Fairhaven UMC

United Methodist Church

2415 Saw Mill Run Blvd.
Pittsburgh, PA 15234
Sunday 9:30am Worship

    • Fairhaven Sermon 8-24-2025

      audio-thumbnail

      Fairhaven Sermon 8 24 2025
      0:00

      /1285.824

      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman explored the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, placing it within its historical and archaeological context. She explained the significance of Jericho’s location as a “tell” – a flattened hilltop offering strategic advantages – and discussed the varying interpretations of the biblical account presented by archaeologists. While acknowledging differing opinions on the historicity of the story, Rev. Bowman ultimately reaffirmed her belief in its truthfulness, emphasizing that the narrative serves as a powerful illustration of faith, obedience, and God’s judgment on idolatry.

      Bowman highlighted key takeaways from the story, including the importance of prioritizing God above all else, trusting in God’s plan even when it seems impossible, and embracing unity within the faith community. She drew a poignant parallel to the film “Joan of Arc” to convey the tragic, often violent reality of victory, ultimately underscoring God’s ability to preserve goodness even within corrupted environments, noting Rahab’s lineage to King David and ultimately, Jesus.

      Transcript

      We’re in place. Okay, well, good morning. This morning we’re continuing our sermon series on Bible stories we learned as children. And today’s story is Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, which you just heard.

      And like so many Old Testament stories, the events described in Joshua chapter 6 happened a long time ago. So we’re going to need to have some background on this. If I could have slide two, please. There we go.

      First off, I wanted to show where exactly we’re talking about. This is a modern day map showing…

      The lighter brown area, this and this, that’s Palestinian territory right now. And the dark orange area is Israel. This would have been sort of all differently owned, shall we say, or differently managed back in those days. But you can see Jerusalem is here, and Jericho is almost due east of it.

      And there’s Bethlehem, so it’s sort of northeast of Bethlehem. So that’s kind of where we are. And the people of Israel had approached this, coming up around this side and into Jericho. So that’s where we are.

      Also wanted to point out one other thing on here, and that’s Tel Aviv up here. That’s where the international airport is now. But I wanted to point out the name of that place, Tel Aviv. I know you all have heard of that.

      But the word tell is kind of like the word mountain, Mount Washington. Okay. A tell is not a mountain, but a tell is what I guess started out as a mountain, but somehow the top got flattened. And so a tell is a mountain with a flat top, which is.

      .. Really, really helpful, especially back in those days, how handy that would have been because people could live on top of the tell, they could build on there, and it would be really easy to defend. So Tel Aviv, great place to put an airport, isn’t it, on top of a flattened hill.

      Same thing, same basic idea. The biblical city of Jericho, slide three if you would please. There we go. I’ll talk about that in a moment.

      The biblical city of Jericho today is called Tel Es Sultan. So Jericho itself is also a Tel. You can see that this mountain is essentially flat on top. Now this particular picture, this is modern day photo of where this location is, but I notice this north is downwards, okay? This is basically upside down, but when I tried turning it right side up, all these crevices, you could hardly see them, which is kind of a weird little something that kind of fakes your eyes out.

      But anyway, these crevices are where archeological digs have been right along in here. So you can see that, okay, we have this, it’s essentially a flattened top, Mounted on all sides. We have a modern day road here, modern day roads all the way around. Of course, those roads were not there, I think, except for sort of a footpath on this side, on either side at the time.

      This Helltop was also back in biblical days, was well fed by streams and underground water. There’s all kinds of water around here, so they had no problems getting water up the hill. Very nice place to live, right? That’s biblical Jericho. And this also, this Jericho had two walls, not one, but two walls around it.

      And if I get the next slide up, there we go. This is right side up now, okay. And so we have an upper wall right here. And the inside of this, like I said, was essentially flat.

      That’s where the houses would be. That’s where the farmland would be. All of any cattle or sheep or whatever would all be living up inside this upper wall. And then the outer wall was there for protection.

      So the upper wall basically just as a way of setting aside people’s properties and the lower wall for protection. And then there’s this sort of this pinkish area in between, which would have been very steep and, People went in there, but not for very long and not for very often. What would you do with some steep, rocky material? So that’s where we were. You can see again, this is where the modern day road is now.

      And also this is where the reservoir is right now. Okay, that’s one of the water supplies that was there for the city. So that tells you a little bit about Jericho, just what it looked like, what it was like back then. So the walls were there to defend both the city and to protect the food and water supply.

      And up to this point, everything I have said is basically common knowledge and can be found in any history, encyclopedia, archaeological record, any of that kind of stuff. But as with many ancient stories, both biblical and otherwise, archaeological studies raise some questions and the archaeological digs at Jericho are no exception. So I wanted to share some of what modern day historians and archaeologists have to say. When we look at the historical record, it is clear that there have been people living here for a long time.

      In fact, there was more than one civilization here. According to Wikipedia, Jericho is one of the oldest cities in human history. There’s evidence of people having lived on this tell as far back as 10,000 BC. There were people there throughout the Neolithic era, which goes up to 6500 BC.

      They have found artifacts from the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. And because of all this history, different archaeologists find different things when they go digging. They find things from different eras, from different time periods, and from different cultures. And for this reason, some archaeologists think the story of Joshua is a myth, and others think the story is entirely possible.

      It depends on what you hit when you dig. And as one archeologist I read put it, when you start digging, whatever you want to believe is probably what you will find. So, which is true of so much of life, but at any rate, in this case, after having looked over the evidence myself, I don’t see any reason why the biblical story would not be true. There is no disproof in any of the arguments or in any of the history.

      So having said all of this, let’s turn now to the Bible and hear God’s word. We’ll keep that up for a little bit for reference purposes there. So back in Joshua chapter 2, before the reading that we heard today, As the people of Israel were traveling from Egypt in the south up into the Promised Land, Joshua sent spies ahead of the people and told them to look around and see what was on the road ahead. And Joshua said to them, Pay special attention to Jericho.

      When the spies came to Jericho, they entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab. They probably did this so that anybody who saw them coming in would think they were there for a good time and wouldn’t think twice about it. But this didn’t work. They were noticed.

      And Rahab was questioned by the authorities, and when they came to search her house, she hid the spies up on the roof under some flax that she was processing, and she told the authorities, Yes, they were here, but when they left the city, when the city gates closed for the night, if you’re fast enough, you might catch up to them. So they left in search of the spies. And then Rahab said to the spies, I know the Lord has given you this land. Everyone here is afraid of you.

      We’ve heard about how God dried up the Red Sea so that you could walk through it. The Lord your God really is God. So since I have dealt kindly with you, swear to me that you will deal kindly with me and my family. And the men answered her, Yes, our lives for yours.

      So Rahab helped them to escape, by letting them down through a window in her house because her house was built into the city wall. All right, the estimates for people who’ve dug around, they say that she probably lives somewhere around down here, which makes sense because you would have been able to kind of get out into the countryside very quickly from that spot. So, the men gave her a crimson rope to tie in her window to let the Israeli soldiers know where she was and told her to gather all of her family together in her house for safety. And a few days later, maybe a week later, Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the walls of Jericho.

      Joshua says, The city of Jericho was shut up inside and out. The people were afraid, and the gates and the walls were closed, locked, and guarded, and no one was going in or out. Meanwhile, God gave Joshua a game plan, one that relied on the faith of God’s people. For this plan to succeed, the whole nation of Israel had to trust God and do as God said to do.

      God said, Jericho is yours for the taking. Here’s what you need to do: get your warriors together, get your priests together, get the Ark of the Covenant which held the Ten Commandments and some of the manna from their journey, put the Ark in the middle of the priests, put the priests blowing trumpets around the Ark, put the soldiers around the priests, and have the people follow. and march around the city one time today and one time tomorrow. Not saying a word, not saying a word, blowing the trumpets, but not saying a word.

      And this would have taken, they estimate, it would have taken a little bit more than an hour to walk around the city. So that’s what they were doing once a day. Now the city of Jericho was not heavily populated. The scholars estimate there were between 1,500 to 2,000 people in this city.

      So imagine what the people at the top of the hill were thinking as they saw this army with trumpets marching around the city. and all the people following in silence. And they saw the Ark of the Covenant, which was obviously a religious thing. They didn’t know exactly what it was, but it had angels on the lid.

      They knew it was surrounded by priests. So they knew that both God and soldiers were marching around the city. And this went on every day for six days. Now, one of the things the Bible doesn’t tell us, and a lot of the history books lead this out too, is that Jericho sat, and still does sit by the way, on a fault line, kind of like California.

      And because of this, there were a lot of earthquakes in the area. Now, is it possible that all that marching and trumpet blowing shook some things loose? We don’t know. We can’t prove that one way or the other. But speaking as a musician, I know what sound can do.

      I expect it had an effect. And then on the seventh day, the army of Israel and the priests and the Ark marched around the city seven times. Seven being the number of completion or perfection. just like the world had been made in seven days.

      And God told the people after the seventh time, shout a mighty shout and then go straight up the hill and devote the entire city to God. Now, the phrase devote the city to God was a euphemism for kill everyone and burn the city to the ground. Leave nothing behind. This is a horrific order.

      And it’s an order that God rarely gave. And whenever the order was given, it was always and only about cities or regions where the people were so corrupted by idolatry, And it’s an order that God rarely gave. so taken by the worship of lies, so wrapped up in evil that they needed to be removed from the land. There was no other solution.

      Think about this. I mean, the only person that God chose to save out of all the people in Jericho was the city’s lady of the evening. So she was the best of them. Right? So we talk about day seven.

      Let me, before we talk about that, can we move to the next slide, please? Okay, this is a side view of what the walls would have looked like. Now this one’s a little bit inaccurate ’cause this should be flat on this side. This would have been the top of the tail. But that’s the upper wall.

      People would be living over here. This is the lower wall. When the walls fell, and the archaeological evidence bears this out, the upper one crumbled and sort of rolled down the hill. The lower one, however, fell, as it says in Scripture, flat.

      Right? In the whole piece. So the kind of attack that they were doing was what was called a siege. I’ve talked about a siege before and usually what they would do in a siege would be lock up all the city gates and basically starve the city to death, right? Okay? And while you’re doing a siege, you would also be building a siege ramp up into this if you were attacking people, building a siege ramp up into the city so that you could get into it at the end and get all the stuff. In this case, they didn’t have to build a siege ramp.

      The siege ramp built itself. flat down. So it literally says in the scriptures, they went straight up from where they were standing, straight up the hill. The walls were gone.

      So that’s how that kind of worked out. What happened here really was a miracle. When the army stopped marching, and the trumpets blew, and the people shouted, the upper wall collapsed and crumbled, the bottom wall fell straight down, creating that ramp, and they walked in. At God’s command, the army of Israel, captured all of the city’s treasures of gold, silver, bronze, and iron, which were put into the Lord’s treasury, and everyone else and everything else was destroyed, And except for Rahab and her family.

      Everything else was burned to the ground, which explains why archaeologists have found jars full of burnt grain uneaten. in the houses. Because during a real siege, they would have run out of food. But these people didn’t run out of food.

      There’s evidence of massive food everywhere that was burnt. Tells us exactly this is what happened. And on top of this, Joshua cursed the city and said that anyone who rebuilt it would do so at the cost of their children’s lives. He said, Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho.

      At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates. So this hill stood empty for hundreds of years. People knew the curse. They left it alone.

      But much later, during the reign of King Ahab, who was known for not listening to God, a man from Bethel rebuilt Jericho. His oldest son died during the laying of the foundation, and his youngest son died when they put up the city gates, just like Joshua had said. So that’s how the land on which Jericho once stood became part of the nation of Israel. And Jericho, what was left of it, was given to the tribe of Benjamin.

      And, There is a newer city named Jericho, which is built near the ruins, but it’s not actually up on the tell. That tell is still empty, as you saw that very first picture, or the picture of the archaeology, that’s what it looks like today. It’s just a dirt with a bunch of holes in it, that’s it. So the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho is a story of great faith, and it’s also tragic.

      It’s a story of a city that couldn’t be saved or wouldn’t be saved. Its people were so wicked that God had to wipe them out, and Israel obeyed God when he told them to do so. When I read stories like this, They remind me of a movie I saw as a kid. Some of you might remember this maybe.

      Remember Joan of Arc? The original one starring Angry Birdman. It goes back, it’s an old 1940s black and white movie. Some of you are going, I don’t think so. Anyway, great movie, it’s a wonderful movie.

      But Joan’s courage has always inspired me. But in this movie, when she leads the French to their first victory, as a leader of their army. The soldiers are celebrating, but Joan is found on the battlefield weeping. And one of the soldiers asks her why, and she answers, I thought victory would be beautiful, but it is an ugly, bloody thing.

      That’s how it was in Jericho. It’s a sad story. It’s a bloody thing. The city, having been destroyed, plundered, and burned to the ground, was not resettled.

      The ruins were left as a warning to passersby. It had been a place of great evil, and the evil had to end. The people of Israel, after this battle, moved on. They crossed the Jordan River and then into Jerusalem.

      Their future was just starting. And as for Rahab, God never forsakes his own. Rahab was faithful to God, and we remember her words. She said, The Lord your God really is God.

      And Rahab ended up marrying a man named Solomon, and they had a son named Boaz. And Boaz grew up and met and married Ruth, and they had a son named Obed, and Obed had a son named Jesse, and Jesse had a son named David. So Rahab was King David’s great-great-grandmother. God saved the very best of Jericho, and that best still lives on in David and in Jesus.

      So what can we take away from this story? I have six thoughts to share. Take them as you will. Number one, and most important, God will deal with idolatry. God takes idolatry very seriously.

      Commandment number one says, you shall have no other gods but me. You shall not worship anything else or anyone else. This may be, there may be important people in our lives, important things in our lives, but God wants to be number one. above them all.

      If there is anything or anyone that we love more than God, that’s an idol, and we need to take it down off its pedestal. Our first loyalty needs to be to Jesus, both for our sake and for the sake of others. Number two, just like the city of Jericho and its walls, God knows where the weak spots are. We may not know how to attack a problem, but God does.

      Who could have guessed that a week of marching and some trumpet blasts would bring down city walls? but God knew where the weak spots were, and God still does today. So as we bring our prayers and our concerns to God, allow God to get into the weak spots of life. Allow God to do some healing. I’m calling.

      Number three, trust God and do what God commands. God will never steer God’s people wrong, keep following even if the journey seems impossible, and especially when the journey seems impossible. Four, God’s timing is always right. If Joshua had attacked the city too soon or too late, the results might have been different.

      So trust God to know the right time. Number five, stay together. We are the family of God, and we need to move together like Israel did, in unity, not uniformity, but in unity. We are not all the same, and God designed us to be different.

      So our differences are healthy, but we need to move together as the family of God. And last, finally, the way that God dealt with the people of Jericho is a rare exception. We should never assume that God wants to wipe out certain people groups. Almost always, we should welcome strangers, share with others, and communicate what we believe.

      Violence should be avoided unless God specifically commands it. So that’s the story of Joshua and Jericho. May God bless it to our understanding and to our living. Amen.

    • Fairhaven Sermon 8-10-2025

      audio-thumbnail

      Fairhaven Sermon 8 10 2025
      0:00

      /1247.904

      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman began a new sermon series focusing on familiar Bible stories from childhood, examining their meaning for adults today. Starting with the story of creation in Genesis, she explored both chapters 1 and 2, highlighting the distinct perspectives each offers. Chapter 1 presents a grand, sweeping narrative of creation, while chapter 2 focuses on the details of life and relationships within the Garden of Eden.

      Rev. Bowman delved into the historical context, noting that Genesis was likely written down during Israel’s captivity in Babylon and drawing connections to the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia. She emphasized that while debates exist regarding interpretations alongside evolutionary theory, Genesis reveals God’s powerful word and the creation of humankind in God’s image. Ultimately, she encouraged listeners to envision the beauty and harmony of Eden as a model for restoring creation today, anticipating a future where God’s vision is fully realized.

      Transcript

      Well, we have something new and different starting this morning for now and through the rest of the summer and probably well into a little bit of September as well. Pastor Dylan and I have taken a request. Dylan was asked for a sermon series on the stories in the Bible that we all learned as children and what they mean for us now as adults. Stories like the Tower of Babel, David and Goliath, Noah’s Ark.

      And what can we learn from all these today? And Dylan and I both, this is a fantastic idea, so we’re going with it. So like I said, from now through September, and today I’m going to start at the very beginning with the story of creation. And so we’ll take a look at this. Now in the book of Genesis, there are actually two creation stories.

      There’s Genesis chapter 1 and there’s Genesis chapter 2. The first one in chapter one is very familiar. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and that chapter one goes on to describe how God created light and darkness and sky and sea and the moon and the sun and the earth and the stars. Genesis chapter 1 is like listening to a grand symphony or watching an epic movie.

      It’s a sweeping canvas of light and sound and life. And when we look at it in detail, it’s really too much for our minds to take in. It’s just gorgeous. But in chapter 2 of Genesis, there’s another telling of the same story, but in a little bit more down-to-earth.

      Chapter 2 focuses more on the living things, the creation of plants and animals and man and woman. And then in Chapter 3, we meet the serpent and we find out how evil came into the world. But that story is not for today. Today, I want to spend some time in the garden.

      in the Garden of Eden before the fall. I’d like to take us there as much as it is possible for we imperfect humans to go back to that perfection. So come with me on the journey. And actually before our bus takes off to this journey, there are a couple points of history to know before we get there.

      First off, the first book of Genesis, even though it’s the first book, well, the whole book of Genesis, even though it’s the first book of the Bible, was probably not the first book to be written down. Much of what we have in the first few books of the Bible was passed down verbally from generation to generation and then written down later. This does not in any way change its truthfulness. People down through the ages in all cultures memorized books in order to preserve the knowledge, and our contemporary society doesn’t develop those memory skills anymore because we don’t need to.

      We have books. But most of human history, people did not have books, so they memorized and they were good at it. So the actual writing down of Genesis chapter 1 is believed to have happened when Israel was in captivity in Babylon, about the same time as the events of the book of Esther, as you recall that story. The reason for this is because Babylon is the location where the human race began.

      In other words, Mesopotamia, y’all remember that from history class, right? Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, birthplace of human beings. In between the Tigris and the Euphrates, which is between the rivers, that’s what Mesopotamia means, Meso-Middle-Potamia rivers. So in between the rivers..

      . That’s where civilization started. And so while the Jewish people were in Mesopotamia, they wrote down the history of that region, which included God’s creation. Genesis chapter 2, on the other hand, is believed to have been written down much earlier, during the reign of King David, and this version of creation is more down to earth, like I said, focused on relationships.

      God creates the things of earth using the dirt of earth, which God then shapes into plants and trees and animals and finally a human being. So chapter 2 shows how we, as human beings, are physically related to the earth and everything else on earth. In fact, the name Adam is taken from the Hebrew word for dirt, Adamah. So in our time in the 21st century, a lot of people debate the truth of these first two chapters of the Bible and they say the theory of evolution is the reality and that evolution disproves what’s written in these two chapters.

      Personally, I believe that evolution is just one of many tools in God’s toolbox. And the concept of a day in Genesis chapter 1 is not a 24-hour day. It can’t be because the sun and moon weren’t created until day three. So Genesis chapter 1 is better understood like poetry rather than history.

      The important thing in chapter 1 is that when God spoke, things happened. Where there once was nothing, now there was something. In fact, there was a lot of something. And the point is that God’s Word is powerful.

      God’s Word makes things happen. And God’s Word is enough to change the world and enough to change our lives. And so the one last thing that’s important about Genesis 1 is that God made humankind in our image, as God says. And the word our implies that there’s more than one personality in the Godhead.

      This is our first introduction to what we will come to know as the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. People were created to be like God. Not to be God, but to be like God in that we also can create and build and enjoy relationships and work and rest and communicate. So many of the things that God does, we do.

      So that’s the foundational background that we need before taking off on this journey. Back to the beginning. And I should also mention that most of the time when pastors preach on creation, they preach chapter 1 because it is so beautiful. Okay.

      But today, chapter 2, because there’s a lot of good things going on here that are often missed because chapter 1 is so nice. All right, so Genesis chapter 2 starts on the seventh day and then recaps what’s happened so far. So on the seventh day, God rested. And we’ve talked about the Sabbath before and how important that is, so I won’t recap that now.

      At this point in time, God has created the earth and the heavens and the stars and the moon and the sun and all the water on the earth and the dry land and the earth. But at the beginning of Genesis chapter 2, the living things haven’t been fully defined yet. So the creation story sort of starts over again with a different focus, this time on life. So imagine the earth when it was brand new.

      Huge ball of dirt with oceans and now in this chapter, rivers to water the earth. Okay, and by the way, I should mention when you read things in chapter 2, they’re not And now in this chapter, rivers to water the earth. necessarily in chronological order. So I’m going to try to put them in chronological order today so those of you who are following in scriptures, this won’t be in order.

      All right, so first God created Eden, which is a large garden, to be home for the animals and for the people that God’s about to create. God makes rivers to water the garden, the four rivers which God gives names to. Pishon and Gihan, we don’t know exactly where those two are anymore. In spite of the descriptions that are given in chapter 2, people have not been able to identify them.

      But the last two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the cradle of civilization, we know where that is. And so they are there to this day in the country of Iran. That’s where human history started. God then created out of the dirt grass and trees and plants, some of the plants that produce food.

      It’s interesting that God creates all these things out of the dirt. And when we look at what plants are and what animals are, what people are made of, we’re all made of the same stuff. God designed this creation so that everything living is intimately connected to the planet that we came from. God then creates a man and puts him in the garden.

      And God tells the man that his assignment is to till and keep the garden. In other words, take care of the plants. And God is there to help as the man is figuring out how to do this. Do these plants need water? Amen.

      Do they need more sunlight? Do they need to be moved? Do they need to be trimmed so that they can grow back some more? God teaches the man all these things about how to take care of creation. And the man enjoys doing all these things. Imagine for a moment what life would be like if we had never lost that innocence and that connection with the earth. We’d spend our days basically being gardeners and also caring for animals, but that’s still to come yet.

      This is not the same thing as farming. There is no need in those days for barns. There is no need to bring in a harvest. The garden produced fruits and vegetables and different kinds of grains all year round.

      So the man would just go out and pick what he needed and then take care of the rest, take care of the plants. So the plants depended on the man for their survival, and the man depended on the plants for his survival. And as we extend this into human history, the survival of the human race has always depended on taking care of the land and the water, and then the animals when they came along. But again, it didn’t feel like work back then.

      any more than having a backyard garden feels like work today. It’s like something we’re created to do. And as I’ve often said, when we discover and do what God designed us to do, life is sweet. Life is good.

      So this assignment to the first man has never been taken away. Taking care of creation is still our job today, given to us by God and inspired by God. And in that very first garden, God gave the man just one word of warning. He said, Don’t eat any of the fruit of the tree for the knowledge of good and evil.

      Anything else in the garden you can eat, just not from that tree. And for a long time, nobody did. For a long time, creation was perfect. And then God said, Well, it’s not good for this man to be alone.

      And so God knows, because God is never alone. God has Father, Son, Holy Spirit, so God is never alone. God knows it’s not good for us to be alone. So God created us to join in this life of love and be part of it.

      So God starts creating animals. And as God creates each animal, he brings it to Adam, and Adam gives the animal a name: monkey, hippopotamus, horse, sheep, dog, cat. I mean, can you imagine Adam’s delight with each new animal, looking at it for the first time? Aardvark! Alligator, looking into the eyes of another living being, petting its fur or its scales or its feathers, whatever it has, depending on what kind of animal it was. How amazing to get to know each animal.

      And think about the relationships we have with animals today. Many of us here have pets or have had pets, and we also give names to our animals. In fact, it’s the first thing we do when we get an animal is give it a name. So we’re still doing Adam’s work even today.

      And when we do this, we are doing what God created us to do. And the love between a person and their animal is one of the deepest and purest loves that life has to offer. And that’s why it hurts so much when we lose them, because they don’t live as long as we do. So I wanted to say a few words of comfort to those of us who’ve lost beloved animals.

      First off, it is not crazy and it is not weird to love an animal this much. That’s how God created things to be. And second, for whatever it’s worth, the voices of the experts, my theology professors at Oxford, the author C.S.

      Lewis, and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, all agree that we will see our animals again. Animals are part of God’s kingdom. And I don’t know about you, but I find that tremendously comforting. And given that I’ve had cats all my life, since like the age of five, I’m going to be covered in cats in the next life.

      Heaven indeed. So three things that we’ve learned so far about creation of the animals. Each relationship with each animal is different. Something that human beings learn as we get to know them.

      Secondly, God is relational, which is why God gives us so many relationships. God enriches our lives with other living beings. And third, the order that living beings are created in does not imply hierarchy. In other words, if a hippopotamus was created before a lion, and I don’t know that it was, I’m just saying if, That does not mean that the hippo is better than the lion because it was made first.

      Remember that if you ever get into an argument with a fundamentalist. Anyway, moving on, after Adam has met all the animals and has given them names and learned how to care for each one, he’s still alone in a very profound way because there’s only one of him. So God puts Adam into a deep sleep, takes a rib and some flesh, closes up the wound and heals it, and makes a woman out of Adam’s flesh. Now remember, Adam and all the animals are created out of the earth, out of dirt.

      But woman is made out of man. And God brings the woman to the man, and Adam is delighted. He says, This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I name her woman because she was taken from man.

      In Hebrew, by the way, the names are ish and ishah, very, very similar. And both Ish and Isha are naked and not ashamed. Why should they be? They don’t know they’re naked. They’ve never seen clothes.

      Shame didn’t exist yet because sin hadn’t been brought into the world yet. Now chapter 3 of Genesis is where Adam and Eve get mixed up with the snake, and chapter 3 is where death enters the world, both through the sin and through the killing of animals to make clothing for the naked people. The fact that we kill animals for food, for clothing, is the result of sin. Amen.

      It is not meant to be that way from the beginning. Now having said that, I don’t think that this means we should all be vegetarians. Vegetarian diet is very healthy, okay? But I don’t think it’s a sin to eat meat, so long as the animals are not mistreated while they’re alive. And the Apostle Paul seems to agree with that in the New Testament.

      He cautions people against eating meat that have been sacrificed to idols. But Paul says nothing about avoiding meat altogether. Having said that, I’m going to leave Genesis chapter 3 for another day. Back to Genesis chapter 2.

      So today I wanted to focus on and imagine the Garden of Eden. What it might have looked like, what it might have smelled like. all fresh and new with dewdrops on it, berries and peaches and all kinds of fruit for eating, a place where a lion or a cheetah might have strolled up to you and purring and looking for petting, where a monkey might have swooped down out of the tree and taken a bite of your peach, Imagine strolling through this place in the twilight, with the sun going down in a gentle breeze, no deadlines to meet, no doctors to see, no office to work in. And the work that we do there, caring for the plants and caring for the animals, is a pleasure and a joy.

      We sleep when we’re tired, wake up when we’re not. There’s a perfect partnership between the man and the woman, and there’s no laundry to do. So God designed life to be full of beauty and mystery and discovery and cool relationships with each other, with animals, and with all of creation. The Bible says Adam and Eve used to walk with God in the garden in the cool of the evening.

      And this inspired a song we’re going to sing in a moment called In the Garden. This is how life was meant to be. And while we don’t have the power to recreate that perfect garden, anything we do in this life to help restore that beauty and that harmony is doing God’s work. And when Jesus returns, all of this will be restored.

      not destroyed, not replaced, but put back the way it was meant to be. God did not create a world without knowing how to fix it when things went wrong. And things have gone wrong, but God has the last word. So we can bring our troubles and our concerns to God and give thanks to God.

      And while we wait for God to make that final move, our calling is to get the work started. Where we see suffering, ease the pain. Where we see hunger, bring food. Where we see someone sick, help bring healing.

      Where we meet a stranger, offer friendship. At the end of the book of Revelation, after all the battles are fought and all the enemies are defeated, the Apostle John describes our new home. I saw no temple in the city, for the temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light and the lamp is the lamb, and the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.

      I saw no temple in the city, And the angel showed me a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. So we begin in a garden and we end in a garden. A famous Christian author said recently that the words, I believe in God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, is the foundation of everything.

      God calls us to be a part of His new creation, and in Revelation, God brings us back to where it all started and heals all the pain and everything that’s gone wrong. So one day this beautiful creation will be restored. And until then, we keep our eyes on Jesus and honor God’s creation. Amen.

    • Fairhaven Sermon 8-3-2025

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      Fairhaven Sermon 8 3 2023
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      /1247.472

      Summary

      In this week’s service, Pastor Michael Airgood delivered a deeply moving and thought-provoking sermon centered on the concepts of community, forgiveness, and embracing the complexities of human relationships. Drawing heavily from the biblical story of Hosea and Gomer, the sermon explored themes of flawed humanity, unexpected grace, and the courage to extend compassion even when facing challenging circumstances. Airgood emphasized the importance of seeing beyond surface judgments and embracing the messy, imperfect nature of both individuals and communities, advocating for a spirit of neighborliness and radical acceptance – a concept particularly relevant to Fairhaven’s ethos.

      The sermon also addressed the unique cultural nuances of Pittsburgh and its local dialect, specifically the term “nebby,” highlighting its surprising embrace of interconnectedness and genuine concern for one another. Pastor Airgood used this local term to illustrate the need for deliberate cultivation of relationships and understanding, encouraging the congregation to move beyond performative acts of kindness and towards authentic expressions of care and support for all members of the community, even those carrying burdens of the past.

      Transcript

      In Pittsburgh, we use a word that they don’t use anywhere else. We have a few of them, not all that I should say from a pulpit. One of those words is nebby. Do you use nebby? Yeah.

      I have lived in the Pittsburgh area longer than a decade, and I forget to say nosy when I’m outside of Pittsburgh, and I still use nebby. In fact, I think nebby is a much better word than nosy. Nosy is very confusing for non-native English speakers. I think we should hold a campaign to push for the word nebby to be used nationwide to replace the word nosy.

      More than that, we don’t just say nebby, we say we’re being neighborly. That’s part of the problem. We need to pray more specifically. We really want the details.

      We’d like to spill the tea. The Armenian expression is let’s sit crooked and talk straight. We like to know what is going on in our communities and to be well-informed citizens. I moved from the suburbs to the city of Clairton because I wanted to live somewhere where I know my neighbors.

      And this morning, and I know my neighbors, and this morning, I’m going to be a little If I did not know who the people were, I would have thought they were kidnapping my neighbor. But I knew the people. I knew them from the community. I knew they weren’t.

      But they called her by the wrong name. Unsure, a nickname going all the way back to childhood. They were yelling at her to get going, to hurry, to come on. I think they were going on vacation together.

      But if I didn’t know my neighbors and I didn’t know the people in my community, I might have been on the phone with 911 just to have someone check in on what is going on in my neighborhood. Our district superintendent over the United Methodist churches in Ukraine had always lived in cities. His wife is also a United Methodist pastor as well as a doctor and a professor in Syria. English language universities for African and Indian students studying to become doctors in Ukraine.

      They had always lived in big cities, had always enjoyed the life of city, and when this war ramped up a few years ago, they looked at their young daughters and realized they had to go to the mountains where their girls would be safe. Julia said that living in a small town, when you leave your house, not only do your neighbors know that you’ve left your house, they know what you had in your hands. We all do what we must do to be in the ministries that God calls us to. You know, often pastors are asked, What is your favorite book of the Bible? And I read of a colleague once who has asked this in a children’s moment, and so I know that I should not answer with my real answer.

      Because like that colleague, my favorite book of the Bible is Hosea. And if you’ve read Hosea, you’re nodding up and down. It is not a story for a children’s sermon. And if you’re not nodding up and down, wow, do I have a story for you today.

      Usually when I’m asked what my favorite story book of the Bible is, I answer Mark or maybe 1 John, but really my favorite book, my favorite story of the Bible is Hosea, right? Do you all remember the show Mama’s Family? We’re in the right category, right? There’s an episode of Mama’s Family where she takes a night course or community college and they’re reading the Scarlet Letter. And in class, everyone else has only read the Cliff Notes. Today we would say the Wikipedia article. But she actually had read the book.

      And she sits there looking around at everyone else in the room, wondering what is wrong with them, that they are not indignant for this woman, that they truly believe she should be wearing this scarlet A on her chest. Mama doesn’t understand why people aren’t leaping to her defense. And when I talk about Hosea in church circles, and I see that people aren’t nodding along, I say we need to get our Bibles out and start reading them together. Hosea marries a woman who is unfaithful.

      Dr. Wilda Gaffney, who I think is the most brilliant living scholar of languages of the Bible, asks that when we talk about this, that we use words like the ones found in the Bible, like the ones that people really use, because we tend to use a lot of euphemisms for this. But it’s interesting, we have described Hosea’s wife, Gomer, using a lot of words that talk about who she was. We have called her a harlot or a whore.

      We have called her a sex worker or a prostitute. But the scripture doesn’t define Hosea in this way, doesn’t define Gomer in this way. You see, Hosea declares as a prophet that he and his family and the life that he is living is a sermon illustration for the whole world to see. God calls Hosea to marry Hosea.

      A woman with a reputation. And he does. And although our scripture never, ever, ever says that she is unfaithful to Hosea after they are married, there is no indication that she continues in anything other than faithfulness. History has continued to label Gomer with words like whore and harlot.

      Hosea names his children with Gomer, bold and prophetic names, And. comparing the faithlessness, the adulterousness of his relationship, the scandal of marrying a woman with a reputation, to God choosing to align God’s self with people who are so ridiculously unfaithful. Even those of us who’d like to be really good often end up doing really crummy things sometimes. We cannot get it together, and yet God chooses to be faithful to us.

      Yes. If I was serving in a congregation, I’d be announcing today that I’m going to be serving a new congregation. A year ago, I took time off from serving as a local pastor. I traveled to Ukraine and then I spent the rest of the year fundraising for Ukraine.

      But I have been in the candidacy process for a federated church, the Community of Reconciliation in Oakland. It’s not only United Methodists, but Presbyterian Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ. And so they’re following all of those different processes. And it has taken many, many months, but I will have a call and a vote and all of that.

      And so I will be returning to being a pastor today. And in conversations with the committee searching for a new pastor, I said something that felt weird when it left my mouth and I regretted it immediately. But I said that sometimes being a pastor feels like you are in performance art. And boy, doesn’t that feel awful coming out.

      Even now, it feels terrible. But you know, it’s better to say it that way than to say, I feel like a fish in a fishbowl. And I feel so bad for Dylan with the parsonage right next to the church just tucked away. Really, a fishbowl, folks must know exactly where their pastor is and when.

      You know, Jesus tells parables. He tells these stories about people, and we think that the way that Jesus told these parables was unique. It was a new invention, a new construction of unnamed people doing these things. People are acting in ways that people do not act.

      A farmer is throwing seeds not just on her field, but on the sidewalks and on the roads and in the weed patches. Seeds are expensive. Farmers throw their seeds on the field. Every time Jesus tells a parable, there’s something that doesn’t quite line up for the people who are hearing it.

      Why is he tearing down his barns to build bigger barns? Why not build more barns? Why not sell it and build something you really want? As soon as you hear this story, you start to pull on threads. Why did this happen? Dr. Wilda Gaffney invites us to use our sanctified imagination to interrogate the stories of the Bible with the knowledge that people act the way that people do. You know how people act if we start to look at the story of Hosea and pull on those threads.

      We begin to see a bold and courageous prophet. We see more of God in Gomer than in Hosea, to use the words of Dr. Gaffney’s sermon. We see a woman who is faithful, who has a past that her community will not forget or forgive, who has a husband who speaks about her poorly.

      You know, we always talk about the best stories that a pastor can share about their kids, right? But when you talk to pastors, kids, you understand there’s a price to pay. If you tell too many of those stories, those sermon illustrations, and here we have this entire book where the man says, my whole life, my children’s lives, it is a sermon illustration of God’s faithfulness, even though we are not faithful. I wonder if Hosea was always faithful. It doesn’t seem that way.

      He is a prophet respected not only by Jewish people and Christians, but also by Muslims, although not mentioned in the Quran, held up as a prophet of God. But if we use our sanctified imagination, we begin to wonder who this man was and how did he make the choices he made. Missionary life is often difficult. learning the rules and the regulations of everyday life.

      How do people do the things that people do day in and day out? You have to act in a way that is normal for those around you. The missionaries that I followed, in their journey, practice they cleaned on Sundays because it was the day they had off in Ukrainian culture to clean on Sunday was the biggest sin and they’d be out with their vacuum cleaners moving about and their neighbors would think these people hate Jesus they’re cleaning on the Lord’s day One time I went with a friend to her family’s for the Christmas celebration and I’d never done it. And all of a sudden we were all on our knees around the table praying. And so I’m trying quickly to get on my knees and then we’re all standing up and we’re doing a toast with a shot of vodka that Jesus is born.

      And you’re just following along trying to keep up. There are all these rules. Every culture has rules and norms, and Jesus breaks all of these norms. In the same way that Hosea does, Jesus’ life is pushing back against the culture of his day, is making a bold and prophetic statement to all who are interacting with him.

      Dr. Amy Jo Levine, a Jewish woman who studies people, the world of the New Testament era through the lens of the Gospels, Amen. finds it very interesting that in a culture that is absolutely obsessed with marriage, because marriage is a contract, it’s a business deal, you are uniting empires, you are preserving wealth and wealth. heritage and history and all of these things.

      Marriage is such an integral part of life. Everything is about marriage. And yet in the Gospels, after the birth story, with Jesus’ parents and John the Baptist’s parents, once Jesus grows up into adulthood, There is only one or possibly two married couples in the entirety of the Gospels after the birth story. Everyone is single or widowed or it’s unknown or maybe someone might be married but their spouse lives somewhere else and you hear of them later.

      In a world, in a culture that is absolutely obsessed with marriage, there’s, Jesus calls us to a bigger family, to sharing generously with all of those around us, calling us to a beloved community that sees beyond the empires that we can build by combining wealth through contracts and marriage and says, but what if we just cared for one another? Gathering thousands at the lakeside, Jesus blessed some small loaves and fish and spread them out, and thousands were fed with baskets and baskets full left over. We often joke about how the Methodists understand the non-miraculous miracles. Growing up, I was always taught that Jesus did this and it all multiplied because this is the magic. But when you start to pull on these threads, which of these families left their home with nothing? But everyone thought, Well, if I pull out my little bit, people are going to steal from me, and I won’t have enough.

      But as soon as people began to share, they understood that they had more than enough for everyone. Jesus tells a parable of barns and a harvest that is greater than what can be stored. And of a man who understands that he can build even bigger barns, that barns can get so big they can hold all the grain the world has ever seen, numbers we’ve never seen of grain. That we can build bigger and bigger empires for ourselves.

      But that this life is but a day. It comes and it goes. What are we doing this all for? Jesus tells these parables about wealth, What are we doing this all for? wanting us to pull on these threads to see if we are prioritizing our lives in the way that Jesus would want us to. Are we focused on our neighbors having all that they need to survive? Or are we focused on getting the next big thing that we would like? Jesus calls us to, to move away from the structures that hold us captive and to expand our understanding.

      Who is our neighbor? Is it the person on our left and on our right and across the street and maybe behind? Or is it anyone we don’t like? Who should we forgive? Is it those who have given us the best apology that meets all the criteria we are looking for, or is it everyone? Or else we risk our own forgiveness. Jesus calls us to expand our understanding of who is my mother, who is my father, who is my sibling, my aunt, my uncle, my cousin, who is my family. It is as big as this room can, as many people as this room can fit and then some. And when our family is missing, we go and find them.

      that when our family is sick, we go and visit them, that when our family is lonely, we make sure that they are not always eating alone, that when our family doesn’t have enough, we make sure that they do. I have blue hair and a yellow beard. I don’t know if you noticed that. Because being a pastor is part performance art, and I still hate how that sounds, But we raised money for Ukraine at Vacation Bible School, and I challenged my kids if they raised so much money that I would dye my hair, and of course they did, and it’s four to six weeks, and two to four weeks yet.

      Family. When I talk about Ukraine, very often people ask me if my heritage is Ukrainian, and it is not. I don’t have one drop of Ukrainian blood, but family is bigger than blood. It’s kind of the message of our gospel, that we cannot turn our back on the other, on the stranger, on someone in prison, on someone who is hungry or thirsty or naked, because that is our family.

      I’m not. And we would never let our family go naked or hungry or thirsty if we could do something about it. And so we share this good news that as the people of Jesus, we are known for the ways that we step up and make sure that those around us have enough, that spirits and bellies are fed in equal measure, that our prayers and our gifts are held with the same regard. that our spirits, our souls, and our bodies are many and one, three just as God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are many and one.

      God calls us to a family that is bigger than our imagination, to neighbors that extend beyond our street, our state, our nation, to friends that don’t look like us or speak like us or act like us. But love in the same ways that we love, act in the ways that we love, get it wrong like we do, and try our best to be faithful to the God who loves us even when we are not. May we grow in our faith that we may learn to love one another as God loves us. May it be so.

      Amen.

    • Fairhaven Sermon 7-20-2025

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      Fairhaven Sermon 7 20 2025
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      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson challenged the congregation to move beyond a comfortable understanding of faith and confront the harsh realities of injustice. Drawing on the prophet Amos, Parson emphasized that God’s ruling attribute is love, but a love intertwined with a demand for righteousness and justice. He critiqued the tendency to seek comfort in church, contrasting it with Amos’s message of impending judgment for Israel’s mistreatment of the poor and vulnerable, a warning applicable to contemporary society as well. Parson urged listeners to consider whether they desire to “flee from the wrath to come,” a question posed by Amos and echoed in Wesley’s early Methodist societies, rather than settling for a superficial faith.

      Parson’s sermon highlighted the importance of aligning oneself with Jesus as a “plumb line,” revealing areas where individuals and society fall short. He underscored the prophetic call to action, urging listeners to defy injustice and embrace a faith rooted in love and righteousness. Drawing on Colossians, he encouraged unwavering faith and action, reminding the congregation that true Christian living requires confronting difficult truths and actively working towards a more just world, rather than seeking solace in complacency.

      Transcript

      I’ve never really considered myself to be a fire and brimstone preacher. And my preference generally is to stick close to the theological understanding of John Wesley, no surprise there. And Wesley insisted that God’s ruling attribute is love. That above all things, when it gets down to it, the one thing that will describe what God does, what God is, is love.

      And that differs from other groups of Christians. It’s not sovereignty or power, that’s what Calvinists would usually say. It’s not righteousness or justice like Lutherans might suggest. It’s love.

      Over all things, God is about love. However, I feel like I’m kind of cracking my evangelical knuckles here. I would suggest that preachers, myself included, can be a little bit too soft sometimes. We can be a little tepid in our focus on love, in confronting the powers and the principalities of a world that really is addicted to sin and to death, right? from our governing institutions all the way down to the way that we conduct our lives as individuals.

      And I recognize that we all come to church for different reasons, and those reasons vary even from week to week. But one of those key drivers is often comfort. We want to hear a word that will soothe our weary souls. We want to sing some songs that will take us back to simpler times.

      That’s why I’m wedging this in with a hymn singe. We want to have some coffee and donuts. And then we want to go home and relax. Church is this hour where you don’t have to think about the news.

      You don’t have to think about trouble with your parents or your kids or grandkids. You don’t have to think about the stack of bills on the kitchen counter. And that’s totally valid from time to time. Your church, your faith, your preacher are doing you a terrible disservice if your overwhelmingly However.

      .. predominant experience of the Christian faith is one of comfort. The Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor said that people think that faith is this warm electric blanket, but in reality it is the cross.

      And I really have to remind myself of this sometimes, and Amos really is dragging us into it today. Right? The same John Wesley who staked his entire ministry on God being love above all other things, and he was correct about that, also had one single piercing question for anyone that sought to join one of his class meetings or societies that comprised the early Methodist movement. And that question was simply..

      . Anybody? Okay, what? No. That’s what he asked at the meetings. But before you’re even allowed in, do you desire to flee from the wrath to come? A little harsher than we usually imagine, Wesley.

      A little bit sharper than your average Methodist sermon these days. But it’s a crucial question because the Lord our God is making all things new. The old is passing away. The new has come.

      And we say this together almost every Sunday. Jesus Christ shall come again to judge the quick and the dead, the living and the dead. So our goal should never be to just, you know, slip into heaven under the wire. That’s not what this is for.

      Our goal is total righteousness, freedom, reconciliation in Christ. It’s to be made perfect through God working in us. We can be sure that one day, maybe in this life, maybe in the ages to come, the wicked and the righteous will both receive from God what is rightly theirs. And there are some who will indeed receive the wrath of God, and I would like to be as far away from that as possible.

      I’d like us all instead to be on the ark that is Jesus when the storms roll in. And so we turn to the prophet Amos today, who is not at all shy in talking about God’s wrath, God’s justice. Now, we get a little bit of this information in the passage itself, but here’s some background as we jump in. Because we’re jumping into Amos 7 here.

      Amos is basically a farmer. He’s not a priest or a prophet by trade. He’s a shepherd, to be specific. He’s a grower of sycamore trees, of sycamore figs.

      And he comes from the village of Tekoa in Judah. And Judah is the southern portion of what was formerly, under David and his descendants, one big united kingdom of Israel. They split up. But the Lord has given Amos a vision, and he has sent him out as a prophet, not to his own country, but to the northern kingdom, which is still called Israel at this time.

      He’s from Judah, but he’s preaching in Israel. And the time period here, by the way, just to give you a sense, is a couple decades. It’s right around the same time as Isaiah, but a couple decades beforehand. And Amos’ focus is very similar to Isaiah’s.

      He’s warning the people of Israel that because of their injustice, because of their turning away from God, and particularly the way they treat the poor and the vulnerable, Okay? They’re going to be conquered. They’re going to be scattered by Assyria, this rising superpower to their northeast. The Assyrian threat is building, they don’t see it. Amos is warning them that they’re going to be taken by the sword because of the way they’re behaving.

      And basically what Amos is warning Israel about is a precursor, this kind of preview of what’s going to happen to Judah a few decades later when they’re conquered by Babylon. And then we see the Babylonian captivity, the exile, all that stuff as Israel is basically destroyed. Amos is promising in his prophecies nothing less than the final end of Israel as an independent monarchy. And that was it.

      This was it. It never happened again. This is apocalyptic. And he’s trying to get them to understand that there is a real reckoning coming.

      So what we hear from Amos is a lot that should grab our attention. But there’s one thing in particular that strikes me as eternally true. And that is this. When someone speaking on behalf of the Lord asks the people if they desire to flee from the wrath to come, and when he even offers them a chance to do so, an off-ramp, Bye.

      their response is not, great, let’s go, or, oh no, that’s terrible. It’s, shut up and go away. And that really is the crux of this story’s exchange between Amos and Amaziah, who’s the high priest of Bethel. God has given Amos this really stark vision of a plumb line.

      You all know what a plumb line is. If you’ve never used one, it’s literally just a weight on a string. And it’s a tool that’s used to measure the straightness, the uprightness of a wall. You hold it against the wall and see if it’s square.

      And God says that one of those has been placed in the midst of Israel as if to measure their uprightness. And the implication is they’re not straight. They’re not standing upright. They’re not the way they’re supposed to be.

      They have been found wanting. And now God tells Amos he will never again forgive and restore Israel. Judgment will come in the form of the Assyrian sword. So Amos has been going around preaching this in Bethel.

      That’s the religious capital of the northern kingdom. It’s like their Jerusalem. And Amaziah reports this to King Jeroboam. He’s like, something is going on here.

      And he reports that Amos is engaging in this sedition, undermining the king, this treason, speaking against the kingdom of Israel like this in public. He’s getting people really upset. And they’re trying to put a lid on this because presumably it’s riling people up a bit. And Amaziah goes and confronts Amos and says, you who see things, what a way to talk about a prophet, right? You who see things, go.

      Run away to the land of Judah, eat your bread there and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel. For this is the king’s holy place and his royal house. That is, shut up and go away. Amen.

      You’re really ruining the vibes here, Amos. And he really is. Because the thing is, King Jeroboam II, who is the king at this time, is presiding over the absolute peak of Israelite power and prosperity. This is a golden age.

      Israel is doing extremely well, as good as it will ever, ever, ever do. Even today, archaeologists looking back at this time period, confirm that during Jeroboam’s reign, Israel is the most densely populated country in the region. It’s extremely wealthy. It’s become wealthy by trading luxury goods like wine, olive oil, fine horses, and ironically mostly with the Assyrian Empire that’s soon going to wipe them out.

      But things are really, really good when Amos is prophesying. So there’s a little bit of a dissonance here. You can understand where Amaziah is coming from. What are you talking about? We’re doing fine, actually.

      The stock market is in excellent shape. The unemployment rate is very, very low. The military is strong as it’s ever been. Leave us alone.

      And I suspect there’s another layer under this too, an implication that he’s making. Leave us alone. If things are booming the way that they are, God must be blessing us. God is giving this to us and you are wrong.

      So see, there’s often this contradiction present whenever we’re in good times. Prosperity and power are accompanied by fear, not too far below the surface, that all of this could come crashing down. Who knows how much damage the shepherd could do if he just keeps talking in Bethel. It isn’t all that hard to drum up a rebellion, a market crash.

      They were having assassination attempts right and left on Israelite kings at this time. It’s not that hard to make that happen. So Amaziah’s confrontation of Amos has what I read as a very noticeable tinge of frantic desperation in it. I hear some desperation.

      Desperation. But in his conversation with King Jeroboam, the priest Amaziah expresses this fear of Amos’ words in a different way. And he says it like this. The land isn’t able to cope with everything that he is saying.

      Isn’t that such an interesting way to put it? He doesn’t say that Amos is lying, you’ll notice. What he is saying instead is that this very land, the people, the place, the fabric of the kingdom of Israel cannot handle what Amos is saying. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, and so it has to be shut down. It doesn’t matter if he’s right.

      It doesn’t matter if he’s wrong. We can’t handle hearing it. It’s not worth dealing with. It’s too much trouble.

      I’m reminded of a satirical movie that came out about five years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio. Don’t Look Up on Netflix. Anybody seen it? But the president’s, in that movie, there’s a world-ending comet that looms ever closer in the sky. You know, people can see it moving towards Earth, this big rock hanging over them in the sky.

      And everybody can see it. And the president’s response to the people who are worried about it is, don’t look up. That is their advertising campaign. Don’t worry about it.

      Don’t look up. Keep on running over the cliff’s edge, hanging in the air like Wile E. Coyote, praying that gravity never kicks in. Don’t look at it.

      And that’s a deeply sad place for a priest to be. He ought to know better. Amaziah is desperately trying to preserve the status quo. He is completely cynical.

      He represents a religion that has become so flimsy that he can’t imagine that anyone genuinely speaks the word of God. And further, he refers to Bethel, a word that literally means house of God in Hebrew, Bethel, house of God. He refers to Bethel as the king’s holy place and royal house, not God’s, the king’s house. The temple in Amaziah’s eyes is not primarily God’s, but exists in the service of the king.

      It’s a really blasphemous thing to say. It’s offensive to God for any ruler to think they have a say over what comes out of the pulpit, so to speak. Because this is God’s temple. It’s not the king’s.

      It’s not the emperor. It’s not the president’s temple. And so when Amos defends himself against Amaziah’s allegations by saying he’s not a prophet or a prophet’s son, he’s talking about what had become a lucrative career at the time. There were people who were vocational prophets.

      They were court prophets. They were hired by the king to offer messages from God to tell them what to do. And Amos isn’t a pro here. He’s not a professional prophet who does this for the money or the recognition.

      This isn’t his job. It’s his calling. He didn’t want to go from Judah to Israel to prophesy. He was a shepherd.

      He has this fig orchard. That’s a way easier way to make money than going to a foreign land and shouting down its king. Calling an entire people to repentance, to change, to flee from the wrath to come. He would not be doing this if he had a choice.

      And so Amaziah and King Jeroboam find out that they can’t shut Amaziah up. They can’t stop him from raining on their parade, from poking holes in this golden age. Because this word that comes from God can’t be stopped. Prophets of God can be slandered, they can be criticized, they can be shouted at, but they cannot shut him up.

      Pretty much the entire issue that Amos is speaking about is that Israel is mistreating the poor and the vulnerable. That’s the whole issue here. The people whom they are commanded to care for countless times in the law of Moses, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the alien, or the immigrant, they’re throwing them under the bus in the name of prosperity and power. And indeed, they actually resent that God expects them to behave with justice, with honor.

      Wow. They complain in the next chapter. When will the new moon be over? So that we may sell grain. And the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale.

      Make the ephah, a measure of grain, smaller. Enlarge the shekel. and deceive with false balances in order to buy the needy for silver, to buy the helpless for sandals, and sell garbage as grain. They hate that God wants to put the brakes on what they want to do.

      And that includes committing fraud by lying about the weight of grain and the value of money. They want to milk a little bit more money out of the poor who are trying to buy food. They want to adulterate the grain. They want to add stuff to the grain so that it’ll weigh more and they can make more money off it.

      They want to force people into debt slavery. They want to cause the poor to be so vulnerable that they can be bought for a pair of sandals. And any attempt to shut Amos up is not going to change the reality that God will ensure that justice is done. In fact, God is offering them grace here.

      God is doing them a service by offering them a prophet, by calling their attention back to the covenant that God has made with them, offering them again this off-ramp grace. to change their ways, to avoid destruction. That’s what prophets are for, to give people a chance. But regardless of how they respond, as Amos says in chapter 5, this is what’s going to happen.

      Justice is going to roll down like rivers. Righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. And that’s not supposed to be this image of natural beauty or whatever. This is supposed to be the unstoppable power of a flood, of holy justice, of righteousness, Righteousness.

      washing away wickedness and sin like Pharaoh’s soldiers as the Red Sea closes on them. That’s what this role of justice looks like. And so Amos’ warning here is meant for this particular people in this particular place, but it’s also timeless because I think we’re a country that thinks we’re doing pretty well, after all. Yet our cities are dotted with tents and overdoses.

      Credit card interest rates are so high that they’d have been viewed as obviously criminal 100 years ago, and we don’t even think about that stuff as immoral anymore. An uncontrolled new epidemic is emerging as gambling addiction, which is accompanied by domestic violence with suicide, is through the roof. It’s entirely illegal to lose everything you have to a slot machine on your phone. That would have been viewed as immoral by the church in the past.

      Support for the poor and vulnerable is being rolled back. Foreigners in our land are being mistreated worse than they’ve been in generations. And so I ask, do we desire to flee from the wrath to come or not? We can tell ourselves like Jeroboam and Amaziah that God’s not really concerned with any of our stuff. Just with our souls.

      As long as we keep on praying in his name, singing his praises, putting crosses in our houses, going about our rituals. But that’s not how it works. Because God’s ruling attribute is love. Which means that God burns with anger at the mistreatment of his people and of creation.

      And judgment will come. The Lord stands in our midst as a plumb line, showing right where we’re crooked if we’re willing to see it. And that plumb line, by the way, is Jesus himself. We put ourselves up to the example of Jesus and we see where we’re right and where we’re wrong.

      Paul talks about this in his letter to the Colossians about how we can move forward in the midst of this destruction. He says, Once you were alienated from God, you were enemies with him in your minds, which was shown by your evil actions. But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through death to present you before God as a people who are holy, faultless, and without blame. But you need to remain well-established, rooted in faith, and not shift away from the hope that was given in the good news that you heard.

      live in the grace, the power, the reckless love of Jesus. Hold on to him and his example. Defy a world of violence and injustice. That’s what the church is for.

      That’s what our faith in Christ is for. Flee from the wrath to come. Lift high the cross and pull the world along with you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

      Amen.

    • Fairhaven Sermon 7-13-2025

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      Fairhaven Sermon 7 13 2025
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      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson explored the meaning of “neighbor” through a compelling examination of Luke 10 and its connection to Mr. Rogers’ legacy. He challenged the conventional understanding of neighbor as someone who shares geographic or cultural ties, referencing Pittsburgh’s diverse neighborhoods and their unique identities. Instead, Parson emphasized Jesus’ redefinition of neighbor as anyone whose life intersects with ours, highlighting the Samaritan parable as a powerful illustration of selfless love extended to an unexpected and even despised individual.

      Dylan underscored that being a neighbor, in the Christian sense, is an active choice, not dictated by proximity or shared characteristics. He challenged listeners to confront their own biases and justifications for excluding others, urging them to consider who they might be overlooking as potential neighbors. Ultimately, he emphasized that embracing this broader definition of neighbor—loving those we might instinctively avoid—is a matter of eternal significance, echoing Jesus’ call to love our neighbors as ourselves.

      Transcript

      You know, you’re originally going to get a sermon with both of these passages in it. I was going to do the Luke and the Amos. I didn’t want to talk for an hour. So we might go back next week and do Amos because I got about six pages in and I’m like, you know what? We’ll wait.

      All right. Yes. If you use the word neighbor in Pittsburgh, there’s an image and a voice that inevitably Yes. comes to mind, right? A zip-up sweater, maybe? Mr.

      Rogers defined what a neighborhood is for generations of Americans. His imprint in this region, his home in particular, is even bigger. He’s become something of a saint around here. When Mr.

      Rogers welcomed us all into his living room to spend some time with the goldfish and, God help us, Lady Elaine, by asking, won’t you be my neighbor, it’s worth looking a little bit more closely to ask exactly what he meant by that. Be my neighbor, right? Obviously, you and I and millions of PBS watchers were not Fred Rogers’ literal neighbors, unless you happened to live in Squirrel Hill during that 33-year time span. Right? Maybe some of you did. Some of you might have been his neighbors.

      At least that’s the way we tend to understand the word neighbor, right? But we were invited to be his neighbors in a spiritual, in a Christian sort of sense. And you can certainly, you’re probably almost certainly aware of this, rather, but Mr. Rogers’ Right? training was as a Presbyterian pastor. He was a pastor first.

      He was educated at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He was ordained into the Pittsburgh Presbytery. And he never left that behind, even as kind of the venue of his ministry shifted, right? And so whenever he talked about neighbors, he knew very well what he was trying to get at. He knew what language he was speaking, and that was Christian language.

      He wasn’t calling us to go buy a house in Squirrel Hill. He wasn’t calling us to rent along the miniature trolley line that ran between his home on one end and the castle in the neighborhood of make-believe on the other end. That’s not what he meant. Instead, he was helping American children and hopefully their parents and later their children He wasn’t calling us to rent along the miniature trolley line that ran between his home on one end and the castle in the neighborhood of make-believe on the other end.

      start to understand this really deeply Christian concept, one that Jesus talks about most memorably here in the 10th chapter of Luke. So if I were to ask you what a neighbor is, you’d probably give me a definition that stems from what a neighborhood is. And so a neighborhood, Pittsburgh has 99 of them. We have neighborhoods as huge as Carrick, as tiny as Duck Hollow.

      I feel like they’re inventing new ones every couple weeks. I learn about a new one. A neighborhood is a geographical area, right? It’s often centered around a particular landmark or a focal point. Highland Park is centered around Highland Park.

      In Carrick, it’s centered around the Brownsville Road corridor. In Overbrook, it’s centered around us. Wow. I mean, the ghost of what used to be Overbrook’s Main Street back in the old days.

      And especially true here in Pittsburgh, a neighborhood is also home to a particular, like, hyper-local culture. which could be ethnic, it could be racial, it could be economic, it could be something else. I mean, like, try telling someone from Overbrook that they live in Carrick and see how they respond. Think about this.

      Shadyside is rich. Bels Hoover is the tight-knit center of gravity for the black community in South Pittsburgh. Beach View has this growing Latino population. Brookline is a more affordable, semi-suburban area.

      Young families often buy their first house there. Right? Polish Hill used to be Polish. And now it’s known for this punk rock kind of subculture that’s there. So given all this, you might tell me that your neighbor is someone who lives in your neighborhood.

      And at the very least, that would be a neighbor who would share geographic roots with you, cultural roots as well. And so that would seem to give a relatively cut and dry answer to the question a legal expert uses to try to trick Jesus in Luke 10. Who is my neighbor? Someone who lives in my neighborhood. Well, maybe not.

      It might not be that straightforward. Okay. So for context as to what’s going on here in Luke 10, this legal expert serving kind of as a challenger, an antagonist of Jesus, he’s trying to catch him saying something heretical, something that’s against the law of Moses that will prove that he’s this false teacher who needs to be condemned and ignored. There are a lot of those floating around, so you see why they were doing this.

      And so the legal expert is asking this sequence of questions, and each of them he’s hoping is just a little bit harder trying to trip Jesus up. So he starts with a really big picture, kind of the fundamental question. What must I do to gain eternal life? And Jesus answers, well, what does scripture tell you? Good answer, Jesus. And this is an answer that can’t be wrong since it puts the focus back on the legal expert.

      It makes him answer and it makes clear that Jesus is not coming up with some newfangled theology. So the legal expert gives his answer and he says, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And this is verbatim scripture. This is straight out of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the law of Moses, Deuteronomy 6.

      5 and Leviticus 19.8 to be specific. That’s word for word Old Testament. And this is the centerpiece, the kind of scaffolding around which the entire law of Moses is built.

      This is the law that Jews have lived by for thousands of years. And so Jesus confirms, yes, exactly. Do that. Do that and you will live.

      But the legal expert pushes further. Do that. He thinks that he can maybe trip Jesus up on the details. So, ah, okay, we know who God is, but who is my neighbor? I know God, I can love God, but who’s my neighbor? Who specifically am I obligated to love? How big is this circle of care that I’m supposed to be responsible for? And I don’t know about you, but this is a question that I wrestle with constantly.

      Okay. Who is my responsibility? So this is where we and he, the legal expert, think that we’re going to get some specific answer from Jesus. You got to love these people. These people aren’t your problem.

      And after all, rabbis in the Jewish tradition, and Jesus was a rabbi, keep that in mind, they painstakingly debate details like this in the Torah. They come up with all these specific regulations that help people apply the law to their daily lives. That’s a lot of what rabbis do. Think about the specificity even today with which the Jewish community treats regulations around Sabbath, what you’re allowed to do, what you’re not.

      How you keep kosher, what you can eat, what you can’t, what you can touch, and when. All that stuff. All of that gets hammered out in debate over the years. But Jesus here isn’t interested in debating anybody.

      He’s not interested in making any kind of explicit legal argument, making a ruling on the law. Instead, and this is extremely irritating because he does it to anybody who wants to debate him, he tells a story. He says, He tells a story. He placed him on his own donkey and he brings him to the inn in order to sleep and recuperate.

      He finds a motel six along the road, puts him up there, tends to him. And even then, whenever he has to leave and continue on his journey, the Samaritan keeps caring for the beaten man. He leaves money with the innkeeper to make sure that he’s still got a place to stay, make sure that he’s well fed, make sure that he gets medical care. And then he promises the innkeeper that when he comes back through, he’ll pay whatever the balance is, whatever it costs to take care of this guy, he’ll make it right.

      So finishing the story, Jesus asks the legal expert, which one of these three was a neighbor? And the legal expert, again, is forced to answer his own question. The Samaritan is the one who has been a neighbor. and we can be sure that this is not the answer that he wants. Okay.

      He’s forced to concede that it’s the right answer, but it’s not the answer that he wants to give. It’s not the answer that we’re going to want to give either. Because Jesus has fundamentally redefined what the meaning of neighbor is, transforming it from what we think it means to something unrecognizably different. Because the thing is, the Samaritan is literally not this beaten up guy’s neighbor.

      He’s literally not. He’s not the legal expert’s neighbor. He’s not Jesus’ neighbor. It’s right there in his name.

      He’s a Samaritan. He’s not even from their country. He’s from Samaria. He’s from a different place, a different ethnicity, a different religion, right? And more than that, this is something that has gotten often kind of obscured in the telling of this story over the years.

      The Samaritans are some of the most hated enemies of the Jews in those days. The Jews and the Samaritans despised each other. Their history diverged from the Jewish peoples in such a way that they were like almost feuding cousins because they started as one people. But then after the exile, the Samaritans sort of changed their religion and they worshiped God on a different mountain in Samaria.

      They worshiped God on Mount Gerizim while the Jews worshiped God in Judea on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, right? And this sounds small, but it’s a huge sticking point. I mean, there’s Samaritans still around today, by the way, like 700 of them. But they are completely contradictory because as far as the Jewish people are concerned, the Samaritans are worshiping a different God. They are traitors.

      They are blasphemers to the God they once shared. They didn’t hold on. And so there’s this really deep ancient ethnic heritage here. It had actually increased a little bit in the 200 years before Jesus came on the scene due to a couple historical events.

      This was peak Samaritan hatred time. And so the Jewish people oppress and reject the Samaritans. They hate the Samaritans. So much so, and we see this elsewhere in the Gospels, that Jews do their absolute best to go around Samaria when they’re traveling.

      If they have to take a much longer route, they will because they don’t want to go there and see those people. And it’s not like it’s tucked off to the side. Samaria is like right there. we can be pretty sure that even the innkeeper in this story is probably not happy when a Samaritan walks in the door and asks to rent a room.

      He doesn’t want him, with his funny accent, his different clothes. But who is the one who behaves as a neighbor? And don’t forget this part. Go back to the original question the legal expert asked. Who then is the one, by implication, who’s in the position to inherit eternal life? Because those questions were one and the same.

      That was the original question. And the answer from Jesus is not the Israelite priest, not the Levite who’s another ancestral member of the Jewish religious elite. It is this heretical, hated foreigner, the Samaritan. Jesus has thrown out completely this idea that we are foremost neighbors to the people who are like us, who live near us, who share our culture, our status, our religion, our language.

      That stuff might matter in the secular world, but it’s not of concern to Christians. It’s not our problem. No, if you want to inherit eternal life, Jesus says, you are to love your neighbor as yourself. And your neighbor, as far as God is concerned, is everyone whose life interacts with yours.

      Neighborness is not a function of geography, of culture, of shared citizenship. And you can easily choose not to be a neighbor to the person who lives next door to you. Plenty of people do that. You can easily not be a neighbor, in Jesus’ definition, to the person who is literally your neighbor.

      It’s two different kinds of neighbors. And the same way you can be a neighbor to say a child in Gaza, a persecuted Christian in Nigeria or China, a Salvadoran refugee family. Right? You can do that. You can be a neighbor to those people regardless of if they live next to you.

      Fewer do that. To be a neighbor is something that you choose. It’s not dictated by where you buy a house or by where you rent an apartment. And here’s the important thing in this story.

      If you’re a Christian, Jesus Christ himself requires you to make that choice. Jesus makes this a matter of eternal life and death, does he not? Because again, the original question the legal expert asked was, how do I inherit eternal life? And the final answer that they come to is be like that Samaritan. who has acted with selfless love towards a man who was raised to hate him in a country that wanted him to go back to where he came from, or at the very least, just get out of here. And so we see in this parable, and we know from real life, that religious people who should know better are often the worst at this.

      Perhaps it’s because we’re deep enough into scripture, into faith, into calling ourselves Christians, that we can end up in so many situations like this legal expert. We find ourselves scrambling to come up with a good Christian sounding reason why this teaching doesn’t apply to us. It doesn’t apply to our specific situation. but we will, like the legal expert, end up confronting Jesus face-to-face, and he will make the truth unavoidable.

      So I’ll ask you a question here, and this is not a rhetorical one, but I’m also not asking you to answer out loud. As you have heard Jesus’ parable about this hated foreigner who pours out his life for a stranger, whom Jesus says ends up being a better believer in God than the professionals, Who is your neighbor? And then, who is the individual in your life? The group in this world? The population that makes you ask, but surely not them, right? but surely not them, because that’s what this legal expert is thinking, but surely not them. He’s coming up with reasons. You’re coming up with reasons.

      I’m coming up with reasons. Right? I’m sure that the Holy Spirit makes this specific in your heart. Look, the Levite and the priest probably had excellent, compelling reasons why they had to leave that beaten man on the side of the road. They did have good reasons.

      Many preachers have speculated about this over the years. Touching him would make them impure, and they need to be pure in order to do their priestly jobs. Maybe they were on their way to deal with a life or death situation. Maybe they had to go meet a congregant who was dying, right? Right? Maybe it was reasonable to suspect that this guy lying in the ditch was there as a trap, a lure, bait, putting them at risk of being victims themselves.

      That’s an age-old scam. Maybe he was a criminal himself. Maybe he was reaping the consequences of his own actions, right? Jesus doesn’t care. I think that’s very clear here.

      Jesus doesn’t care. Whatever bulletproof reasons we might come up with for why someone isn’t our neighbor, for why they aren’t worthy of love, of dignity, of care, the same way that we are and our families are, well, those bulletproof reasons are our reasons. They’re not God’s reasons. They’re not.

      So who is your neighbor? They’re not. Jesus tells us not to let your answer stand between you and eternal life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

      Amen.