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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her sermons from our most recent sermon series on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our last series was The Joyful Kingdom, which examined some of the joys that Easter brings us. Our current series is an examination of events in the Acts of the Apostles. Enjoy.
Radical Conversion
June 7, 2026 3rd Sunday of Pentecost
Acts 9:1-9 Acts 9:10-22
Saul was not a nice person before he becomes Paul. When I learned Bible stories in my youth, Paul was this great leader of the early church who went all over the Middle East and into Europe preaching about Jesus and planting new churches wherever he went.
Then when I got a little older, I heard the story of the death of Steven, one of the early disciples, and that Saul held the cloaks of those who stoned him. This is how he enters into the Bible narrative. I learned that he originally opposed the new church of Jesus, and was instrumental in having a lot of early Christians arrested. Eventually he decided to go to Damascus, pursuing a lot of the Christians had fled there, and on the road to Damascus he was struck down by Jesus and had his great conversion.
But it wasn’t until I became an adult, and I really thoroughly read the account in Acts of who Paul was and what he did as Saul, that I realized how dramatic and intense that conversion was.
We don’t know much about Saul’s background, but we do know that he was a Pharisee descended from a Pharisee family. Probably that included not only his father, but other members as well. Now remember that you didn’t inherit being a Pharisee. It is like being a college professor, you have to study many years and be very proficient in the scripture, and the laws and customs of Judaism, before you are awarded that title.
We know that Paul’s main job was being a tent maker. For most people being a Pharisee was their volunteer job that they did in their community, which they would sometimes get paid for. When you rendered your services to a family who wanted to know if what they were doing was religiously or culturally correct you could accept a token fee, in coin or goods, as a mark of gratitude.
The Pharisees were created to make sure that the laws and customs of Judaism would not be forgotten. It’s believed that this organization was formed when the Greeks conquered Israel and really tried to eradicate a lot of Jewish tradition. The Pharisees were the counter to that to keep the culture alive.
But take a moment and think about Saul as a young man. He was from Tarsus, a prominent city in present day Turkey, and we know that his father was a Roman citizen, so he is a Roman citizen. So, he grew up with a privilege that most young men didn’t have. He also grows up in a very dedicated religious household, and he’s surrounded by this idea that the Jewish faith must be preserved. That this is his family’s mission. He takes on that mission and studies very hard to obtain the very honorable position of Pharisee. Then he goes to Jerusalem. It’s implied that he arrived there after Christ died, and it’s also implied that he never met Christ or even saw him preach.
Now I want you to imagine this young man, who has been raised to believe that he is a keeper and defender of the Jewish faith. He looks at early Christians and their beliefs, and he sees a threat to the foundation of Judaism. He’s connected to the Temple, and he’s listening to priests talk about these radical ideas that Jesus had and taught, and he learns that this man was crucified for sedition. And he probably also learns that the priests had hoped that, when Jesus died, that his movement would have died with him, but it didn’t, in fact it’s growing. Plus, his followers are claiming that he rose from the dead after three days and is the true Messiah.
This threatens every foundation of Saul’s life. He’s a young man with fire in his heart for his faith. He concludes that these followers of Jesus have the wrong beliefs and he’s going to do something about it. Understand that Saul truly thought that this was a divine mission that God had given to him: To show these people the errors of their ways and to stamp out this new heresy.
I am sure that when he first started, he brought people in for questioning and tried to convince them that the beliefs of this new Jewish cult were wrong. But he came up against the unshakable belief and faith that those in the early church had. They had seen Jesus; listened to him preach; walked with him; and some had maybe even met with him after his resurrection. They were not going to discount their life experiences. And Saul goes from re-educating and guiding to arresting and giving people one option: Renounce Christ and come back to the true Jewish faith or spend your time in prison or executed.
Saul became the inquisitor who was responsible for the persecution, imprisonment and death of many, many people and families. He made Jerusalem such a horrid place to live that many of the faithful left, and Damascus was one of the cities that they fled to. Which was why Saul was on his way there with a company of Temple guards who were going to round up the Christians in Damascus and do what they did to them in Jerusalem.
Saul is the classic case of good intentions using evil methods to do what you think is right. That is not a good place for anyone to be because you lose your humanity in the process, and Saul had definitely lost his. No wonder Jesus struck him down, because that was the only way to get through to him.
And Christ didn’t just strike him down, he took away his sight. Have you ever not had your sight for a while? I had eye surgery in my twenties, because I was going blind, and coming out of it I was essentially unable to use my sight for about a week. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t go outside, I had to stay in a dark room, I couldn’t lift anything over ten pounds or do a lot of movement, and I had to cover my eyes for a few hours every day. Now I wasn’t completely blind but let me tell you, you are thrown into your head; it’s the only place you can be. Saul’s life came to a screeching halt, and for three days he had to think and confront who he was, what he believed in, why it was wrong, and remember all the atrocities that he had committed. I do not think it was a good three days.
Sometime during those three days he came to the acceptance that he was on the wrong path and that he was ready to repent, to choose a new direction. And when he was ready God sent Ananias to him. Saul was ready to become Paul; he was ready to proclaim that Jesus was the son of God. And he went out and did just that.
People didn’t believe this. They had doubts, they did not believe that he was sincere. And I think Paul knew that was going to happen, but he didn’t take the doubts and animosity personally. He knew why they doubted him and he knew that the only way to counter that doubt was to live his new life fully and completely as a servant of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. To go out in Jesus’ name and do the work of Evangelistic love.
Paul never lied or glossed over that evil period of his life. He admits that he was one of the worst sinners out there. But that is one of his messages. That if he, who had lived with so much hate in his heart that it drove him to destroy others could be forgiven and change, then anyone could. There is hope for us all.
Now in this story of Saul who becomes Paul, where do you see yourself? I don’t think any of us have gone to the extremes that Paul went to. But where have we judged because we were certain that we were right? Where have we not listened to other opinions and beliefs and acknowledged the truth of the experiences of others. Have we ever acted with such certainty, only to realize that we were horribly mistaken? Are we willing to sit with ourselves and think about what we’ve done and acknowledge that we were wrong and think about how can we fix this? And are we willing to do the hard work to make things right even though we know that we’re going to get some flack for it? And finally, are we willing to accept radical conversion in others?
Jesus challenges all of us to go out and live as radical converts. To accept Him and God and the Holy Spirit in our lives and then to put our former lives behind us and to live forward into Christ’s love. Paul made his start in a synagogue telling everyone that Jesus was the Messiah. What can you do? How can you bring God’s radical love into your life and the lives of others?
We are all walking a road towards God with Christ as our guide. Like Paul, may we all have the courage to acknowledge our mistakes and continue forward in and with the Love of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
Being the Church
May 31, 2026 Trinity Sunday
Acts 2:42-47 Philippians 2:1-4
Our current sermon series is looking at the Book of Acts and how the disciples brought about the early church. We started with Jesus's ascension and then last week we talked about Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit gave the gift of languages to the disciples. Today we're going to talk about the early church.
The early church was not wealthy. The majority of the disciples were the 85% who lived in poverty. Some of them might have had businesses, such as being a potter or a carpenter. Some of them might have been laborers, such as farm workers or fishermen. We do have a hint that some people might have been merchants or members of the priesthood. Joseph of Arimathea supposedly was a tin merchant, and Nicodemus was a Temple official. Jesus appealed to a wide variety of people so probably there were some well off members of the community but for the most part these were people who did not have a lot of money or a lot of physical assets.
They did not start out with church buildings. They met in each other's homes where they worship and shared meals together. But the main thing that this group of people did was they set up a support network to help each other. And not only did they help each other, but they also make it their mission to help out those in the greater community who didn't have any support. So, widows, orphans, and older people who didn't have a family connection were served by this community.
Think about this: You're a poor widow who has no husband, children, or extended family, and you're struggling to survive. And all of a sudden this group of people starts to bring you some food, and asks you what you need. Do you need a new cloak or a blanket perhaps? Can we gather some firewood for you? Do you need someone to help you clean or cook? This is very nice; people are helping you out, but you're going to ask them: Why are you doing this? And the answer from the community is: Our Rabbi, Jesus Christ, taught us that we need to show our love for each other love by helping and supporting each other and other people.
And you might say: Really? Who is this Jesus? Isn't he that rabbi who was crucified a while ago? And this starts a conversation. The people will tell you of their experiences with Christ. Of the kind words that he said; of the miracles that they witnessed; and they would say: God loves you and you are saved, and explain to you what that salvation meant.
They would tell you this radical idea that Christ paid the price for whatever sins you had committed, so you don't have to keep beating yourself up for not being perfect. They would tell you another radical idea, that you too have a place in heaven. That it’s already prepared for you. Yes, even though you’re poor, you have a place to go. They would tell you all the wonderful stories connected to Jesus.
And it is not surprising, because of the love and care that the early disciples gave to other people and the stories that they told about Jesus, that people joined the community. And the community grew until, after 300 years, it was so big that it had to be acknowledged as the main religion of the Roman Empire.
But there's a funny thing that happens to religions. They usually start out as small, contained belief systems among a group of people. If they answer a spiritual and social need for a population then they grow. But as they grow, they become more institutionalized. Not immediately, but early on the early church started to rent or create separate spaces to meet in. Usually, these spaces were a room connected to the minister’s house. The minister’s part of the house would only be one or two rooms, and then there would be a special attached room to the house which functioned as the place of gathering. This space was used for worship, but it was also used as a place to eat, or have official meetings, or a place to just hang out and socialize with your church friends.
But then churches started to be managed in groups, usually, because you didn’t have enough ministers to start with and ministers took care of several churches. But eventually Christianity did have enough ministers to go around and then churches were joined by regions, which got larger and joined other regions, and then became more international until finally we had Rome and the Vatican.
Now when things get top-heavy, any religion starts to split. There’s a movement within for more independence, and new denominations are formed. This is a normal cycle that all religions go through. But that doesn’t mean that a church is dying. It just means that the church is seeking relevance in the world through the best way to serve its community.
Methodism is a classic example of this. The Methodist church didn’t start out as a denomination. It started out as a society of spiritual growth and mission within the Anglican church. The people that started it wanted to live more active Christian lives and formed groups to study the Bible and then applied Jesus’ teachings in the real world.
Where did they meet? Mostly in people’s houses. When Methodist groups got big enough, they built meeting houses which served as worship and study centers, but also as spaces for schools, clinics, and group meetings. Doesn’t this sound like the early church? And it’s interesting to note that in John Wesley’s General Rules there is a line that Methodists will support other Methodists. First to support them in their spiritual growth and endeavors and second to support them in businesses. Now this didn’t mean that you couldn’t use a plumber who wasn’t a Methodist, but it did mean that whenever possible you would actively support a business owned by a Methodist or employ a Methodist for your business. The idea was to support your community.
So, if you look at the church community, from the beginning it has a dual purpose. First of all, to provide a space of spiritual renewal and growth. The spiritual renewal comes from our community worship. Being together, singing and praying, and looking at a Bible scripture, gives us a time to put away the outside world and focus on connecting with God. To grow we should provide a place where people can come and freely wrestle with their problems. Where they can say: How can I live this situation in my life as a Christian? That answer is not always self-evident. Life is complicated and often we have to wrestle with sticky situations that seem to have two bad choices. It helps to have friends who will listen to your problem and help you. That’s what small groups like Bible study, United Women of Faith, or class meetings are for.
The second purpose is to provide a platform to reach out into the community and support it, in whatever is needed. Some churches have food banks or thrift stores. Some have Alcohol Anonymous or substance abuse support meetings. Some places have grief or cancer sessions. Some provide spaces for charities to meet. I know of one church, in a rather impoverished area, which had a community sewing circle that made blankets, bibs and baby supplies for newborns. Each church needs to look at their community and find what needs to be supported, and then decide what the church can do.
So, to be a church we need to ask ourselves: How can we support our members spiritually, and in the world outside? And, how can we lift up the community that we live in? It doesn’t take a building to do this, it takes people. First and foremost, the people are the church. People who are dedicated to helping out and making whatever is needed happens. People who want to grow spiritually and show their love of God through actions of love as we serve others in our church family and our greater community.
So, let’s take advantage of our church. Let’s pool our resources – that doesn’t necessarily mean our money, it also means our talents, gifts and graces and use this space and the support of our people to help grow closer to God. Let’s use our church to serve and lend a helping hand, to create a small piece of God’s Kingdom that we can live in right now in celebration of God’s love.
Filled with the Spirit
May 24, 2026 Pentecost
Acts 2:1-13 Acts 2:14-21
Pentecost, like Easter and Christmas, is one of the high-holy days of the Christian Calendar. It is the day that the disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit and when the Christian Christ started.
We say that the Holy Spirit is the messenger that gives us feelings that show us the way to follow the teachings of Jesus and points us to right actions that help us to build the Kingdom of God. It sometimes comes in a voice within us or a voice we hear outside of us. I know of people who say that they heard a voice, either within or without, which pointed them onto a career path.
It sometimes comes as a suggestion from someone. Before I went to Japan, I met a friend who was going to graduate from college, and I asked her what she was going to do. She told me that she was planning to go to Japan to teach. My friend was not a teacher and had a degree in art. I asked her: How can you go get a job in Japan if you don't have a teaching degree? She said: Oh, they don't care, anyone can go and teach in Japan. This was not entirely true, she had some false information. But when she said teaching in Japan it was like there was this resonance in my body, as if I was being given a direction for me to take. I started to explore the idea, and I ended up in Japan for 16 very good years.
It sometimes comes as a series of hints. I remember I was looking for a prayer book and within one week a book, Draw the Circle, came up in three different conversations, and I happen to see it randomly on Amazon. God was telling me it was just the book I needed at the time.
It sometimes comes simply as a feeling of rightness that you are supposed to be in this place, at this time, doing this thing. And often when that happens, you get into this zone and you feel powerful and unstoppable while you're doing that action.
In the case of the disciples, forty days after Easter, on the day Jesus ascended to heaven, he told them to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit to come to them. Ten days later, on the Jewish festival of Shavout, the spring harvest festival, the disciples were at the inn getting ready to celebrate.
The Holy Spirit was anticipated, but not expected. Do you remember that when people asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God and the Restoration of Israel was going to happen? What did Jesus say? It is not for you to know the day or the hour. It wasn’t the disciples’ job to know when the Holy Spirit would come, they just had to make themselves ready to receive it.
One of the ways that they made themselves ready was to follow the observances of the Jewish religion. Jesus, after all, hadn’t told them not to be Jewish. Yes, Jesus questioned the application of the law; he questioned customs that shut people out of community; he questioned practices that restricted people from helping each other when it was needed; and he spoke out against bigotry and exclusion. But he believed in the observation of religious ceremony that helped people to get close to and connect with God. Shavout is a very important holy day that gives thanks for the creation of the world and the sustenance that allows us to live. So today, while we are celebrating the Holy Spirit coming into our lives, I also want us to give thanks for this beautiful world we live in, and to all those people who dedicate their lives to providing us with food. And let’s pray also for a good and bounteous harvest.
The Gospels and Acts tell us that the disciples went back to Jerusalem prayed every day at the Temple. They were living in a pious community. This tells us that the disciples were in a state of holiness and were open to receiving the Spirit.
Now I know that sometimes the Spirit does come to people, like Saul, who are doing not so good things, and pushes them onto the right path. This happened to John Newton, the sea captain who wrote Amazing Grace. He was on his deck, importing a load of slaves to America, when he was struck down by such a feeling of remorse and shame for what he was doing that he turned the boat around back to Africa and set the slaves free. And he had to pay for that loss. He then became an abolitionist minister and gave us the song of hope and strength that we still sing today.
But interestingly, Saul and Newton were people who did believe in God and who worshiped regularly. Most people set right by the Holy Spirit are open to the possibility of God. As disciples we participate in the discipline of worship and connecting to God and Jesus so that we can hear them better through the Holy Spirit.
The first gift of the Spirit was the gift of languages. Most of us try to learn a language when we’re in high school as a requirement for college. Learning a language has a lot of benefits for the brain actually. People who learn a second language, even if you never use it, can often see alternative ways of doing things and have better reasoning capabilities. But if you get to a higher level of a language you begin to understand the cultural nuances connected to the culture of that language. You have a greater, more empathic, understanding of the people of that culture.
You see God wasn’t just preparing the disciples to go out and spread His word to people of other nations, he was preparing them to understand where those people were coming from so they could meet them with understanding. You know that list of people who hear the disciples speaking? Those are also the fifteen major languages of the day. Most of the disciples had never been beyond the borders of Israel and they would need that extra cultural context if they were going to go to out and preach Jesus’ word. When we’re telling people about our faith we need to first meet people where they are to understand how Jesus can help them in their lives, not demand that they come into our lives and understanding.
Remember, just as God loved those disciples at Pentecost for who they were with all their flaws, he loves whoever we are trying to help. We are not perfect, neither are they, so we need to meet people where they are.
The gift of languages was the gift that was needed at the time. When you are filled with the Spirit you don’t have to speak in tongues, but usually an encounter with the Spirit does surprise you by showing you an ability or resource that you didn’t know you had. I remember when a few of my fellow students asked me to help them get through a philosophy class in college. For some reason I seemed to get the material. Halfway through the study session for the final exam it hit me that I had the ability to teach – to take content and make it understandable for others. That was quite a rush of understanding, and it felt like a fire inside me. It got me going on a completely different career path of teaching, which has given me some great life experience.
When that happened, things felt right, and positive, and I felt very strong in that moment, like I could do anything. That’s the Spirit talking to you.
But the Spirit can also guard you. I remember there was a party I was invited to once of some people who were friends, but when I got there something felt very off and I got this strong feeling that I should leave. So, I said I was tired and went home. Some bad stuff went down that night between two people, which fortunately I wasn’t there for. No one was arrested or got hurt but I realized after that this was a negative group of people who I didn’t want to stay involved with. I believe that the strong feeling I had to leave was also the Spirit talking to me.
So be on the lookout for the Spirit in your life and don’t discount those feelings. Yes, some people are going to call them instinct and maybe it is a bit, because God gave instincts so we could survive. But if it’s a feeling or message of rightness, or a feeling or message of wrongness then that is God connecting to with the Spirit so you’ll take an action in the right direction. Open your heart and mind and you’ll always live in the Spirit and have the fire of God in your heart.
What are We Waiting For?
May 14 &17, 2026 Ascension Sunday
Luke 24:44-49 Acts 1:1-11
From the beginning Christianity has lived with the idea that Jesus is going to come back to earth, defeat all the legions of evil, and restore it to a paradise. Heaven and earth will no longer be two separate realms, and everyone will live in peace and harmony. This idea comes from Jewish theological tradition. Many Old Testament prophets predicted that God will restore the country of Israel and that all the nations will come to recognize that God is the supreme God of everyone and everything.
But a new or renewed world is not limited to Christianity. Most major religions have some version of a restoration of a perfect paradise. Either the paradise existed before, like the Garden of Eden, or the paradise will be realized in the future, like the Baha’i and some Buddhists sects.
Many scholars have debated where this idea originates in the collective human consciousness. In the last century it’s been discovered, from extensive studies of the world climate through time, that before 5,000 BCE the climate of the Middle East was a lot different. The Sahara Desert was much smaller and the areas around the Nile and other rivers, like The Euphrates, were more like tropical forests, with elephants and other forest animals, unlike the arid regions of today.
This has led many historians, anthropologists, and archeologists to speculate that the idea of a past paradise, like Eden or the Golden Ages of many cultures, is actually referring to this time. In our collective cultural psyche, we have a memory of climate abundance and the peace and harmony that existed with a lower population and tribal interactions. And we translated this into the myth of lost paradise and the possibility of that paradise coming back to us in the future. We know it was there once and we believe that it can be again.
Christians have named this as the coming of the Kingdom of God. In this kingdom the earth will be fertile and provide us with all the food we need to eat. We won’t need to worry about our homes being destroyed by natural disasters. There will be no violence among animals; Isaiah 11:6: The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. As well as people; Isaiah 2:4: They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation will not lift up a sword against another, nor will they ever again be trained for war.
Jesus was asked several times during his ministry when this restoration would take place, and his answer was always the same: It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. He did caution people to be watchful and to be ready for the moment, which could come at any time, but he refused to name a date.
These statements influenced the early church. Paul and John especially believed that the moment was going to happen during their lifetime or within a few decades. Both of them wrote about the coming and urged people to keep themselves devoted to God. But this idea of an imminent restoration wasn’t without controversy.
When the Council of Nicaea, in 325, was debating which books to put into the Bible and which to leave out, Revelations, the book about what would happen with the coming of Christ, only made it in by one vote. Many people argued that it would encourage people to only think about the second coming and not focus on the mission and ministry work that needed to be done in the present.
And in some ways their caution was warranted. Over the centuries humans have gotten caught up in end-of-the-world-restoration-hysteria. At the turn of the first millennium nearly everyone in Europe went to sleep in their local churches, convinced that it was a safe place to ride out the destruction of the world. When they woke up the next day and went outside nothing had changed. Think of all the cults in our lifetime that predicted the end of the world and the coming kingdom that never showed up.
So, what are we waiting for? Are we waiting for God’s Kingdom to suddenly come with Jesus descending from the clouds and legions of angels at his back? Are we waiting for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to ride through town? Are we waiting for that perfect world to suddenly be manifested around us?
Personally, I’m not waiting for any of that. First of all, because Jesus told us not to wait for it or worry about it; that it’s all well above our pay-grade. Second, because the idea of me waiting feels similar to a girl waiting by the phone for her boyfriend to call when she could be out with her friends having a good time. I’m not going to put my life on hold waiting for the perfect world. I have things to do, places to see, and missions and ministries to act on.
But actually, I think that the idea of a perfect world is a good idea. It’s part of our Christian heritage to try to make ourselves better people and the world a better place to live. It gives to us a positive ideal that we can work toward. And I believe that that’s what we’re supposed to do.
You see, I believe that the creation of God’s Kingdom is a two-way street. On the one hand you have God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit working up in heaven and planning for good things that can happen on earth. On the other hand, there is us, working with God’s justice; Jesus’ teachings of how to love each other in our daily lives, and missions and ministries; and the Holy Spirit, who gives us nudges in the right direction and power when we need it. And we take all that and we use it to make the world around us a better place to live. It’s a cycle of the plan and the energy from heaven flowing down to us, and the energy of our actions flowing up to heaven. And, at some point, we don’t know when, those actions are going to meet in the middle and create a new reality.
Now what that new reality will be, I have no idea. But it’s not something we need to worry about. You let God & Jesus worry about the timeline and the result. We just need to worry about what’s happening right here, right in front of us.
So, what do we need to do while we’re waiting for it all to come together?
First of all, take care of yourself. This can be selfish if you are only taking care of yourself FOR yourself. What we do is take care of ourselves so that we can love and serve others. Eat right, exercise a little, and get enough sleep. And for your own peace of mind stay away from the negative as much as you can. I know we can’t cut that out entirely from our lives, but balance the negative with positive experiences and people. And give yourself time to connect with God: Through prayer, journaling, nature walking, or a hobby. Also, don’t be afraid to grow and change. God did not make us to stay the same all our lives. We are continual-learning creatures.
Second, take care of the people and the world around you. Our lives are made up of interconnected relationships. Think of your life like a collection of expanding circles. In the first circle you have your family. In the next you have your friends. In the next you have people in your community. Then we have the larger communities of our county, state, region and country. And finally, we have a relationship with everyone in the world. Maybe not directly to everyone all the time, but the possibility of connecting is there.
We connect with all those people, in all those circles, through the actions of love that we give to each other. Through the ministries and work that we do in our communities to make them better places to live. Through the mission work that reaches beyond our immediate boarders. All that energy is poured into the world and is used by God to further the design that He’s working on.
There’s nothing wrong with waiting for the Coming of Christ. But don’t spend your time just waiting. Use the time that God is giving you to become and be better and more loving; to reach out and make the world around you better and more loving. And who knows, someday we might see a new world being made right before our eyes.