Fairhaven UMC – Page 12 – United Methodist Church

Fairhaven Sermon 9-21-2025

September 24, 2025

Fairhaven Sermon 9 21 2025

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Summary

In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman delivered a sermon focusing on the story of Ruth from the Bible, concluding her series on childhood stories. She emphasized that while often presented as a simple tale for children, the story of Ruth holds deeper meaning for adults, particularly within its Jewish context and as a reflection of our own spiritual journeys. The sermon traced Ruth’s story from her origins in Moab, following Naomi’s return to Bethlehem amidst famine and hardship, through Ruth’s unwavering loyalty and eventual marriage to Boaz, a pivotal event that ultimately led to the lineage of King David and, consequently, Jesus Christ.

Rev. Bowman highlighted parallels between Ruth’s journey as a foreigner finding acceptance and belonging with our own experiences of faith, emphasizing that we too were once strangers to God but have been brought near through Jesus. She concluded by drawing a hopeful comparison between Ruth and Boaz’s betrothal and our own relationship with Christ, suggesting that while the path ahead may be uncertain, a future of joy and belonging awaits those who remain faithful.

Transcript

Just a little cultural footnote, Orpah there. That’s where Oprah got her name. For those of you who might not, it was somehow misspelled or misunderstood when she was born. But that’s where her name comes from.

So here we are. So today will be my final installation of our Bible Stories from Childhood series. We have one more from Pastor Dylan next week, but this is my last one with you, so at least for now. And I’ve saved my favorite one for last, the story of Ruth.

I love Ruth. A moment ago we heard parts of Ruth chapters 1 and 2, and I will also draw on chapters 3 and 4 as well, so the entire book, we’re going to cover that very briefly. So if you want to, feel free to grab a pew Bible and follow along. I will start in chapter 1 and move straight through.

Ruth is found right after Joshua and Judges in the Scriptures. So the story of Ruth is one of those stories whose message gets richer as we get older. As children, when we heard this story, we may have learned from Ruth things like that God takes care of us when we are faithful, or what it means to have or to be a good friend, or that we should help other people even if it’s not always easy. And these are all good lessons that we can take from this story of Ruth.

But as adults, there’s a lot more to see. First off, the story of Ruth is not meant to be a children’s story. There are some very adult themes in here. Secondly, the story of Ruth is a very Jewish story, and what I mean by that is that the story assumes that we, the readers, know the law of Moses and specifically what Moses said about foreigners and about poverty and about family relationships.

And third, most important, the story of Ruth is our story, yours and mine. And I’m going to get back to that at the end, but let’s begin at the beginning. The stories found in the book of Ruth take place during the time of the book of Judges. This was after the Israelites have left Egypt, after they’ve arrived in the Promised Land, but before Israel has a king.

And during this time, the people of Israel had amazing personal freedoms. They had the law of Moses to guide their life together, and they had regional judges who had the background and the authority to settle any legal disagreements or disputes that came up. But imagine this if you can. They had no central government.

no senators or representatives or anything like that, no states, no governors, no mayors, and as a result, no taxes. As a citizen of Israel, one’s only responsibility was to worship God in the ways that Moses taught and to bring gifts and sacrifices to worship, which were then used to maintain the tabernacle and to assist the poor, as well as being part of the celebration of worship. Because when you brought your animals and offered them, you would then have a feast afterwards after the animals had been roasted. Okay, so that’s it.

Apart from that, every person was free to live as they best understood God’s word. Now having said all that, life still wasn’t always perfect. Back in those days, people of course had no electricity, no refrigerators, no supermarkets. Okay.

I mean, they depended on the crops that they planted and the animals that they tended to stay alive. And if a year came along that was very dry, like this past summer has been for us, going hungry was a real possibility. And that’s what happened at the beginning of the book of Ruth. There was a famine.

It was very dry. All the food, the plants died, the animals died, the food was gone. And a family from Bethlehem, a town whose name means house of bread, found themselves without any bread. This is a family of four, Elimelech, whose name means My God is King, and the mother Naomi, whose name means Pleasant.

And you put those two together, you could say that life is pleasant when God is King. Okay, so that works. But in this case, something was wrong because their two sons were named Malon and Chilion or Kilion, which means sickly and ailing. So for some reason, maybe because of the famine, these boys were not thriving.

And Elimelech and Naomi decided the only thing that they could do was to leave home and go to another country. So they became immigrants in the country of Moab, a country on the opposite side of the Dead Sea from Bethlehem, about 40 or 50 miles away. And it took about 10 days to walk there, not because it was so far, but because the land was so rough and mountainous. So this family of four came to this foreign land, this Moab, where people spoke another language, where they worshiped another god called Chemosh, the god of war and destruction.

And how difficult was it for them to learn that new language and that new culture and to make friends and to stay true to their god at the same time and to find a place to settle and to farm and raise livestock and start all over again. As we imagine putting ourselves into their shoes and imagine being there, we come close to understanding where we are now because we also worship the one true and living God. We also live among a people where many people worship something other than God, if they worship at all. But here’s where we find ourselves, and being strangers in a strange land, we set up household and we do the best we can for our families and for our neighbors.

But it’s kind of like the old hymn says, and this is an old, I think this one comes from the Baptist hymnal, I have not found it in the Methodist hymnal yet, but you may have heard it. It’s an old hymn that says, This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

That’s how Naomi and Elimelech felt. This wasn’t their home. This place could never be their home, but they did the best they could where they were. and after a few years, Elimelech passed away, and Naomi found wives for their sons named Orpah and Ruth, and the next generation started setting up household.

But then tragedy struck. Malon and Kilion also died, and the women were left alone, without children, without defense, and with no way of making a living. Naomi, brokenhearted, heard that there was food again in Bethlehem, so she started to head back there. And the young women went with her at first, but Naomi said to her daughters-in-law, Go back to your father’s houses.

You are still young. You can still find other husbands. As for me, I’ll go home and see if I can find a relative to live out my days with. And the women wept because they loved each other and did not want to say goodbye.

But Orpah, she saw the logic in Naomi’s thinking and after a while she went home. But Ruth wasn’t having it. And Ruth spoke those words which we hear so often at weddings. But how often have they spoken to a mother-in-law as they are here? Ruth said to Naomi, Entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me. Sometime during those years of being married to her son, Ruth had become a believer in the God of Israel.

Ruth, who was still standing in her own country, near her relatives at this point in time, speaking her own language, gives it all up out of love and loyalty to God and to Naomi. So Ruth’s story is our story. Like Ruth, before we met Jesus, we were foreigners to God’s people. The language of faith was foreign to us.

And technically, we still are immigrants like Ruth was. This world is not our home, but somewhere along the way, For those of us who know Jesus and claim his name, we made a decision to leave the ways of this world behind and follow Jesus into a new world, into God’s kingdom. We changed our citizenship from one country to another, just like Ruth did. But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself.

Back to Ruth. So Naomi, the mother-in-law, she knows that this move is not going to be easy for Ruth. Thank you. Ruth has a new language to learn.

She has a new country to get to know. And Moabites were despised by the Israelites because Moab had frequently been at war with Israel. So this wasn’t going to be easy. But eventually Naomi and Ruth arrived back in Bethlehem, and the people who knew Naomi back in the old days, who saw her now, gasped at the change.

Naomi said to them, Don’t call me Naomi anymore, which means pleasant. She says, Call me Mara, which means bitter, because the Lord has dealt bitterly with me. And the women arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. And immediately Ruth started following the law of Moses.

She went to the nearest farm. As the law of Moses said, she followed behind the harvesters and picked up anything that they missed. The law of Moses said that farmers were not to harvest to the edge of their fields or to go over a field twice, but they were to leave a few stalks behind for the poor and the foreigner. And she said, And Ruth was both poor and a foreigner.

So she worked hard in those fields, and as she was noticed by Boaz, the owner of the field, he asked about her and he listened to the praise that the harvesters spoke about her. They said to Boaz, she’s that young Moabite, who came back with Naomi. She said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves. And she’s been on her feet from early this morning until now without even resting for a moment.

God, that’s high praise from a farmhand because harvesting is not easy work. Even today, we hire foreigners to work our fields doing some of the work that none of us want to do. And Ruth was doing it without pay except for being able to keep whatever she picked up. Boaz was moved by her hard work and her loyalty to Naomi and he said to Ruth, Don’t harvest anywhere else.

I will tell my men not to bother you, stick close to my women, drink from the water the young men provide. And we heard a moment ago how Ruth responded to this kneeling face down on the ground and Boaz blessed her and said, May the Lord reward you for your deeds, the Lord under whose wings you have taken refuge. So we discover in this that Boaz is also a man of faith. And when mealtime came, Boaz invited Ruth to come and eat some bread and dip it in the wine, which might be a foreshadowing of communion, maybe? We’re not sure about that, but it kind of looks like it.

When the day was over, Ruth had gleaned about an ephah of barley, roughly about a bushel, they say about 50 pounds of barley, by hand, and she brought this home to Naomi. And while they ate, Ruth told Naomi about the kindness of Boaz and everything that he had said. And Naomi praised God and said to Ruth, He’s one of our nearest kin. Stick close to his women so that you won’t be bothered as you work in the fields.

And Ruth finished out the barley harvest and then the wheat harvest, and she did well for the two of them. Meanwhile, Naomi was doing some thinking. She thought to herself, Ruth needs a husband, and we need a man in the family, and we need a son. And the law of Moses said that if a man died without having children, his brother should marry the widow and have children for him.

Now the details of this law are a bit involved. They include inheritances and all that kind of thing. But to sum it up briefly, here’s what Moses said in Deuteronomy chapter 25. He said, If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family.

Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. And the first son that she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother. That’s the law of Moses, and that’s what Naomi and Ruth knew. Okay.

The second passage I want to share that comments on this is from Jesus. And Jesus said this in answer to the Sadducees who didn’t believe in resurrection back in the day. So the Sadducees made up this story that they thought disproved the idea of resurrection. Matthew’s Gospel says that the Sadducees who say there is no resurrection came to Jesus with a question.

Teacher, they said, Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us, and the first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother, and the same thing happened to the second and the third brother right down to the seventh, and finally the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her? Because the Sadducees thought that this disproved the concept of resurrection because you couldn’t possibly have a woman being married to seven men at the same time, right? So therefore resurrection must not exist. Jesus answered, You are in error because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God.

At the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead, Have you not read what God said to you? I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

That’s Jesus’ word. And Naomi, of course, had not heard Jesus’ comments on this, but she knew what Moses said. So she decides that Boaz should be the man to do this for Ruth. Boaz is not a brother, but he’s a close relative.

And so Naomi tells Ruth what to do. She says, take a bath, put on perfume, dress up in your very best, and go down to the threshing floor and watch where Boaz lies down. When he’s asleep, uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what to do. So Ruth does this, and in the middle of the night, Boaz wakes up and finds someone at his feet and he says, Who are you? And Ruth answers, I’m Ruth, your servant.

Spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next of kin. Now, the Bible doesn’t tell us this because everybody knew this back then, but Ruth had just proposed marriage. The cloak represented two people taking shelter together in a storm. And she’s saying to Boaz, You are the kinsman redeemer.

Put a ring on it. So Boaz’s answer tells us three things. First off, he’s probably a bit older than Ruth, since he says, You didn’t go after younger men. Second, that Boaz is pleased with and honored by the suggestion.

And third, that there’s another man who’s a closer relative, who stands between them. And Boaz will take care of this in the morning. So he gives Ruth all the grain she can carry to take home to Naomi and says to her, Don’t be afraid. I will do for you all that you ask, for you are a worthy woman.

And the very next day, Boaz has a conversation with that other relative and finds out for certain that he’s not interested in Ruth. So Boaz and Ruth are married and they have a son and they named him Obed and Obed was the father of Jesse and Jesse was the father of David, King David. These sons will form a dynasty that will reign for 400 years. If the people of Israel had not welcomed the foreigner Ruth into their community, King David would never have been born.

And without David, the family into which Jesus was born would never have existed. God’s salvation works out one life at a time, one year at a time, one day at a time. So the story of Ruth is our story too. We also were once foreigners to God, but Jesus was born into our world as one of us, and He became our kinsman redeemer, our Boaz.

By the grace of God, faith wins and love wins. And the apostle Paul explains this in the book of Ephesians. He says, At one time, you Gentiles by birth, remember that you were at one time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in this world. But now in Jesus Christ, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

So then you are no longer strangers or aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God. So Ruth’s story is our story. The generosity of Boaz parallels the generosity of God, and Ruth’s love for Boaz is like our love for God. Even when things seem dark and difficult, God’s light is with us in a very real way.

As we keep the faith, as we keep on living God’s way, guided by God’s word, in some way that we can’t see yet, there is a future being built. Right now, we are where Ruth and Boaz were on that night on the threshing floor. We are betrothed to Jesus, but with a lot more that has to happen before we can set up household. One theologian puts it this way, we accept God and our future without always knowing what either will bring.

But the wheels of time are turning and our future with Jesus will be like Ruth’s, a future of royalty and majesty and joy. Amen.
Fairhaven UMC Living Stones & Prevention Point

September 23, 2025

Summary

Fairhaven United Methodist Church, located on a busy highway in Pittsburgh, recognized an opportunity to serve its community and partnered with Prevention Point Pittsburgh, an organization providing harm reduction services. Initially offering a weekly van in their parking lot for medical care and supplies, the church expanded this effort by collaborating with Living Stones to offer a free community meal during Prevention Point’s service hours. This three-way partnership has fostered a welcoming space where individuals experiencing substance use disorder feel comfortable, building relationships and receiving support beyond just practical assistance.

The program has profoundly impacted both the individuals served and the church community. Volunteers and staff from Living Stones have developed deep connections with those attending, offering not just food but also fellowship, prayer, and a sense of belonging. The church has seen a shift in perception, with members recognizing the program’s life-saving impact and cultivating a reputation as an open and welcoming space, even for those who might typically avoid traditional church settings.

Transcript

Fairhaven has long been a congregation that is very focused on trying to figure out how to reach out to its community, to leverage the space that we’re in, which, you know, anyone can see coming in. We’re on a very busy highway right on Route 51. Kind of this weird little, they call it the country church in the city, as some of the church’s older branding. This little white church in the middle of the city of Pittsburgh on a major highway.

And so we’re in this really interesting place of trying to figure out what it looks like to reach out to our community. How do we be a church that is known for its service and for its outreach and for its attitude as well? And so one of the things that they leaned into was a partnership with Prevention Point Pittsburgh, which is an organization that does harm reduction work with people who use drugs. And so what they started doing was just having a van out there in the parking lot once a week for three or four hours where they would come and just be open for a anybody who needed their services, who needed medical care, who was looking for clean needles. And Fairhaven was really quickly on board with that because they understood very instinctively that This is something that will save lives here.

We wondered how we could start building relationships with the people that come and not just be a site, but be a community space as well. That’s building relationships with people who come into the parking lot. So this is actually kind of a three-way partnership now between Fairhaven itself between Prevention Point, just because they’re here and we want to serve them, but also another organization called Living Stones, and they serve a free community meal at a different church throughout the South Hills every Sunday. I’m Stormy Parson.

I’m a member here at Fairhaven United Methodist Church, and I’m the executive director of Living Stones, and we rescue food and serve it to people who need it most in the community. So we rescue food from restaurants and institutions across Pittsburgh and then we take that food to different locations every Sunday a month. She proposed the idea to the church and to Living Stones of having one of their meals during prevention point service hours at Fairhaven. What we have found has been just a real.

.. a real blossoming on both sides of positive relationships. Living Stones in general, we value relationships, so people are not just coming in our doors, we’re not just scooping food on their plate and sending them off.

We purposely wear name tags, we have our neighbors wear name tags, We take prayer requests and pray with them, so we know a lot of people’s deepest parts of their lives, and we are getting connected with them in so many ways. So, Fairhaven has a really wonderful reputation in this community of being an open and welcoming space. It’s been great to see like from the beginning that this sort of reputation of welcome has built just by having prevention point in the parking lot. The people of the church, especially you know the parents and the grandparents of the church who can see their own kids and grandkids and a lot of the people that come in recognize that this is something that is saving lives.

What is different is getting them to come inside to something with people from the church. And it’s different from the church too because you know offering your parking lot is it’s not super hands-on. Whereas whenever people are coming in and are having lunch, sitting down, talking to you, you kind of see a longer term view of their lives. You know, I think oftentimes people do struggle with seeing, you know, people in addiction and struggling with substance use disorder.

But here when we’re serving, you know, they’ve gotten to know our names and they’re excited to see us. And, you know, people are we’re hugging each other. We’re praying for each other. And it’s just a great reminder of, you know, the humanness of each of us.

So I’m Lisa Tiger and I’m the outreach coordinator for Livingstone. And honestly, I was I was kind of skeptical in the beginning. I wasn’t sure how I felt about programs like that because I struggle with where the line is between enabling and actually being a help. But I was willing to give it a shot.

These folks start coming in and you start listening to their stories. and seeing the situations that they’re in. There’s one gal who is close by here. I started inviting her to come to this lunch, and she came a couple months ago, and she started talking about her story.

She got involved with a young man who was addicted to drugs, and it wasn’t long before she was too, and she said she woke up one morning under a bridge with needles all around her, and she thought, you’re a drug addict. And how did you get here? And so you start hearing these stories and it breaks your heart. She’s got two kids and she’s been clean for almost eight months. And if she stays clean, she gets to see her kids on Sunday.

She’s holding down a job. So you also get to see what programs like this do to help people in those situations because so many of the situations seem so hopeless and so desperate. This program of all the things we do has become the one that is the nearest and dearest to my heart. We serve a simple lunch, but I think it’s more about the fellowship and encouragement that they get than the food.

For me personally, I think it’s even better because each week when we see the same faces come back, it means they’re alive. And that means a lot to me because so quickly that could not be the case. And so we’re seeing so much deeper things happening all the time. There has been, I think, a really meaningful response from the people in the church to see, like, I just see with our volunteers and with the Livingstone staff, that there is investment in each other’s lives, and not just in an abstract sense, but in the real sense of like, I know your name, and if I see you on the side of the street, because you know a lot of them are homeless or close to it, I know who you are.

I can check in and ask how you’re doing. It is really just such a big deal to say, No, we do want you here. And not just we want to, we’re a church that wants you here. People who deal with any kind of shame or just problems with their self really don’t want to walk into a church.

And yet we find that a lot of times if people who are in addiction especially feel like they’re going to walk into a church, this is one that they feel comfortable walking into. And that is just a really…

that’s a powerful thing to be able to cultivate. So I’m really happy that we’ve gotten to do that.
South Hills Partnership Ministries

September 22, 2025
Summary

The video highlights the impactful ministry work being done collaboratively by the South Hills Partnership of Hilltop, Fairhaven, and Spencer churches. Individuals from each church share their experiences with various outreach programs, including food pantries, blessing bags, clothing cupboards, Vacation Bible School (VBS), and the Hilltop Table dinner series. These initiatives focus on serving local communities, providing essential resources like food and clothing, sharing faith with children through VBS, and fostering community connection through shared meals and discussions.

Several participants emphasize the reciprocal blessings of these ministries, noting that serving others not only benefits those in need but also brings joy and a deeper understanding of faith to the volunteers themselves. The Christmas Store, offering deeply discounted gifts to working families, is presented as a particularly impactful example of this principle, demonstrating how church involvement in outreach can create lasting positive change and strengthen community bonds.
Transcript
I’m Dylan. I’m the senior pastor here at the South Coast Partnership for Hilltop, for Fairhaven and Spencer churches. I think it’s very easy to forget about how much we’re able to accomplish together as small churches, how much we do accomplish together as small churches. There is so much ministry that we do in Pittsburgh and that we help support around the world.

We’re going to hear from a couple people on this video who are involved in ministries across all three churches. Some that each church does by itself, some that are shared across the churches, and I hope that you will be inspired by what you are contributing to, what you are giving to with your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness. There is so much good that is happening that we can really be proud of. Great things are happening at the Southwest Partnership.

We are accomplishing so much in the name of Jesus and for the Kingdom of God right here in Pittsburgh. – I am Robbie and I manage the small food pantry that we have here at Spencer Church. And I want to say first that our ministry, this little ministry, is doing quite well. Our pantry is funded through a line item in our budget.

And we have a wonderful shopper at our church, Bobbi, who really stretches the dollar as much as she can. But like everyone and everywhere, we all know that sometimes there is way more months than there is money. Our pantry is used by a lot of the community. We have had young families of immigrants, we have had the elderly, we have had handicapped people who have come to me or other people at our church, and they have just thanked us for the nice ministry that this is.

We have also had people in the community come and donate. They have either put things directly into the pantry or they have come into the church to Pat, have given her boxes of food. We have had monetary donations. So this ministry in my mind is really taken off and what it has done and what I think is so important is that for the people of this community, it has made the presence of God real to them.

I’m Kelly and I go to Fairhaven United Methodist. We have several different missions that we have throughout for our church. We do the food pantry. which has been there almost seven or eight years now.

And I purchased the food for it from a line item in our budget. But we also have many people in the church and the community that drop lost food. We have seen all kinds of people using the pantry. And when I’m down there filling it, everyone who uses it stops and thanks us and says how wonderful it is.

So that makes me happy because I’ve worked with children whose parents have had difficulty with food and I know how important it is. We also do blessing bags at our church which again has been going on for maybe seven or eight years. We take all kinds of sample items like deodorant, toothpaste, the heating things you can put in your feet and your hands, all kinds of things. We place them in a Ziploc baggie, put a paper in there that tells them this is from our church.

If you need anything, there’s a number that they can call. And the people take them from our church, they put them in their car, and if they see someone on the road that looks like they’re in need, they can hand them the bag. Bags have been given out downtown Pittsburgh in Oakland. People have taken them on vacation and given them out.

And that’s just another way to reach out to our community. We also have two clothing cupboards down at Fairhaven that we have in season clothes put in by several of the ladies, but everybody donates for that. We also see the community coming and donating for that. So all of these missions are serving the people around our church, and we feel that we’re doing God’s work by doing that.

Hi, my name is Jamie. I’m from Spencer. One of the chaired ministries we had is our Vacation Bible School. We’ve had it for two years with all the churches involved.

some amazing volunteers. We reach out to children both in the church families and in the outside community that are coming in. We learn about Jesus, we learn about God, we learn about love, and do it with a lot of fun and a lot of laughter. This year we wandered through the wilderness with a bunch of Old Testament and New Testament characters.

Again, we have a supper, we have crafts, we have games, we have a discovery area. We have, in fact, this year we actually had a campfire because we were out in the wilderness. So it’s a wonderful time for the leaders, a ministry by all the leaders in the different churches. and for the children.

And we’re reaching kids, in some cases, they’ve never been in a church, they’ve never heard about Jesus. They’ve come because it looks interesting and they’ve learned something new. So it’s a great reach out to all these kids, as well as those that come back and back and really are close to God. Hi, I’m Ben Lehman.

I go to Fairhaven. I’m part of a group that coordinates one of our newest ministries and outreaches here in the South Hills Partnership, the Hilltop Table. The goal of the Hilltop Table is kind of give a new perspective on church to people that maybe don’t attend regularly, and also to help build community in an area that seems to really be in need of it. So the way that we’re facilitating that is once a month having a dinner at the Hilltop Church.

And we get all kinds of members from the community come and participate. And following the dinner, we’ll have a brief scripture lesson and then a period of discussion. where it’s sort of pretty open-ended. Everybody just kind of discusses what we talked about and what it means to them.

So for me, I’ve really enjoyed the new perspective on church, sort of a break from that traditional regimented worship service And it’s nice to interact with people and see how they interpret what we’re discussing. And that helps give me a new way to look at things. And I think through that I’ve really grown in my experience. understanding and relationship with God.

My name’s Lou Ann and I’m with the Hilltop United Methodist Church and I’m going to hear talking about the Christmas Store. This is our fourth year of doing the Christmas Store. The Christmas Store is about helping the community, serving them with gifts that are over 90% off. This is for working families from minimum wage to approximately $20 an hour.

that families come in and just enjoy a blessing. There’s two blessings through this, not just for the families that are receiving it, but also for the churches itself. That is one of the things I feel that God gave me on my heart was it’s involving the entire church to get involved in an outreach that not only they get to witness a blessing, they also receive the blessing from just serving. My personal experiences that I have seen and witnessed is more of watching the joy of the congregation serving in events that I don’t think they’ve served it before and they got that blessing, but also watching parents that come in in tears with their hearts just totally broken because there they are, we’re giving to them something that they’ve never received.

And so I think this is a way of them looking at a church that in a different view that we are giving. I would like to say if you have never been a part of the Christmas store, you should try to volunteer. We do, you know, greeters, we do food, we do money takers, we do hostessing. So there’s so many different parts, wrappers, you know, we have cookies that you have to, but if there’s something that you can at least try.

You not only will bless others, but the blessing will come back to you.
Fairhaven Service 9-14-2025

September 18, 2025

Fairhaven Sermon 9 14 2025

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In this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson delivered a sermon centered on the story of Noah from Genesis and its surprising parallels to J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. He challenged the congregation to reconsider Noah’s role, noting that he doesn’s speak in the biblical account and essentially relinquishes control to God’s will, responding only with action. This quiet faithfulness, the very thing that made Noah “a nobody” to his contemporaries, is what ultimately makes him remarkable in God’s eyes.

The sermon explored the idea that true faith often involves letting go of personal ambitions and embracing a path chosen by God, even when it leads to difficult or seemingly pointless endeavors. Parson drew connections between Noah’s story and the call to persevere in faith, even when faced with uncertainty or disappointment. He concluded by sharing a prayer written by Bishop Ken Untner, emphasizing that we are “workers, not master builders,” called to plant seeds and lay foundations without necessarily seeing the full harvest of our efforts, trusting that God will ultimately bring His kingdom to fruition.

Transcript

So a line from what is possibly my favorite book, one that has stuck with me since I was about 14. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everyone else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it.

I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everyone else that wants to make some kind of splash. That’s from J.D.

Salinger’s Franny and Zoe, which was written in 1957. Most people would know him for The Catcher in the Rye, the high school English class favorite. But this novel of his was always the one that really grabbed me. The speaker in this passage is Franny from the title.

She’s a college student who was formerly nationally famous for being a child genius with a radio show. And she’s in the midst of this kind of existential breakdown. She’s trying to explain to her much shallower Harvard-educated boyfriend what’s going on with her. And she finds herself completely disinterested in academics, in sports, in her social life, all the things she used to love.

And she’s been overcome instead by this old book that she’s been reading called The Way of a Pilgrim. It’s real. It’s an anonymous book written in the 1800s. And in that book, this Russian peasant decides that he’s going to live the Apostle Paul’s call to pray without ceasing.

And the peasant prays the Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, with every breath that he takes, in and out with that same prayer. That’s a pretty well-known practice among the Eastern Orthodox. And so Franny starts wondering if life is less about achievement and recognition and more something like that, learning to pray with every breath. She rejects this idea that life is for becoming somebody, reaching for admirable goals, traveling a course that others have decided is a good one.

And instead, maybe it’s about turning inward, getting closer to God. And it feels ironic, but I guess it’s a point that makes more and more sense to me the older I get. Franny becomes more of herself by letting go of herself. Letting go of this ego, the desire to be the one who’s the protagonist of her own life.

She lets go of that and is able to become more herself. And I was surprised, you know, sitting with the story of Noah’s Ark, that this is the book that came to mind as I was reading that. Why? Well, I guess because I’ve always figured out, I’ve always figured, speaking of protagonists, that Noah is the protagonist of Noah’s Ark. But it turns out that’s not really the case.

Across the three chapters of Genesis we skimmed across in our reading this morning, Noah doesn’t even speak. Okay. Not one time did Noah say a word. Have you ever noticed that? I hadn’t.

No, instead, Noah relinquishes literally everything to the will of God. Every single thing that Noah does in this story is in response to what God tells him to do. God will say something, Noah will do it. That’s the entire pattern across three chapters here.

And this line struck me too, that whenever the flood came, whenever the animals were on board, whenever Noah and his family were on board, the Lord shuts the door behind them. Noah doesn’t. God does. Noah is a man here who prays without ceasing to the point that he himself recedes into the background of this story and God becomes the main player.

Noah’s entire significance is in that he walks with God. Maybe you noticed again, this is what Genesis says about him. This is chapter 6 verse 9. Noah was a good man, a man of integrity in his community.

Noah walked with God. And that way that I just quoted it now is from the message. But that line stays more or less the same in every translation I checked from the KGB, the KGB, the CEB, the NIV. Noah walked with God.

That one line stays the same. And that is the entirety of what makes Noah important. We don’t hear anything in Genesis about Noah’s story before God starts to plan the great flood. That said, I’m willing to guess that across all the preceding years of his life, Noah has not been particularly interesting.

Naturally, that probably changes whenever a 450-foot-long wooden ship appears in his backyard, but before that, we see no evidence that Noah’s interesting. And I think we can be especially sure that Noah was probably not interesting by his world standards, because if he had become interesting or accomplished or important, it almost certainly would have been because he was participating in all the evil of his time. God says all the thoughts of human beings were evil, and Noah wasn’t. So Noah remained unnoticed, maybe a disappointment to his parents and his loved ones for not amounting to much.

But God had noticed Noah in his quiet faithfulness. And precisely that quiet faithfulness is where Noah’s uniqueness was found, not in standing out, The humility and the lack of ambition that made Noah a nobody to the people around him is exactly the same thing that made him remarkable to God. So finally one day, God comes to Noah. And in contrast to Noah, who again, totally silent, God talks a lot.

Much of what we heard was the voice of God. And God opens bluntly in his one-way discussion with Noah. The end has come for all creatures since they have filled the earth with violence. I’m now about to destroy them along with the earth, so make a wooden ark.

And God moves straight at that point from explaining what’s going to happen to telling Noah what to do about it, presenting detailed instructions on the size, the shape of the ark, who’s supposed to be on it, all that stuff. And there’s no question or hesitation as to whether Noah’s going to participate. He is, after all, one who walks with God, and this is where God is walking. So whatever vision Noah had for his life five minutes ago, which was probably a pretty low-key existence for the rest of his life, he lets all that go without saying a word.

And significantly, I’m not saying this is right or wrong because we see both in Genesis. Noah doesn’t try to change God’s mind like Abraham does later. He doesn’t try to bend what God’s going to do. Noah remains committed walking with God to follow the path that God has set before him and chosen him for.

And I hate to say it, but he faithfully walks with God down a path that is just truly terrible, right? One that is truly terrible beyond our imagining. This story, whenever you hear it, like divorced from kind of the picture book telling, is awful. Can you imagine what Noah feels like as he sets out to do his part here? He stares out at this familiar world around him while he’s sawing the timber for his ship. His hands are getting blistered and he looks to all of his neighbors, all of his friends, like he’s just a maniac, building this boat in the middle of dry land.

And he must have had such pain in his heart about this, knowing that everything, everyone he’s ever known, is gone. Maybe Noah had this big tree that he liked to climb as a kid, right? It’s going to be turned into driftwood. Or maybe it’s just going to be one of thousands of other logs in this ship. Maybe there was this stream nearby where flowers would emerge along the waters once the winter had passed.

Maybe he’d go there and skip rocks when he was a kid. And that too, erased, gone. Maybe made into a great canyon if it’s not gone entirely. And over there he’s got his house, the farm, the vineyard where he established his family with his wife.

And over there are his neighbors, probably his cousins based on how this society worked on the other side of the fence. And they’re gone too. And he knows that this is coming. God’s told him exactly what’s coming, but he is committed to walking with God pretty much into hell on earth here.

And I felt twinges sometimes of that ache of God taking me somewhere I don’t want to go. And maybe you felt that too. And this won’t come as any surprise to any of you, but I’ve lamented to pastor friends to Stormy that I could potentially be in the midst of overall decline and death in the church for my entire ministry career. Hearing these stories about whenever we had to pull out all the chairs to make room for people, whenever our buildings were full to bursting, whenever we had more money than we knew what to do with, 40 more years of hearing that on the downward spiral.

And it’s quite possible also that Carnegie is not the last church I close. Even as I kind of resent, kind of, I really resent that I had to do that in my very first appointment. Three years out of school, ready to serve the church, down one. That building had been there since the Civil War.

My name’s on it whenever they put a lock on the door, right? No one gets into ministry for that. To be clear here, I’m not saying that I’m resigned to letting that happen as far as I can help it, and neither should you be. We’re in the business of building things up with the gifts that God gives us. We should never be given into gloom and doom to assuming our best days are behind us.

I think that’s a sickness that afflicts Pittsburgh overall. We always assume that the best time that we’re ever going to have was about 40 years ago. we often worry about the years to come. You know, how can we continue serving God and our community in this place? What is it gonna be like to continue to live and serve here? And we’re always supposed to be doing the best that we can for the kingdom of God.

We’re supposed to responsibly steward the gifts that God has given us, doing the most with what we have, hoping that God will work miracles among us because God always does. Trusting that God’s grace is at work, not only in the high points, but in every season. And this is true in all aspects of our lives. Not just the church, but whatever God has called you to, both within the church and beyond it, in your personal life and your work, it’s crucial that you do that the best that you can.

Trusting that God’s going to make it into something good. But still, this unpleasant truth that Noah reveals to us is that God pretty frequently calls God’s people to this steady, invisible faithfulness in very, very hard times. That might even be the norm across scripture. And our job is to walk with God, like Noah, to the very best of our ability, doing what God asks us to do without being attached to the outcome.

And that’s a really fine line to walk, right? That you’re going to do your best without knowing for sure what’s on the other side. And none of this is licensed, again, to give up, to stop caring what happens, but it’s a call to persevering without any condition. Like, I’m not going to keep doing it as long as I keep seeing good stuff happening. No, you’re supposed to keep doing it anyway, right? We ended our reading this morning at Genesis 8, 22, and God’s promise never to destroy the world again.

That’s where we stopped. But there’s a famous image also in chapter 9 that you all know, when we get this famous, beautiful moment where God casts a rainbow in the sky, maybe the first rainbow. And the rainbow, God says, is going to remind God and us that he’s never going to flood the earth again. But what do you think that means to Noah, really? What consolation is that to Noah, the guy who lived through it the first time? Regardless of whether that’s going to be the only time, it still happened.

It’s hard to imagine that seeing a rainbow is ever going to give Noah this warm, fuzzy feeling when he sees it after a storm. It’s not going to feel good to see it. Instead, it’s going to remind him that God will never flood the earth again, but he already did. And what must that feel like to be the one who’s left standing? And so every rainbow now for the remaining 350 years of Noah’s life, Noah lives to be 950 years old.

Must have been like a PTSD flashback, seeing that rainbow. Really. It wouldn’t feel like a promise. It would feel like a scar.

And so truthfully, I think we can come away from this story without being too happy with God. I feel like Noah probably wasn’t too happy with God. And that’s okay. We see throughout Scripture, throughout the Psalms, that God can take that.

God is accepting whenever we’re not having a good time with God, we can tell God that. God can handle our questioning, our uncertainty, our aching, our disappointment in where we’ve come. And while this doesn’t make the pain and the ache and the doubt go away, it is worth remembering that this story is so much bigger than us and our individual lives. Think about Noah.

Noah doesn’t know about Abraham. Noah doesn’t know about King David. Noah doesn’t know about Jesus, all of whom are going to be his descendants. Noah doesn’t know that through his descendants, not only will they repopulate the earth, get things back on track, Abraham.

creation will be cleansed once more. Not with a flood of water, but with a flood of grace this time, drawn back to God that has been left behind since the Garden of Eden. That’s coming to be repaired. Noah isn’t the main character in his story, and the greater story doesn’t end with him.

It goes on so much longer. We’re still in it. In the same way, we’re not the main character in our lifetimes. We’re not the main character in this world, in Christ’s church, not even this church.

All of this is so much bigger than us as God brings to fullness the salvation that was planned since before the beginning. And so we pick up our cross for a while. We walk through joy, pain, ups and downs, water and mountaintops, drawing closer to God through it all until we enter the glory of a new heaven and a new earth that Noah hadn’t heard about that either. And unlike poor Noah, we know that not only can we walk with God, God has walked on earth with us in Christ and does now in the power of the Holy Spirit.

God has felt our pain in his own body. God has died our death and conquered it. And he sent the Spirit never to be taken away from us. We’re not alone.

And God does not promise us final victory in our time on earth, although who knows, maybe someone’s going to get it. We’re not alone. But we have already received something better than that. Living in this life requires real bravery, but God gives us what we need to make it through that.

The courage to be an absolute nobody, as Franny Glass calls it, is something we must develop in order to be the people, to be the church that God has called us to be. And of course, we might not end up being nobody. That might happen. We might end up living in this golden age of the church.

We might even live to see the return and the victory of Jesus Christ. We might live to be heroes of the faith, you know, saints that are remembered forever. They could have a stained glass window of you somewhere someday. But maybe all these things are only possible if we’re willing to live our lives quietly devoted to a God whose story is bigger than ours, even when things seem hopeless, even when God calls us to places that we don’t want to go.

In late 1979, the Catholic Bishop Ken Untner of Michigan was asked to write a prayer. And this was a prayer for a service in memory of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Archbishop Romero had been martyred in El Salvador earlier that year. He fought for the poor, the marginalized of that country against an oppressive authoritarian government.

And he was shot and killed while he was serving communion at a hospital. And the Archbishop was one who walked with God without ever seeing the fruit of what God was doing through him. He’s a saint now. He didn’t live to see that.

In 2015, during the process of canonizing Archbishop Romero, Pope Francis offered this prayer that Bishop Untoner wrote once more in his Christmas address at the Vatican. This prayer that he wrote has become known as the Prayer of St. Oscar Romero by, But I think it would resonate with Noah too. And it does with me.

So here’s this prayer. We’re going to do this. I just would ask you to pray with me. We’ll do this instead of the Apostles Creed today.

If you lift up your hearts. It helps now and then to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it’s even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we’re about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capacities.

We cannot do everything and there’s a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it’s a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders. Ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future, not our own. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.
Fairhaven Sermon 9-7-2025

September 9, 2025

Fairhaven Sermon 9 7 2025

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In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman explored the familiar story of David and Goliath, highlighting the surprising context surrounding this iconic tale. She emphasized that David, the future king and prolific psalmist, wasn’s a celebrated figure at the time; he was the youngest of eight sons, overlooked in Jesse’s family due to their cultural norms. Working as a shepherd, David spent his days in solitude, tending to sheep, playing the harp, and developing a deep connection with God, a stark contrast to the troubled King Saul, who was suffering from what might have been PTSD or bipolar episodes and needed musical solace. This background laid the foundation for David’s courage when he confronted Goliath, a giant taunting the Israelite army and insulting the living God.

Bowman underscored that David’s victory wasn’t just a “rags to riches” story, but a testament to what God can achieve through a person wholly committed to Him. Despite his humble beginnings and lack of formal education, David’s time spent in quiet communion with God prepared him to face seemingly insurmountable challenges. Ultimately, the sermon encouraged the congregation to emulate David’s faith and courage, recognizing that even imperfect individuals can be instruments of God’s purpose and that no experience, however small, is ever truly wasted when offered to Him.

Transcript

So this morning, as you heard, we’re continuing our series with the Bible stories from childhood. And today we have that story of David and Goliath. This is a story of unforgettable courage and And it’s just the beginning of a story of a man who literally became world famous. David’s story is told in the Bible, in the Torah, and in the Koran, the holy books of three major religions.

David’s name is known by more people today than it was back then. But on the day that this battle took place, David wasn’t famous yet. In fact, he was anything but famous. David had been secretly anointed by the prophet Samuel to be the next king, but nobody knew that yet, apart from David’s immediate family.

Nobody knew yet that David would become the most famous king Israel ever had. Nobody knew yet that David would write some of the most moving worship songs ever written. And certainly nobody knew yet that one day there would be a Messiah who would be called the son of David. At this point in time, David was just the youngest son of the eight sons of Jesse of Bethlehem.

Bethlehem in Hebrew, Beit Lechem, which means the house of bread. This city would also one day be the birthplace of the bread of life, Jesus. But back then, Bethlehem was just a small town. And as in so many ancient cultures, in Jesse’s family, the oldest son was considered the most important.

The oldest son received the larger inheritance. It was his job to take care of the family after the patriarch passed and Being the youngest son like David was, it didn’t get a person very far in that culture. David’s three oldest brothers were at that time serving in the military. They were fighting the Philistines while David was back home in Bethlehem taking care of the sheep.

So David was outdoors most of the time, sleeping under the stars, getting to know each sheep by name, helping the ewe lambs give birth, protecting the sheep from predators, and most of the time it was pretty quiet. It gave David the chance to pray, to get to know God well. It also gave David the time to practice the harp and learn it well. And the fields where he sat around a thousand years later would be the same fields where shepherds would hear angels singing about the birth of the Messiah.

David never heard any angels singing in that spot, but he did experience God’s presence and God’s power, especially when he used his slingshot to kill bears and lions who attack the sheep. The life experiences of a shepherd helped to shape this young man into the kind of leader that would make a good king. Ironically, back in those days, shepherds were not all that welcome in polite society. Apart from the fact that David was the youngest son, which put him behind the eight bowl to start with, People had, back then, had mixed feelings about shepherds.

They admired shepherds for the hard work they did, but they also felt that shepherds were socially awkward because they spent so much time alone. And besides that, shepherds smelled very strongly of sheep, right? And considering that back then nobody used deodorants, that was a pretty bad smell. So on the other hand, in David’s case, David was already starting to build a reputation for himself. So.

.. Shortly before our story took place, David had been introduced to King Saul. And the reason was that Saul was a deeply troubled man.

And nobody knows the exact nature of Saul’s difficulty, but he was in trouble both mentally and emotionally. And that trouble started after Saul had disobeyed a command from God, which was given to him by the prophet Samuel, at which time God removed protection from Saul. Now, what exactly that meant and what exactly happened, we don’t know, but we don’t know. He may have been suffering from PTSD.

He may have had anxiety or bipolar episodes. We just don’t know exactly what was troubling Saul. All we know for sure is that these episodes of anxiety interfered with Saul’s ability to lead and be an effective king. So the king’s servants suggested to Saul that he bring in a gifted musician to lift his spirits.

And they found David, who played the harp very, very well. And so whenever David played, King Saul’s spirits were lifted and he was able to rule as a king. But the effect would only last for a little while. So David was a fairly frequent visitor to King Saul.

The rest of the time when David was not playing for King Saul, he was home watching the sheep. And I imagine he liked the job, I imagine he enjoyed having time to talk to God, practice his harp, giving names to all the little sheep, all that kind of stuff. And every now and then his father Jesse would say to David, Take some supplies to your brothers on the front lines. The armies back in those days were not fed by the government, they were fed by supplies from home.

And so David would load up breads and cheeses and whatever else was on hand, take them to his brothers, they said three of whom were in Saul’s service, and he also brought food to their commanding officer to share with the men. So the day that David met Goliath was one of those days when he was bringing food to his brothers. David was in the camp when Goliath the giant came out from the opposing Philistine army, and he said, among other things, ‘I defy the ranks of Israel. Give me a man that we might fight together.

The victor will make his nation victorious, and the other nation will surrender.’ And Goliath said other things too, things that made fun of Israel’s army and made fun of Israel’s God. And this had gone on for 40 days before David’s visit. Now, a little background on Goliath.

Okay, first, historians say, believe that Goliath was a true giant. How exactly how big he was is debated. But a giant in the scientific sense, as they say, a hereditary pituitary disorder causing familiar gigantism. In other words, it ran in his family.

It has been documented that Goliath also had a brother and three sons who were also giants. Now exactly, like I said, exactly how big is debated. Big enough is the important thing, right? And whenever Goliath made his challenge, Israel ran for the hills. No one had the courage to stand up to Goliath.

So David heard the men of Israel talking amongst themselves and they were saying, the king will give great riches to the man who kills this giant. He will give the man his daughter in marriage and he will make his family free in Israel. In other words, they would never have to pay taxes again. Can you imagine that? No taxes.

So David asked a few of the men if this was actually the case. Was this, it sounded too good to be true? And the men answered, yeah, this is the truth. This is what the king will do. And David’s older brother Eliab overheard these conversations, and he got ticked off at David.

He said to David, why are you here? Who’s taking care of those sheep of yours in the wilderness? You have evil in your heart, and you’re only here to watch the battle. And David’s reaction hints that this was not the first time the two of them had had words. David answered, What have I done now? It was only a question, he says. And having heard the whole story, David was mightily ticked off that this uncircumcised Philistine, as he called Goliath, had been getting away with ridiculing God’s people and God’s army.

So David goes to King Saul and says, let no one’s heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine. And Saul objects, how could a teenager like David, who has never held a weapon of war, take on this huge man who’s so well trained in battle? But David already had it worked out in his mind. He says to Saul, Your servant keeps sheep for his father.

And he tells him about killing lions and killing bears and rescuing sheep out of the mouths of these animals. David says, this uncircumcised Philistine shall be just like one of them. He has defied the armies of the living God. See, David’s offended because this Philistine is insulting the one true and living God, and David is not having it.

Now David, of course, is not your perfect hero. He does make mistakes, sometimes really big ones. But the one thing we can say about David is that he loves God. He loves God with everything he is and everything he has.

David’s whole heart is in God’s hands. And we can hear this in the Psalms that David wrote, The Lord is my shepherd. I shall want for nothing, he says. And God says that David is a man after God’s own heart.

And we see this in spades as David offers to defend God’s honor with his own life. But this makes Saul uneasy. And Saul tries to talk David out of it. And David reassures him.

And then Saul offers David his armor and David tries it on, but he can’t walk in it. So he takes it off. And David instead takes his shepherd’s staff and his sling, and it says, Five smooth stones from the wadi, a wadi being a river that is dry part of the year and wet part of the year. And so he would have found in that riverbed some nice smooth stones that would serve his purpose.

And armed only with these things, David approaches the giant. Now Goliath looked at David, all young and handsome, and Goliath hated him. And Goliath cursed David and gave him an earful of trash talk. But David was not intimidated, and he came back at Goliath with the ultimate trash talk, David said, And then all it took was just one stone guided by God’s hand.

That stone went straight to Goliath’s forehead. The giant fell face down and then David grabbed Goliath’s own sword and cut off his head. And that sword was David’s from that point on. When the Philistines saw this, they ran, and Israel chased them all the way to Gath, which was Goliath’s hometown, and the Israels plundered their camp.

David, meanwhile, picked up Goliath’s head, totally gross, and brought it to Jerusalem, and Abner, the commander of the army, brought David to King Saul, while David is still carrying his head around, and David kept Goliath’s armor. At the end of the story, the author of Samuel writes, When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan, Saul’s son, was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And thus begins one of the most famous friendships in history between Prince Jonathan and the shepherd David. David also married Saul’s daughter, Michael, became the son-in-law to the king.

And one would expect this story to end and they all lived happily ever after. But that’s not how things turned out. Saul’s troubled episodes would become worse, and eventually David would have to run for his life. Somewhere around 15 years later, Saul and Jonathan would die in battle.

But those are stories for another day. For today, we want to look at David and Goliath. Because this story has been called a rags-to-riches story, or a victory for the little guy’s story. I’m not sure I see it that way.

David was called and gifted by God from a very young age. And I think David’s story is an example of what God can do when a person is fully committed to God, a person who loves God with all of his or her heart. God can call anyone and does call anyone into God’s service. God can prepare anyone.

The most important thing is willingness to say yes and then to take it one step further to use the best that God has given us in service to God. So when we look at David, we have no idea what his IQ was. We have no idea what kind of education he had, if any. We do know that David, when he was young, spent a lot of time surrounded by God’s creation and singing praises to the Creator.

Bottom line, nothing God gives us is ever wasted. David’s time on those hillsides, alone with the sheep, playing the harp and singing songs to God was not wasted. David’s time when he wasn’t famous and was known only by the members of his family was not wasted. And like David, whenever we face a giant, whether that giant be sickness or family troubles or financial issues, whatever they might be, the same God who provided for David will provide for us.

So remember David’s question, Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? In the same way we can stand up with confidence in the name of God whenever God’s people are in trouble. We are not all called to be heroes on the battlefield. In fact, most of us aren’t called to be heroes. But we are called to be faithful.

and we are all called to be courageous, and we are all called to put everything we have on the line for God. And when imperfect people are faithful and courageous for God, good things happen, not just for us, but for all of God’s people. Amen.