do things like keep the lights on and the air conditioning or heat running, to fix things that need to be fixed or remove things that need to be removed, and yeah, to pay folks who work for the church in some capacities.

Don't give God the useless things of the world; give to God what is God's, starting with ourselves and what we have.

For staying out of the traps of stewardship, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #692, Spirit, Open My Heart; #708, We Give Thee but Thine Own; #697, Take My Life

 

 

 

 

Sermon: The World at God's Table

First Presbyterian Church

October 4, 2026, World Communion

Isaiah25:1-9; Revelation 7:9-17

 

The World at God's Table

 

 

It doesn't take much to remind ourselves that, whatever of God's promises we might seek out or read about or remember, or whatever vision of future glory we subscribe to, we don't live in that world yet. Clearly this is not a world that is unified in its devotion to God. Your average front page of a newspaper (whether in print or online) can usually make that clear pretty quickly.

What we might do well to remember sometimes is that the same is true of the world in which these scriptures were first written and disseminated. The Israel in which Isaiah wrote was a land at various times under siege or carried off into exile by one empire or another, and frankly beset by the inept or crooked leadership of one king after another. As to the time of the writing of the book of Revelation, most likely some time near the end of the first century, the Roman Empire held sway. As if that wasn't enough, the far-flung but still emerging body of followers of Christ was having to face the reality that there would be no home in the Judaism in which many had been born or raised before coming to follow the way of Christ. Even those who had held out the longest could no longer deny that the two, no matter what common roots they may have had, were simply separate faiths at this point.

That point is simply that texts like those we have heard today sounded as farfetched and fantastical to their first readers and hearers as they do to us today, perhaps even more so. Remember from last week's reading from the book of Jonah, how ragingly angry Jonah was at the repentence of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria? If you take Isaiah's prophetic writing at its word, that this "feast of rich food" that the Lord prepares is to be "for all peoples," then you have to assume that the people of Assyria (and Nineveh) are included among "all peoples." And to put it bluntly, there were plenty of other menacing empires that had harmed Israel, either through attack or exile, or who threatened to harm Israel, that the idea of a feast "for all peoples" might well have sounded more like threat than promise to Isaiah's hearers and readers.

It's also worth noting the nature of this feast. The wines are not only well-aged but "strained clear" - wine-making in this period often produced wines, particularly of the less-expensive variety, that were cloudy or needed to have some excess matter strained away to be palatable. And while describing food as "rich" nowadays might suggest health risk more than anything, the opposite was closer to the truth in this time, with a "rich" meat not lacking in texture and quality and frankly edibility, which was too often the case with the meats that most could obtain.

The remainder of this brief passage describes how the Lord takes away those barriers that have kept the peoples of the earth at one another's throats. The "shroud that is cast over all peoples," the shroud of violence and death, is lifted away; the tears of the peoples are dried; the disgraces that weigh down all peoples (for indeed all people are "his people") are wiped away. None of these can stand in the presence of the Lord presiding over the feast.

Our second reading also takes us away to a time yet to be, in the seemingly fantastical writings of the writer who goes by the name of John, recording a series of visions each seemingly more "out there" than the previous one. In this case, though, this particular vision is an interruption; in chapter 6 six "seals" have been broken and great terrors set loose in the land, but before the seventh seal is broken we get a glimpse of large numbers of those who have in some way remained faithful despite the tribulations visited upon them. First to be presented is a vision of thousands out of the twelve tribes of Israel. Then, however, a much greater multitude appears, "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language," standing before God. They are described in verses 14-16 as "those who have come out of the great tribulation"; they serve before the Lord's throne day and night, and "never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst," and the Lord will "lead them to springs of living water."

In short, no matter which testament you prefer, you get a vision of a great, gathered multitude, one in which all of the peoples of the earth are represented. Whether they are put before a "feast of rich food" or being led to "springs of living water," this great multitude is being provided nourishment and even more, well beyond sustenance, by the one Lord.

This is the ultimate vision of the people of God, one way or another. When one compares that vision to the current state of the church, it's not hard to see that we have some ways to go to live into that vision of joyful multitudes from all the peoples of the earth.

The church is truly spread across the nations, with all peoples or really darn close to it found in its number among the countries and tribes and languages of the earth. It can be difficult to tell that in visiting any one particular congregation of the church at worship time, when the old saw about the church at worship being one of the most segregated entities around still holds too close to true (though that's less so here than in any other church I've served).

In some ways the whole point of a World Communion Sunday such as we celebrate today is to remind ourselves that God's table is not only found in the United States nor alone in any other nation. That Sunday morning separation, willful or otherwise, cannot obscure the truth that God truly gathers followers and disciples from all the peoples of the earth. Some of the practices of those peoples might look wildly different from even the church next door, but God is gathering. What remains for us, really, is in some ways to get out of God's way and see all nations as part of the people of God. Even more, though, we are called to join, to serve together, to make welcome and hospitality for all those peoples God gathers in.

For the great multitude, from all the peoples of the earth, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #515, I Come With Joy; #526, Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ; #504, We Come As Guests Invited; #500, Be Known to Us in Breaking Bread

 

 

 

Sermon: The Confession of Caesarea Philippi

First Presbyterian Church

September 27, 2026, Pentecost 18A

Matthew16:13-20

 

The Confession of Caesarea Philippi

 

 

Like many of the accounts of Jesus' life in the gospel of Matthew, this story has a parallel in the gospel of Mark – or actually a predecessor, since it seems extremely certain that Mark's gospel was written well before Matthew's. In most cases the accounts are largely the same, but sometimes there are slight differences between the two, and sometimes those differences in wording or phrasing can be quite substantial in how the story gets read. This is one of those stories.

For one thing, while Mark's gospel describes the conversation recorded here as happening while Jesus and the disciples were on their way to Caesarea Philippi, Matthew records it as happening after they had arrived there – when they "came into the district of Caesarea Philippi" is how the NRSV renders it. For Mark, language of being "on the way" is frequent enough that it suggests an easy metaphor; the journey from one place to another becomes a representation of the journey of discipleship, the journey of following Jesus. Similarly, for Matthew to place the discussion in Caesarea Philippi itself comes freighted with meaning in a different way, having to do with the nature and history of that location itself.

The earliest history of this location seems to have been as what southerners might call a "stop in the road," a location with a nearby spring for travelers on an important trade route between the port city of Tyre and the inland city of Damascus. The conquest of the region by Alexander the Great's armies and the resulting "Hellenization" of the region added a new level of significance to that spring; it was quickly appropriated as a shrine to the Greek god Pan and the location given the name Paneas.

The subsequent occupation of the area by Rome added one more layer of significance. During the reign of Caesar Augustus, the local Roman puppet ruler Herod the Great (yes, both of those names are familiar from the Nativity story in Luke's gospel) built a grand temple at the location in honor of his patron, the emperor (and perhaps also to overshadow the older Greek shrine). His son Philip expanded upon his father's work, building a full-fledged city there; therefore, the location became Caesarea Philippi – a city of Caesar belonging to Philip.

So this wasn't just some anonymous town for Jesus and the disciples to stop for a rest. For Jesus to ask "who do you say that I am?" and for Peter to answer "You are the Messiah, the son of the living God" in this particular city of all places carried the weight of the words themselves – which are weighty and powerful enough, to be sure! But it's one thing simply to say that "You are the Messiah, the son of the living God", and another thing to do so in a location carrying the marks of three of the greatest obstacles to the human understanding of God:

§  Empire – as the seat of political power in the area, Caesarea was as much the emblem of Rome as any city in the area, or even more.

§  Idolatry – both the shrine to Caesar and the older shrine to Pan make the location an excellent stand-in for a whole host of "idols" seeking to detract from God – and remember, any religion can lapse into idolatry…and finally,

§  Money – don't forget that ancient history as a center on a trade route.

Given Matthew's penchant for making everything in his gospel have some level of extra significance, it's hard to believe he didn't give extra emphasis to this conversation happening in this city. To claim Jesus, inevitably, is to reject these other claims on us.

On such an occasion it would be easy for someone like Peter to get a little puffed up and full of himself. Jesus's words in response to Peter's statement would go a long way towards getting Peter all puffed up, at least at first glance. "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!" Jesus says, and you can imagine Peter all flush-cheeked and waiting for Jesus to lay it on thick. But what comes next changes course a bit: "For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." In other words, Nice job, Rocky, but you didn't come up with that all by yourself.

It's a bit of humility we can all stand to take to heart. Even the ability to understand just a little bit, to catch just a flash of a moment of insight into what God is doing with us or in us or among us; even that is a gift of God, ministered by the Holy Spirit. This discourse from Jesus that follows, a part of the story not found in Mark's version, becomes a necessary moment of instruction about our role in Jesus's work in the world.

Peter made the good confession, yes. Literally across the centuries since then, Christians have sought to give words to the call of God upon the church, to put down, in that moment and in that place, what God was doing amongst them and how God was leading them. Many of those statements are found in our denomination's Book of Confessions. Some of those confessions even reflect the place where they were written down – the Scots Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Declaration of Barmen, the Confession of Belhar, for example. In many ways Peter's "Confession of Caesarea Philippi" is the forerunner of all of these, and Jesus's disclaimer to Peter – "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you" – had better be true of any such statement that comes along, or it's really not worth the trouble of writing it down. In the midst of all the idols the world offers for our adoration, it is the Spirit that gives us the answer, "Jesus is Lord."

Verses 18 and 19 have frankly become lightning rods for disagreement within the larger scope of Christianity. For example, the statement of Jesus about "you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" becomes a sticking point depending on what you decide about "this rock"; does it refer to Peter himself, an interpretation significant in Catholic thought and understanding of Peter as the forerunner of the papacy? Or does "this rock" refer to Peter's declaration, a more historic Protestant interpretation? All of what follows, about the authority represented in the "keys of the kingdom of heaven" and things being bound or loosed on earth, gets hung up in this particular thicket. And the final verse of this reading, one that is carried over from Mark wrapping up all of Matthew's added material, makes less sense here than in Mark's gospel, in which the so-called "Messianic secret" is a consistent theme.

At any rate, the idols of Caesarea Philippi – empire, money, and even "religion" itself – still contend against the faith of those who would seek to follow Christ. And if we take nothing else away from this account of Peter's confession, we must take this: we do not resist those temptations on our own, reliant on nothing but our brains or our heart or our emotional commitment or anything like that. We resist those idols because God gives, as God gave to Peter, the words to say and hear and do in order to follow faithfully and to live as Christ would have us live in a world that would rather us not.

For the good confession in the not-so-good place, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #81, Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken; #321, The Church's One Foundation; #313, Lord, Make Us More Holy