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Fairhaven Sermon 5-25-2025

May 28, 2025

Fairhaven Sermon 5 25 2025

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Summary

In this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson explored the readings from Acts, highlighting the significance of the Holy Spirit’s movement in the early church. He explained how the lectionary’s focus on Acts alongside the Gospel of John illustrates the fulfillment of Jesus’ promises about the Holy Spirit, emphasizing the Spirit’s role as a “paraclete”—a comforter, advocate, and defender. The sermon used the story of Lydia’s conversion as a prime example, noting that her embrace of Paul’s message wasn’s the result of skillful preaching, but rather a work of the Spirit.

Dylan challenged the congregation to move beyond personal plans and expectations, recognizing that God’s timing and methods are often mysterious. He encouraged openness to the Spirit’s movement, drawing parallels to John Wesley’s experience of having his heart “strangely warmed.” Ultimately, he urged the church to wait on God, anticipating His action and being ready to receive whatever He offers, rather than attempting to force outcomes or control the process, and to trust that God’s guidance is far greater than our own.

Transcript

All through the Easter season, you might have noticed the lectionary moves away from the Old Testament. We don’t have any appointed Old Testament readings except for the psalm in the Easter season. And instead, we get these snippets from Acts of what life for the church, for the apostles after Jesus’ ascension looks like. And I don’t totally understand why the lectionary does that, why it goes ahead of what’s happening during Easter.

But it’s sort of fascinating to be reading on one hand what Jesus is promising the apostles while he’s still with them, which is what we just heard from John, and see all that alongside the fulfillment of those promises, which is what we just heard in Acts 2. And that’s very much what we’re seeing here. In John 14, Jesus tells the apostles not to be afraid because the Father will be sending the Holy Spirit. In Greek, he calls the Holy Spirit the paraclete.

Sometimes you see that untranslated. It means comforter, as it was in Flo’s translation. It means advocate. It means companion.

Most literally in Roman Latin, it would be Roman Greek, it would mean defense attorney. That was the most literal reading of what a paraclete was. It’s the defender between you and God in the world, the one who advocates for you. And then in Acts 16, we see this Holy Spirit at work, first sending a vision to Paul in the night, calling him to ministry in Macedonia.

Macedonia is a region in the Balkans. It’s northern Greece today. And then the Spirit works on Lydia’s heart, this seller of purple cloth. She would have been a very wealthy woman.

That was a really luxury good in those days. But the Spirit works on Lydia’s heart to enable her to hear, to embrace Paul’s proclamation of Jesus’ good news. And now this instance of the Spirit’s movement in Acts is not a particularly dramatic one by the standards, excuse me, of the book. It’s notable that Lydia becomes the very first Christian in the European continent.

So whenever Lydia is converted in Macedonia, that’s our first Christian in Europe. Everyone else has been in Asia so far. And that’s important, right? But throughout Acts, we see the Spirit do much more dramatic things than that. The tongues of fire that we’re going to remember at Pentecost in two Sundays that enable the gospel to be miraculously heard in every language, that’s a little bit more dramatic.

Then there’s that sudden conversion, that mystical conversion of Saul from a murderer of Christians into an apostle of Christ as he’s knocked to the ground on the road, and As you probably know, Acts is abbreviated. That is not the entire name of the book. In almost any Bible, if you turn to the first title page of Acts, you’ll find it referred to by its full name, the Acts of the Apostles. But the pastors and professors Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand point out, they say this, the title of Luke’s sequel, and remember that’s what Acts is, it’s the second volume to Luke’s gospel, the title of Luke’s sequel is all wrong.

It’s not the Acts of the Apostles, but the Acts of God, The apostles wait and God acts. In the biblical scholar, Christopher Matthews says something really similar. He says, as a descriptive title, Acts of the Apostles is a misnomer. And his reasoning is a little bit different, but it points out something that also should be obvious.

The only one of Jesus’ 12 apostles who really even plays a role in the whole book is Peter. Peter. Paul doesn’t even claim that title in the book, so calling it the Acts of the Apostles is a little strange whenever there’s like one and a half apostles in the whole book out of 12. It’s really not the apostles who are acting.

It is the Holy Spirit that is acting in the book. It’s the Holy Spirit through the early Christians around them. They, whether it’s the apostles of Jesus or a disciple converted later by the apostles, they aren’t the ones acting. The people aren’t the main focus of this book.

God is. The people are just putting themselves in the position to tag along for the ride. And it’s ironic for us, I think, especially given our history as Methodists, but my experience is that we tend personally and collectively to steer clear of the Holy Spirit as much as we can. The Father and the Son are comfortable to us.

The Holy Spirit… And this is really bizarre if you think about it.

And not just because of the stories we see in scripture. Last week, I don’t know how much Pastor Peg focused on it, but we remembered Aldersgate Sunday. That was the day in 1738 when John Wesley’s heart was strangely warmed, he said, at a London prayer meeting. He felt Jesus’ love for him at a deeply personal level.

This was a spiritual experience. Yeah. That wasn’t something that he was trying to make happen that evening. And I think that’s very important.

He wasn’t trying to make it happen. This experience was something that was a work of the Spirit. It came upon him. It happened to him in spite of him.

And that becomes very clear when you know the guy’s biography. Right? By 1738, when this happens, he has been striving for years to really get to know God, to have an experience of God’s love. He’s already 35. He’s been an Anglican priest for about 15 years before he has this experience, this overwhelming experience of God’s love.

And in that moment, he’s transformed by the Spirit. He had no say whatsoever in when or where or how it was going to happen. God did it when and how God was going to do it. And that moment marked this turning point for him in the Methodist movement that would ignite the whole English speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic.

This was a moment the spirit decided something was going to happen. Amen. And the thing is, I don’t really like that very much. And maybe you feel the same way.

I’ve been dwelling on this for a long time now, months, a year maybe, to really get personal about what I’ve been feeling. Every time I come upon the Aldersgate story, and this happened as I stood in that spot in London last summer. I find myself wanting that very same sort of unambiguous, clear encounter with the Holy Spirit that Wesley got that I can mark on my calendar and say that was the day. There it was.

I felt God just the way I needed to that day. I want to see a complete transformation in that moment in my life. I want to have the same moment in your lives, in this church. I want to see the miraculous healing of the kind we see across the New Testament.

I want to see the revival that the Wesleys saw of people flocking in the doors. And then we go pouring out to show people the love of Christ, just like what God did in the wake of Pentecost. Thousands of people were added to their number. Amen.

I want to see these powerful church-led movements for justice, like we saw the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement. And I really want all that to happen right now. If there was something that I thought I could propose at church council or at annual conference that would help us get to any of those goals, I would. I would.

We could have a fundraising campaign for it, maybe. We could strategize about how to make all that happen. We could make plans. We could advertise.

We could do all that we could to make it as successful as it could be. But that’s not how it works, as it turns out. No more than Wesley planned to have his heart strangely warmed that evening in May 1738. No more than Paul planned to evangelize in Macedonia.

God decides when the Spirit will move. We can’t plan for that. We can’t light that fire ourselves. We can’t catch it.

We can’t tame it. And as far as revival and conversion go, you and I can’t preach that into anybody. You can’t make anyone care. You can’t make anyone love Jesus.

And we get to this here in this Acts reading. Because Lydia, you might have heard, was enabled by the Lord to embrace Paul’s message. She didn’t decide, and Paul didn’t decide. It had very little to do with how good or bad Paul’s preaching was, right? Right? And the quality of my preaching has very little to do with whether you’ll change your hearts and lives or go home as if you never worship this Sunday.

All we can do is get ourselves into the right position to wait on God, to act with openness, with willingness, with anticipation in the way that we interact with God, just being open and ready. That seems to be where Lydia was, doesn’t it? Your work as a Christian and our collective work of ministry, which is partnering with God, only works whenever we’re trying to be aligned with the movement of the Spirit, whatever the Spirit is doing in this moment and in the time to come. It doesn’t work when it’s independent, when it’s self-driven, when we’re following our own visions. Right? So consider that if Paul had stuck to his own plans in Acts 16, none of this would have happened.

All of this would have fallen apart. They’d have never encountered Lydia. They’d have never sparked the founding of the church on the European continent. Paul had not planned to go to Macedonia.

He had not planned to go to Europe. It’s worth rewinding. This is just going back two verses from where we started today because I think it gives some helpful context. When they approached the province of Mycenae, they tried to enter the province of Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus wouldn’t let them.

Passing by Mycenae, they went down the Troas instead. Okay. Isn’t that amazing? That so in tune with the Spirit are Paul and his companions in ministry that they are literally not able to do what the Spirit does not want them to do. The Spirit will not let them do something that God is not planning for and ensures that they’re directed on the right path.

The Spirit turns them around at that border and says, Hold it. You’re not going here. Not right now. There’s somewhere else you’re supposed to be.

So wait. And then God gives Paul a dream, tells him exactly what to do in this vision of this man from Macedonia. So think about how close of a relationship with God all of them must have cultivated, but especially Paul. And compare that to how you experience God, how you approach God, and how that might change so that you can hear God better.

Think about this. How often do you feel like prayer, whether that’s before a council meeting, whether that’s at the start of your day, whether that’s before a meal, does that feel like it’s a ritual or a one-way conversation? Do you actually expect that God’s going to say anything? Because if you don’t, well, maybe he won’t. Maybe you won’t hear it if he does. but what if you expected that God really was going to answer you, and you listened for that, whether or not it ended up happening, because it won’t a lot of the time.

And I know how hard this is. Who in their right mind actually expects, you know, whenever we’re talking at 8.15 on a Sunday morning at a church council meeting, that God’s going to show up there and do something? Right? but we have to expect that or there’s no point. You know, if the church is Christ’s body, if it’s empowered by the spirit, certainly God is interested in guiding us on the right path.

No less than in sending Paul to Macedonia. We’re involved in the same ministry Paul was. So God’s still not going to leave us alone to figure things out for ourselves. And if we’re not hearing, maybe we’re not listening.

Okay. And if we’re not receiving vision and promise, maybe we’re too focused on our own preferences, on crafting our own plans, tending to our own fears, our own anxieties. And so I invite you today, as I think the Spirit does, to get yourself in the right position for God to get to work. Open yourself up to receiving that, to setting aside your own plans, your own worries, your own hesitations, and instead waiting for the Holy Spirit to move in power, expecting it.

Whether that’s for healing, whether that’s for vision, We’re in a far more faithful place if God doesn’t have to knock us to the ground on the road like he did to Paul. If instead we’re reaching for what God is offering, hoping for it, expecting God to do something the way that God wants to do it. Now see the difference here. Here.

It’s not desperately trying to make what we want happen. It’s not saying, God, do this. God, do this. God, do this.

Instead, it’s wanting God to get to work in our lives in whatever form that takes, leaving it open. It’s a very open-ended ask. Every year at annual conference, one of my favorite traditions that we do is during the ordination service, the close of the ordination service. The bishop will stand up at the end, play some music, and will invite anyone who’s feeling a call to ministry to come down, to be prayed for at the front, to discern what God has for them.

Amen. And that’s exactly the kind of moment that I’m talking about. How do we live like that every day with our hearts open? What is God calling me to, offering me right now? This service is just so moving to me every year. I try to get down there as fast as I can.

Sometimes I’m trapped in the middle of an aisle. But I try to get down as fast as I can, hopefully to be in the position to pray for somebody. I’ve prayed for youth, kids that are 13, We prayed for retirees, people who are going on their second career in ministry. All these people who feel like God is speaking to them, and we go down and try to amplify that for them, to pray for them, to pray with them.

The same thing happens, you know, when we dare to pray for healing. There’s something powerful about opening ourselves up to God and saying, I know you can do this. I know you’re doing something. And not demanding anything, not on our own terms, not on our own timetable.

And lo and behold, miracles happen when we open ourselves to receive those. So this day, like Paul, like Lydia, put yourself bodily, spiritually, where the Holy Spirit, the companion, the advocate, the comforter, can move you. Where you can hear God if God has something to say to you. Where you can receive a calling or a gift or simply the assurance of Jesus’ love for you like Wesley got.

invite in the advocate, the companion, and receive the peace that is given to you through Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Fairhaven Sermon 5-18-2025

May 22, 2025

Fairhaven Sermon 5 18 2025

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Summary

In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman explored the themes of hope and renewal, drawing from readings in Revelation, Acts, John, and Psalm 117. Focusing on Revelation 21:1-6, she emphasized that the “end of the age” isn’s about fiery pits and battles, but rather a vision of a new heaven and a new earth where God dwells among people, and there will be no more death, mourning, or pain. Bowman cautioned against interpreting Revelation as a literal timeline and instead highlighted its message of comfort, encouragement, and God’s promise of a restored earth where all people from every nation will live together in peace.

Bowman further connected this vision to the readings from Acts and John, explaining that God’s plan from the beginning has been for all people to know and love God, and that the wall separating Jewish and Gentile believers has been broken down. She stressed that anyone who believes in Jesus and receives the Holy Spirit is a brother or sister in Christ, and challenged the congregation to embrace this inclusivity and love one another as Jesus has loved them, looking forward to the fulfillment of God’s promise of a world renewed.

Transcript

All right, so today is the fifth week of the Easter season, as well as being Aldersgate Sunday, and our scriptures are still talking about the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection, both for the early church and for us today. The scripture readings we just heard today are from the book of Acts and the Gospel of John. And both of them sort of take a step back into the days before the resurrection. And we’ll talk about those readings.

But we also have for the fifth Sunday of Easter, a third reading. In fact, every Sunday we have three readings of which we only do two. In this case, I thought the third reading also applies if it goes well with the other three. And here’s from the book of Revelation.

And I wanted to include that into the mix. And here’s why. There have been times, we’re speaking of history, in American history, and in world history as well, when people have just all of a sudden gotten really fascinated with the book of Revelation. And I can remember the last time it happened here in the States.

My brother and I were both in college at the time, and people were talking about revelation literally everywhere. I mean, I remember people debating it over the lunch table at work. I can remember my brother and his then girlfriend, now ex-wife. having a banner across the top of their living room wall, showing the events in the book of Revelation in the order in which they were supposed to happen and showing just how close to the end we really are.

We’re in one of those times again now when people are… talking about Revelation.

I’ve been hearing it wherever I go, and I see people pulling out those lists again and checking off what’s happened so far. So when our list of readings offers me a chance to talk about Revelation, I wasn’t going to pass it up. One of the things I learned about Revelation in seminary is that this book was not meant to be a timeline for the end of the age. It does describe some of the events of the end of the age to some extent, but not in any particular order and certainly not on a timeline.

The book of Revelation is first and foremost a letter to It’s a letter that was written to the churches of the first century after Jesus’ resurrection. It’s written to give direction and comfort and encouragement during difficult times. When John wrote the book of Revelation, he was writing a letter to the churches who were under persecution. from the Roman Empire, and who were also experiencing false prophets internally, that is, people coming into the churches and teaching things that Jesus never taught, and sometimes they were teaching the opposite of what Jesus taught.

So seeing a combination of external pressures and internal pressures in the churches, John wrote the book of Revelation to give some words of correction, first off, which we see in the first few chapters, and then comfort and encouragement to the people of God with the knowledge that God was still with them, God was still in control, and God’s word is still true. So. So, having all said all of this as background, I want to start off today’s sermon by reading that passage from Revelation, and then we’ll tap into the other two readings. This is Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 6.

It’s close to the end of the book, and in this short passage, we actually do hear about the beginning of the end of the age, but it’s not what people expect. Here we go. John writes, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more. Mourning and crying will be no more, for the first things have passed away. As the one who was seated on the throne said, See, I am making all things new. Also he said, Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.

He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. That’s the end of the age, as described in the book of Revelation.

There are no fiery pits, no beasts, no huge battles, no horsemen of the apocalypse. All those things, they all happen before we get there. When Jesus actually returns, the scene is a peaceful one. It’s beautiful.

There’s a new heaven and a new earth. Not that the old earth is completely destroyed, but it is renewed. The earth we know is not suddenly going to become something completely unfamiliar. And we’re not going to leave it and fly up somewhere in the sky and float around on clouds or any of that kind of thing.

The earth we knew will be remade. the pollution will be gone. All the forests and the oceans will be restored. All the extinct animals brought back to life.

Not sure about the dinosaurs, but anyway, most of the animals will be brought back to life. The point is that God will make all things new. And the holy city, the New Jerusalem, is where God’s people will live. The city contains people from all over the world, every nation, every continent.

And this is why the reading from Acts today is so important. And we’re going to go there in just a moment. But staying in Revelation for just one more moment, the holy city of Jerusalem is described as a bride adorned for her husband, and Jesus is the husband. Amen.

The end of history as we know it and as we live it is going to be a royal wedding. The voice from heaven says, The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people’s. And this was God’s plan from the very beginning, for God and people to live together in love.

That’s what Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are about. God creating the earth and creating a people to live in a loving relationship with God. It’s the whole story from the beginning of the book to the end. Two things therefore we can take as true from this passage.

Number one, if a person doesn’t like God very much, they’re not going to like eternity very much because God will be a part of everything in eternity. And number two, if someone doesn’t like people from other countries or other races, they’re not going to like eternity very much because God is making plans for all the people of the earth to be there. This is what eternity is going to look like, all of us together. No more tears, no more death, no more pain.

Now, speaking as a member of the partnership here, we have already seen a great deal of pain this year. In just the past five months, we have had people who have lost loved ones, have loved ones who are seriously ill. We’ve had people whose jobs are in jeopardy. and we bring these people to God in prayer, and we pray the best, we pray for blessings, but we also know that in this world before Jesus returns, that there are some illnesses that won’t be healed quite yet, and there are some tears that can’t be avoided, because we’re still living in the old world.

But there is a new world coming, right here in the same location, with oceans and trees and cities and animals and people. We will not be sitting around on clouds with harps. And in this new earth, there’ll be no more death, no more pain, and no more tears. That’s the good news of the book of Revelation.

So if you happen to be overhearing people talking about Revelation, like I said, I’ve been hearing this a lot lately, tell them about this new earth. Tell them what God says in Revelation, that the real end of the age, we can trust God and trust Jesus, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. Amen. So having said all of this, one of the next questions frequently asked is, well, who’s going to be there and who’s not? How do people qualify to live in this new world and how can we avoid missing it? And that’s what our other two scriptures are about today.

So the reading from John, we go back to the night before Jesus was arrested, to the night when he washed the disciples’ feet, Jesus is about to leave this earth, but not quite the way the disciples are thinking. And He says to them, I’m only with you for a little while longer, and where I’m going, you can’t come. So where is Jesus right now? Today? Jesus is right now seated at the right hand of the Father, according to Scripture. He is still alive.

Now, does God’s throne room have a physical location? Beats me. We don’t know. The important thing, though, is that Jesus will be back, and when he comes back, the earth will be set right, the earth will be healed, and so will we. In the meantime, in our reading from John, Jesus leaves us with one commandment, just one: Love one another as I have loved you.

But none of us can love the way Jesus loves, and that’s why the cross was necessary, to make up the difference, to make us whole, and to make us like Jesus. A Christian’s ability to love others is taken to a whole new level by a relationship with God, and our call to love others is still as much in effect today as it was in the Gospel of John. Our ability to love others is related to our love for God and vice versa, and our love for God and others bears witness to the world of the truth of what Jesus taught. Pardon me.

So who’s going to be included in this kingdom of God? Our reading from Acts answers that question. Acts tells the story of the first major disagreement in the early church. Peter had gone to visit a Roman centurion, and he ended up baptizing the whole family and eating with them, actually staying with them for a few days, And this was totally against what faithful Jewish people were taught to do. And the first Christians, of course, were all Jewish.

They had been raised with the Torah, the law of Moses, and the law said, among other things, that number one, all believers, and this, of course, is all male believers, had to be circumcised and this was a mark of the covenant between God and God’s people. And number two, circumcised believers were not to eat with uncircumcised people. And this comes from the laws of purity. There were quite a few foods listed in the Old Testament that Jewish people were not allowed to eat.

And they couldn’t risk the possibility of being served some of those foods if they ate in a non-Jewish household. But what happened over the years was that, as often happens when people are separated from each other, is that separate became unequal. And Jewish people believed that their way was better, they were the ones obeying God’s law, They were the ones who were separate and clean, and many of them forgot that God’s plan from the very beginning was that all the people of the earth would be blessed by and get to know God through the Jewish people. That was their calling from God.

And once Jesus was resurrected and returned to God’s side, the wall between Jew and Gentile came down. And Peter describes what happened. He said while he was staying in Joppa by the seaside, Sea of Galilee, no sorry, not Galilee, Mediterranean Sea, gorgeous, and he saw a vision, a large sheet coming down from heaven with all the kinds of animals on it, many of them on God’s list of things not to eat. And Peter heard a voice from heaven saying, Get up, kill and eat.

But Peter said, No way, Lord, I’ve never eaten anything unclean. And the voice from heaven answered, What God has made clean, you must not call profane. And this happened three times. Three, the number of completion, the number of the Trinity.

And immediately after the third time, three men arrived at Peter’s door. They were Gentiles, servants of the Roman centurion, and the centurion was a God-fearer, and he had seen a vision of an angel telling him to send to Joppa for Simon, who is called Peter. He will tell you and your household how to be saved. And Peter, inspired by the vision he had just seen, went with those servants to the house of Cornelius, the Roman centurion.

Peter shared with the whole household, including servants and friends of the family. They divided the whole neighborhood into the house, basically. And while Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit filled every person listening, and they began to speak in tongues. And Peter asked his companions who’d come with him, If God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed, how can we withhold baptism? And so Cornelius’ whole household and all their friends were baptized, and Peter and his companions stayed with Cornelius for a few days, including having meals together.

And that’s the story that they brought back to the believers in Jerusalem. Scripture says the early church, the first believers, understood what God was doing and praised God. They did not let the old ways, their old traditions and their former divisions, get in the way of what God was doing. And the psalm we read a few moments ago calls on all people everywhere to praise God.

Verses 1 through 11, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young and men and women alike, old and young together, praise the name of the Lord. Every nation, every people, no exceptions. The song of praise becomes a prophecy of what happens in Acts chapter 11. Amen.

And what happened in Acts 11 still happens today. Anyone, anywhere who believes in God and trusts in Jesus and has received the Holy Spirit is our brother or our sister in Christ, no exceptions. And I believe that this is one of the greatest blessings that God has given us. That’s each other.

Believers in Jesus can be found around the globe, in Africa and Asia, Europe and Australia, South America, North America. The more people we meet, the more places we know, the bigger our God gets, at least that’s how it feels. We know from stories and hopefully from experience that God has placed our brothers and sisters in faith everywhere around the world. We share not just humanity, but we also share God’s Holy Spirit.

And in God, we are one. um All these people from every time and place will be with us when the words of revelation come true. Jesus said to His disciples on His last night with them, Love one another as I have loved you. When we do this, we begin to catch a glimpse of the future that Revelation describes, a new heaven and a new earth, where God lives with us all and wipes away every tear from every eye.

This is God’s promise. This is the world that is coming. Amen.
Mothers Day Service 2025

May 14, 2025

Mothers Day Service 2025

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Summary

In this week’s service at Fairhaven United Methodist Church, James Campana led a heartfelt and reflective Mother’s Day sermon that celebrated the strength, sacrifice, and enduring influence of mothers and grandmothers. Opening with a lighthearted anecdote from a third-grade classroom, Campana quickly turned to the deeper significance of the day, honoring not only the joyful side of motherhood but also the pain and complexity many women experience. He acknowledged those who may feel sorrow or loss on Mother’s Day—those who have lost children, longed to become mothers, or struggled with difficult relationships. With compassion, he reminded the congregation that while mothers are not perfect, their love, intuition, and dedication are irreplaceable gifts from God.

The message wove together humor, scripture, and real-life reflection, drawing on biblical examples like the wisdom of Solomon and the strength of mothers in scripture to underscore the sacred nature of motherhood. Campana emphasized that motherhood is a lifelong calling filled with both visible and unseen sacrifices, often carried out without complaint. He praised mothers who quietly shape lives through everyday acts of love and selflessness, reminding listeners that God grants wisdom and strength in every season of motherhood. In closing, he encouraged mothers to embrace their journey, however imperfect, knowing they are upheld by God’s grace. The service ended with gratitude and reverence for mothers past and present, wrapped in a warm and uplifting spirit of faith and love.

Transcript

One day a third grade science teacher was teaching his class about magnets. The next day he wanted to test if the students remembered his lesson. He asked, My name begins with an M, has six letters, and I pick up things. What am I? The answer, My mother, was the reply.

Can’t you just feel it? It’s Mother’s Day. Today’s message is a little bit different because we are not only here to worship the Lord, we are also here to honor mothers and grandmothers and all the great mothers in our lives. It’s a day for greetings and expressions of love. It’s also a day for remembering.

True motherhood is a lifelong task. It’s a calling, a privilege, and a true pleasure most of the time. But motherhood is not easy. By the time a child reaches 18 years of age, a mother has juggled some extra 18,000 hours, that’s 750 days, of child-generated work.

One mom once said, The joy of motherhood is what a woman experiences when all her children are finally in bed. Ah, Mother’s Day. It’s sweet. It’s happy.

It’s beautiful. And it’s complicated. Some women are delighted to celebrate the day and come to church on Mother’s Day. But some women are hurting so deeply that they dread the day or even skip church.

How do you shower love on moms but show love and compassion to the wounded? Many women would have loved to become a mother, but for some reason they could not. Some people do not have the best mom in the world, while others may have lost their mom through death. Some mothers have lost children, where others carry the weight of wayward children. It’s understandable why this day is very difficult.

For them, Mother’s Day is a constant ocean of emotions. Today, we especially think of and pray for these fragile and wounded women, but thank God for putting these ladies in our lives. No matter the situation, no matter the circumstances, and no matter the struggles, moms are the bold and beautiful women who usually are the glue that holds a family together. There is a great saying from Napoleon that says, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, Men are what their mothers make them. And the scriptures are rich on great portraits of motherhood. There was of course the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. Then there was the mother or stepmother of Moses, who cares so much for her son that she broke the law in order to teach him the faith of his people.

Proverbs 31 reminds us the story of King Lemuel’s mother, who gave advice to her son about godly living and how to pick a good wife and mother. And of course, there’s the powerful story of a mother’s love, where a mother was willing to give up her child to another woman rather than let any harm come to him. Back when Solomon rose to the throne, he sought God and God allowed him to request whatever he desired. Solomon humbly recognized his inability to rule well and nobly asked for the wisdom he would need to govern God’s people righteously.

Solomon could have asked for anything, such as riches and a long life or victory over his enemies, but he didn’t. The scriptures tell us, God granted Solomon his request. And incidentally, God also gave Solomon all those other things as well. But little does Solomon realize that this gift of divine wisdom would soon be put to the test.

There were these two mothers, rumored to be prostitutes by trade, who lived in the same house. Each gave birth to a son within days of each other. And during the night, one mother laid on her newborn child, smothering it, and it died. She took the dead child and replaced her roommate’s living child, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

Soon before daylight, the second mother rose to nurse the child. And as it got lighter, she got a good look at the child and realized it wasn’t hers. Even though this woman’s child was only a few days old, she knew it wasn’t her child. Back in Solomon’s day, there was no DNA testing.

So before long, the two women were presenting their case before Solomon. Their conflicting claims created the dilemma, and Solomon was faced with the task of discerning who the true mother was. The two mothers argued back and forth, but in a moment of brilliant wisdom, Solomon proposed a solution to determine the real mother of the child. Solomon said, Both of you say this live baby is yours.

Someone bring me a sword. A sword was brought, and Solomon ordered, Cut the baby in half. That way, each of you will have a part of him. Please don’t kill my son, the rural baby’s mother screamed.

Your majesty, I love him very much. Give him to her. Just don’t kill him. The other woman, in a cruel, selfish, and heartless act, shouted, Go ahead, cut him in half.

Then neither of us will have the baby. Solomon, perceiving the real mother’s love and selflessness, intervened decisively. He declared that the living child should be given to the woman who pleaded for the child’s life, recognizing her as the true mother. The people witnessed Solomon’s divine wisdom and were in awe of his ability to discern the truth in such a challenging situation.

Solomon couldn’t be fooled. And in the end, you can’t fool mother either. One of the things this short story shows is how mothers know their offsprings. Another lesson that we learn, in spite of how wonderful moms are, mothers are not perfect human beings.

Nobody’s perfect. Nobody has the perfect mother. Nobody is the perfect mother. As much as we hate to admit, the perfect mother has never been born, never invented, never existed.

Hopefully this should relieve some of you mothers here this morning who think you don’t or didn’t meet your own expectations of motherhood. You’re not expected to be perfect. You will make mistakes. My mother wasn’t perfect, but God chose her for me, and I thank God for that.

But try to fool mom, you can’t. They know when you’re lying. They know when you’re trying to hide something from them, when you’re sick, when you’re afraid or worried. Mothers just know.

They have the sixth sense, eyes in the back of their head, a special gift from God. Most of the times we don’t realize the sacrifices that mom makes because they don’t tell us. A good mother sacrifices for her children. You buy them the best things that you can afford, even if it means going without things yourself.

You take them to practices and school events and social events, even if it means taking up most of your time that you could be spending on yourself. You encouraged them to participate in sports, in band, and in a dozen other activities, even if it means more work for you. Life before children was mostly carefree, simple, and easygoing. Well, once blessed with a child, you not only have your problems, but you gain your children’s problems and sometimes even your husband’s problems.

There is no one definition of motherhood. It’s a combination of raw emotions, experiences, and individual hopes and dreams for their children. A good mother will always hurt when her children hurt, no matter how old they get. Being a mom is high stress.

The stress may get lighter or change with time, but it never disappears. Motherhood is a lifelong ministry. It’s a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired.

Every mother has their own path to motherhood, but the rewards are essentially the same. In our society, a mother is considered old-fashioned to her teenagers, yet she is just mom to her youngsters and simply mommy to the little two and three-year-olds. But there is hardly a thrill in a mom’s life that can compete with their child saying to the world, She is my mother. I remember when my son was five years old and my daughter was just a baby.

I’d come home from work to the smell of motherhood, dirty diapers, wash drying, and Stephanie all clean and fresh lying asleep on the couch. I sensed it was a stressful day for my wife, but she never complained. As a young woman, I’m sure she didn’t sign up for this kind of life. In her mind, I wondered how many times she thought about that carefree, simple, and easygoing life prior to kids.

But she fed the kids when they were hungry. She laundered all their clothes. She helped them study history and math and wiped their dirty noses. She cooled their fevered brow with cloth.

She taught them how to ride a bike. She even taught them to eat foods they didn’t like. Although I’m sure that lesson really hasn’t stuck. She wore old and faded clothes so kids could wear something new.

She set an example so I would know what to say and what to do. And she often worked from dawn to dusk to make our house a home, her eyes shining with motherly love. Elaine used every opportunity to train and teach our children. The essential values needed to be a good Christian mother, a good Christian people.

But those days have passed. Now wrinkles Grace Elaine’s brow. Her hair has turned a little grayer, but she’s still mothering and grandmothering. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers are special individuals too, and we honor them today as well.

For all mothers, past and present, each of you women of God have a heavenly father who will always take time for you, always. So let’s face facts. There’s no such thing as stress-free motherhood. There’s no such thing as stress-free mother.

There’s no such thing as a perfect mother. But hear the good news. God is always there for you. And he’ll give you the wisdom you need at the right time and in the right place, just like he did for Solomon.

Don’t give up. You’re not in the struggle alone. God is always there for you. So enjoy it, cherish it, embrace motherhood, no matter where in the circle of life you are.

Motherhood is not a split decision. You win overwhelmingly by the grace of God. Happy Mother’s Day. May today and every day be a very special day for you to reflect and remember.

Amen.
Fairhaven Sermon 5-4-2025

May 10, 2025

Fairhaven Sermon 5 4 2025

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Summary

In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman explored the interconnectedness of scripture across time, drawing parallels between Psalm 30 and John 21 to highlight God’s enduring plans for His people. She began by reflecting on the joy of parenting and the idea of building homes, likening David’s preparations for Solomon’s temple to Jesus’ foundational work with the disciples after His resurrection. Bowman emphasized how these stories—separated by a millennium—reveal a consistent divine purpose: God’s commitment to creating spaces for worship and community. She detailed David’s role in planning the temple, despite his own imperfections, and contrasted this with Jesus’ post-resurrection encounter with the disciples, where He restored Peter through forgiveness and redefined the church’s mission. The sermon underscored themes of faith, humility, and God’s unchanging love, bridging ancient and modern expressions of devotion.

Rev. Bowman further unpacked the significance of Jesus’ post-resurrection meal with the disciples, framing it as a symbolic “fish fry” where healing and reconciliation took place. She highlighted Jesus’ emphasis on love as the foundation of the church, exemplified by His repeated calls to Peter to “feed my lambs,” transforming betrayal into a mission of care. The sermon concluded by tying these narratives to the promise of God’s eternal home, built not on human perfection but on divine love and trust. Bowman stressed that just as David and Jesus prepared for future generations, God’s love enables believers to live with hope, joy, and confidence in His unending care. The message closed with a reflection on how love—both received and given—forms the eternal “house” God is building for all who seek Him.

Transcript

Pray with me, please. Lord Jesus, please come and speak through me. Come and touch our minds and our hearts today with your love and your truth. In Jesus’ name, amen.

I was just thinking as Flo was reading that passage from Revelation, that’s the text that is used for the very, very end of Handel’s Messiah. And I could hear the song going in the background. It’s just, I’m not preaching on that one today, but I just had to mention that’s beautiful, beautiful. Anyway, before I get started today, this being the fourth day of May, I do have to say to all the Star Wars fans out there, May the fourth be with you.

Turning to our scriptures for the third week of Easter. One of the great joys of parenting is watching kids grow up and begin to make plans for their lives. As the kids grow up, they start to think about getting their own place. And it can be so much fun to help them imagine and decorate and maybe even help with the down payment on the first house.

So cool to watch them putting together a home for the next generation. Yeah. And in a way, that’s what’s happening in our scriptures for this week, particularly in the psalm and in the Gospel reading from John. In the psalm, David is helping his son Solomon make plans for God’s temple.

that will be built as a house for God’s worship and for God’s people. And in the Gospel from John, we see God and Jesus working together with the disciples to lay the foundation for our spiritual house, the beginnings of the Christian church. So each reading is a story in itself, but each one contains those wonderful plans for the future for God’s people. So let’s take a look and we’ll start with Psalm 30.

Now, first off, in terms of time when these things were written, Psalm 30 and the Gospel of John were written almost a thousand years apart, almost exactly. Psalm 30 was written in Jerusalem in the south of Israel around 970 BC. John chapter 21 takes place in Galilee in the north of Israel around the year 30 AD. And just as for kind of a little reference, a thousand years ago from today, our forefathers and foremothers lived without electricity all the time.

and without motors of any kind and without modern medicine. So things can change a lot in a thousand years. One of the great things about our faith is that it is so remarkably consistent throughout all time. People may change, people may mess up sometimes, but God knows what God is doing, and God is the same yesterday and today and forever.

The similarity and the connectedness between these two readings, separated as they are by 10 centuries, is one of the great things that gives us a real sense of permanence to our faith and to the Scriptures. So starting with Psalm 30. Psalm 30 is a psalm of thanksgiving and praise. It focuses on God’s promises of good things in the future.

And David is sharing his praise as he writes this, his thanksgiving and his joy. And David has walked with God all his life. Now that doesn’t mean that David was without sin, far from it. He was human like all the rest of us, but he had loved God all his life.

And as we know, the book of Psalms was basically the hymnal of the ancient Israel. These Psalms were meant to be sung. But like most great songs, even just reading the words can capture your thoughts and feelings that went into that song. And the note at the top of this psalm, David says that he wrote it for the dedication of the temple.

But the temple hadn’t been built yet. And the book of Chronicles gives us the back story. King David had wanted to build a great house of worship for the Lord, but God said no. God said David was a man of blood.

In other words, he had caused many human deaths, which was true. Scripture doesn’t say exactly which deaths God was referring to, but it’s not. Was he talking about David’s military conquests? Possibly. I mean, Scripture is generally against violence, but it’s not 100% anti-war.

Or was God talking about David killing Goliath? I tend to think that one’s not it, because in that particular battle, David was defending and protecting the armies of Israel. But, Or was God talking about Bathsheba and her husband Uriah who David had killed? I think that’s probably part of it. But the bottom line was in one way or another, David had arranged for hundreds of people to depart this earth and move on to the next life. He was a man of blood.

On the other hand, God also knows how very much David loves God. There are places in Scripture where David is called a man after God’s own heart, a man whose will and whose life were dedicated to God. God’s relationship with David shows how very forgiving God can be. and how very much God wanted David and wants all of us as well to be in relationship with God.

So at the end of the conversation, God promises David in the Old Testament that his son Solomon will be the one to build a temple for God’s great name and for the people to worship in. And David is overjoyed at this message. So before David died, he appointed Solomon as his successor because he had many sons and David made all the preparations necessary for this great project. This temple, this house of God would be the crowning achievement of Solomon’s life.

And so like any loving parent, David starts to make provisions for this great house. He orders timbers and cut stones from the nations around them. He collects up gold and silver for the plates and the cups and the candlesticks in the temple. And he collects up embroidered fabrics and perfumes.

He has technical designs drawn up. And I’m sure that as all these plans went forward, he was telling Solomon about every detail, sharing this with his son, and telling Solomon what he would need to do to complete the project. And David thought of everything, even the music for the grand opening. David wrote a song for the congregation to sing on that great day, and Psalm 30 is it.

How cool is that? I find it interesting that this song of praise, Psalm 30, is not like other songs of praise that we typically hear for heroes or for great leaders or for great events. The song does praise God, but not for giving victory to Israel’s army or for solving all of Israel’s problems. The psalm does say that God has not allowed enemies to rejoice over them in victory, but mostly the song praises God for getting God’s people out of the way of their enemies, for healing, for rescuing God’s people out of Sheol, which is not hell, by the way. Sheol was thought back then to be a place where the soul went when the person died, sort of like a holding area until the judgment day.

The song thanks God for resurrection and also for God’s help. And David sings, weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. And how many times and places have we heard those words? And how many times have we prayed them? So here in this great public celebration, this first worship service in the newly built temple, the song that David wrote for this event is remarkably personal. It’s remarkable.

David is not focused on Israel being God’s nation, but rather encourages each person present, each worshiper, each one of the thousands in the temple, to sing about how God has been there for him or for her personally. and also to sing about confidence for the future, confidence not in the worshiper but in God. This is what a godly nation looks like in worship: personal, humble, thankful, and confident, not in ourselves but in God’s goodness and God’s care. So that’s the future that David was building towards.

And then as we turn to our reading from the Gospel of John, a thousand years later, we’re still dealing with the same God. Just at this point in time, God is present in the flesh, as well as in the Spirit, because Jesus is there. After Jesus’ resurrection, and after the disciples met with the risen Jesus during the week of Easter, the disciples seemed kind of uncertain as to what to do next. Jesus had told them to meet him in Galilee, that’s back in the book of Matthew he said that, but exactly where and when is not clearly defined.

Jesus just says, Meet me in Galilee. So in the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us that over 500 disciples saw Jesus in Galilee after the resurrection. But that meeting hasn’t happened yet. It seems at first just the inner circle was told to go to Galilee and wait ahead of Jesus.

So some of the disciples got there before the others, and with nothing else to do, they fell back on their habit of fishing. They went out fishing, but the fish weren’t biting that night. And in the morning, Jesus made himself known by doing again what he had done before, letting them know where to let the nets down to catch the fish. It’s interesting that this fishing advice is what told the disciples it was Jesus.

There are a number of times after the resurrection that the disciples don’t recognize Jesus by sight. And why this happens is not clear. Scripture doesn’t address the question, and theologians actually don’t talk about it much. So after doing some research, I think the best answer I was able to find was not from a theologian, but from a scientist who said that a body that passes from life into death, into life again, would go through a number of chemical changes, processes that we don’t usually see because we don’t usually see dead people, and these processes would change a person’s cell structure in some way.

And of course this is guesswork, but to me it makes sense. A resurrected body would probably not look the same as the body did before someone died. At any rate, from now on, Jesus will be recognized not by how he looks, but by who he is. In which case the Apostle Paul was right when he said that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, as opposed to by seeing.

E Meanwhile, the disciples were pulling the net with all the fish on shore. While Peter has once again jumped out of the boat and is swimming to Jesus, Jesus already has a fire going on the shore and is already grilling some fish. Now, where these fish came from, we don’t know. They added some more from the net, but there were some already frying.

So, at any rate, there’s a fish fry in the works, and as the disciples gather, they share the joy once again of eating with Jesus, having fish, they had some bread on the side, and their joy is even greater because the fellowship has been restored, and those terrible events in Jerusalem are now behind them, and they’re once more together with Jesus. See, Jesus has plans and the Father has plans. God the Father has plans. This is not just a reunion.

God is going to build a house. And God’s son Jesus is going to be like Solomon, the one for whom the house is being designed. And just like the parts of the temple came together in ancient Israel, the parts of the church now come together to be the bride of Christ. And God the Father, like any loving parent, is preparing a place for Jesus and his bride.

That’s us in a forever home. But there’s still a lot of details that need to be pulled together. And the first is to heal the pain of the betrayals that happened the night that Jesus was arrested. All the disciples had run away that night, except for Peter, who followed at a distance and then swore three times that he’d never met Jesus.

Jesus. So when breakfast is over, Jesus goes about setting things right, and he starts with Peter. And Jesus asks Peter, do you love me? And Peter says, yes, Lord, you know I love you. And Jesus says, feed my lambs.

Now, Jesus is taking something that might have ended the church before it started and turns it into the very foundation of the church, forgiveness and a caring outreach for others. And Jesus asks again, same answer, same assignment, feed my lambs. And I notice at this point what Jesus does not say. He does not tell Peter, go kill the Romans, or go take down the Sadducees, or go kick all the non-Jews out of Israel.

Feed my lambs, he says, both with food and with spiritual food. And this is what Peter is called to do as the foundation of the church is being laid. Oh. And then Jesus asks a third time, do you love me? And his words cut to Peter’s heart.

He says, you know all things, Lord, you know I love you. Feed my lambs. And then Jesus tells Peter that Peter will suffer for God’s word, he will one day find that he’s no longer a free man, he will be bound and made a prisoner and will be martyred for the faith. And Peter raises no objections.

And Jesus says, Follow me. because Jesus has already been there. Jesus has already passed through death. He and he is now alive to tell the tale.

And this is the hope, and this is the new home that is being built, a life that cannot be taken away. So what does this say for all of us? God has gone ahead of us just like David did with Solomon, preparing the temple, preparing the future, and Jesus has gone before us, giving his life so that we can live, and then preparing a place for us, a forever home, that we can’t even begin to imagine right now. And the reason for all of this is love. God’s love for us, Jesus’ love in giving his life for us, and our love for God, following as we are able in the footsteps of David and Peter.

The greatest thing we can do in this life and in the next is to receive God’s love and to love God back. Love is the material out of which our forever home is built, the home that God is building for us and for all who love God. As David says, Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Amen.
Fairhaven Sermon 4-27-2025

April 30, 2025

Fairhaven Sermon 4 27 2025

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Summary

In this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson explored the nature of belief, drawing on the biblical account of Thomas’s doubt and eventual recognition of Jesus’s resurrection. Parson shared a personal journey of seeking certainty and understanding through apologetics, initially driven by a desire to logically prove faith. He then challenged the congregation to consider that true belief isn’s necessarily about empirical proof or intellectual understanding, referencing the example of Ravi Zacharias and highlighting the limitations of a purely rational approach to faith.

Parson emphasized that, according to John’s Gospel, belief is a verb—an ongoing relationship and way of living—rather than a noun to be acquired. He encouraged the congregation to embrace a faith that exists “despite all reasonable doubt,” committing to a life of discipleship even when certainty is elusive, trusting that through service and relationship with others, a deeper understanding of Jesus will unfold. Ultimately, he urged the congregation to “preach faith until you have it,” and to live as believers even when faith feels uncertain.

Transcript

So I have been a pretty big reader since I was a small child and actually I probably read way less now than I did when I was in like middle school, which is probably a combination of two things I think. First is just being burned out from eight or seven years of higher education where you like read hundreds of pages every night. I got kind of sick of that. And like the rest of you, social media has fried my attention span.

So there’s that. But reading has always kind of been the way that I understand and process things. So if I hear about something new or interesting, I wanna do some reading on it to get a fuller picture. I want to really intellectualize it, to understand it inside and out.

I wanna explore what other people have said about it so I can internalize it for myself. And I do this about things it makes sense for, you know, like theology, history, science things, but also for things that it kind of doesn’t, I guess. And something that comes to mind for me on that is running. This was a while back, but whenever I took up cross country in high school.

I read a number of books about training technique, how to run, one of which I distinctly remember. I can see the cover of it. It was called Run: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel. And the basic thesis of that book is that your body knows how long and how hard you can run on any given day, and that you train best by listening to what your body is telling you.

Unfortunately, my body has not told me to run in like 10 years, but it will. It was a good book. But the irony is that it was telling me to trust my own experience of running when what I really wanted was for the book to tell me specifically what to do to get as fast as I could be. And the entire point of the book is that following some program to the letter is just not going to work for you if you want to reach your full potential because you’re an individual, you’re unique, you need different things.

But that’s my tendency. I want to grasp everything in my brain crystal clear. Just tell me how it is. So about that same time in my life, I was becoming a Christian.

So this would have been early high school. And I’d been in church a couple years. I really loved it. I wanted to understand the faith for myself.

And I wanted it the same way. I wanted it to be cut and dry in a way that I could hold on to, in a way that I could unimpeachably explain it to someone else. Here’s what I believe. Here’s the reason that it is true.

True. So I gravitated towards an area of theology called apologetics. If you’re not familiar with that, apologetics, it comes from the Greek word to speak in defense, not like apologize. It’s different.

It’s basically a type of evangelism that seeks to prove that. the existence of God, and then more specifically prove the God of Christianity, prove Jesus Christ by appealing to science, to logic, philosophy, math, and so on. And there are some very sophisticated arguments. Some of the great thinkers in history, the physicist Blaise Pascal was a big apologist.

C.S. Lewis, the writer of Narnia, was an apologist. The Apostle Paul is kind of doing that throughout a lot of his letters.

He’s seeking to explain Jesus to the Gentiles and convince them to follow him by using images, principles from the Greeks’ religion and philosophy. It’s like using other languages to explain and prove Jesus. So about at the same time in my life, what I really found myself drawn to was apologetics. And the figure I was drawn to was Ravi Zacharias.

I don’t know if any of you are familiar with that person. But he was an Indian-born pastor and apologist who, until his death a few years back, was one of the most influential in the world. Right? He had a radio show every week that I’d listen to at work. I read a couple of his books.

And I really found this way of relating to faith useful, logical. It helped me digest it. It helped me understand it in the same way I might process information from history or for science, nice and cut and dry. And he was obviously brilliant.

So by the time I applied to college, I remember writing in my application, I always planned to study religion. that my prime interest in that field was apologetics, understanding the faith and explaining it to other people. And I wanted to be able to preach and teach convincingly like Robbie Zacharias, long before I knew I wanted to be a pastor. So he died in 2020.

I’d largely switched gears by then. I relate to Jesus now in a way that’s different, not logical, not analytical so much anymore. But just a few months after he died in 2020, accusations started pouring out that he’d engaged in all kinds of sexual misconduct, abuse, coercion against, I think, like 200 women in multiple countries. His own ministry hired investigators to look into these reports.

His own ministry concluded that they were true. And so I was left with this question. How could it be That a man who helped teach me and millions of people how to believe in Jesus in our minds didn’t really seem to know Jesus at all and indeed behaved like the devil in his private life. Our gospel text this morning describing Jesus’ appearance to the disciple that we unfairly name Doubting Thomas helps us understand, I think, because it makes us confront what it actually means to believe in Jesus.

So think about that just for a second for yourself. What does it mean to believe in Jesus? If you believe in Jesus, what does that look like for you? How does that belief function? What does that mean? Is believing to decide in your mind that something is just empirically true, that it’s verifiable by the evidence that you’ve been given? So in my apologetics era, I think I’d have said, yeah, basically that’s what it is. I had faith. I believed because the information I’d received about Jesus seemed to be factually correct.

But the thing is, that’s a pretty new idea of what belief is. That’s not really how belief is talked about in the Bible. Believing in that sense is an Enlightenment-era concept that’s only really existed for like 500 years now. Because in scripture, particularly in John’s gospel, belief is not a noun, something that you acquire with enough evidence, like you believe in the theory of gravity or something like that.

Believe is a verb. You don’t have it. You live it. And so for John and for Thomas, to believe is to be in an ongoing relationship with Jesus.

In the New Testament, to believe is to live your life as if something is true, and that is to live your life as if Christ is risen indeed. So in the days after Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples were obviously not interested in doing that. They just witnessed him arrested, tried, condemned, tortured, killed. They knew that he’d been placed in a grave to rot.

They’d rolled a rock in the front of the cave entrance like this final punctuation mark declaring the end of his life, of their hope. And there was nothing left to believe in, as far as they were concerned. Why would they live their lives as his disciples when there was nobody to follow? And things changed pretty rapidly after those three days. Mary Magdalene sees him.

We read that on Easter Sunday. She speaks to him at the tomb. And Jesus sends her back to announce to the disciples that he is alive and is coming to them. And she tells them, I have seen the Lord.

but we can assume, I think, that the disciples don’t really buy it because that’s where we pick up in our reading from John today. And after Mary’s given her report, they’re still in hiding, right? She said Jesus is alive. He’s coming. He’s around.

But they’re still hiding in this locked room, so they don’t really seem to believe it very much. Mary’s word apparently isn’t good enough, and they’re still afraid. and Thomas is perhaps even more devastated than the rest of the remaining 11 disciples, and he has simply run away. He’s not with them anymore.

John’s gospel doesn’t tell us where Thomas is. But by Sunday evening, despite this locked door, they have fortified themselves in the upper room. Jesus miraculously shows up and stands among these 10 disciples and says, Peace be with you. And I think that’s beautiful.

Jesus’ first words to his handpicked disciples after literally going to hell and back are, Peace be with you. Peace must really be something that he wants for them and for us if it’s his first priority when he’s resurrected from the grave. And then after that, after he’s done that, he shows them his pierced hands, his side, scarred but transformed in his resurrected body, and they are filled with joy, John says. Now they believe.

Jesus breathes on them with the Holy Spirit. He gives them the authority to forgive sins, and they are back in business. They believe again. Not in their heads, mind you.

but in that they are once more living their lives as his followers in the world that tried and failed to take his life. We know that they believe because they go out despite the risks. But Thomas is absent, right? Thomas misses Jesus’ visit. And not only is he absent, when the other disciples find him, he completely rejects the possibility that Jesus could be alive.

Unless I see nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand in his side, Thomas says, I will not believe. I will not believe. He’s not getting disappointed again. He wants empirical, unassailable proof, which to me it seems he sure isn’t going to come.

Whenever he’s saying he’s not going to believe unless these things happen is kind of a when pigs fly sort of thing, right? But, And so a few days later, when Thomas has rejoined the group, Jesus returns to them again, again despite these locked doors. And again, those same words, peace be with you. And he has a message for Thomas specifically. Put your finger here.

Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe.

And he has, out of love for Thomas, met him on his own terms. Okay. You know, you said you wouldn’t believe unless you could see and feel the wounds from my crucifixion. Well, here they are.

And Thomas does indeed get that proof that many of us would like. Wouldn’t that be nice, right? But the remarkable thing is that he doesn’t seem to take it. John doesn’t tell us that Thomas actually insists when Jesus comes to touch the nail marks to put his hand in his side the opportunity arises, Thomas doesn’t do it instead it’s when he meets Jesus when he hears Jesus’ voice calling out to him his response is to be overwhelmed with faith my Lord and my God, he says He sounds a lot like what we heard Mary Magdalene say last week Whenever she said, And Jesus now comes to each of his followers in the way that they need him. Not the way they think that they need him, but the way that they need him So that they can call him mine, my teacher, my Lord, my God.

Amen. But he tells John, he tells all the disciples down the line, which now includes us, that the real gift, the real blessing is for those who do not see and yet believe. Belief in Jesus is just so much deeper, so much harder to pin down than this beyond all reasonable doubt standard of proof that we might find in a courtroom. There’s going to be doubt.

Doubt. Instead, the belief that we’re invited to in the resurrected Jesus is belief despite all reasonable doubt. It’s belief without proof, let alone the kind of proof that we can lay down to somebody else to prove Jesus to them. I’m not sure many people in history have actually ever been convinced by logic, by reason, to believe in Jesus.

it’s believing without that proof and then committing our lives to him anyway. More than anywhere else, we meet Jesus as we do his work in the world. We meet him as he appears before us in the face of other people, the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed specifically. Pope Francis was very insistent on that.

and we see him as we seek him out, as he speaks to our hearts, it’s that voice that mattered so much more to Mary Magdalene and to Thomas than being able to physically touch Jesus in front of us. Just as he tells Thomas the proof kind of belief is great if you can get it, where you believe Jesus is Lord the same way you believe your sibling or spouse or some celebrity is real and touchable. But if you’re a person like Thomas who struggles with faith in the resurrected Christ, you should know that that kind of belief that never has an ounce of doubt exists. is completely unnecessary to life as a disciple.

That’s not the kind of belief we’re asked to have in Christ. If you’ve ever been worried that you don’t have enough faith in Jesus, you have enough faith by wanting to have faith. Relationship with him is the kind of belief that matters. Not seeing, yet believing anyway matters.

believing in your heart. It’s the willingness to walk, to sacrifice, to serve as if he’s alive, regardless as to whether you feel yourself feeling as if he’s as physically real as me standing here. You are not expected to believe in Jesus with that same kind of belief that you believe in the Pythagorean theorem, if you remember it. Or that Columbus crossed the ocean in 1492.

Because that’s not the kind of belief that transforms. You can know, you can believe in your head and not be transformed, not be changed, not you live your life any differently. Ravi Zacharias showed me that pretty clearly after my teenage years. And I would suggest to you that there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus in their minds, that he’s a historic figure, that they are sure lived and died and rose again, and that doesn’t make the tiniest bit of difference in their lives.

We know that this is true. Some 67% of Americans at the last poll identify as Christian, which simply means they believe in Jesus, right? Do you think that 67% of the people in this country are followers of Christ, believing in him in such a way that they stake their whole lives on him, that they seek to live in mercy and justice and righteousness and love, that he is their Lord, that he is their Savior, their everything as they seek to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. 67% of America. Do you even think that 67% of churchgoers believe in Jesus in that way? And yet, that’s what it’s all about.

That’s what belief is in the body of Christ. The ability and the willingness to say, my Lord and my God, from the depths of your heart, without ever having put your finger in his nail holes or a hand in his side, And I wonder if a lot of people who struggle with faith, who struggle with belief in Jesus, do so because they’ve been seeking a standard of evidence and apologetic that they don’t really need. Because remember, Thomas didn’t really need what he thought he needed. He just needed to hear from Christ.

this is never, ever, ever going to be something that you understand inside and out. That you can hold in your hand and analyze and grasp. That’s not what Jesus is like. John Wesley had in his 30s what you might call a dark night of the soul.

He wasn’t sure about his call. He wasn’t sure about his faith. And a Moravian preacher and kind of a mentor of his, Peter Bowler was his name, famously told him, preach faith until you have it. And then you will preach faith because you have it.

And that’s the challenge, I think, a beautiful one for those of us who are not lucky enough to meet Jesus at the mouth of the tomb. For those of us who have never gotten to touch his resurrected flesh in the upper room. Live the life of a believer, of a disciple, until you are one. Decide to trust Jesus until you really do.

And then you will live the life of a believer, of a disciple, because you believe. And you’ll trust him because you found that he’s trustworthy. And for many of us, that’s not going to be a one-time thing. We’re going to find ourselves recommitting to belief repeatedly over the years and relying on our siblings in Christ to believe for us when we can’t.

But it is worth it. These disciples have decided in Scripture. and that face-to-face meeting that Thomas and Mary Magdalene got is coming for us to, each and every one of us, we will see him. We will touch his transformed body that has transformed our souls.

We will one day be able to look at him in the eye and say, My Lord and my God. Thanks be to God in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.