Fairhaven UMC

Well, as you know, today is the first Sunday of Lent, and it’s also the first Sunday of our Lenten sermon series called Vital Signs. Pastor Dylan preached the first sermon in this series on Ash Wednesday, basically an introduction to the series. and to the idea that there is a parallel between the way we think of physical health and the way we think of spiritual health. And if you missed Flash Wednesday, that’s okay.

We’re kind of starting again at the beginning today. And I’m going to draw our attention to all three of the Scripture readings that we heard a moment ago, Genesis, the Psalms, and Matthew. Before we dig into the scriptures, though, I wanted to mention a book that I just finished reading called American Sirens by Kevin Hazard. And this is the story of the very first EMS service, emergency medical service, in the United States that employed people who were actually trained in medicine— And it happened right here in Pittsburgh in the Hill District.

The AMS was called Hill House. Do you all know about this? Have you guys heard? Okay, good. Some of you have heard about this. I did not know about this until like about a month ago.

I was thinking, this is cool. Back before there were ambulances, if there was a medical emergency, people would call and either the police or a funeral home for a hearse, for transportation to the hospital. And because there was no medical care given on the way to the hospital, many people died before they got there. But the men and women at Hill House were trained by a doctor who taught them to do first aid and do it on site before they were transporting people.

And that doctor’s name was, I hope I’m pronouncing this right, Safar, Dr. Safar, originally from Austria, moved to Mount Lebanon and worked at Presby. and he was the inventor of CPR. And I’m wondering how many of us have been trained on CPR? Okay, so that was a world changer also right there.

We have Dr. Safar to thank for that. He taught CPR to the people at Hill House and also things like how to start an IV drip and how to intubate somebody who’s not able to breathe on their own. And these men and women saved lives and were the model for services across the country.

So, we as God’s people are sometimes, in a sense, called to be spiritual paramedics. And I think sometimes we’re a little bit shy and uncertain about that, kind of like the first EMS workers were. We’re kind of looking at, we can’t do that. Can you do that? Really? You know? But we can do this because it’s one of the things that God created us to do.

God has equipped us, and through scriptures we have been trained in God’s truth and in God’s love. Yeah. And we are here in this world with troubles around us on a daily basis, equipped by the Holy Spirit, which, like Hill House, was a new thing once. You remember in the Bible when Pentecost happened.

Before that, somebody needing spiritual help usually had to go see a priest. But now with the Holy Spirit equipping everyday believers, we are able to bring God’s words and God’s care to people where they are. like EMS, keeping folks on their feet until they can get to a church or a pastor or a spiritual counselor or even to God in prayer. Amen.

So kind of keeping this thought in the back of our minds as we head into today’s scriptures. Our reading today from Genesis is kind of like a prequel to Matthew’s gospel. It tells the story of why people need Jesus. In Genesis, we meet the first human beings ever, and in this passage, the human race, all two members of it, come down with a fatal condition called sin.

In this case, their sin took the form of not believing God, not trusting God, and they answers. In this passage, we hear a little bit from Genesis 2 and a little bit from Genesis 3. In the chapter 2 piece, God has created the man who is called Adam and placed him in the garden of Edom, and God tells him he can eat fruit from any tree in the garden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says, If you eat from that tree, you will die.

In Genesis chapter 3, we see Adam and Eve together. Our reading today skipped over the part where Eve is made from Adam and the two of them introduced and so forth. So a little bit later, Adam and Eve are walking in the garden and a serpent shows up. And the serpent tells Eve that God was lying about this tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He says if they eat its fruit, they will not die. But God told them that they would because if they eat it, they’ll become like God, knowing good from evil. So the snake is not only calling God a liar, but he’s saying that God is holding out on them. So Eve takes two pieces of fruit from the tree, gives one to Adam, takes one for herself, and they both eat.

Amen. And their eyes are opened, and they realize that they’re naked, and so they sew fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, and that’s where our reading for today ends. But there’s more to the story. When God found Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves, God was angry, and he asked them who told them they were naked.

And Adam and Eve told God the whole story, pointing fingers at each other, and then God kills a couple of animals and dresses Adam and Eve in their fur. – So, because fig leaves are not enough to cover sin. Only death can do that. It was a hard lesson, and Adam and Eve never forgot it.

It was a lesson that points to the cross, because only death can conquer sin. Before we move on to the other readings, I want to draw out just a couple of things from this Genesis passage. Number one, since the beginning—this is just completely aside, but point of interest—since the beginning of organized religion, theologians have pointed to the fact that Eve is the one who took the apple, and she was the first to be deceived. Believe it or not, this is the foundational reason why women have been barred for ministry for 2,000 years.

Amen. Theologians have other arguments, but when you dig down, this is what you find at the foundation. Secondly, notice that Eve had not yet been created when God told Adam not to eat the apple. Adam had to share this information with Eve, which I am sure he did.

And I point this out because they were both involved in the decision to eat. Third, looking at this from a health perspective, if something is poisonous and if it’s eaten, which happens accidentally from time to time, we need to know what to do, how to save a life. Adam and Eve did not know what to do, but God did. So the diagnosis in this case was lack of faith or lack of trust in God.

The prognosis for lack of faith is death, because we cannot live apart from God, our Creator. However, death is not immediate in this case, it is progressive, but the lack of faith is fatal 100% of the time. The treatment is God’s word and God’s love. God’s word has healing power, power even to bring the dead back to life.

And this is the good news of the gospel. So then we can move on to our psalm from King David, who is very aware of what we’ve just said. David was not a perfect person, far from it. But David loved God.

In Psalm 32, we hear David confessing his sin and then sharing in the joy of God’s forgiveness. When David prays to God, he asks for mercy. He knows that his sin is serious. He doesn’t mince words about it.

And, He doesn’t say anything like, well, hey, Lord, Moses wasn’t perfect either. Look how you used him. David doesn’t deflect. He says straight up, I acknowledge my sin to you, and I do not hide my iniquity.

Confession like this is one of the tools in our spiritual EMS toolbox. David assesses the situation correctly. He confesses, I have sinned and I need your forgiveness, Lord. And God hears David and the healing begins.

David says, Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. And then last but not least, we turn to our reading from Matthew, where we see Jesus kind of going through the spiritual equivalent of paramedic training. Even though he, even Jesus, he needed to practice a little bit before he went out to do God’s work. So the Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness alone to fast and to pray and to spend some time with God.

Jesus was not wandering around lost in this case. Matthew writes that he was led by the Holy Spirit in order to be tested, and he was not And Jesus’ conversation with the evil one proves that he is indeed ready to be our Messiah. And he also sets us an example at the same time. So how does Jesus handle temptation? He’s got three temptations.

We’ll find three different things. Number one, in medicine, the rule number one, first rule is first, do no harm. In God’s service, rule number one is trust God. Trust God.

If someone challenges God’s authority, we answer the challenge with God’s words and not our own words. Trust God. And Jesus shows us how this is done. So the first temptation is to turn these stones into bread.

So Jesus has been fasting for 40 days, and he’s hungry. Now, this temptation is just flat-out cruel because most of us don’t fast that long, but when people fast, usually after the first day or two, you’re not really hungry anymore. Your body gets used to not having food, and you carry on with life. But there comes a point where you start to get hungry again.

And that’s usually the body saying, okay, that’s enough, now you need to eat something soon, right? And Scripture says that Jesus was at that point. He was saying, his body was saying, eat something. So this temptation is just absolutely cruel because the devil uses that against him. And he suggests that he doesn’t need God’s help at this point, he should just turn some stones into bread.

Now, could Jesus do this? Probably, yeah. But Jesus knows the point is he’s here to do God’s work in God’s way and to set an example for us. Yeah. And that means trusting God his Father to provide.

So, it’s interesting that in both Genesis and here in the Gospel of Matthew, the enemy’s first line of attack involves food. Food is a very personal need. And in both situations, eating improperly would show a lack of trust in God. Same temptation, different circumstances.

But Jesus, who’s sometimes called the second Adam, answers correctly. and He says, We don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. Spiritual paramedics trust God to meet physical needs. Second temptation is, Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple, where Satan says, Prove you’re the Son of God, throw yourself off.

Because it says in the scriptures, God says, God’s angels will bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone. We know that from our song, right? Eagles Wings, that song Eagles Wings. And what he’s saying is, here’s an easy way for you to get people to believe in you. Because if you jump off and survive, people are going to believe, they’re going to know you’re something special.

Scripture says the angels will keep you safe, so jump off. Prove you are who you say you are. But Jesus doesn’t need to prove himself. He knows who he is, and people will believe in him because of who he is, not because he shows off.

Like Jesus, we need to be aware that not everyone who quotes Scripture is doing God’s will or sharing God’s truth. God’s enemy knows how to quote Scripture, too. The key is to remember that God loves us and we can trust in that love. – No more.

And also, we love God. We don’t need God to prove God’s self to us, and we don’t need to prove ourselves to God. God knows we love Him. So as Jesus puts it, don’t put God to the test.

If we have doubts, and we will sometimes, bring them to God. Bring the questions to God in prayer. Trust God to verify the truth of God’s Word. Spiritual paramedics.

.. Third and final temptation. The tempter shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, past, present, and future, all the great leaders and great nations, all the great and terrible events of human history.

And he says to Jesus, ‘All these I will give you if you bow down and worship me.’ Back in the 60s, the original Star Trek had an episode called City on the Edge of Forever. And whenever I read this passage, I think of that episode. Captain Kirk has landed on a planet where he finds a time portal, this big stone thing, time portal in which he can see what looks like a movie of the history of the Earth.

moving in front of him. You see ancient Greece and ancient Egypt and ancient Rome and the European civilizations coming up and all that kind of stuff, and he’s watching all this go by through this time portal. It’s really compelling to look at. Powerful.

Powerful. and I imagine the devil showing Jesus something like that, the grandeur and the splendor of all the nations down through history, and he says, I will give all of this to you if you will bow down and worship me. Now, this offer is tempting because it avoids the cross. Jesus is here to save the world, and if He can do it without the pain and humiliation of crucifixion, wouldn’t that be worth it? Of course, there’s always the question, Does this world belong to the devil in the first place? Is it his to give? And the answer is sort of yes and no, right? Scripture does call the devil the god of this age, but he is not all-powerful.

His power is limited, his power is temporary, and his power is not over everything. It does not encompass the whole ball of wax. So God, on the other hand, is the creator of the world and everything in it, and God made the world good, and this world belongs to God. So Jesus dismisses Satan with the words, away with you, Satan.

And for our benefit, Jesus quotes the commandment, worship the Lord your God and serve only him. So for spiritual paramedics, the word is, the rule is, worship only God. As we live our lives, we can remember these temptations from these temptations, that there is no place so difficult that Jesus has not already been there and done that. There is no temptation we face that Jesus has not already overcome.

So we serve in His name and in His power. As we go out into the world to care for others in Jesus’ name, we take these three paramedic principles of the Spirit. Trust God to meet our physical needs. Trust God to confirm the truth of what we speak.

And worship only God. And we go then with God’s blessing and God’s guidance into a world that desperately needs spiritual paramedics. Amen. Thank you.

Well, good morning again. This morning we are still, at least for another week and a half, still in the season of Epiphany, the revealing of Jesus to the world. And I was really hoping that we could take some time between Christmas and Lent to to get to know Jesus as a person, what he was like before he was famous, back when he was hanging out with the fishermen and preaching in local synagogues. But here we are only a week and a half from Ash Wednesday, so there’s not a lot of time left to talk about Jesus before we get to the cross.

But I’m going to do what I can with the time that we have. My thought, though, is not to do just like just a Bible study, but to get to know Jesus kind of the same way that the fishermen did as a person, as a neighbor, as a member of the community. Let’s do this. I mean, that’s how Peter and Andrew and James and John got to know Jesus, right? The fishermen knew Jesus.

They knew he was a preacher. In fact, Peter and Andrew had been introduced to Jesus by his cousin, John the Baptist, when they were all down by the River Jordan before Jesus began his ministry. So for them, Jesus was already part of the community when they met him. They had meals together.

They hung out together. They watched him care for their neighbors. And can you imagine what it would have been like to spend time with Jesus before anybody knew that he was the Messiah, before anybody knew that he was heading for death on a cross, Now, Jesus always knew these things. He knew he was the Messiah.

He knew, at least he knew that much before he started his ministry. I suspect, and this is just a guess, but I suspect, remember that story back when he right? was a kid who’s 12 years old and he got left behind at the temple and his parents found him a couple days later talking to the clergy in the ministry there. And I suspect that what Jesus was doing was asking them questions about the Messiah, about what the law and the prophets said about what the Messiah would do. He was figuring out who he was because Jesus had to learn about life like all of us do, a little bit at a time.

And so that’s what, I suspect that’s what he was doing there. So keeping in mind, though, our purpose of getting to know Jesus, we approach today’s gospel reading with that purpose in mind. And the passage here is part of what’s known as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus preached these words early on in his ministry.

In fact, the sermon… comes immediately after Jesus called the first disciples.

He called Simon and Andrew, who were brothers, and James and John, who were also brothers, all four of them fishermen who fished the Sea of Galilee and lived in or near Capernaum, which is a working-class seaside village. We have a slide of Capernaum, I think, yes? Yeah, there you go. Take a look at that. So, this is what Capernaum looks like today.

You can kind of imagine what it might have looked like back then. So, we have the village, the houses here and here. These are villages and shops here and here and here. And there were some under here.

This thing looks like a flying saucer here. That’s a church. One of the things that bugs me about the Holy Land is like every place where Jesus put his feet, somebody has to build a church, right? So, here you have this flying saucer. This actually is up on Stiltsa, so the houses that were there are still there.

They’re under the church. So, for example, Peter’s mother-in-law’s house. Peter’s mother-in-law lived at Capernaum, and we hear about her in the Bible. Her house was like somewhere.

.. underneath there is where that is. So this is the village.

And you can see also, for people who lived here, that you could literally like roll out of bed and throw a rock into the Sea of Galilee. You’re right there. Also, the beaches here are not sand, they’re rock, and so they would have been parking the boats somewhere along here. This building here is a synagogue.

That one was built, I think, if I remember correctly, like 1 or 200 A.D. So, this is not the building that Jesus was in, but the building that Jesus was in is underneath that one. They actually built it on top of, and you can see, I mean, even the houses and things like that are down lower than this synagogue.

So, there is a synagogue below there, which is where Jesus taught, where He did some of His first healings. That is it. The next picture, which don’t put that up just yet, but the next picture will be taken from, I believe, right around here. There’s a gate right there into the city, and I think the person taking this next picture was standing there.

If you would put up the next. This is the mountain where it’s believed that Jesus taught Jesus. the Sermon on the Mount. And again, because Jesus was there, there’s a little tiny chapel on top of the hill, so you have to have one of those.

But it’s believed that He would have been teaching here and people would just be sitting around on this hillside listening to Him talk. How cool is that? So that’s sort of, this is where we are. So back to the disciples. When Jesus called these fishermen, he also gave them nicknames sometimes.

So Simon became Peter, which means the rock. And James and John became the sons of thunder. And he had a way of making friends with people right off the bat, seeing who they were, joking around with them, putting them at ease. And I think Jesus would have been fun to hang out with.

So as we come to the Sermon on the Mount, pardon me, Jesus might not have called all Yeah. 12 disciples at this point. He called them from different towns and different places as he traveled. So at this point in the Sermon on the Mount, we know that there were at least four disciples.

More beyond that, we don’t know. Also thus far in Jesus’ ministry, he has been staying within the region around the Sea of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues. So, He had not gone south to Jerusalem yet. There are lots and lots of little villages and towns all around the edge of the Sea of Galilee, as well as on the hills beyond the shorelines.

So there would have been lots of synagogues to visit. And also, the word synagogue in Hebrew means to gather together and to gather together. So it wouldn’t even necessarily have been a building. It’s just a place where people got together that he would have preached, okay? And that’s still true today, by the way.

Wherever God’s people gather, that’s the church, no matter where you are. So Jesus was traveling around, preaching in the synagogues. And many of the sermons that he preached were received really well, like the one that he preached at Capernaum. Some of the sermons were not received well, like the one that he preached in his hometown of Nazareth, where the congregation very nearly threw him off a cliff.

That’s another story for another day. So here we are, now gathered on this hillside, looking out over the Sea of Galilee, listening to the Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus has already spoken what we call the Beatitudes, the blessings, blessed are the poor, blessed are those who hunger. I believe that, did Pastor Dylan preach on that last week, maybe? No, okay.

That comes right before today’s reading, so I’m kind of, anyway. But all those blessings come right, we’ve led up to this. Today’s sermon, the same sermon, but further along, Jesus changes gears, right? And he says to the people listening, and to us as well, you are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? Now, I don’t know about you, but I have heard a lot of sermons in my lifetime on that particular verse that, And most of the time, the focus I’ve heard has been on the fact that salt is a preservative.

Salt keeps food from going bad, especially in a warm region like ancient Israel. And likewise, people of faith help keep society from going bad. And there’s some truth to that thought. But as I look at what Jesus is saying here, I’m not sure that was his point.

So I went back to the original Greek just to double-check, and as it turns out, there actually But, are two meanings for the word salty in Greek, neither one of them having to do with preservatives. One is salty like the flavor, as in salt makes food taste good. The other is salty as in being on point, like hitting the nail on the head, and that’s That was a salty moment, for example. And so both meanings of the word salt tell us that God has made us and blessed us to be a blessing, even if it means being a little salty sometimes.

And I came across a wonderful example of this in real life this past week. I think most of us have been at least somewhat following the story from Minnesota about that little boy Liam in the bunny hat. When I heard that the judge in Texas had handed down a decision in his case, he said, I got nebby, and I went out on the internet and found the actual judge’s order, okay? Wanted to see exactly what he said, and you guys are welcome to see this afterwards if you want to, but what I’m interested in here is the very end, because at the end of a judge’s decision, you usually have the judge’s signature, and that’s it, right? But that’s not what he ended with. He put on this a little picture of Liam here, and then two Scripture verses, Matthew 19, Right? 14, and John 11, 35.

And he didn’t spell out those verses. He just left them there. That’s salty. So I, of course, had to be nebbier and go out and find out exactly what those verses said.

Matthew 19:14 says, Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is But… such of these as the kingdom of heaven belongs.

And then John 11:35, Jesus wept. That’s what it means to be the salt of the earth, to direct people’s attention to God’s word and God’s truth and God’s love in the way that we live out our lives every day. And along those same lines, Jesus continues his sermon by saying, ‘You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others.

‘ We don’t light a lamp and put it under a bushel. We put it up where it can be seen, and so other things can be seen by that light.’ So when Jesus says that this gives glory to God, again, there are two possible meanings in that phrase, giving glory to God. One means praising God, and then second means to speak God’s truth.

One theologian put it this way, God made us to spice things up. not to overpower the dish, but to enliven it, highlighting other colors. And likewise, God makes us to shine as only we can. So we do good things like putting food in the food pantry, not because we want to be blessed, but because we are blessed, and we are blessed to be a blessing.

Jesus then counterbalances all of this with a word of wisdom. He says, Don’t think I’m doing away with the law and the prophets. Everything in the Old Testament still stands. Every word of it is there to be fulfilled.

and And with this in mind, think back to the Old Testament reading from Isaiah we heard a moment ago. Isaiah writes, Is this not the fast that I choose? – See? To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house, and when you see the naked to cover them and not hide yourself from your own kin? And God promises when we hear and do these things— that our ancient ruins will be rebuilt, that we shall raise up the foundations of many generations, that we shall be called repairer of the breach, restorer of streets to live in. And I just want to say, apart from the sermon, that has always touched me as someone living in Pittsburgh.

because of how the mills went down and the towns went down. We are called to be restorers of these places, rebuilders of these places in the name of God. I’ve always believed that. These words of Isaiah were written 500 years before Jesus was born, but they are so fresh and so relevant the ink could still be wet.

And isn’t that really what we want to see, is to see restoration around us, both for ourselves and for the generations to come. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that God gives us hope for this. Jesus says everything in the Old Testament stands right down to the last comma or period the Old Testament stands. But Jesus challenges us to do better.

He says, And That could be a little scary thought right there. But Jesus had some specific issues with the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes were people whose full-time job it was, whose career it was, to copy the Scriptures. They had no printing presses back then, so everything had to be copied by hand onto scrolls And, made out of either sheepskin or papyrus, and they had to be copied absolutely exactly so that God’s Word was not changed in any way.

So it’s understandable that the scribes became perfectionists. They were by nature nitpickers, which is a great thing for the job, but it was not so good when dealing with people. And the Pharisees, they were legalists. Okay.

They were people who knew the Scriptures very well, and they knew God’s law very well, and they held everybody else to the letter of the law, but not themselves. And Jesus said they were like whitewashed tombs, looking good on the outside, but on the inside they were full of greed and self-indulgence and wickedness. And Jesus looks at all this, and he says that his people— His followers, His disciples, need to do better than that. In these words, both from Isaiah and from Matthew, we catch a glimpse of who the real Jesus was.

We also see and hear the hope that God offers us of a future where God’s word and God’s plans are fully and completely lived out. But we also realize that human beings can’t manage that on our own. We need a Savior, and that’s why Jesus came. Jesus shows us by words and actions how very much God loves us.

and Jesus has come to us where we are as one of us so that one day we can be where he is. So in the name of Jesus and by his power, be salt, be light, and give God the glory. Amen.