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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her two most recent sermons on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our Easter Season sermon series is: Called to More. Enjoy.
Staying on Track
May 25, 2025 5th Sunday in Easter
Philippians 3:12-16 Mark 1:35-39
In my 40s I had a conversation with a friend who went on about the problems that exist in public school systems. Kids weren't reading up to their grade levels; difficult math was being introduced too early; homework was too easy; students didn't even know what the 50 states were. While I listened to this tirade, the only thing I could think of was that I had heard practically the same tirade when I was in my 30s, 20s, and when I was in high school.
In education every generation has to reinvent a lot of what we're teaching because the world has changed. When I first started teaching computers were not used in classrooms, in fact laptops didn't even exist. The world changes, and we have to change with it. And sometimes it seems that we’re going so far so fast that we're not able to keep up.
So, how do we hold on to our sanity in a world of ever-increasing change? One way is re-evaluation and adaptation into new action. At the end of each semester, I would look at my material and ask: What is no longer relevant and what do I need to teach instead? One year I realized that my students didn't know how to punctuate. Apparently, it had been de-emphasized from the English curriculum in high school. The next semester I added punctuation to my curriculum. I always knew that something was going to be irrelevant the next semester, I just didn't know what it was until I got there.
Until I accepted this change-over, I was frustrated as a teacher because of course I wanted everything in my class to be perfect, relevant, and accessible to my students. I had to learn to accept that not everything I planned was going to work. I had to learn to listen to my students and see how they reacted and what they needed. Every year was slightly different.
But that's life. You think you’ve figured out how things work, and then all of a sudden a new factor comes along and you have to adjust. Sometimes things get torn down; like a tornado comes through and our homes get damaged and we have to learn how to rebuild. Sometimes unexpected things happen; like we lose our jobs – not because of our own work performance, but because the company is downsizing. We have to figure out how to do something different in order to survive. Sometimes we make an honest mistake. One time I diligently studied the wrong chapters for a history test. Fortunately, some of the chapters were right and I knew enough basic history to fake my way through the rest of the test. The grade wasn't as good as it could have been, but I didn't fail. Sometimes we only know part of what we're getting ourselves involved in and then, the next thing we know, we're improvising as best we can.
In today's verse from Philippians, Paul admits that even though he is an apostle who has been saved by Christ; even though he is good friends with Peter and all the other original disciples; even though he is going around and preaching this new system and process that Christ taught us to help us connect with ourselves, each other, and God; that he doesn't have the whole thing figured out yet. He stumbles, he questions, he gets it wrong sometimes. But he has a goal and that keeps him on track.
His goal is that he is going to be as much like Jesus Christ as he can be. Paul is trying to live as Jesus would want him to live. Like the original disciples, we need to ask ourselves: What did Jesus model for us and how do we put that modeling into action?
Now I mentioned before re-evaluation and adaptation into new action. But there was always still a baseline of what I had to teach as an ESL teacher: Vocabulary and grammar, within a set of conversation subjects that we all deal with on a daily basis. That baseline never changed.
Christianity has a baseline that we all start with which is our constant and provides us with the system that we can apply to everything in our lives. That what Jesus was trying to teach his people, and Paul was trying to teach to his congregations.
The first place we can all start with is that Jesus wants us to love God with all our being. He wants us to take time to connect with him, to learn how to feel his presence, to be aware of how the Holy Spirit sends us messages to guide us. That takes time to learn, it's not an automatic thing. Which is why the idea of prayer and spending time alone with God is so important.
Our gospel passage today says: While it was still night, way before dawn, he got up and went out to a secluded spot and prayed. Think about that: Jesus was the son of God. Jesus was this person who was healing people with his touch, who was blessing loaves of fish so that they could feed 5000 people. He was raising people from the dead. If anyone could connect to the power of God, it was Jesus. And yet, there are many places in the gospel where Jesus goes alone to pray and takes the time to connect with God. This probably helped him to renew his energy, gave him some time to consider what he was doing, helped him to evaluate what was happening around him, and to seek guidance for what he’s going to do next.
What is interesting is what happens after the disciples all come to him and Jesus says to them: Let’s go to the rest of the villages so I can preach there also. There is cause and effect in the Gospels of Jesus praying and then doing action afterwards. This is why I’ve come. He went to their meeting places all through Galilee, preaching and throwing out the demons. But the action is done with a clarity of purpose and a certainty of connection with God. When we take the time to pray before we take action, we have clarity of purpose and know that our actions are connected to God.
The next commandment that Jesus gives us is to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus gave us the way to do this by saying that we need to love each other as Jesus loves us.
The first way that Jesus loved us was he operated on a principle of equality. All people were equal to him, precious to him, and had value because all of them were God's creation. All people were God's children and therefore they were all his brothers and sisters. Jesus healed lepers, cripples, and people with grave illnesses. He talked to women, and Samaritans, as well as Pharisees. He had exchanges with people who were very rich and very poor. He talked to people who were Jewish and people who were gentiles. So to be like Christ, we have to put aside whatever prejudices we might have about other people and start to treat everyone as equal.
The next thing that Jesus did was that he forgave people. He forgave people in general like saying to someone you are forgiven for your sins, but he also forgave people who hurt him personally. He forgave Peter for betraying him three times when he said that he didn't know Jesus. When he was up on the cross, he forgave all the people who put him there. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Forgiveness is a really hard thing to do sometimes but the more we do it, the more we practice, the better we get at it. Forgiveness gets us out of the trap of hatred and anger that keep us inside the negative emotions which prevent us from moving forward to fixing the problem and heal.
The final thing I think that Jesus does for us is that he gets us to think more broadly about our lives. Jesus was trying to get his disciples, and the people who were listening to his preaching, to think beyond their immediate world. He tries to get them to imagine a world that encompasses all of God's creation and people.
When he tells his disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations that was a bold move. His disciples we're mostly from Galilee, a province that was kind of out of the way and in the country. His disciples weren't very educated, nor did they have political standing. But Jesus told them to go out into the world, out of their comfort zones, and preach his gospel. Now this doesn't mean that we all have to go to exotic places in order to do God's work in the world. But I think it does ask us to think beyond our own actions and how they affect others; how they are going to ripple out and affect many people down the road. Jesus wants us to see that the world is bigger than we are, and that we can begin the energy of goodness that will ripple out from us when we are as kind, and generous, and loving as Jesus wishes us to be.
When the world is crazy, and you think that you just can't adapt to it, go back to your baseline of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Operate on the principle that all people are God's children and that they are deserving of love kindness and respect. Operate with generosity and compassion. Be forgiving of yourself and others, because we all make mistakes. And keep your mind and heart open to new experiences that God leads you to. And remember that all those actions of compassion and respect ripple out to places that we will never know. And help yourself to stay on track by giving yourself some time to pray meditate and connect with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. When we stay on track to Jesus, we will find that we are able to run the crazy race of this changing world with God’s love. And we will keep ourselves open to God’s love now and always.
You are Not Your Sin
May 18 2025 4th Sunday of Easter
Psalm 32:1-5 John 8:1-11
We can't help it; our experiences define us, whether we want them to or not. And unfortunately, our bad experiences can overwhelm our good experiences. When I took relational psychology, I learned that one action of mistrust has to be countered by three actions of trust in order to get you to feel neutral about someone. It actually can take up to five actions of trust for you to start trusting someone again.
The psalmist really knew what he was talking about when he says that deceit and guilt mess up your heart and your brain. Remember that in ancient civilizations you didn't separate the two. They really understood that the heart and brain work together, and this has actually been confirmed by modern medicine. We know that a reaction goes through the emotional part of the brain first, before it gets to the logical part of the brain. But sometimes it gets stuck in the emotional part, then our reaction is a whiplash based in emotion without any reason.
The psalmist starts out by saying people whose sin and transgressions are forgiven are happy. Likewise, those people who are honest and avoid deceit are also happy because they don't have a problem with themselves.
The psalmist isn't one of those. Because he keeps silent about his sin, because he’s in denial that he's done anything wrong, he feels like his body is wasting away. He's groaning all day long, which I think means that he's constantly thinking about what he did wrong. He's so preoccupied with his sin that he doesn't have the strength to do anything else. But then the psalmist goes to God and he admits the wrong that he did. He doesn't hide anything and comes clean with the whole story. You know how sometimes we admit that we did something wrong, but we leave out little details, kind of to make it look like it's not really as bad as we think? He doesn't do that; he goes for full-on confession. And then what happens is: God forgives him.
Now that might seem like a little bit simplistic. For a long time I thought: That doesn't work; that’s not good enough. If you do something wrong you've hurt somebody and caused them grief. Sin is an infliction of negativity. Whether you do it by accident; or you get back at someone because you're mad at them; or you don't allow somebody to participate in something because, well, that's how we've always done it; you are hurting someone. And it seemed to me that just knowing that you're forgiven doesn't get you off the hook for the pain that you've caused.
So what good is knowing that God forgives you if we've still got a bunch of hurt out there that needs to be addressed? And how do we address it?
Well, healing from sin, making right whatever wrong we've done, is a process. Read any self-help book, whether it's about psychology, business management, or organization, and what comes up first is: You've got to admit that the problem is there and identify it. It’s the first step to fixing things. (Like that really messy closet!) When you've done something wrong, the first thing you have to do is to recognize and admit that you did something wrong, otherwise you are never going to be able to make it right. And it's not going to do any good for you to admit to half of the problem, you've got to admit to all of the problem.
Bloomville has a beautiful new kitchen because when they removed the countertop, they found problems with the walls and the cabinets. They didn't deny the problems; they didn't say: Oh, we'll put a countertop down and deal with the other stuff later. They said: We have to fix all of this. They found and faced the entire scope of the problem. Yes, it was a big mess, but everybody came together to fix it, and now they have a beautiful new kitchen to enjoy.
Now it's easier to fix something out in the physical world than it is to fix something that’s connected to your head and heart. When we admit we did something wrong to God we take all that emotion and all the thoughts that we've been wrestling with, and we set them out on a metaphorical altar in front of God and say: God look at this. I recognize and admit to the infliction of negativity, and please forgive me. And when you feel that forgiveness, and know that God still loves you even though you messed up, all that stuff that has been playing havoc inside your heart and your brain is calmed down and you can now start to take the next step to healing.
You see, if you know that God has forgiven you, then you know that God is on your side and will help you to heal the hurt that you’ve created. So, confession, and then forgiveness, gives you a sense of peace and a connection with God. Once you have that sense of assurance and connection you can move forward, working with God into solution, resolution, and absolution.
One of my favorite sayings is: In the word Absolution is the word Solution. Find the solution to the problem and the absolution takes care of itself. If you look at the hurt that you've caused by your infliction of negativity and you figure out what you can do to make the problem right, then you’ve found a solution to move forward into. Sometimes it's as simple as an apology, and other times you might have to do some work to repair the damage you've done. And maybe that work is not going to feel very comfortable or will seem to be hard to do. But that uncomfortable and difficult work of making something right and better is actually penance. Penance comes from the word repent which means to turn the other way. By turning away from inflictions of negativity to positive actions of generosity, renewal, and compassion we heal what is wrong with the world.
Now, when things go wrong, we often can’t put them back together the way they were before. It isn’t the nature of time to go back to the past; it’s the nature of time to move forward into something new. What we look for in our work with God it's not reconstruction, but a continuous working resolution to the problem. And when you hit that point when you know that you have created something new and positive, from the negative that was, then you know you have your absolution.
The story of the Pharisees bringing to Jesus the woman caught in adultery shows us that resolutions to sin are not always what we think they should be. Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees who want to know what he thinks should be done to this woman. The law of Moses calls for her to be stoned. And Jesus as a good Jew and a good prophet should adhered to the law. But Jesus has been preaching compassion and forgiveness of sin. The Pharisees think that they've put him in an uncompromising position. How can he be a good Jew and prophet if he rejects the judgment of Moses? How can he be a man who preaches compassion if he condemns this woman to death by stoning?
Jesus does something very interesting: He un-confronts the crowd. Instead of answering he kneels down and starts to write in the sand in front of them. The scripture doesn't tell us what he wrote in the sand. It could be a well-known biblical passage, or it could be a nursery rhyme that he learned from his mother. Whatever it was, it stopped the momentum of what was happening. Everyone is standing around waiting for an answer and this guy is writing something in the sand. And when everyone was refocused on Jesus’ writing and not focused on the woman, he stands up and challenges them: Whoever is without sin may cast the first stone.
And now everyone has to stop and think – UMMMM! And each person comes to the conclusion that they are not without sin. So the only thing for them to do is to walk away. Situation defused. And then, seeing that the woman is alright, Jesus doesn’t berate her but tells her: Go and sin no more.
Now of course this woman, just like us, was going to keep on making mistakes. But we don’t have to define ourselves as our mistakes. That’s what sin does: It tries to make you believe that your mistakes are all you are. But when you take your mistakes to God, he lifts them off of you so that you don’t have to live inside them be ruled by them. Instead, you can become a person who heals your mistakes, and in turn helps to heal the world.
You are not your sins – so don’t let them define you. Live in the Grace of God by living in the process of confession, forgiveness, connecting with God, solution through healing, working towards a resolution, and finally you will come to the absolute-knowing that you are God’s child who is loved by Him. What did Jesus say to everyone: You are forgiven for your sins. Live to heal your sins, and you will be living into God’s love and His kingdom.