Fairhaven UMC

United Methodist Church

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

    • Fairhaven Sermon 3-15-2026

      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson explored the Gospel of John’s account of the man born blind, challenging the common interpretation that focuses solely on Jesus’ miraculous healing. He drew a parallel to his own experience gaining sight later in life, vividly describing how glasses revealed a previously unseen world of detail – the intricate branches of trees, the faces of friends, and the details of his surroundings. This personal anecdote highlighted the profound value of sight and the importance of recognizing what we might be missing.

      Rev. Parson then delved into the story’s nuances, emphasizing that the man born blind was not a passive recipient of a miracle but a figure of strength and insight. He contrasted the man’s growing spiritual clarity with the blindness of the religious leaders, who, obsessed with legalistic interpretations and societal norms, failed to grasp the true significance of the healing. Ultimately, the sermon underscored that true sight isn’t just about physical vision, but about the willingness to acknowledge our imperfections and open ourselves to a deeper understanding of God’s grace and action, even when it challenges our preconceived notions.

      Transcript

      I’m in the middle of a pretty bad allergy day, so if I sneeze in the middle, I apologize. I feel it coming. I was in seventh grade or so when after a lifetime of easily passing my annual school vision test, an optometrist finally pointed out that my sight was not perfect and was in fact far from perfect. And that was a surprise.

      I had no idea that I was seeing the world as anything but exactly what it was. So a few weeks later, I returned to the office, in Walmart, of course, to pick up my new glasses. And this whole new world emerged before my eyes. I could see the aisles over the hallways from halfway across the store.

      The signs. My view of the ceiling sharpened. I could see the details of the rafters. I could see all the little bolts up in the ceiling.

      And when I got to school the next day, I could recognize my friends’ faces from all the way across the gym, which I didn’t realize was a problem previously. But what still sticks out to me, what I remember most clearly, is how trees changed. I’d never realized what I wasn’t seeing. Treetops, as it turns out, had been fading into this fuzzy blur for who knows how long, this kind of muddled together green and brown that would just kind of shake around in the wind.

      And now I can see every single individual twig. I could see them moving in the breeze. I could see the birds as birds and not just brown dots up there. And it was such an amazing difference that I remember taking my glasses off and putting them back on again to watch that all come back and forth into view.

      And I was stunned that I had been missing this for who knows how long. And my focus was finally corrected, something I didn’t even know that I needed. You know, my visual impairment had not been crippling. You know, I heard friends say that they couldn’t read the blackboard without glasses, that it had really been affecting how they were doing in school until they got it fixed.

      I didn’t have that problem. I thought I was fine. I got by. And yet having it fixed was amazing because I had just been missing so much that having it back really improved how much I could enjoy my life.

      And so, despite never having been blind, I can speak personally to how much sight matters, the deep value that it has for you. And I cannot imagine the experience of someone who’s never been able to see at all, let alone the maybe even more traumatic experience of someone who’s lost their vision over the course of their life, this is the kind of disability that to those of us who can see is really hard to fathom. It’s very scary. So we’re conditioned as we enter this morning’s reading from the Gospel of John to think that the man born blind that we read about is sort of the object of the narrative here.

      That is, that the purpose of this story is to talk about how Jesus saved this poor man from a lifetime of misery, of suffering, and made him normal for the first time in his existence. We might even think, as we read this, that this man’s entire role in the story is to be this passive recipient of a miracle. He’s an object of pity. And that is not the case.

      That is not the way John tells this story. This man is not some helpless soul. He would sit and beg, as the townspeople say about him, but that’s not intended to have a shameful connotation. Not for him.

      Why would it? He’s a blind guy in an economy where the only option pretty much was farming. So what’s he supposed to do? It’s not like he can drive a team of oxen and a plow. And so it’s the community’s job in this society to take care of him because he can’t. He fundamentally cannot take care of himself.

      And in fact, beyond that, there is this strong implication in this story that he has been deeply mistreated. This is easy to miss here. we find out midway through the chapter that his parents are alive and well. And in this case, it would be their job to take care of him.

      And if he’s sitting and begging in order to make a living, in order to feed himself, we can infer that they have abandoned their fundamental responsibility now. to take care of their disabled son. His parents are there, but they’ve left him to fend for himself. And listen here to the ease with which they continue to cast him aside whenever they’re questioned about him.

      Whenever he’s healed, the Jewish leaders ask the man’s parents about him, and they reply, We know he’s our son. We know he was born blind, but we don’t know how he now sees. We don’t know who healed his eyes. Ask him.

      He’s old enough to speak for himself. They want to keep their distance. They do not want to be involved with him. And yet this man, whom we might think is the most pitiable character, turns out to be a force to be reckoned with on his own.

      As the chapter progresses, as we get further along, his spiritual sight sharpens every time he speaks, while all the religious insiders, the people who should know better, just stumble around in the dark. They’re not figuring any of this out. Everyone in this narrative, everyone in this story, except the man who is literally blind, is fundamentally unable to see what is right in front of them. Look at the disciples here, for example, who open the story.

      Their focus is completely warped. Rather than seeing this man as a suffering neighbor in need of their care, they see him as this theological puzzle to be debated. And it’s coming from within their cultural context. You know, this is in Scripture that sin can be passed down because of what the parents did.

      But listen to how dehumanizing their question to Jesus is when they see this guy. Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind? Was it this man or was it his parents? There is this deep need on their part to figure out why this guy deserves it. Rabbi. What did he do to make this bad thing happen to him? How did he get himself into this position in life? And if that sounds silly, oh, we don’t believe that people are disabled because of their parents’ choices— Think about how this still plays out in our world.

      Whenever you see a homeless person on the street corner, isn’t that same question in the back of your head? What did they do? How’d they get there? Or if you think about the two million people that are in prison in this country, And surely they did something over the course of their life that landed them in this position. Maybe. Maybe not. And Jesus’ answer shocks them by saying there’s not a lot of justice to it.

      Jesus says that neither he nor his parents sinned at all. The way that people’s fates shake out in life, Jesus tells them, is not quite so tidy as, Well, bad things happen to bad people. It’d be comforting if that was the case, but that’s not the case. And the Pharisees the same way have a spiritual astigmatism here, but a different kind.

      And their misplaced focus is not on theology like the disciples. But on the law of God, they’re less concerned about the consequences of sin in the man’s life and instead are focused on the law of God’s requirements to the point that their focus on God’s law makes them miss God’s action. They are less interested in this miracle that is going to change this man’s life forever than the fact that it happened on the wrong day of the week. And these Pharisees are bending over backwards to refuse to acknowledge that Jesus has done something truly miraculous, truly holy, and they have to reject the evidence of their own eyes to do that.

      They go back and forth as to how they’re going to make that leap here. And at first, they just insist that no miracle could have happened. Couldn’t have happened at all. Sinners can’t do God’s work.

      That’s just the guy that looks like the beggar. Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. Well, that can’t be. And they keep waffling on their explanation, and they next lean into the belief that it’s a hoax, maybe.

      They ask the man’s parents, he was born blind? And of course, they find out that he was. And after that, they try once more. They move on to questioning how it happened. And they ask the man who was once blind, what did Jesus do to you? How did he do to you? did he heal your eyes? Which, of course, the man doesn’t know.

      Just that it happened. And finally, when none of those things solve the problem for them, keep their way of thinking about things working, they retreat back into this sense of superiority. And they say to the blind man, You are his disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we don’t know where this man is from.

      And when the man fires back, he dares to point out that God answers the prayers of righteous people. They fall back onto that very same conclusion that Jesus’ disciples made at the beginning. You were born completely in sin. How is it that you dare to teach us? They can’t understand because they don’t want to understand.

      And so they attribute what is unquestionably a good thing to a sinner. A sinner has healed another sinner? Can’t be. Impossible. The Pharisees are convinced that this is just an open and shut case.

      Jesus has broken the law. And in their eyes, he hasn’t just broken social norms. He hasn’t broken the law of the land. He’s violated God’s own law given to them through Moses.

      Moses. But Jesus is doing something more expansive than their interpretation of the law allows. Again, wouldn’t it just be easier if we could decide who’s good and who’s bad based on whether they obey the law and the norms we have in our society? But Jesus doesn’t operate that way. He doesn’t give us that cut and dry, in, out, yes, no, good, bad.

      He here is the one who appears to be breaking the law, and we know that he’s God himself, so he’s actually fulfilling the spirit of the law. So the Pharisees’ interpretation of the law is being violated, not the law. And it’s interesting, I think, that in telling us this story, John tells us about the violation of the Sabbath almost as an afterthought. You probably didn’t notice this the first time through.

      But John doesn’t mention that this was on the Sabbath until the 13th verse. The entire healing process has already occurred. The mud on the man’s eyes, his washing, his neighbors questioning him about it. All of that has already happened before John remembers to tell us, oh, by the way, this happened on the Sabbath day.

      But this is the single highest priority for the Pharisees. They demand this clear rubric of right and wrong in order to maintain their understanding of how God works. The law that they receive that they’re trying to interpret from Moses isn’t wrong, but Jesus Right. rejects that way of understanding it, that it’s quite so simple as they think it is.

      Jesus has made this incredibly poetic move here in choosing to heal this man specifically because we find out over the course of this story that the only one who can actually see is the blind man. It’s that old proverb, there’s none so blind as those who will not see. No amount of evidence, no amount of reasoning will convince people who want to believe they’re right, even if God himself is telling them they’re not. This healed man is filled with such a powerful, righteous anger about all of this, too.

      Now, the dialogue in this story is incredible. Does any of this matter compared to the only important piece, that there’s a man who was blind and now he’s not blind anymore? Who cares about how it fits with our theology, with our understanding of the law? Who cares whose fault it is that he couldn’t see to begin with? There is so much emotional weight here to what the man says to the Pharisees. I don’t know whether he was a sinner. Here’s what I do know.

      I was blind, and now I see. And he has this sharp sarcasm about it all as he keeps getting dragged in front of people to be questioned about it. He’s asked by the Pharisees to repeat his story again and again, and finally he shoots back, Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to be his disciples too? And you can feel this fiery frustration in him that something good has happened, that God has transformed his life, that he’s included for the first time ever. He’s lifted up while his family and his community have abandoned him for decades.

      And all of this is being treated as a matter of debate. Is this good or not? He knows. And we see in Jesus here a God who refuses to be bound by the limits humans put on God. He knows.

      The Pharisees and the disciples, for that matter, can easily point chapter and verse in Scripture explaining why this couldn’t happen. They could point to why Jesus isn’t allowed to heal a man on the Sabbath. They can point to another verse that would explain that this man must have been born in sin to be in this condition anyway. They can find ample evidence that this is not allowed and that it’s impossible.

      And yet Jesus does it. And in addition, he tells the Pharisees point blank, Physical disability, social stigma, poverty, those things are not a result of sin, Jesus tells them. But their refusal, anyone’s stubborn refusal to participate in the healing, the reconciling, liberating work of God, that is the result of sin. That is the cause of sin.

      The man born blind is brought to true belief in God, not because of anything the Pharisees who are teachers of Israel do. He’s included once more in the community, not because his neighbors are generous, not because his parents take care of him like they’re supposed to. Do. That still doesn’t happen.

      None of them have helped him in his blindness over all this time. And they are fundamentally unable to see much worse than he is. But Jesus has come to flip things upside down and says, I have come into the world to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see, and those who see will become blind. And it turns out that’s already how it was anyway.

      And the healed man says to Jesus, I want to believe. And this is exactly what Jesus is waiting to hear from you and from me. He doesn’t need to know what you know. I want to believe.

      He doesn’t need to know just how devout you are. He’s not concerned with your qualifications, and He doesn’t first weigh whether you’ve been on your best behavior in following the law of God and the state of Pennsylvania. What Jesus is looking for, what we see by the end of this story, is people who are willing to admit their vision is imperfect. Healing and salvation are here for those who are finally ready to stop pretending their sight is perfect.

      who are ready to put on lenses, to see like Jesus does, to look at the top of trees and realize they didn’t even know they were missing something. And then we will see the Son of God standing right in front of us. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

    • Fairhaven Sermon 3-8-2026

      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman continued the Lenten sermon series on spiritual health, focusing on the vital sign of “hydration.” Drawing on a definition from Google AI, she explained spiritual thirst as a profound longing for purpose, meaning, and connection with the divine – a craving that can be quenched through prayer, scripture reading, and righteousness. The sermon explored this concept through readings from Exodus, Psalms, and the Gospel of John, emphasizing the importance of trusting God and recognizing His provision, even when faced with hardship and doubt.

      The heart of the message centered on Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well (John 4), highlighting his willingness to bridge social and religious divides and offer “living water” – a metaphor for spiritual fulfillment. Rev. Bowman emphasized the radical nature of this interaction, where Jesus challenged prejudice, revealed truth, and ultimately, found nourishment in sharing God’s love. The sermon concluded with a call to action, encouraging the congregation to extend compassion and welcome to those in need, mirroring Jesus’ example and offering them a chance to quench their own spiritual thirst.

      Transcript

      Welcome to week three of our Lenten sermon series on vital signs. This week’s spiritual health topic is on staying hydrated. We know how important it is physically to drink enough water every day. We know if we go out running or walking or take part in a sport that we need to take water with us.

      We also know that a person can only last about three days without water, and that’s assuming it’s not hot out. On a spiritual level, though, what is it that keeps us spiritually hydrated, and what does it mean to be spiritually thirsty? Well, Now, I’m no fan of AI, but every now and then Google AI comes up with something that’s not too bad. I asked Google, what is spiritual thirst? I was just curious what it would come up with. Here’s the answer it gave me.

      Spiritual thirst is a profound, innate longing of the human soul for purpose, meaning, and connection with the divine, often described as a deep craving that transcends material satisfaction. Symbolizing a need for God, this inner dryness or soul dehydration is frequently quenched through prayer, reading scripture, and the pursuit of righteousness. Not bad for a machine, right? Not bad. So the opposite of spiritual thirst could be described as joy or the assurance of God’s presence and care.

      And Isaiah 12.3 says, …

      with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. So when we think about life, we want our lives to have meaning, to go on beyond the short number of years that we have on this planet, and this also is a kind of spiritual thirst. Each of our scripture readings for today, from Exodus, Psalms, and the Gospel of John, each one talks about thirst in one form or another. In our reading from Exodus, we read about actual physical thirst— Psalm 95 revisits the events in Exodus, and the Gospel of John, we listen in on a conversation next to a well.

      Now, I wanted to spend the bulk of our time today with that conversation at the well, but the other two readings have important things in them that I don’t want to miss, so we’ll start with that and then move through into the big story. So, starting in Exodus, the people of Israel…

      We’re set free from slavery in Egypt not long before the events of this particular reading. They are now on their way to the Promised Land, but they have a ways to go yet. And at this point, they are not too far from Mount Sinai, which tells us they don’t have the Ten Commandments yet. Their journey so far has been long, and it has not been easy, and the people have been grumbling the whole way.

      And at this point, they have set up camp at a place called Rafirim, which means place of rest, and it’s anything but restful. Okay. Immediately, the people start complaining that there’s no water. Now, this raises all kinds of questions that the Bible does not answer, questions like, is there really no water nearby? Did they actually look? Why would Moses stop in a place where there’s no water? Why do the people not dig a well? What exactly were people expecting Moses to do about the lack of water? We don’t have answers to these questions.

      What’s clear is that the people expect Moses to do something. And Moses comes to God and says, They’re about to stone me. What should I do? God’s answer indicates that the people are showing a lack of faith. After all the miracles that they’ve witnessed, they’re still doubting God’s presence.

      They doubt God’s care. They doubt God’s ability to provide. And God is not happy about this. Scripture says that the people were testing the Lord, and they were certainly testing Moses.

      So God tells Moses to take his staff and take a few of the elders and go to the rock at Horeb, which, by the way, is another name for Sinai. So it was within a day’s journey of the Mount of Sinai. And he says, Little side note, Horeb was also the location where Moses saw the burning bush all those years before. So, Moses strikes the rock, and water comes out, and the people have all the water they need, and Moses names the place Massa and Meribah, which means testing and quarreling.

      So, So what does this mean for us? There are a number of ways we could apply this information, just to name a few. When people test God and quarrel with God, it might be an indication that God’s people need to work on their ability to trust, because God is infinitely trustworthy, and God’s people don’t need to be afraid. It might be an indication that God’s people need to work on their ability not so much to love as to receive love— And we see this frequently just as an example in people who are caught in addictions. Deep down, they don’t think they’re worthy of love, which of course isn’t true, but it makes it tough to reach them.

      It may be an indication that God’s people need to get to know God better because God does care for us. God can never stop loving because God is love in the same way that water is wet, right? God’s love doesn’t depend on us because God’s love is God’s nature. And so these are some of the things that the people of Israel were wrestling with as they traveled through the wilderness to the Promised Land. During this time, they needed to learn that God hears and God cares and God knows what we need and God will act and God will provide.

      That’s from Exodus. From Psalm 95, just want to mention briefly, Psalm 95 says that God is the rock of our salvation, verse 1, which echoes the events at Massa and Meribah. God is the source of water. God is the source of all we need, and we are called to worship.

      This psalm reminds us not to harden our hearts as the people did in the desert when life gets tough. but to keep our hearts soft towards God and our minds and our ears open. Amen. Psalm 95 also, just as an aside, is a very important psalm in the history of the church.

      For the liturgical churches, Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopalian, this psalm is a part of their daily prayer service. And it’s not foreign to the Methodist Church either. It’s John Wesley practiced daily prayer, and the daily prayer service that’s in the back of our hymnal on page 877 mentions Psalm 95. So this is very much a part of our tradition and the part of church tradition for the past thousand years.

      And history like this, in my opinion, is too important to ignore. So I recommend this Psalm 95 to you for personal prayer time, as it has been used down through the centuries. But last and certainly not least, we come to the Gospel of John. chapter 4.

      And this is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture. I love this conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. I love who Jesus is when he’s talking with her, and I love who she is when she’s talking with him. And today, as we’re talking about hydration and thirst, we meet at this well two people who are thirsty—the Jesus is thirsty for water, but he’s also thirsty to be known for who he really is.

      And the woman, whose name we don’t know, is thirsty for friendship and respect, and also to be known for who she really is. Before we listen into this conversation, just a little bit by way of background, Jesus and the disciples have been traveling from the northern part of Israel to Jerusalem in the south, and at this point in their journey they’re about halfway there. Jesus has told the disciples he’d like to rest, and he has given them an assignment to walk into the nearby town and get lunch. The Samaritan woman, like all Samaritans, was a descendant of generations of intermarriage between the Jewish people who were left behind when the Babylonians came and took them all captive.

      They were the ones left behind. Marriage between them and Gentile Assyrians who invaded from the north. So, they were, at best, as they were considered, like half-breeds by the Jewish people, and that comes with all of the cultural, religious, and racial prejudice that you can imagine. And needless to say, the events in this story would have been a total scandal in Jesus’ day, because Jews didn’t talk to Samaritans, and Samaritans didn’t talk to Jews.

      And nice men back then didn’t talk to nice women in public, no matter where they were from. So this conversation breaks all the rules. Or we could say this conversation shows us how to build bridges in places where people say bridges shouldn’t be built. Let’s listen in.

      Jesus is sitting by a well, resting. And this well is located on a mountainside near Samaria. It’s a very old well. It’s almost noontime.

      And while Jesus is resting, a woman comes along carrying a water jug. Now, Jesus immediately knows that something’s wrong because women don’t come to wells at noon or alone alone. Women of the village come to get water early in the morning before it gets hot, and they travel together for protection. A woman traveling alone is unprotected.

      So when she sees a man sitting at the well, she’s immediately on alert. This situation could be dangerous, and every woman, even today, knows this feeling when you’re in a strange situation with an unknown man. Jesus breaks the ice by asking her, May I have a drink? And she asks him, How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink? Because Jews and Samaritans don’t share cups. They don’t share anything.

      No plates, no houses, they don’t share food. They don’t…

      it’s simply not done. And Jesus answers, If you knew God’s gift and who it is that’s talking to you, you would ask him for a drink of living water. Now, there’s a double meaning in Jesus’ words here: living water as in spiritual water and living water as in running water, like what you find in a creek or a river, not in a well. Running water is fresher and better tasting than well water because it’s naturally filtered.

      And she answers him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket.’ Now, Jesus has said something of interest, at least if it’s maybe a little bit ridiculous in her eyes, but she’s starting to think he might not be a danger. He might be a little crazy, maybe, but he’s not a danger. And when she says, ‘Sir,’ the word is Kyrie, as in Kyrie eleison, as in Lord have mercy.

      And she continues, Lord, sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where are you going to get living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and watered his flocks with it? See, she knows her history. Jacob was here once on that very spot, and his 12 sons who started the 12 tribes of Israel, they are the men who dug this well. And that’s important to her.

      And the truth is important to her. Truth is important to Jesus, too, so he says to her, Go call your husband and come back. See, Jesus already knew what her truth was, but there’s no way she could have known that. And her words cut like a knife, his words cut like a knife.

      She’s probably thinking to herself, why did he have to bring that up? Aren’t I good enough to talk to? What am I, chopped liver? She’s ticked off now. And she spits out her answer in Greek: Uk eko andra. Don’t have a man. And she doesn’t say kyrie this time.

      And Jesus answers, ‘Well said.’ ‘Truth is, you’ve had five husbands, ‘and the man you have now isn’t your husband.’ ‘And he says this not unkindly, ‘and he doesn’t walk away.’ And she answers, Kiryeh, I can see that you’re a prophet.

      Tell me, our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say the place to worship is in Jerusalem. Which by the way was true, and it was a major cause of dispute between the two nations. Jesus honors her with a complete and theologically sound response worthy of a professional religious leader. He says, The time is coming and is now here.

      when people will worship God in spirit and in truth. But know that salvation is from the Jews. We worship what we know. You worship what you don’t know.

      But God is a spirit. And those who worship God worship in spirit and in truth. And she gets it. And she starts to wonder about him.

      And so she needs to ask. She says, I know Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will teach us all things. And Jesus answers, I am he.

      I am he. By the way, those are the exact same words that God said to Moses at the burning bush when Moses asked God what God’s name is. I am he. And she believes him.

      And as a result, Jesus’ first evangelist will be a woman. Amen. At just that moment, the disciples return and they are boggled to find Jesus in a conversation with a strange Samaritan woman, but they don’t ask any questions. She takes off for the village down below, leaving her water jar behind, and she says to the people of the town, ‘Come see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.

      Could this be the Messiah?’ And the whole town heads up the hill to meet Jesus. Meanwhile, the disciples are saying to Jesus, eat, eat, and Jesus says, I have food to eat that you don’t know about. It’s called doing the will of him who sent me. And like Jesus, when we are in the center of God’s will, doing what God created us to do, and being who God created us to be.

      Physical food loses its importance. Athletes experience this. So do musicians and actors and others who perform for a living. Don’t really need to eat right now because this is spiritual food.

      This is spiritual hydration. This is what satisfies Jesus, to see the Samaritans coming up the hill to meet him, to see them coming to believe in a God who loves them. And Jesus comments, he says, look, the fields are white under the harvest, and he’s probably looking at the white turbans on all the guys’ heads as they were coming up the hill. The social barriers have come down.

      The prejudice and hatred are gone. And Jesus and the disciples will stay in Samaria for two more days, which is completely not right in the eyes of the Jewish people. The old ways are over. It is no longer us versus them, but it’s all God’s children together.

      And this is what satisfies the thirst of our Lord and the thirst of the people who love him. Which leaves us with the questions. Which strangers do we see around us who we can welcome? How can we help knock down the walls of prejudice in our own day? How might we offer someone a hand up? It all begins with having that conversation with Jesus. We live in a world right now that is dying of thirst.

      Thirst for truth. Thirst for God’s love. Thirst for peace and for unity. Thirst for compassion.

      Jesus is waiting for us at the well. Who can we invite to come? – Amen.

    • Fairhaven Sermon 2-22-2026

      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman led a Lenten sermon series kickoff, building on the introduction given by Pastor Dylan on Ash Wednesday. The series, titled “Vital Signs,” explores the parallels between physical and spiritual health. Rev. Bowman drew inspiration from the book “American Sirens,” detailing the story of Pittsburgh’s first trained EMS service, Hill House, and the groundbreaking work of Dr. Safar, the inventor of CPR. She emphasized that, like these early paramedics, Christians are called to be “spiritual paramedics,” offering God’s truth and care to those in need, equipped by the Holy Spirit.

      The sermon centered on readings from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew. Rev. Bowman explored the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, highlighting themes of trust, faith, and the consequences of disobedience. She then connected this to King David’s Psalm 32, where he confesses his sin and experiences God’s forgiveness. Finally, she examined Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, emphasizing the importance of trusting God’s provision, following His guidance, and worshipping only Him. Through these readings, Rev. Bowman encouraged the congregation to embody the role of spiritual paramedics, offering comfort and care rooted in God’s love and truth.

      Transcript

      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.

    • Fairhaven Sermon 2-15-2026

      Summary

      In this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson used the analogy of witnessing a sunrise – a moment of profound beauty and spiritual silence – to illustrate the human tendency to capture experiences rather than fully immersing oneself in them. Drawing from the Transfiguration Sunday scripture, he explored how Peter’s impulse to build shrines after witnessing Jesus’ miraculous transformation mirrored this desire to solidify and control the divine, a reaction contrasted with Moses’s example of completely disconnecting from the world to be with God. Parson emphasized that the most profound experiences are not meant to be documented or analyzed, but simply received and appreciated in their fleeting, sacred moment.

      Parson connected this reflection to the season of Lent, encouraging the congregation to move beyond a focus on “doing” and instead prioritize “listening” to Jesus, echoing the divine command given during the Transfiguration. He challenged listeners to resist the urge to control or intellectualize spiritual experiences, and instead, embrace the power of simply being present with Jesus, much like one would simply absorb the beauty of a sunrise without attempting to capture it. He concluded by highlighting the sacredness of these unshared, personal moments of connection with the divine.

      Transcript

      When I’m on vacation, above all, I want to sleep. Stormi is not like that. Stormi is very different than me. She’s up at or before sunrise every day at the beach.

      and she and my dad will go down, go down to the sand and set up the tent, the chairs, long before anyone else can encroach onto our spot. My dad is very territorial on the beach, which I’ve inherited. Stay far away from me. We spread out our chairs, right? And I can usually get myself out of bed, sunscreened, coffeed up onto the beach chair by like 9:30 or so, by which time Stormy’s already starting to sunburn.

      But I can’t deny the magic of sunrise on an East Coast beach. And I do my best to make it to the sunrise at least once on every trip. Because there’s nothing like that silence. And it’s hard to express the way a sunrise on the beach feels because it’s really not silent.

      It feels silent, but it’s not. The seagulls are slicing through the air, cawing. You know, you have the little shorebirds skittering on the sand trying to outrun the water coming in and out. And the waves always seem just very peaceful, no matter how big they are, whenever the sun is glowing red.

      But there’s this spiritual silence there. Yeah. It feels like you’re not really supposed to talk. It feels like you’re supposed to be quiet.

      And the light that you see there can’t really be compared to anything else. Somehow the sun starts very small, this little red-pink disk, and over the next couple minutes it turns into a big orange ball of fire, and then just the regular daylight. And how is a person supposed to react to something like that? What are we supposed to do in moments like these where we can tell there’s something divine happening around us? And the way we respond is that we pull out our phones and take some pictures. And that’s not the right answer, but that’s what we do.

      And we want to capture what’s happening when we’re seeing something beautiful in some way so we can take it with us so we can enjoy it later. That’s why you see people doing it in all these silly circumstances. You’ll be at a concert and someone’s filming the whole thing. You’ll be at fireworks, same deal.

      And it’s kind of bizarre because, no offense in case you’re a great photographer, but I have never seen a smartphone picture of a sunrise that was worth looking at. There is nothing that you can capture in a picture that conveys what that looks like, what that feels like, this experience that’s just immersive in every sense. And you are not going to feel anything like that looking in that picture. And while you’re still there, this desire to catch it puts a barrier between yourself and whatever miracle is happening around you.

      And so we might be tempted to diagnose this as a very modern problem. Our inability to be in the moment comes from technology. And I don’t know. You think about, back though, James Audubon, the early 1800s naturalist, he sought to record every bird in North America, and he had to sit down and paint every single one of them.

      You think he knew them pretty well. And in 1909, Robert Peary was the first explorer to ever reach the North Pole. We have no pictures of that voyage. We just have his diary where they calculated, looking at the son, that they must have been there.

      We have evidence in pencil, right? And even 30 years ago, you didn’t have to put a forceful note in your wedding program requiring people to stay seated and refrain from taking flash photos during the ceremony. Without the possibility of some random aunt or cousin stepping out to snap a picture with her iPad, right? Right. Now, things have changed in that way, but I don’t think the general phenomenon is new. And the world we live in makes it easier than ever to keep ourselves from really absorbing what’s going on.

      But the Apostle Peter shows us today that this is a human condition, right? Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the day that marks our transition from the season after Epiphany, which looks at the early, exciting, new, fresh moments of Jesus’ ministry into Lent where we walk along with Him to the cross. The symbolic turning point from uphill to downhill happens on the Mount of Transfiguration this morning. Jesus’ upward journey up the mountain, up to the shining moment. gives way to that long downward drift to betrayal.

      But the apostles don’t know any of that. The apostles don’t know that they’re standing in this symbolic moment. They’re just walking with Jesus up a mountain. So here’s the scene.

      Jesus has taken Peter, James, and John, three of his first disciples, to the top of a very high mountain. And we don’t know that he’s given them any explanation as to why they’re supposed to go. And in fact, based on what we’ve seen in Scripture over the past couple weeks, you remember when he called them at the seashore and just said, follow me? We can probably speculate he didn’t tell them much at all. He just said, let’s go.

      But the four reach the top of this mountain. Jesus is in the lead and is out in front of them. And miraculously, Jesus is transformed before their eyes. His face starts to shine like the sun.

      His clothes become as white as pure light. And Jesus is completely different now. at a fundamental level from who they thought he was seconds before. It’s not just that he’s the same guy but glowing.

      Something is different. And as if that’s not enough for the disciples to take in, suddenly Moses and Elijah, who are respectively long dead and bodily taken into heaven, they show up. And they’re there having a conversation with Jesus. And there’s a sense in which Jesus is really bringing the story together.

      Jesus. Old Testament prophets, law in this new promise. This is the first time that Moses has set foot in the promised land. Really fascinating.

      So Peter, naturally, is overwhelmed. He’s standing in the midst of this glorious moment, brighter and more immersive than the most incredible sunrise, and he is just overtaken. And I imagine Peter is trying to stay firmly in his rational brain, to keep control, to hold on so this high-voltage emotion, the spirit in the air doesn’t just knock him down. And he says to Jesus, quite sincerely, in doing his best to be a servant of the one he has very recently called the Son of God, he says, Lord, it is good that we’re here.

      Off to a good start. And then he says, if you want, I’ll make three shrines. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. And it’s this beautiful gesture.

      We’re always attempted to kind of raise an eyebrow at Peter for being clueless, but he’s not. He’s talking about the kind of tent, the kind of shelter that the Ark of the Covenant was kept in. This is a tabernacle. He’s trying to make this holy place.

      Yeah. Peter wants to build the kind of structure that’s intended to be a shelter for the presence of God. So he kind of gets what’s happening here. And he thinks, understandably, that doing something is the way to respond to this moment.

      You know, I’m here. I must be here for a reason. I’ve got to do something. And Peter’s mistake is not in his intentions.

      His intentions are good. His mistake is that he’s refused to just let himself be overwhelmed. He has this desire to stay in his right mind, to keep a handle on the situation, and, yeah, to put something between himself and this act of God that’s happening before his eyes. He puts the smartphone up, so to speak.

      He’s attempting to make tangible and permanent something that God intends to be fleeting, something that’s a special gift just for those who are there. Peter is you and me, standing in front of a sunrise, trying to figure out the best way to capture it. He doesn’t have a phone, so he wants to build a monument. It’s not a sin or anything.

      It’s just this intensely human tendency to do something whenever all God wants is just for him to be there. And it’s the stark contrast to the example we see from Moses in our Exodus reading, if you listen there. When Moses goes to be with God, although Moses has had kind of a longer standing relationship with God at this point, Moses goes to be with God on the top of Mount Sinai, and when he does, Moses fully unplugs. He is there to be with God.

      God doesn’t even show up for the first seven days, and everything else gets left at the foot of the mountain. So Moses’ warning to the people before he goes up the mountain, I think is actually kind of funny, but it’s really powerful. It’s important. He basically says, you know, if you guys, the people of Israel, if you guys have any complaints, any legal disputes, go talk to Aaron, go talk to her.

      Somebody’s name is Hur. I’m off the grid. You know, I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with your silly nonsense. There’s people here who can handle it.

      Leave me alone until I come back. Moses is ready to hear. Notice how differently Peter responds. He’s just desperate to maintain control, to be a responsible disciple, to keep up this job that he has.

      And it results in him speaking before God does. How often have you done that? He’s ready to hear. Have you wanted to do something and spoken then before God has actually spoken? I would say most of the time for me. And if we’re lucky when that happens, we experience in these moments what Peter does, and that’s that God cuts us off.

      God cuts us off to say what God needs to say. And so in this case, on top of the mountain, this cloud descends, this physical representation of the Father. It’s the same cloud that surrounded Moses at Mount Sinai. The same cloud that leads the Israelites across the desert.

      And here on the mountain, from that cloud, God reaffirms to the disciples what he said at Jesus’ baptism. They weren’t there the first time around, but they get to hear it this time. This is my son whom I dearly love. I’m very pleased with him.

      But God adds a little addendum to this, something that he didn’t say at the Jordan. Listen to him. Moses received the law for the first time on a mountaintop from God. That’s what Moses went up for in our Exodus reading, to get the tablets.

      And now the disciples are receiving the fullness of that law. Listen to him. Listening to Jesus, that’s God’s orders now. And it’s simultaneously so much simpler and so much more complex than the law of Moses.

      It’s not just a bunch of yes or nos, it’s listen to him. And Peter is probably more than a little bit embarrassed because he has not been doing a lot of listening in this couple moments. But hearing the voice of the Father, he does hear, he does listen, he drops to the ground, which was the proper response all along, just to take it in. Jesus then comes to them, comes to the three disciples, reaches out and touches them and encourages them to get up and not to be afraid.

      This moment is a moment of wonder, of grace. It’s not judgment. You know, Peter, you got it wrong, but here’s your opportunity. This is what you’re here for.

      But as they lift up their heads to see what’s going on, it’s done. that special liminal moment of the sunrise, this brief miracle after the darkness has just drifted as it always does into the plain light of day. And then they head back down the mountain. It’s done.

      And Jesus does something, I think, really puzzling at this point. And he tells Peter and James and John, don’t tell anybody. Don’t tell anybody about this vision until the human one is raised from the dead. Interestingly, they don’t seem to have any questions about that.

      But he says, don’t tell anybody. That incredible experience of transfiguration, of meeting face-to-face with God, with these great heroes of Israel’s history, of watching Jesus be transformed into pure heavenly light, don’t tell anybody. Don’t tell anybody. That’s just for them.

      Don’t tell anybody, Jesus says, not the crowds coming to hear me preach, not those wounded souls who are coming to you for healing and for exorcism, don’t say anything to the people who are trying to decide whether or not to believe in me. Don’t even say anything to the other nine disciples. levels. It’s as if they’ve gone out alone to the beach at daybreak, submerged into this ocean of color and sound and smells they couldn’t have imagined, and now they’re just supposed to go back home, slip into bed before anyone knows they left.

      left. Envision doing that, though. I have done this. Doesn’t it feel more sacred not to tell anybody? You’ve seen something that nobody else has seen with you.

      This gift that was given from God to you, and it remains between you and Jesus. it’s easy, I think, in our lives to believe in a Jesus who’s either just completely beyond us and very distant. You know, he’s removed from our lives. He’s seated up on a heavenly throne.

      Or to believe in a Jesus who’s very abstract. You know, he’s contained in like the words of the Sermon on the Mount, these commandments. It’s easy to think of Jesus being distant in that way. But the transfiguration shows us a Jesus whose most fantastic miracles and signs are sometimes just one-on-one.

      Who gives those who love him the overwhelming power of his presence. Not for public consumption. Not for any purpose of convincing other people. But just because.

      Just because he wants to give it to you. You know, we don’t go out and look at a sunrise for any reason, you know, to help us see in the dark. We go because it’s beautiful, because it’s a great, wonderful thing to see. And once we have seen it, once we’ve seen the sunrise for ourselves, we know every night that that same thing is coming again in the morning.

      And so if Peter had distracted himself from what he was seeing to build these three tabernacles, these three tents, or if the disciples had spent their time engulfed in this cloud of God debating among themselves, trying to nail down the meaning of what they were seeing, what is this about? That would have been as good as missing it. Why even go? the presence, their presence with Jesus, is the entire point in that moment, just being there. That’s it. Wrestle with the theology, wrestle with the meaning, talk it out later.

      For now, just be there. And so as we move into Lent this week, we do that walking alongside Jesus and the disciples down the mountaintop. We have the opportunity to wrestle with the meaning of all of this. But we often think Lent is about what we’re going to do, what we’re going to give up, what new practice we might take on.

      But the voice from the cloud doesn’t say, copy him. It doesn’t say, obey him, at least not yet. God says, listen to him, which is a very different thing if you think about it. Listening and obeying are not the same thing.

      And so the question is, before you do anything for Lent, before you do anything, can you just sit in the sunrise? Can you put down the phone to take pictures, the plans that you’re coming up with to build tents, and just sit down, just listen? So for the next 40 some days, we’re walking towards Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. We’re walking towards the Last Supper, towards the Garden of Gethsemane where, again, the disciples have trouble just being there. We’re walking towards the foot of the cross. At every step of the way.

      we can devote ourselves to taking seriously these words from heaven. Listen to him. Just be with him. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

      Amen.

    • Ash Wednesday Service

      • Tonight, the season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday.
      • The Ash Wednesday service will be held at 7pm at Fairhaven United Methodist Church. All are welcomed to attend.