Fairhaven UMC – Page 56 – United Methodist Church

Fairhaven Sermon 8-13-2023

August 16, 2023

Summary

In this weeks sermon on the Sabbath, Rev. Peg Bowman uses a Star Wars analogy to frame her exploration of how the concept of the Sabbath evolved in the Old Testament period. Just as the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, connects the beginning and end of the original trilogy while having a different tone, Rev. Bowman explains that this sermon connects the Sabbath’s origins at creation to Jesus’s teachings about it by examining its development in between.

Rev. Bowman then discusses various expansions of Sabbath laws and practices in the Old Testament, including gathering manna, prohibiting work and fire, instituting Sabbath years, and requiring debt relief. She explains that properly observing these Sabbath commandments brought prosperity, while later abandoning them brought exile and harm.

Rev. Bowman concludes by praying for understanding of the Sabbath as a gift and commitment to honor it in anticipation of next week’s sermon on how Jesus related to Sabbath practices.

Transcript

So how many here remember the very first Star Wars movie? Most of us? Okay, good. Yes. The very first Star Wars was like nothing that had ever been seen before. Big screen, big special effects, great heroes.
And the third movie in the series, Return of the Jedi, was a lot like it. Big special effects, local hero does good, good guys win in the end. But the second movie, The Empire Strikes Back, wasn’t quite the same. It still had the great special effects, but the storyline left a lot of questions unanswered.
Empire Strikes Back connected part one to part three, but it wasn’t quite the same as the other two. It was sort of just that connecting issue. Today’s sermon is kind of like that. This is part two of our sermon series on the Sabbath, and like the Empire Strikes Back, in many ways, this is a connecting tissue between parts one and part three.
Part one, we saw God creating the world and blessing everything in creation. Part three, Jesus will bring a new meaning to the Sabbath. But here in part two, we find the original Sabbath being changed, first by God and then by God’s people, And eventually, the people of Israel give up trying to keep the Sabbath at all, which brings harm to the nation of Israel. So in part one, we saw the Sabbath is a day of rest, a day when we remember God’s work in creating the world.
We also saw that all people are equal on the Sabbath, that the Sabbath was good for friends, children, foreigners, workers, even farm animals. Everybody gets to rest on the Sabbath. And then in the Sabbath, we also remember the time when Israel was set free from slavery in Egypt. Sabbath was a way of saying we will never be slaves again.
So that was part one. Today in part two, we look at how that idea of Sabbath grew and expanded in the Old Testament. The first example of this comes from our reading in Exodus 16. And in this reading, Moses is telling the people how to observe the Sabbath.
Now keep in mind, remember, the people of Israel were still living in the wilderness. They were sort of wandering, or they were not in the promised land yet. They’re out in the wilderness, and God is providing them manna to eat as they travel through the wilderness. And God gave them instructions on how to handle this heavenly food, this manna.
God said, Gather it every morning. Don’t save it for later, because the manna will go bad, and it will stink, and it will get worms in it. OK, I think what they say– what did you– maggots. There we go.
That was– you get the idea, right? So that was God’s instructions. And by doing this, they had to gather fresh every day. And by doing this, they learned to trust God for their provision for every day. But of course, there were always a few people who thought to themselves, well, this doesn’t apply to me.
So they saved extra manna overnight anyway. And like God said, it went bad and stank and got maggots in it, right? But on the Sabbath, things were different. God said no work should be done on the Sabbath, and that included gathering the manna. So on the day before the Sabbath, the people were supposed to gather twice as much manna, food for two days.
And God said it would not go bad or stink on the Sabbath, and it didn’t. But again, some people didn’t pay attention, and they went out on the Sabbath anyway to get some more manna. And there wasn’t any. So they learned to gather manna every day, except on the Sabbath.
God was not happy about that, but they managed to settle this and keep going. So I think there’s three lessons here. First off, when God speaks, people need to pay attention. God knows what God is talking about.
God doesn’t usually get things wrong. Secondly, hoarding is not good, whether it be manna or anything else. And third, doing things the way God says to do them is good not just for us, but for others around us. In the second reading from Exodus today, God tells the people again not to work on the Sabbath.
And God adds two new things to the Sabbath law. God says the definition of not working includes not starting a fire on the Sabbath. And secondly, God says that disobeying the Sabbath law is now a capital offense. I did some research on that.
According to the Jewish scholars, the death penalty for breaking Sabbath was rarely, if ever, enforced, because it was very difficult to prove in court. You needed to have at least two witnesses and all these different conditions. And what’s more important, really, both to the Jewish people and to us, is that the definition of work now includes starting a fire. It’s amazing when we stop and think of how many things starting a fire might include.
I mean, at the time of Moses, it would have included not gathering firewood, not stacking firewood, not lighting a flame, which would also mean not cooking, not forging iron, any of that kind of stuff. In our time today, our Jewish cousins still debate amongst themselves over the meaning of this commandment. But they do agree that not starting a fire on the Sabbath is important. What they disagree on is what it includes.
Many Jewish people believe that not starting a fire includes not turning on a light switch. Think about that. You know, these little– the minute you move that thing up, a little spark happens inside the wall, and electricity happens, right? So that’s a fire. I would not have thought of that, but they did.
So in today’s world, many Jewish families have their house lights on timers so they don’t need to turn things on and off on the Sabbath. Not starting a fire also means not using a stove. So many Jewish people cook Sabbath meals in advance. Some eat cold food, some keep food warm in crock pots or in the oven, and all of these things are turned on before Sabbath begins.
Not starting a fire also includes not driving a car. Think about it, internal combustion engine, that’s a fire. But I should also quickly add that the Sabbath law can be set aside in times of emergency. So if a person needs a ride to a hospital on the Sabbath, then driving the car is okay.
So we begin to get the idea of what Sabbath looks like on a daily basis for the people of Israel, both then and now. There are two other groups of Sabbath laws that are not in our readings today, but I should mention them because we’ll probably come across them at some point. The first has to do with planting crops. Leviticus chapter 25, God tells the people to give the land a Sabbath.
Here’s just a piece of that commandment. God says, The Lord spoke to Moses saying, ‘When you enter the land that I’m giving you, the land shall observe a Sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard. But in the seventh year, there should be a Sabbath of complete rest for the Lord, for the land.
Now, keeping this law would require a lot of trust in God because the family would be without crops basically for two years, the year of the Sabbath, and then the second, the next year when the new crops are growing. But this is also wise farming. And an echo of this teaching is still seen in our world today in the idea of crop rotation, The land does not grow the same thing year after year. And many farmers today, not all, but many, rotate their fields and allow one field to rest while the others rotate.
So giving the land a Sabbath actually increases what the land produces, which brings blessing to the people of God. In addition, in the Old Testament, people themselves were given a Sabbath year, specifically a Sabbath from debt. This law, which is found in Deuteronomy 15, would be almost impossible to do in our society today. It would turn a capitalist system upside down.
But here’s what the law says. Imagine this in real life. Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debt. Every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed.
There will be no one in need among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you. And when the Lord your God has blessed you, you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. You will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you. If there is among you anyone in need, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.
You should rather open your hand willingly, lending enough to meet the need, and be careful you do not say to yourself, The seventh year is near, and therefore give nothing. Your neighbor might cry out to the Lord, and you would incur guilt. Give liberally; be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work. Since there will never cease to be some in need in the earth, I therefore command you, open your hand to the poor and the needy.
All of this, all of this is part of the Old Testament Sabbath law. So basically, God’s people are told every seven years, all debts are cleared. I don’t think our society could handle this. Car loans, mortgages, I mean, what would you do? (laughs) It was just, we have to revamp the entire system.
But it’s interesting to think what our world would be like if no one was ever in debt for more than seven years. All these laws give us a picture of how important Sabbath is to God. Not just a day to remember God’s creation, not just a day of stopping work, but also rest for the land and freedom from debt. There’s a little bit more to the Sabbath law in the Old Testament, but these highlights give us the idea, now all Israel has to do is do them.
So our last reading for today is from the book of Nehemiah. And before we look at this, I wanted to add a small quote from the prophet Amos. Amos was the prophet before Jerusalem fell, before the exile to Babylon. Nehemiah was the prophet after they came back from Babylon.
So this little snippet fills in the gap. Amos gave these words to Israel. He said, Hear this, you that trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, when will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat. The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
This is what caused the people of Israel to go into captivity in Babylon. They oppressed the needy and the poor by denying them Sabbath rest and overcharging them for goods. Because we saw a Sabbath stands for equality, for peace and for rest for all people. And the Sabbath year meant that no one could fall into debt, but the people of Israel ignored the Sabbath and trampled the poor, and they would not listen to God.
And so God sent them from the promised land into captivity in Babylon. Nehemiah was one of the prophets who helped rebuild Jerusalem and the temple after the people came back from Babylon. And so in our scripture for today, the prophet says, I saw in Judah people treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in heaps of grain, and loading them on donkeys, and also wine and grapes and figs and all kinds of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And Nehemiah says to the people, basically, What are you doing? Don’t you remember this is how we ended up in Babylon in the first place.
And when they still wouldn’t listen, Nehemiah saw the gates of the city were shut and barred on the Sabbath, and still the merchants camped out outside the city walls until he chased them away. And so Nehemiah told the Levites to purify themselves and guard the gates and keep the Sabbath holy. The average person in the days in Jerusalem after Babylon had forgotten the Sabbath. They had forgotten God’s laws.
Some of them had never actually even heard God’s laws. I mean, back in those days, people didn’t have Bibles in their houses. So God’s word was scarce in Babylon all that time. They were there, what, 70 years? So most of the laws had been forgotten.
If they’d not been passed down, they’d been forgotten. So one of the very first laws that Nehemiah teaches the people is the Sabbath law. And he prays, Remember this in my favor, O my God. Nehemiah knew that success of the Second Temple and the success of the rebuilding of Jerusalem rested on obeying God’s law, beginning with the Sabbath.
So a quick review up to this point. Week one, we saw that Sabbath reminds us of God’s creation, calls us to enjoy that creation and all the beauty that God has made. Sabbath is for everyone regardless of age or nationality or what we do for a living. We also saw that Sabbath is related to freedom, freedom from slavery, freedom to say no to anyone in power over us once every seven days.
This week in week two, we saw that God used manna to teach the people to trust in God’s provision and not hoard. We also saw that Sabbath takes planning. We need to have our fires started and our lights lit so we’ll be ready when the Sabbath comes. And we also saw that the Sabbath involves caring for the land.
God commands those who grow food to let the land rest every seven years. And we saw that Sabbath law applies to money, particularly debt, which is to be wiped out every seven years, basically a financial Sabbath. In the Old Testament, when the people of Israel kept the Sabbath, everything went well with the nation. When they threw the Sabbath away and ignored it, war and exile were the result.
One Jewish website says, More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel. Next week in part three, we will see how Jesus kept the Sabbath even while people are accusing him of breaking it. And we’ll take a look at a few ideas as to what Sabbath-keeping might look like in the 21st century. I’d like to close today with another part of another Sabbath prayer.
Last week I closed with the opening of Sabbath. This prayer is sort of similar to a grace. It is traditionally said at the beginning of the first meal on the Sabbath. Let’s pray.
Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and given us in love and favor his holy Sabbath as an inheritance, as remembrance of the act of creation. For this day is the beginning of all holy days, a remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. For you have chosen us and you have blessed us from among all the nations. Blessed are you, Lord, who sanctifies the Sabbath.
Lord Jesus, please bless to our understanding this gift of Sabbath that you have given us, and inspire us to observe and honor this gift. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO].
Sermon Shorts 8-13-2023

August 15, 2023

We also saw that Sabbath is related to freedom, freedom from slavery, freedom to say no to anyone in power over us once every seven days. This week in week two, we saw that God used manna to teach the people to trust in God’s provision and not hoard.

Basically, God’s people are told every seven years, all debts are cleared. I don’t think our society could handle this. Car loans, mortgages, I mean, what would you do? It was just, we have to revamp the entire system.
Baby Shower for Jesus

August 11, 2023

September 9, 2023

10am – 1pm

Fairhaven United Methodist Church

RSVP by Saturday, August 26, 2023 to Stormie!
Fairhaven Sermon 8-6-2023

August 9, 2023

The sermon explores the theme of spiritual maturity and identity formation through the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling with God. Pastor Dylan describes how Jacob begins his life driven by self-interest, manipulating others and disconnected from God. After encountering God in a vision, Jacob begins a journey of growth, though he still relies on his own scheming. The pivotal moment comes when Jacob physically wrestles with a divine messenger, demanding a blessing. After this intense struggle, Jacob receives the new name Israel, symbolic of his identity shifting to one who wrestles with God.

Pastor Dylan connects this transformation to the Christian life. Though God’s grace and blessings are freely given, believers must actively “wrestle” to fully embrace their identity in Christ. Maturity means recognizing that life’s struggles belong to God rather than striving alone. Just as Jacob emerged from the fight a new man, Christians are continually called to surrender their old identities and accept the love remaking them as children of God.

Spiritual growth is an ongoing process of choosing faith over fear, allowing God to shape us into who we were created to be.

Transcript

I mentioned this before probably, but my ethnic heritage is decidedly bland. It’s largely German, Swiss, large amount of Swiss, which is kind of weird actually. French, English, Irish, you know, your basic northern Europeans, not a lot of spices or tomato, you know. We’ve been here a good while.
It’s been since the 1740s or earlier for a lot of the Swiss and the English, which is a very long time to remain in love with the promised land of Butler County. The French side is the most recent, and even that particular great-great-grandfather got here in 1900, so that’s still 120 years ago. Unsurprisingly though, the traditions that my ancestors may have brought with them across the Atlantic are virtually gone. I don’t know what they ate.
I don’t know their religious customs. The churches in Porterville and elsewhere that many of my forebears would have helped found, they started as Swiss reform churches, but they’ve been Americanized into just Bible churches now, they’re called, for decades. My French great-great-grandfather, I imagine, was Catholic, but he’d have been traveling quite a ways every Sunday to find a mass, so presumably he just didn’t. And here we are.
Accordingly, I look with envy upon some of the things the spicier ethnicities of Western PA have, you know, like clubs and pierogies and holiday traditions and special days at Kennywood. I’m especially jealous, you know, of the rare and unique ones, the Lithuanians, the Ruthenians, because I’m just American. And indeed, the US census shows that a lot of the English, a lot of the Scots, Irish families who have been in this region, in the Appalachian region for a long time have simply just marked American on their census for years and years and years, because any identity beyond that is gone. My homeland isn’t the Alpine lakes of Switzerland, though I’d like to see them.
It’s the glacial valleys, the rolling hills of Slippery Rock Township. It’s changed. There’s a novelty t-shirt store at the Robinson Mall with a shirt in the window that I’ve seen many places elsewhere. and it says, American by birth, Italian by the grace of God.
And that’s a joke, I assume. Maybe not for some Italians who are really into it. But there’s something to that also. We carry different identities at different depths within us.
And the identity of our birth is not necessarily the one that we claim, the one we retain throughout our lives. Like in this example, an Italian-American who was born and raised in the US has a really wide choice as to how Italian they want to be, right? They could easily discard their home culture entirely as my European ancestors did eventually until American is what they are above all else and no one else, maybe not even their kids, knows their heritage without doing some hardcore research. Meanwhile, you could have an adopted child, right, who might identify with their biological family to some degree, and their DNA will never change, but it’s also quite likely that their last name will change and that they’ll consider themselves to be more fully a member of that adoptive family. It’s quite likely that their adoptive parents just become understood as their parents, right? And those who gave them birth might get that added distance of biological parents.
You know, the same way a woman often changes her name upon marriage. Men do now occasionally. I have some friends who hyphenated theirs to symbol a new family as a fusion of the old. And whenever you change your name, it’s not that the old has gone away, but that you’ve chosen to become something.
You’ve chosen to create something new, and that’s what you’re claiming now. The name that will one day be on your headstone, the name that your children will bear, that’s something that you choose, that you create together in a new marriage. So you get what I’m saying here, that identities are fluid, are complicated. Who you started as, even down to the level of your DNA, is not necessarily the determinant of who you end up as in life.
Life happens, we grow, we change. Over time, some of us might as well become a new person entirely. And I would argue that’s actually exactly what Jesus calls us to over a lifetime of discipleship and growth. By the end of our lives, by our older years, with God’s help, with God’s shaping touch, we should be unrecognizable from who we started as, in the best way possible.
You know, disciple of Jesus, child of God, should become our above-all identity as we grow over time. I remember the words of 2 Corinthians 5, 17. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away.
Look, new things have come into being. Complete change, complete transformation until it’s just newness. And we see something like this happening within Jacob, a kind of metamorphosis. Over the last month or so, I’ve been working through Jacob’s saga in Genesis, and what we have seen over the last three, what you might call, episodes is the sprouting and maturing of Jacob’s faith.
In today’s reading, we might reach what we might call that maturing. Jacob began his story as a man who, despite his heritage as a son of Isaac, as the grandson of the great patriarch Abraham had zero relationship with God. Instead, he’s what his given name describes. Jacob means supplanter or one who seizes, and indeed he seeks to build his own power and fortune by hustling.
If there’s one thing Jacob is, it’s a hustler. He manipulates those around him. His only mention of God before his exile, you’ll recall, was this offhanded remark to to his father as he’s trying to embezzle him in the wake of extorting his brother Esau’s entire inheritance. Jacob uses God as a tool, just kind of a rhetorical device.
Whenever he is sent into exile, whenever he sets up camp at Bethel, it’s there that he sees this vision of angels ascending and descending a staircase to heaven. And he hears the voice of God directly speaking to him for the first time in his life. He’s never met God before, he’s never had any concept of God, and then God breaks through in this vision. And for the first time, a real relationship opens up between Jacob and the Lord, despite Jacob never having sought one.
It’s not like Jacob went into the wilderness to meet God. No, Jacob had no interest in that. But God promises to be with him even as he’s leaving his homeland until his destiny is fulfilled. God promises that he’s never alone, even as he wanders into the desert and away from his family into an uncertain future.
And so for Jacob, after Bethel, God is no longer this abstraction belonging to his father and his grandfather. Faith isn’t just something that his parents and grandparents had. The God of Abraham is now his too. One that he knows personally, one that he’s met, one that he has spoken to.
Surely God was in this place, but I didn’t know it, Jacob says. And so it’s been a couple chapters, we skipped a couple chapters, since we last encountered Jacob at the beginning of his exile. And since then, now that we’re in chapter 32, he’s grown up quite a bit. A lot has happened in his life.
It’s been a while. He’s gotten himself a couple wives, Rachel and Leah, those are stories of their own, in his mother’s homeland. And he’s had a really successful run back there. He’s been working the land of his cousin Laban as kind of an indentured servant.
He’s paying off his wives, right? He was, Laban promised to give him his wives if he would work for him for a number of years. And he and Rachel and Leah have begun having sons who will become the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. But now the land is getting a little bit tight for both Laban and Jacob to live in peace. Some friction is emerging between the two clans.
Laban’s family is getting jealous because Jacob’s doing really well. He’s become a very successful farmer, very prosperous, got all these strong young boys, right? And God tells Jacob that it’s finally time to go back home and also to finally face his brother Esau, whom he pretty aggressively screwed over. His servants warn as he heads back to Canaan, the land of his father, that Esau, his brother, is coming to meet him with 400 men, which he reasonably assumes is probably not a great sign. Jacob, at the beginning of this chapter, is panicking.
You know, his brother’s essentially raised an army that’s marching towards him, and he prays. Lord, God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, who said to me, go back to your country and your relatives, and I’ll make sure things go well for you. I don’t deserve how loyal and truthful you’ve been to your servant. He’s right.
I went away across the Jordan with just my staff, and now I’ve become two camps. Save me from my brother Esau. I’m afraid he will come and kill me, the mothers and their children. You were the one who told me.
I will make sure things go well for you, and I will make your descendants like the sand of the sea so many you won’t be able to count them. He’s terrified. And he anticipates crossing back over the river to his homeland to face these skeletons that he prayed would stay in his closet forever. He thought all that was long gone.
And on one hand, he really trusts that God is calling him back. He does go after all, but still not fully. He isn’t both feet in. Deep down, he’s still that desperate boy who hung on to his brother’s heel at birth, trying to control his own fate by force of will.
And so he prepares this big strategy, right? This big game of showering Esau with gifts. He’s sending before him all kinds of dozens of animals and this fortune and so all these presents to Esau. So by the time Jacob arrives, Esau’s softened up a little bit. He’s like, Oh, well, this is nice.
And when a reading this morning begins, he sends the first group over into the land to encounter Esau and offer this peacemaking gift. So he sent his wives, his children, the servants, a lot of animals ahead, but he stays behind on the riverbank, and this mysterious man shows up and starts wrestling him. What a weird moment. And they wrestle, and they wrestle through the night, And the man takes a cheap shot eventually, ’cause it’s gone on too long, and he either rips Jacob’s thigh muscle or dislocates his hip, depending on which translation that you read.
And yet he still doesn’t win. Jacob persists, insisting that he won’t let this man out of a headlock until he gives him a blessing, which is a recurring theme for Jacob, you’ll notice. He’s always trying to get that blessing. And so he does.
The man gives him that blessing. He asks him his name, Jacob, but then he renames him and he says, Your name won’t be Jacob anymore, but Israel, because you struggled with God and men and won. Israel means struggles with God. This mysterious attacker turns out to be God himself, but he refuses to speak his own name.
In the midst of the struggle with himself, with his fear, and directly now with God, Jacob becomes a new man with a new name. His identity now has been forged in his wrestling with God. He started out that fight. He started out on that side of the river as Jacob, but now he’s Israel.
Supplanter is who he was born as, this schemer, this striver. What wrestles with God is who he’s become. And that’s a really different way to live. Finally, Jacob, now Israel, sees God’s blessing and grace as his own, as really, truly being something he has.
It’s striking, I think, in this story that God has already promised Jacob his blessing and promise like decades ago now, back at that night at Bethel when they first met. Years and years have passed. God already promised back at Bethel that all this stuff was going to be Jacob’s. Jacob already had God’s blessing without even asking for it.
But it’s only whenever he wrestles with God that he demands it, that he then truly accepts the love and the grace of God given to him. God essentially has to like reverse psychology Jacob into finally getting it. He had to fight him so he knew that he wouldn’t have to fight anymore. God has to force Jacob to see that a path of grace has been laid wide open for him his whole life if he’s just willing to go.
And our paths as Christians are not so different. No mysterious men are wrestling us on the side of the road, hopefully. But the promise God places upon our lives, that we are reborn and renewed and claimed as children of God through Jesus, is given to us at baptism. It’s totally free, it doesn’t require a single thing from us, just like whenever God promised Jacob at Bethel.
We are marked and sealed as God’s beloved from the very beginning, before we even ask. But it’s most often in wrestling with God and man, in the words of Genesis, over the course of our lives, that who we have always been in Christ becomes the identity we claim deep in our souls. Grace and blessing are free. They’re always free, and yet we have to learn to receive them.
Our lives are not so different than Jacob’s journey from home to exile and back home again. times will come and continue to come over and over and over again when we stand on the riverbank and we can choose to strive and flail and scrap on our own, looking with anxiety on what is to come, or accept that God is already with us, fighting for us in the midst of life’s battles, calling us to be more than we were born to be. And this is what spiritual maturity looks like. And I suspect it’s rarely a one-time thing for most of us.
Maturity is just getting it right more often, right? But a decision we have to make over and over again. Is this my struggle to deal with myself? Is it on me? Or is it God’s? hand it over to God, to accept the blessing, is to transcend our own identities and to be renamed. We’re not striving, we’re not supplanting, we’re not scrapping anymore. We’re renamed.
God has given you and me every single thing that we need. The question is whether we’ll break down, surrender and just accept the grace and love that has been ours all along. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Sermon Shorts 8-6-2023

August 8, 2023

The Full Sermon can be viewed here.

Life happens, we grow, we change. Over time, some of us might as well become a new person entirely. And I would argue that’s actually exactly what Jesus calls us to over a lifetime of discipleship and growth.

By the end of our lives, by our older years, with God’s help, with God’s shaping touch, we should be unrecognizable from who we started as, in the best way possible. You know, disciple of Jesus, child of God, should become our above-all identity as we grow over time.

The God of Abraham is now his too. One that he knows personally, one that he’s met, one that he has spoken to. Surely God was in this place, but I didn’t know it, Jacob says. And so it’s been a couple chapters, we skipped a couple chapters, since we last encountered Jacob at the beginning of his exile. And since then, now that we’re in chapter 32, he’s grown up quite a bit.