Understanding the Jesus of the Gospels

Sermons from the Gospels

recent posts

Subscribe

1-corinthians-12 all-saints-day bible chalenge christianity commentary-on-luke-12-13-21 communion cost-of-salvation diversity Easter faith fear god gospel-of-luke gratitude healing holy-spirit jairus jesus john-17 John 20 Lazarus lords-supper love-in-the-darkest-hour luke-16-13 luke-17-11-19 luke-18 luke-24 mark-5 matthew-6 my-fathers-house pentecost prayer resurrection say-thank-you talents temptation the-dishonest-steward the-rich-fool the Empty Tomb to-whom-do-you-belong unity witness witnessing world-communion-sunday

  • “Come Follow Me”                                      

    Prepared for the Rockport Presbyterian Church / January 25, 2026

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder, PCUSA

    Before we get into this story in Matthew’s Gospel, I want to first just get a picture of what Jesus was doing.

    The first thing that Matthew tells us is that John the Baptizer was arrested and put into prison and that Jesus went to Galilee. Why?

    It was because the political and religious climate in Jerusalem and Judah was too hot and too dangerous for him this early in his ministry. So, Jesus went from Nazareth to Capernaum. I want to tell you that this was not an easy trip. It was not just around the corner. It was 20 miles away and about a four-day journey. 

    Why would Jesus do that? After all, Nazareth was his hometown. Why would he bypass it and go to Capernaum? One reason that I found in my digging was that Nazareth was a smaller community and very conservative. Early on, the people there were not receptive to Jesus’ teachings and claims. We know from Luke 4 that when Jesus began his ministry in Nazareth, he went into the meeting place there and read a scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He quoted from Isaiah 61: 1-2:

    The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
        because the Lord has anointed me;
    he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
        to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim liberty to the captives
        and release to the prisoners,
    to proclaim this is the year the Lord has chosen.

    Whoa. Jesus is proclaiming something extraordinary in the Jewish meeting place of his hometown – a place he had probably sat and prayed in hundreds of times before. Everyone there knew him. He takes the prophetic scroll of Isaiah and proclaims to the people, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” Why? “Because the Lord has anointed me!” He goes on to announce, “The Lord has sent me [has selected me] to bring the good news…” And to “…proclaim this is the year the Lord has chosen.”

    In other words, from the prophetic scrolls of Isaiah, Jesus proclaims the Lord God has chosen me. “This is the year the Lord has chosen.” People, you have been waiting 400 hundred years. Well now the time has come.

    Well, that’s good news, isn’t it. The Jews had been waiting 400 hundred years for some word from God. God had been silent. Finally, Jesus is proclaiming, here is God’s herald, God’s messenger, God’s Messiah? That’s good news, isn’t it?

    However, when he did this, it angered and outraged those listeners in the meeting place. It enraged them to the point that they drove him out of town threatening to stone him. Well, that couldn’t have been the reaction Jesus was hoping for. No. We know that Jesus would say elsewhere that prophets are not welcomed or accepted in their homeland. Jesus had to begin his ministry somewhere else.

    Going to Capernaum afforded Jesus both distance from the haters and a far more receptive audience. You see Capernaum was at the farthest northwestern side of the Sea of Galilee. It was north of Samaria and even farther north of Judah and Jerusalem. It was a portion of the ancient kingdom of Israel that when the initial tribes of Israel entered into it, they never really were able to completely establish themselves as the dominant culture or religion. Instead, right from the beginning the Israelites were assimilated into the cultures of the people in those lands. They absorbed and picked up the local practices. And after a time, that caused the purist down in Judah to say they were no longer really true Jews.

    Also, Galilee was on the crossroads of several important caravan routes that brought with it trade, commerce and new ideas, customs and religions. And the Galileans were quick to be accepting of new and fresh ideas. Which meant that it was fertile ground for Jesus to arise and say to the people, “…Repent. The Kingdom of God is near.” In Galilee, Jesus was new. His message of repentance and salvation was received with interest and then with a growing following.

    A second reason for Jesus’ move to Capernaum may have also been to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaish foretelling that the Messiah would arise from out of the territory of Zebulum and Naphtali. Those were the two Israelite tribes that first entered Galilee. So, while Jesus was seeking a safe haven from which to begin his ministry, he was also dotting his “I-s” and crossing his “T-s” making sure that the ancient words of the prophets were being fulfilled.

    And maybe, there was a little bit of Jesus saying to his hometown, “I know you are not going to believe me. But I am going to give you a chance anyway.” It didn’t go well.

    So, just as Jesus told his disciples in Luke 10, “… whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say,‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.” In other words, you had your chance and you blew it!

    OK. That’s our background for today’s Gospel story.

    Now I want to focus on verse 17 particularly on the word translated here as “preaching”. The text reads: “Then Jesus started preaching, “Turn back to God! The Kingdom of God will soon be here.”

    Now, I am going to use William Barclay’s commentary as a resource here. In his commentary on the Greek word used here that we have translated as “preaching”. The Greek word is “kerussein”. Which means: a herald’s proclamation from a king. So, what Barclay is telling us Matthew was trying to say here was that Jesus was not just preaching like I am here today but that his manner was that of a herald proclaiming a message from the King in Heaven, God.

    How is Jesus being a herald of God and me being a visiting preacher differ?

    First, Barclay tells us that a herald spoke with an air to certainty. The herald’s message was not filled with ifs and maybes. It was delivered with the certainty of one who spoke for the king.

    And with that came a voice of authority. Jesus spoke with the certainty and authority that he knew the mind of God.

    And that tells another thing about a herald. He didn’t speak for himself. He spoke for the king. Jesus’ Words were the Words of the Father. These were not opinions or the rehash of commentaries.

    When I enter a pulpit, it is with the preparation of study and research from commentaries of learned sources. When the Spirit takes ahold of me, using me to speak to you, you may say later, Mel that was a great sermon message. But what Matthew is telling us here in verse 17 is “Mel, no matter how good the people tell you that you are, you are a pale comparison to the true light that was the Christ.”

    What Jesus was doing was far greater. When Jesus taught, it was with extraordinary authority – like nothing the people had experienced before. It was the Word of God standing before them and it was the awesomeness of God that shown through him. That is what Matthew is trying to say to us in verse 17.

    Now with that being what the people of Capernaum were seeing and experiencing, imagine Jesus walking up to you [Peter, Andrew, John and James] and saying, “Come with me! I will make you fishers of people instead of fish.”

    Wait a minute though. Don’t think that out of the blue, Jesus saw these men for the first time and singled them out. It was more likely that these men had already heard of and had seen and listened to Jesus’ teaching around town. And he was aware that they were following him – here and there listening to him teach.

    Perhaps they had already been down to the river Jordan and heard John announcing to them “…to repent and make straight the way of the Lord.” Perhaps they had already stepped into the River Jordan with John to be baptized and cleansed so that they could be ready. Perhaps they had already witnessed a miracle or two of Jesus. Perhaps things for the people of Galilee were beginning to fall into place regarding this new message that this new herald of God was proclaiming. And when this extraordinary teacher came to these fishermen in their boats and told them to come and follow him, they were more than ready and jumped at the chance. Perhaps.

    This brings us to the final thought that I wanted to share with you today. It is this. Consider how different the call of the first disciples must have been from other calls to people in the Bible.

    Samuel heard the voice of God call him from out of his sleep. He didn’t understand but at the direction of Eli, he responded to God out of faith. “Here I am.”

    When Isaiah found himself in a dream prostrate before the throne of God and after the Seraph cleansed his lips, God asked, “Who will go for us? Who shall we send?” Isaiah responded again in faith, “Here I am. Send me.”

    When the Angel Gabriel visited Mary and proposed to her God’s preposterous scheme for impregnation and the birth of a Son of the Most High, Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s Servant. Let it be as you have said.”

    In faith, these servants of God submitted themselves in order to be used by God.

    The calling of the first disciples was a bit different. They were seeing firsthand the awesomeness of God. They were seeing extraordinary signs before their eyes. They may not have understood what they were seeing but nonetheless they were seeing and being called to be a part of something extraordinarily different from anything that happened prior throughout Biblical history.

    In John 3:16, John tells us that “God so loved the world that God gave his only Son so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never die.”

    What that boils down to is this. “God gave God’s self at the Incarnation.” And we have to connect the dots here. What that means is that God’s very self, the Word of God, the Son of the Trinity in God, was standing in their midst. In their own physical time and space speaking to these fishermen calling them to follow him. Holy [expletive deleted]!

    What Matthew was describing here in his Gospel was a singular moment in human history and it is important for us not to gloss over it. We have to stop and absorb it and allow it to sink in. Because if we don’t, we would be in danger of allowing the entire Good News story of the Gospels to be swept away. We have to grab ahold of the awesomeness of what Matthew is telling us here.

    Now we may never be graced or lucky enough in our lifetimes to hear the Christ, the Son, the voice of God call us so clearly. For most all of us, the calls we hear may be as Samuel’s – a wee small voice whispering in the night, calling our name. Maybe, we will dream of God sitting high up on a throne calling for someone to send. Or maybe we might be graced by an Angel’s visit. Even those were a bit out of the ordinary. But I think what the disciples experienced when Jesus looked them square in the eye and said, “Come, follow me.!” was singularly unworldly. I’ve run out of descriptive expletives.

    Most of us will experience less dramatic calls that will demand faith from us. We’ll hear wee small voices in our sleep. We’ll feel the nudging of the Spirit trying to push us in a direction that we may not be sure is right for us. And that’s alright. Because Jesus didn’t offer those first disciples a structured program for discipleship. Instead, he held out his hand to offer a relationship. I think how we answer the call we feel will be based more upon faith in that relationship than in dramatic certainty.

    But my friends, it is no less important that we recognize and answer that call.

    God whispers to us every day, “Come follow me.” Will you leap at the chance to follow him?

  • Luke 15

    This is a two-part sermon series offered to the Wharton Hungarian Church of Wharton, NJ in June of 2022

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA

    Part 1: Finding the Lost

    The Bible is referred to as the greatest story ever told. These three parables of Luke 15 can be called the greatest story within the greatest story. I have heard it referred to as “the Gospel within the Gospel”. These three parables provide so much meaning and richness, so much insight into how Jesus views God, that for me, each time I read them, I find some new and deeper meaning. For me, Luke 15 is the prism through which we can understand what Jesus wants us to know about God.

    First, let’s build a picture of the circumstance that Luke places us in. Jesus is teaching tax collectors and sinners in the courtyard of the Temple. Around him, observing this very disapprovingly are some Pharisees. They are taking a very dim view of Jesus’ interaction with these sinners. You have to understand that the Pharisees considered these people, that they labeled “sinners”, as trash that needed to be avoided at all cost. They are called “People of the Land” – not a compliment. The Pharisees were strict followers of the Law. And they saw these sinners, these People of the Land, as living outside the law and they needed to be avoided and not interacted with. We would understand these parables more fully if we noted that the Pharisees did not rejoice with God when sinners repented and returned to God; just the opposite; the Pharisees would say that there would be joy in heaven when these sinners were obliterated before God. They looked forward not to the saving but the destruction of these sinners. So having these “People of the Land” within the Temple and a Rabbi sitting and teaching them was completely abhorrent and out of character for them.

    So now with that backdrop, let’s take a look at these parables. The first thing that I want you to observe in these parables is that Jesus is showing us the ways that we can get lost. Thus far, I have found four that I am going to share with you today and next Sunday.

    First is the Parable of the Lost Sheep. We hear this story, and we take it for granted, that Sheep get lost. But to give you an idea of how Sheep get lost, let me tell you this story. My wife and I were on a vacation to Scotland a couple of years ago. On the countryside in Scotland there are Sheep everywhere. I think there are more sheep in Scotland than there are people. We were on a road along a shoreline when we spotted a group of Sheep on a grassy mound offshore surrounded by the rising tide. What had happened was that the Sheep, in search of food, had wandered onto this lush spot offshore during low tide. They had their heads down following the food and took no notice of where they had wandered off to. What was once a lush feeding area exposed by the low tide with a path back to shore had been reversed and now the tide had started to come back in and oblivious to it all these Sheep nibbling with heads down were now trapped and completely surrounded by the rising tide with no escape back to dry ground.

    It was actually quite comical. But it does provide a real-life picture of what Jesus was describing in this story. Sheep wander off with their heads down nibbling here or there just following their noses and they don’t realize where they have wandered off to and suddenly, they can be in need of rescue. That’s when the hero in our story comes on the scene. The Shepherd leaves the flock behind (knowing that they are in the safety of the pen) and goes out searching for the lost Sheep. Now let’s understand one thing. There were two types of Shepherds back in the day in Palestine. There were shepherds who were dedicated and totally committed to the safety of their flock. And then there were hirelings who were paid as daily workers who would bolt at the first sign of trouble. And there we see a contrast between Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and the Pharisees who really didn’t care for the flock at all.  It is the task of the Good Shepherd to bring the lost sheep home safely even at the risk of his own life. Now this hunt for the lost sheep could be dangerous and life threatening. So, when the Shepherd does find the lost Sheep he rejoices. He lifts it upon his shoulders and carries it home and calls to the people to celebrate now that he has returned with the lost Sheep.

    Sometimes, that is how we can get lost. We can lose sight of where we are and where we are going in life. We put our noses to the grindstone, and we go plodding through our nine to fives never looking up to see where we have wandered off to. More importantly, we lose sight of whose we are. We get overcome by necessity and we allow our work to become the most important thing in our lives, and we forget that we are a beloved of God. Suddenly, we find ourselves lost in an unfamiliar country of business or in relationships which distracts us from who we should be; or one that sends us spiraling off in a destructive direction. Either way, we lose sight of whose we are. And because we forget whose we are, we lose sight of where we are going, and we find ourselves far-off lost and alone. We may be nibbling contentedly and our bellies may be full, but we have lost contact with the part of life that provides us real security, real connection and purpose.

    Years ago, when my wife and I moved out to Jersey from New York, we took a deep breath and said to ourselves, OK we are out from the watchful eyes of parents and family and now we are free to live as we liked. And while we putted around tending to our new house, the children and our jobs, we lost sight of our relationship to God and a church community that would support us. We forgot whose we were. Then one Sunday afternoon our six-year-old daughter Robyn came running into the house from playing with her friend Adrienne next door. Adrienne had been enrolled in Sunday School and she told our daughter all about Jesus and the things she had learned about him that day. With a sense of alarm and urgency, Robyn came running into our home yelling out, “Mommy, who is Jesus and why is He Adrienne’s friend and not mine?” I looked at my wife and muttered, “Damn, he’s found us.”

    Have you found yourself lost there? What you need to know is that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is searching for you and when he finds you and brings you home, God will be celebrating upon your return. That is the message that Jesus is delivering to the sinners circled around him and to the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law. But for the Pharisees and the Teachers, this is an abomination. They could not see, not even for a moment, why any of these sinners would be of any value to their God at all.

    Now, let’s look at the second parable. In this story, the coins would have been Silver Drachmas, very valuable possessions. In ancient Palestine, it would not have been difficult to imagine a peasant losing a coin inside their home. The house would have been dimly lit – one window. The floor would have been beaten earth covered in dried reeds. So, to search for coin in these circumstances would have been truly like looking for a needle in a haystack. It is not hard to imagine a woman lighting a lamp and sweeping the floor and sifting through the straw to find a lost coin.

    The coin could have been money for food or a part of a young woman’s dowry. In ancient Palestine a betrothed girl would have been given a necklace of ten coins as part of her dowery. So, you can understand her panic if she should lose one of the coins. So, she searches frantically and when she finds it, she would quite understandably rush out to her neighbors and call out gleefully to them to come celebrate with her. Jesus says, God is like that. That God would search for us like that. Isn’t that an amazing image – God on hands and knees searching for something that valuable, – you.

    I have a friend who told me this story about his life. Growing up through his Senior year in High School, his father was the center of his family life and was the anchor of his own life. Before the end of his Senior year, his father died suddenly. His family and he himself were unprepared for the loss. It was a shock to all of them but personally for this young man it spun him off untethered and unable to find that center for his life. He wandered through his college years not knowing what his direction or purpose should be. It was not until he met and married his wife and after several years of a difficult relationship that through counseling, Jesus found him to bring him home. This was a young man who, through no fault of his own like the coin, was lost. He had fallen into the reeds of the flooring. But Jesus tells us that God is relentless. That God will doggedly search for you and when God finds you God will lift you up. And then, what does God do? God calls to all in heaven and on earth to celebrate. “I have found that which had been lost!” This story may not be about a pearl of great value; but we can be as precious in God’s eyes.

    Now this was the thing. No Pharisee would ever dream of God like that. A Jewish scholar once admitted that this was a completely new teaching about God – that God would actually search for us. No Pharisee would ever conceive that God would go out and search for sinners. We believe and understand it because we know the end of the story – the story of Jesus’ saving love and grace and his conquering of sin through the cross. But to the Pharisees, this was an alien concept. They could understand a sinner crawling back to God and in a self-abasing way begging for forgiveness; but they could not conceive of a God that went out searching for sinners to be made righteous by God and made heir to the same inheritance of the kingdom that they claimed.

    So, what do we learn about getting lost in this parable? In this story about the lost coin, we hear a lesson about getting lost through no fault of one’s own. Sometimes in our lives, we find ourselves adrift. We lose contact we family and friends. We find ourselves in a wrong place, in unfamiliar surroundings. It wasn’t planned. We made no conscientious choice. But suddenly we are in a place with no sense of where God is.

    In each of these scenarios, Jesus tells us that God will risk all and expend all energies to search for and find us. Jesus tells us that God will search the wilderness for us if we wonder off. In the second, we see how God will frantically sweep out the house to find us if we some how fall into a crevice or corner. In both cases, Jesus finishes each parable speaking of heaven’s reaction to the return of the lost. Far different from the disapproving sneers of the Pharisees, it is with rejoicing and celebration. And here is revealed a wonderous truth about God. God is kinder than we are. We may give up on a sinner, but God does not. Sometimes, it can be far easier to return to God than to come back and face the criticisms of families and friends.

    This is the new image of God that Jesus was trying to bring to the people. It was not that God had changed. It was that Jesus was giving them a new vantage point from which to see God. It was a view point they had never had before. The sinners listening to Jesus could receive this Good News with joy. It is truly sad that the Pharisees and their dedication to the Law prevented them from understanding who God is and experiencing that same joy. It is a painful and almost tearful irony. These men, dedicated to the Law, are blinded by it to the point that it prevents them from knowing the God that gave them that Law.

    So, my friends, let’s us wrap up this first half of our study of Luke 15. The conclusion is that Jesus is revealing a God in deep love with its creation. God knows us, our hearts, our shortcomings, our propensity to fail. God knows all of that. And with all of that baggage that we carry, Jesus wants us to know that we are important and that wherever we wander off to, or however we get lost, Jesus tells us that God wants us to come home to be with God. God does not cast off. God does not condemn. God so loved the world that he sent the Son and that Son wants us to know the Father, God as he knows him and these parables open a door to give us a beginning glimpse of God’s love.

    End 1

    Part 2: The Prodigal Father

    Ok, let’s do a quick recap of what we learned from the parables in Luke 15 last week. We can get lost. We can do that in a variety of ways, but God does not abandon us. God loves us and wants us to be with God. We learned that God proactively searches to find us and when we are found, all of heaven rejoices with God.

    We saw how the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law did not understand that. Their sentiment was that all would be better off if these sinners that Jesus is fraternizing with would just die and go away.

    So, Jesus continues his teaching and tries again to reach their hearts.

    Now, he uses a story about wealth, about family, about two sons who demand their inheritance. In this story, Jesus is putting the squeeze on the Pharisees. He points a finger and puts them right in the center of the story. But be careful, don’t lose sight of the fact that we are in there, too. So, let’s dive into the story of the Prodigal’s Father.

    That’s a curious word, Prodigal. What does it mean? Prodigal means to be recklessly lavish, to go overboard, to spend without limit, without care. Remember that definition for later. Oddly enough, in the context of this parable, it has nothing to do with being lost.

    In the story we see in the younger Son what happens when we are lost because we, by our own choice, turn and walk away from the father. Now this is a marked difference from the two previous stories of getting lost by happenstance or wondering. Here, Jesus makes it clear that we can choose to be lost.

    Perhaps, we get lost by turning in on ourselves – brooding in self-pity. Or we can let friends distract us and pull us in tangential directions. Or perhaps we think we are not getting what is owed to us and we stomp off in search of “something” more befitting our position, importance and stature.

    Although I believe we need to read these stories as a trilogy so that we can get the full scope of Jesus’ lesson, it is the story we call the Prodigal that usually gets the most attention. The curious thing about this third story is that it is not really about either of the sons, at all. It is more about the word Prodigal and how it describes the Son AND how it describes the Father.  In this story how the Father reacts is different from the previous two. Here, the Father, God, is not a searcher or a rescuer. Instead, the Father is patient. The Father waits for the time when we, the wandering lost, look up from the woeful choices we have made to see God’s face again. In this story, we see God as the Father as being patient and watchful; and then being welcoming, loving, full of mercy and forgiveness.

    If you recall, the story begins, “There was a man had two sons…” It is only in part a story about the younger son. This son chooses to reject the way of living that has been handed down as a sacred legacy. The Pharisees understand legacy. Their positions in the community and the Temple are assured by legacy.

    This son’s actions are a betrayal of family and community. It is a disrespecting of all that the Pharisees would have deemed important within a Jewish family. I am sure that the Pharisees are looking squarely at the sinners before them and pointing judgmental fingers. In the context of the story, this son’s actions are a denial of the basic tenets of the Jewish faith and Law. He has violated a commandment by disrespecting his father and the law by demanding an inheritance that he is not entitled to. The Father in this story would have been justified in having the son beaten senseless, disowning him, kicking him out of the family and denying him any inheritance at all. The Pharisees would have approved of that. That is the God they could approve of. That is the God that fits their reality.

    We can read into it that this son is also denying the spiritual reality that we belong to God. We belong to the Father. And when we choose to walk away from that, when we lose sight of this and we make choices to go off on our own, we are denying whose we are. We are denying the God that loves us and yearns to have us in a righteous relationship with God.

    But back to the story. It is also a story of the Elder son. He dedicates his life to the discipline of doing everything that is expected of him, to a life of following the letter of the law. Sound familiar? Now Jesus is placing the Pharisees in the middle of this story. The Elder son stays at home working the fields and serving the Father in the Father’s house. In the Elder son, we see how we become lost in the law, in religious practices, lost in being so focused upon the letter of the law that like sheep we wander off into the law, into being so focused on the things of religion that we lose sight of its purpose and our relationship with God. We forget about Jesus’ compassion and mercy and sacrifice and get lost in doing the “things” that are expected of us.

    While we know that Jesus began the day teaching the Tax Collectors and Sinners, now he is speaking directly to the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law.

    What happens when the wandering son returns home? Remember, he has been rehearsing his confession all the way back. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and you. I am no longer worthy to be your son. Treat me as one of your workers.” So, after the Father has hugged and kissed him, he begins to speak his well-rehearsed apology. But what happens? The Father hears the confession, yes. He has compassion for the contrition but ignores the rest. He sweeps the groveling aside and lifts his son up. He turns to his workers and immediately starts giving instructions.

    Give him a Robe – this would signify that his honor in the household had been restored.

    Give him a ring – this would display to all that his authority in the household had been restored.

    Give him sandals – this would show all that he had been received back into the household as a son and not as a hireling or a slave for they did not wear sandals. All of this to ensure that everyone would know that this son’s position and his inheritance to the Father’s house had been restored.

    All of this is to restore this wanderer, this sinner to his prior status. There is no demand for groveling, no ultimatum, or suggestion of probation. There is only forgiveness. That is not to say unconditional or that there is no contrition. The Father knows and sees into the son’s heart.

    And, what comes next? A joyous and raucous celebration. It is a celebration that is prodigal – that is lavish and reckless. Lavish is obvious, the fatted calf has been prepared for the feast. But why is it reckless? It is reckless because the Father is putting is reputation in the community on the line by welcoming this outcast back and restoring his position in the family and community.

    This is the God that Jesus wants not only the tax collectors and sinners to see – that they are welcomed back into the Father’s house, but the Pharisees, as well; that they are called to offer these sinners the same forgiveness and then join in God’s celebration in receiving them back home. This is the Father that Jesus wants us to see and emulate; to see as sinners that we are welcomed back into God’s house when we repent, but also to emulate, to rejoice with God anytime a sinner returns to God. This is the reckless course that God wants from his spiritual leaders.

    But there is bump in the road. Upon the return of the younger brother – that sinner, the Elder brother refuses to welcome him in and does not participate in the rejoicing and celebration of the Father but rather resists the father’s invitation and pleading and refuses to go into the father’s house. This is the very picture of what is happening in the Temple. These sinners are pressing in to hear Jesus, but they are being judged and shunned by the Temple Elders who are refusing to acknowledge that God would welcome them in, restore their inheritance and celebrate. No, this is not possible.

    The Pharisees, in the Elder brother refuse to see or be a party to the Father’s joy that these sinners are coming back into the Father’s house. The Pharisees follow the law. They pray and praise God. They make the proper sacrifices according to the Law. They keep the Sabbath according to the Law. They do EVERYTHING that the law requires of them. But because of this, they are lost in the Law. They have lost sight of the God that entrusted them to be a Chosen People. They don’t see or understand the Father.

    And there is the fourth way that we can become lost. We become lost in the law. The law becomes a path to righteousness. But there is a problem with the law. The law can NOT make us righteous before God. There is no way that we can by our own deeds stand before God and declare ourselves to be righteous. The Book of Job tells us that. Only God can make us righteous; and God does that through the Christ; through God’s own saving mercy, love and grace.

    But here, the Temple Elders are angry! In their eyes, this is nothing less than outrageous!

    So, now we get to the heart this parable. It is not the Elder brother who has been aggrieved by the younger son. It is the father who suffers a most insulting indignity, who loses a son in the most disrespectful of circumstances. So, it follows it is not the Elder brother [or the Pharisees] who have the authority to judge. It is the Father who makes judgement. And God’s judgement is that God does not write off this sinner or deny him his inheritance. No, the Father is Prodigal. Remember the definition that I offered earlier, that the Father is recklessly lavish in pouring out forgiveness and mercy.

    Here’s another way in which the Father is prodigal. Now the Elder Son refuses to be a part of the celebration. What does the Father do? The Father goes out to the Elder Son and pleads with him to come in and join the rejoicing. This, too, is an act of reckless love. In the community, before all who would be watching, the Father is risking his own pride and standing to go out and solicit a party guest to come in after that guest has refused the invitation. But the Father does not stand on protocol or on our own notion of what is proper. The Father risks his standing and goes out and begs the Elder Son and the Pharisees, who stand in judgement in the Temple listening to Jesus, to join the rejoicing. Yes, even now, with the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law, God is being recklessly lavish with them. God does not give up on them either.

    The Father is recklessly lavish with patience, and caring, and love and is most recklessly lavish in receiving the sons back into the household. God pours out God’s love, and mercy and caring without limitation. God is a giver of mercy and forgiveness where none is justified.

    That is what Jesus is calling the Temple Elders, the Elder Sons of the story, to be. He is telling them to reach out to these sinners and be patient, be caring, be loving, be welcoming, be merciful and be forgiving even when mercy and forgiveness may not seem justified. Jesus is telling them AND us to be more like the Father.

    End 2

  • The Triune God – How can we Know it?

    John 16: 12-15

    Offered to the congregation at The Presbyterian Churches of Long Hill, NJ

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA

    So, today is Trinity Sunday. Usually, a Pastor will tackle the complexities of the Trinity in their message for their congregation on this Sunday. It is a difficult and complex subject that requires a rather deeper insight into the theology of the Trinity than your run of the mill congregant possesses, and I find it somewhat amusing that the Spirit has led me here today on Trinity Sunday.

    When I got the request from Barbara to come and fill a pulpit today, I answered “Yes” before I looked at the Lectionary. I feel when I receive a request for pulpit supply that it is a call of form Spirit and then I usually respond and then look at the lectionary to see what’s on the calendar. When I did it in my preparation for today and saw that it was Trinity Sunday, I kind of looked up at God and said, “You’ve got quite a sense of humor.”

    So, at the beginning, let me provide this disclaimer. I have my own idea of how I see and understand the Trinity. I have worked it through from the perspective of, how would I explain it to someone who has no idea of what our faith is, someone with absolutely no knowledge of Christianity, the Judeo-Christian shared heritage, who God is, who the Christ is or who the Holy Spirit is. How would I explain our Triune God to them?

    Now some people have told me that it is awesome and insightful. They would ask, can I use that as a lesson plan for my Bible Study. And I would kind of … and say why yes, of course. But others would tell me that it is naïve and childlike and doesn’t do justice to the complexities of the Trinity and the mysteries of our faith. And I would respond, “Well, Yes. But isn’t our ability to understand God both naïve and childlike?” So, from that perspective, it works for me.

    So, take what I say to you today with a grain of salt. It is not Reformed doctrine. It is just something that that helps me to understand and know this God that loves you and me.

    OK. The Triune God. Theologians use the word peri/cho/re/sis to describe it. It is Greek phrase meaning “going around like in a dance.” Picture it as something like a reel dance. God created the world with gracious goodness. Jesus reveals that love and kindness to us and the Spirit of Truth and Wisdom invites us in to join the dance. Now all of this is exquisite imagery but would someone new to notion of the Christian Trinity be able to understand any of it, or get a sense of who that Triune God is?

    The first thing the word, Triune, reveals to us is that we need to be thinking of God, how? As a threesome? As persons [plural] combined into a singular one? Or separately as a Father, Son and Holy Spirit doing their own thing? What would that even mean or look like. How would you begin to explain that to someone hearing it for the first time?

    Well, I find understanding by trying to see our Triune God revealed through the ways in which we experience God. Create for yourselves the image of you as a child – one with limited understanding of the world and one with very limited language skills. You see, I feel that our words fail us when we try to understand and explain who God is. Our words are limited in what they can convey. As we heard in Jesus’ closing remarks to his disciples earlier in the reading from John.

    12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth”

    What Jesus was saying here very simply is, we don’t have the capacity to understand the awesomeness of our God all at one time, not then and perhaps not even now. The Spirit will work us through it but only as far as we can go at any one time. And for that reason, rather than trying to explain something that even we have difficulty understanding to a novice, I have defaulted to looking at what we can see, hear and feel with our senses and let that tell us what God reveals about God to us.

    I think one of the first ways we can experience the presence of God is by looking at the universe around us and seeing God’s creation. I think, if we begin there, we can understand the concept of God as creator. God the creator is revealed to us in Genesis, the very first Word of scripture spoken to us. We are taught that God created the Earth and everything that is in and around and about us. Now, fortunately, we don’t need a theological proof of that because we can see and bear witness to creation because it is real. It is there for us to see, touch, smell and taste. All we need to do is look out around us and see the diverse complexity of the universe and of life on Earth and the beautiful simplicity and order in the chaos of the universe. Is all of this a cosmic accident or is there some force at work? We can look at the vastness of the universe and shrug our shoulders and say nothing here but us humans, no divine handiwork here. That would leave us in a meaningless void where at the end of our own lives or human existence itself there would be no hope that anything humanity does or creates means anything at all. The hope this belief provides looks forward to nothing more than oblivion.

    Or we can wonder at the awesomeness of the universe and see the works of the hands of a creator God. We can see the stars and the trees, hear the thunder and the birds as they sing sweetly in the trees. We can see God’s power through the universe on display. We can be witnesses to all of this and know that there is a creator God. This can be no accident. Even if you are an evolutionist thinking that everything goes back to a big Bang, as I believe, God still had to be at the center of that Bang. Things just don’t boom in the universe without something to make them go boom. That is one of the chaotic laws that order the universe. So, when we look at creation around us and all of its beauties and even its own ability to go on and recreate, we can bear witness that there must be a creator God of some kind at the center of it all.

    Here’s another thing we can know about God the Creator. If we believe we were created in the image of God, then human beings have the ability to be creators and bring forth new life. If we believe we were created in God’s image, then that is a reflection of the creator God. We have within ourselves the creative genius and the ability to be creators and discover the great truths of the universe. This is a reflection of the creator God.

    Another truth about this Creator God is that it created humans [male and female] in its image. [Genesis 1: 26-27]. If that is true, then can the converse be true as well – that the God whose image we reflect is both male and female. Or is it easier to convey that God has no gender, that our deity exists as both sides of creation act – sowing, conceiving and giving birth.

    Further when we care for creation in our acts of stewardship, we reflect the image of the God that loves all things. So, we can see with our own eyes the proof of the Creator God in the creation God has planted us in. It is here all around us.

    Next is the “Word”, the Son, the Christ, Jesus. Jesus is the Word of God spoken to us. Jesus is how we hear God speaking to us. The Gospel writer John tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through him.” John tells us that at Creation, the Word was there and through the Word of God, creation was spoken into existence. The Word [the Christ] is the voice of God speaking to us.

    The Word of God is present all through the Scripture speaking to us and revealing God’s truth to us. The Word, the Christ, Jesus is how we hear the voice of God. If we use our ears to listen, we can hear the Word speak to us.

    For that reason, I believe that Jesus is the prism through which we need to view and understand all of Scripture. On our own, humanity doesn’t have the capacity to understand who and what God is. It is the Christ, the Word of God speaking throughout all of Scripture that reveals who God is to us. He told us stories about God so that we could know the Father/Mother of Creation. In Luke 15, Jesus uses the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the two Lost Sons, to reveal to us some awesome insights into who the Father/Mother of Creation is and how far that God will go in acting out God’s love for us. Without the teachings and voice of the Son/Jesus to interpret who God is for us, the image of the God we read of in the Hebrew Scriptures can at times seem distorted.

    Jesus calls God Father, not so much because God has a male personage but more to convey that Jesus experiences a special relationship of love within God. That is something special Jesus knows about God and that he wants us to know about God. Our God is not a remote uninvolved deity that cannot be known to us. The Word, Jesus, the Son, provides for us a vantage point into knowing who the Father is. We cannot know the Father except through the Christ, that is the Word of God speaking to us. Therefore, when we go back to read the Old Testament Scripture stories it is vitally important that we do it through the prism of the Christ listening to the Word for those visions and ever-exciting glimpses into the nature of God seen through the eyes of the Son who knows the Father. The Word is how we hear God speaking to us and how God is revealed to us.

    Thus far, we see God through the reality of God’s creation and we hear God speaking to us through the Word, the Christ, the Son as recorded in the Gospels of Jesus Christ who interprets all of Hebrew Scriptures for us.

    Now what of the Spirit? How do we experience the Spirit? It can be harder to sense the Spirit because if you don’t see God in Creation, if you don’t hear the voice of God through the Word, it can be harder to sense the Spirit in your life. It can be harder but not impossible; because if you sense a yearning to ask questions about God, if you have an urging that draws you in to find answers, that would be the Spirit at work in your lives. It is the Spirit that plants the seed that yearns for answers. It is the Spirit that urges you to draw you closer to the Flame.

    Now there are moments when we can sense the Spirit of God?

    Let me give you a personal example. When I sit down to prepare these messages for the congregations that I visit, I can tell you that I am an empty vessel. What I mean by that is, I can’t just sit down and expound upon some text from Scripture and write a message for you on my own. When I try to do that, I wind up with a lot of horse manure. Those are my thoughts but with no Spirit in them. When however, I turn to God in prayer and ask that the Spirit guide me the results are quite different. I put the onus on the Spirit. I look to God and say, “OK, you have called me here, what would you have me say. Put the words in my mouth.” That’s my simple prayer. And I believe that God responds by sending the Spirit to fill and use me. I believe that God uses the Spirit to put the Word in my mouth. I don’t want to sound pompous or give the impression that I believe that I am a prophet. No. It is only to convey to you that without God’s Spirit in me, I am nothing.

    It is the Spirit that swells up within us to make our bodies tingle with a rush and fervor that opens a keyhole so that we can get a glimpse of God’s revelation of Truth and then know and understand more about God each time it does.

    If you sat in on a Session meeting or a Deacons meeting when you were discussing some thorny issue that didn’t seem to have a resolution and but stopped to take the time to listen and pray about a solution and then somehow one would emerge from the midst of the discussion, that is the Spirit guiding you along the way as Jesus’ had promised.

    The Holy Spirit of God, who Jesus refers to as the Spirit of Truth, is God’s on-going revelation constantly being reveled to us, constantly taking what little we know and understand about God and expanding our capacity to understand. Jesus called the Spirit a Counselor, and an Advocate and it is all of these things but it also a Revealer. It reveals the awesome power of God. Where others see chaos, we can, with the help of the Spirit, we see a creator God. When others get blerrie eyed wading through unintelligible Biblical text, the Spirit of Truth guides us to be able to hear the Word of God. Then the Spirit emboldens us to step out and create ministries of service to bring Jesus’ Gospels of Good News to our communities.

    Last week was Pentecost. There we saw how the Spirit took a rag-tag group of illiterate fishermen and led them to become teachers explaining the Truth about Jesus, who he was and how it was he was the fulfillment of prophesy and how Scripture was revealed and fulfilled through him. The Spirit came as a violent wind and infused the disciples with a fiery Spirit that appeared as tongues of fire over their heads and led them out in a Festival gathering to teach the Jews about Jesus. And when they were accused of being drunkards, Peter stepped forward and began to quote Scripture from Joel about how all the signs prophesized by the Joel had come to pass on the Cross and through Jesus’ triumph over death and sin.

    How is that? How is it that this fisherman who barely understood who Jesus was fifty days prior could step out and begin to quote from Scripture. Peter was speaking the Word of God through the power of the Spirit within him. And here is the thing, the Book Joel was just a prophesy before that. But now through the prism of the Christ, the Holy Spirit of Truth revealed what before then the people did not see. The prophesy of the signs in the sky, when the Sun went black, the signs on the Earth, when the curtain in the Temple split in half at the moment of the Christ’s death on the Cross. These things had happened. But the people didn’t see them but now the Spirit of Truth was revealing what it all meant, that the Last Days when God’s Kingdom would come to Earth had begun.

    We can witness all of these things. They are all there before us to see and hear and feel. The Creator God, the Word of God that speaks to us and the Spirit of God that moves within us to help us to understand and believe and to be witnesses. The Triune God can be a hard to explain mystery that we studder and stumble over, but it can be easier to see and hear and feel its presence. It can be as simple as seeing the evidence of what the Creator Father/Mother has done, hearing the Word as God speaking to us, and following the lead that the Spirit of Truth provides so that the Triune God is revealed to us.

    CHARGE: My friends, Jesus is the Word of God that reveals our almighty and awesome God to us. My charge to you this week is to open your eyes to see God’s glory, open your ears to hear God’s Word speaking to you, open your hearts to feel the presence of God’s Spirit within you. Let all of these things guide you on your way during the days and weeks to come.

  • From One Place…

    Acts 2: 1-21

    Offered to the congregation at the Wharton Hungarian Presbyterian Church on Pentecost Sunday, June 5, 2022

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA

    If you view today, Pentecost from our joined Judeo-Christian shared heritage, Pentecost is a unique event. In Palestine during the time of Jesus, Pentecost, was the end of the first growing cycle, 50 days. It was the time when the wheat was gathered for the first harvest of the year. The time was called the Festival of Harvest. It was a time that Jews came to celebrate and give thanks for the first Harvest.

    At a later time, after the destruction of the Temple, there developed a Rabbinical tradition where this Festival of Harvest became known as Shavuot. It became the celebration of God’s handing down of the 10 Commandments to Moses. During Shavuot, Jews celebrate their coming together as God’s Chosen People when God gave them the Law. The Law that would define their relationship with God. It laid down to them what their relationship with God and their neighbors should look like and how it should function. The first three speak to their relationship with God. You know these. “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other god’s before me. You shall not make idols to worship. You shall not wrongfully use the name of the Lord, your God.” The remaining seven, tell the people how they are to relate with their neighbors, and the world around them. First, the Sabbath is a day of rest. Then, honor your father and mother, do not murder, no adultery, no stealing, no false witness, and no coveting of anything belonging to your neighbor, not his wife, his slaves, his oxen or his asses.

    So, this Rabbinical thinking comes to define Shavuot as representing the day that God chose them and set them apart to be God’s people by handing down God’s Law.

    For Christians, Pentecost marks the 50 days that passed since Jesus’ triumph and Glory over the Cross, that is his resurrection. It had been 50 days since God stepped in and changed the history of humankind. God stepped into human time and glorified the Christ as the Christ glorified God in his conquering of death and sin. Jesus’ conquering of death and sin through the Cross allows us to come before God with a new righteousness, not earned but gifted through the Grace of God. And on this day, Pentecost, some two thousand years ago, God sent the Spirit that Jesus had promised to be an advocate for his disciples and to provide them with the understanding and guidance they needed so that they could see the reason for the Cross and then witness and interpret it to the world. And today we celebrate God’s gift of the Spirit to us and the birth of the Christian movement, which for a time was called the Way.

    I am struck by the beautiful symmetry that has developed around Pentecost. From a Festival Day around the time of the first Harvest which was a way of celebrating the giving of God’s gifts of food to the people to the recognition of the handing down of the Law then into the celebration of God’s gift of the Spirit, that is, the advocate that will help us to understand the Law and the whole of Scripture so that we can know who Jesus is and how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures, all of this is a beautiful thing that God has given us.

    Luke tells us, on that day that the disciples were gathered together in “one place”. Luke doesn’t clearly tell us where that place was. The text tells us that a violent wind came and filled “the house.” So, we naturally think of them being in an enclosed place. But from what follows we can get the image that it was close by the Temple because when they went out, it was into a large open area where thousands of people could gather. Also, Luke gives us the image that when the Spirit came like a “violent wind”, it attracted the attention of the crowd and they were drawn to it. So, the disciples must have been close to where the crowds were and at a time of Festival, that would have been the Temple.

    There are devout Jews from every nation close at hand. As Luke goes through the list of nations, he groups them in geographical segments beginning near Persia and then moving around through Asia Minor, Greece and then to Rome and then back south going out from Judea through Egypt and west to Libya. They were there from all around the known world. A great diversity of Jews had come to celebrate the Festival.

    And it was in this setting that something unusual was about happen.

    “Suddenly from heaven, there came a sound like a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” I find that phrasing by Luke to be striking. The Spirit does not come as a gentle breeze. It is not a cool, refreshing Spring like breeze. It is not what we are told the voice of God might sound like – a wee small gentle voice. Isaiah hid in the crack on the rocks as the storms passed for the voice of God was not in the storm. He waited for the quiet voice of God to speak to him. But here we are told that the Holy Spirt comes as a “violent wind”, and I think it tells us something of there being a different purpose in the Spirit at Pentecost. You know we experience the triune God in different ways. And I mean that to be three ways. We know God as a creator which we can witness simply by seeing the vastness of the universe around us. This can be no accident. We hear the Word of God through the Christ wherever he is present throughout Scripture and whenever we hear the voice of God speaking to us. Then we experience the presence of the Spirit. The Spirit is a mover and a shaker. The Spirit is what we feel when we are swelled up with Christian love and purpose. The Spirit of God is what gives us the courage we need to go out and witness to the world the Christ that we know. And that is what the Spirit is doing in that “one place” in Jerusalem.

    In that one place, the Spirit anoints the disciples with tongues of something like fire suspended over their heads. And at once, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. We get the sense from Luke that they are filled with the fire of their faith and the courage to go and witness and tell the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t know if they felt the presence of the Spirit and made a decision to go out or if the Spirit as a violent wind pushed them out onto the streets of Jerusalem. Either way, the crowds notice something strange and the disciples are in the midst of them.

    Pentecost becomes for us the day that Christianity has its birth, its beginning. God chose the day upon which Jews would come to celebrate the giving of God’s Law to the chosen people as the same day that God would pour out the Holy Spirit upon God’s second generation of God’s chosen people, the church of Jesus Christ.

    And then what happened next? Is it that they quietly shared a meal doing it in remembrance of him and then returned to their homes to relax and dwell on the events of the day? Is that what the Spirit did? No.

    No, they were spurred to action. They were pushed out onto the streets. The Spirit began acting through them. It pushed them out into the streets of Jerusalem, and they began speaking and the Jews assembled there for the Festival heard them speaking in languages they could understand about Jesus, the Messiah, and his triumph over death through the Cross.

    But let’s be clear about how this happened. First, the Spirit comes as a violent wind that catches the attention of the crowds. They are attracted to this disturbance to see what is happening. As the disciples begin to speak about their experiences what the people hear is the truth of the Christ in their own native languages. And this is a curious thing because the Jews of that day would have spoken and understood two maybe three languages. They would have understood Aramaic if they were there in Jerusalem. In order to travel and do business in the Roman world, they would have had to understood Greek. But they also would have been able to speak and converse in the native languages of their home country which might have been Persian, or Arabic, or Egyptian and so on. If the disciples were speaking Aramaic, they would have been understood with no problem. But on that day, at that moment, each of those in the crowd, heard what was being said in their own native language. That was different and it speaks to the universality of God’s truth.

    So, everyone listening to these Galileans and hearing them in their own native languages asked, what does this mean? They were perplexed and amazed. The deniers came up with the idea that the disciples were drunk on “sweet” wine. What was sweet wine? Well, it is wine which would have been held over from the previous Festival of Grapes which would have occurred the previous Fall. Again, this celebration was for a Wheat Harvest. There was no new wine.

    That’s what the world does, doesn’t it? When confronted by the witness of Jesus’ glory and resurrection, they wave us off and snicker that we are just prattling some nonsense. They say we are filled with new wine, drunk with some misguided yearning for cosmic answers to the universe that don’t exist.

    But Peter steps forward. Peter has always been the bold one. Peter has always been the one to rashly blurt out what he was thinking. But this time is different. This time, Peter points out quite astutely that hey, it is only the third hour of the day, nine o’clock in the morning. So, no, these people are not drunk. Then Peter, now filled with the Spirit, turns to Scripture, the Book of Joel, and tells the people that what they are witnessing is a fulfillment of the prophesy in Joel concerning the last days.

    “And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. And on My menservants and on My maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days; and they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 

    Peter was a good student, wasn’t he? Notice how he has learned from the Lord. Anytime Jesus came into a conflict with the devil or with the Teachers of the Law, he went to Scripture to validate his teachings. He went to the Word of God. And that’s what Peter does here. Peter, guided by the Spirit, goes to Scripture to provide understanding of what is happening. No, what you are witnessing is a fulfillment of the prophesy of Joel. But not only the part that sons and daughters will prophesy or seeing visions or dreaming dreams.

    Look at the part about portents in the heavens and signs on Earth. Peter is using this prophesy to tell the people that the last days have begun. When Jesus went to the Cross and died, what happened? The Sun went black – a portent in the heavens. The curtain in the Temple was torn in two – a sign on Earth.

    Peter is telling them that at the Cross, God had set the last days in motion. That it was a great and awesome day of the Lord. And now here’s the rub. “And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 

    What did that mean? It meant that if they did not want to be left behind, they needed to come forward and call on the name of the Lord, and that name was Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the one who had they had killed on the Cross but who conquered death and was raised again by God. This, Peter was a witness to. At the end of this day, 3,000 people believed Peter’s witness and came to be baptized.

    By the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter was given extraordinary ability just as Jesus had promised. God be praised!

    But this is the thing. My friends, at our Baptisms, we were given the same power of the Spirit, the same authority in the Spirit, the same call to witness. I don’t know if we will be swelled up with that same violent wind today that pushed the disciples out onto the streets. But as we sit in this one place, we must be open to the Spirit and allow it to be heard and allow it to push us out onto the streets and witness.

    Charge & Benediction:

    My friends, Jesus has provided the Spirit of God for you – not only to be a Comforter but to be a Counselor – and a Motivator. It is the one to guide you on your path. Let it light your way. Be bold. Step out and proclaim that these are the days of the Lord.

  • And Jesus prayed…

    John 17: 20-26

    Offered to the Beemerville Presbyterian Church, Wantage, NJ on May 29, 2022

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA

    I have a favorite way of referring to the Gospel of John apart from the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. It is that the Synoptic Gospels tell us what happened during Jesus’ ministry, the events of the day, the miracles, Jesus’ interaction with the people. Matthew, Mark & Luke tell us the “what” that happened. In his Gospel, John tells us why it happened. John looks at Jesus’ ministry, the miracles not from an awe-inspiring perspective but from a perspective of why did God do all of this for us.

    So, this in a way tells us why the lectionary today, the Seventh Sunday after Easter takes us back to the evening of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest. Our lectionary directs us to go back to that evening so that we can listen in closely to Jesus’ prayers and John’s understanding of what Jesus what doing and why.

    I want to begin my message for you today by reading again the opening of today’s Gospel reading. This is Jesus praying:

    “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you Father are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.”

    I want to stop there for a moment because I want us all to get the sense what Jesus is doing. This is awesome. We as Christians should drop our jaws and slap our heads and utter, “Holy [expletive deleted]”. That is how earth shattering this simple line of prayer is. Take a moment to visualize what is happening here. Jesus is hours away from the Cross. He is about to leave for the Garden where he will be betrayed, and what is he is doing? He is praying for us [you and me]. He has been praying all evening. He has prayed for himself and for the Cross that was coming. He had prayed for his disciples. But here He is reaching out across future millennia to ask the Father to sanctify us. Think about this, thousands of years before either you or your parents at your baptism uttered the words, “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior”, Jesus prayed that God would sanctify and bless you. I don’t know about you but that gives me a chill. Am I that important? Are you so important that on the eve of his arrest, Jesus is looking out across the eons at you and me and praying for us. This, I think, should give us pause. We should hear what john is telling us and reflect on who and what our God is. Our God, at the moment God is giving up God’s Son; our God, at the moment God is going to sacrifice itself for our reconciliation and restoration to righteousness, looks out into the future to pray for us that we may become one with the Father as Jesus himself is.

    I ask again, are we that important? Well, I guess in God’s mind, in Jesus’ heart, we are. We are so important that hours before the Cross, Jesus is petitioning God on our behalf. That boggles my mind. Now, I want to be careful here. I don’t mean to say that we are special and set apart as followers of the Christ; that we are better than any other of God’s creation, that we stand above or apart from the rest. The Israelites made that mistake and turned God’s love inward on themselves and refused to share it. They were the Chosen People. But they made that choosing of themselves to be for themselves; and for that Jesus chastised them and told them they had it wrong. So, let’s not make the same mistake. We are important because we are dear to the heart of God. Through Jesus we have been given the inheritance of the Promise to Abraham. That is purely Grace from God. But it is not ours to keep solely to ourselves. It is an inheritance to be shared.

    There is something else that this knowledge does for us. It should define us as Christians. We are dear to the heart of God, we have been showered with a Grace, an inheritance that has made us righteous again before God. But that gift of Grace is not a reward of any kind, it is a calling. This was how Jesus changed the concept of God’s promise. God, by way of the Cross, has made us righteous before God. But this righteousness calls us out. It calls us to actively represent God’s image by representing God’s love to the world. Jesus told us, “They will know you by your love for one another.”

    Jesus continues his prayer for us,

    “The glory that you have given me I have given them.”

    Glory, what glory?

    Jesus is speaking of his glory and triumph on the Cross. At this point, Jesus does not see what is coming as a death or an ending. He fully views the Cross as God’s triumphant moment in time and history. What is to come will be a world-shaking display of God’s almighty power and it will glorify God – and it will glorify Jesus through God’s power – and us through Jesus’ triumph over the Cross. It will be God’s healing reconciliation with humanity and our restoration to righteousness with God. And Jesus, is praying that God will make us a part of it.

    Here’s the thing, Jesus is a total optimist. He is looking at death in the eye, but he is confident of the outcome because he is confident of God’s love. It will be to God’s glory.

    He has this rag-tag group of followers. They are shaky at best in their understanding of who Jesus is and what is going to happen next. In a matter of hours, they will abandon him. In a week’s time, they will be locked in a room hiding. Yet Jesus is so solid in his confidence in the power of God, that he is praying to the Father in that moment more than two thousand years ago that when we hear his story through the witness of those disciples that we will be sanctified and become one with him and with the Father. This is a display of his complete faith and radiant certainty in the Father’s power. This passage should be precious to us. For it is Jesus’ prayer for us.

    Jesus continues, “I have given them this glory, so that they may be one, as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have love me.”

    Now there ae a couple of things here, I want to pull out of this verse. Jesus is praying for us that God will love us as God loves the Son. Let’s pause here. I want you to think about this. Please think of that one person in your life that you love more than life itself. I want you to think about that person for whom your heart beats and even draws its own life and existence. Now imagine that person coming to you and asking you to love another person with that same intensity and fervor. Imagine that person whose life beats in your heart asking you to love another with no less than that commitment. I struggle with that. Is it something I can do? I have difficulty wrapping my mind and heart around such a request as this.

    This is the Glory of God that Jesus wants us to be a part of. This is what Jesus prays for. This is the Glory that God has graced upon us. It is that God loves us as God loves the Son.

    This is a wonderful and singular thing; God’s Grace being showered down upon us. It is the extension of the inheritance promised to God’s chosen people. The promise made to Abraham is revealed in us. The salvation of the Cross that is Jesus’ new Covenant is to be made known to creation through us.

    And that my friends is the gift and the rub. This is where this wondrous gift becomes a calling.

    You recall a few moments ago, I had mentioned that Jesus had told the Jewish people that they had gotten it wrong. That they misunderstood what it meant to be selected as God’s Chosen People. They took that gift and closed it in upon themselves. But Jesus’ ministry took God’s Grace and brought it out to the world, to the Gentiles, to the Samaritans, to the Greeks and even to the Romans. Jesus was adamant and clear that God’s love was for all of God’s creation and that in the sharing of that message the leaders of the Jewish religion had failed.

    Now we are in the very same position. We are being asked by Jesus to share that love of God with the same intensity and fervor that Jesus has requested of God. “Make them one with us,” he asked. And that is what he asks of us.

    “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

    Jesus asked God to love us as God loves the Son. Jesus also asks us to love one another as he has loved us. But this is not to just throw it off and say, Yep, that’s the Christian thing to do. Yep, I’m there. No, it is much more than that. This request of us is the same one that Jesus made of God. Love them as you love me. It was a gut-wrenching prayer that Jesus made to God, and it is a gut-wrenching commandment that he has laid down for us. Being, children of the inheritance, being disciples of Jesus doesn’t just mean that we are saved, and we get to waltz into the Father’s Kingdom. It also means to that we are called to love all of God’s children as if we were loving Jesus and do for them whatever we would do for Jesus.

    That is the challenge of Christianity. So, how should we respond to that challenge? What is it that Jesus expects of us? How would we show God’s Love? Hear these words from Matthew.

    Matthew 25: “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,[ g] you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

    My friends, this is the challenge of Christianity. We need to seek out the least of these Jesus’ children and care for their needs.

    What, we as Christians, need to do is look at how we view the community around us and how this community views us. If the community of Wantage and Sussex County sees love, your love for your neighbor and the other, then it will see Jesus. Then the Kingdom of God will come down to earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

    Charge & Benediction:

    My friends, my charge to you this week is a simple one. Know that our lord Jesus prays for you. Have confidence in and be emboldened by His Gospel of Good News. Be his hands and feet and heart to the world and shine his light out brightly for your neighbors to see – even to others who you may not know. Then they will know that you are Christians by your love.

    May the God of Glory shine his countenance upon you to light your way and give you peace.

  • When In Doubt / John 20: 19-28

    Offered to the congregation of the Wharton Hungarian Presbyterian Church on May 1, 2022

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA

    This morning, I want to talk to you about doubt. I want to look at this fellow Thomas who through the millennium has gotten a pretty bad rap because of his doubt and his hesitation in believing the witness of his fellow disciples.

    What do we know about Thomas? Among the 12, he was called the Twin. I don’t know why, the Gospel writer, John, doesn’t explain it. He just tells us; he was called the Twin. He is most famous for his doubt but less famous for his ministry after Jesus’ ascension. His ministry was to take the word of Christ to the East, to India and he is credited for the founding of seven churches there.

    But still the thing we most remember him by is his doubt and his supposed lack of faith and believing. “I will not believe”, he says to his fellow disciples. I think that when we do that, we miss John’s point in his telling of the events of those evenings in the locked room when Jesus visited them after his resurrection.

    Let’s see if we can re-examine Thomas’ journey to faith. Let’s start by reconstructing those two scenes in the locked room visited by Jesus.

    On the evening of the first day of the week – that would have been Sunday evening, they were all there [minus Thomas] locked inside that room for fear of the Jewish leaders, we are told. Now this is the evening of the same day that Mary discovered the empty tomb and then ran to tell the disciples that she had seen the Lord. It was the same evening of the day that Peter and John ran to and witnessed the empty tomb for themselves. This is the day that the Lord had told them was coming but despite all this, they were locked in a room hiding.

    It was almost as if they didn’t get the memo. They had heard Mary’s report, she had seen the risen Lord. Peter and John could verify, Yes. The tomb was empty. So why were they hiding? Shouldn’t they be out telling Jerusalem and all the people, “He did what he said he would do. After three days, his temple has been raised up again. He is risen!”

    No. Instead, they were hiding. The pillars of Jesus’ new covenant, the very ones who were to bring his message of good news to the world were hiding in fear.

    Then inside that closed room, Jesus appeared. Jesus shows them his hands and his side and breaths upon them his Hoy Spirit and they recognize him and rejoice.

    Now, please stop for a moment and see all that is happening here. The disciples are not emboldened by the good news that Mary brings or of Peter’s and John’s witness. Far from it, they are paralyzed with fear. Jesus appears to them in that fear filled place and shows them his hands and his side and then says, “Peace be with you.” And then, they finally recognize who it is. It is their Lord. The physical proof is displayed before them so that they could believe.

    Now, there’s more that I want to say about this encounter, but I want to fast forward to Thomas and then we will circle back to this, later.

    Thomas is not with the disciples on the first night. Perhaps, he too, was hiding. Or, perhaps, he is despondent. Because Thomas understood what was to happen, and it happened; that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to his death. Remember that days before when Jesus announced that he was going to Jerusalem, the disciples tried to convince him not to go because it was too dangerous. But Jesus was not deterred. He said we are going, and it was Thomas who said, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.” knowing fully what it was likely to lead to. It was Thomas who understood the events of the days leading up to the cross.

    Now eventually, he shows up and the disciples tell him, “We have seen the Lord.”

    Thomas’ reaction? We all know it all by heart. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the marks of the nails and my hand in my side, I will not believe.”

    OK. Let’s stop for a moment. Let’s read into Thomas’ reaction a little bit. This is the thing; the disciples were not the sharpest knives in the drawer. They were mostly fishermen and their families, a tax man and a couple more that we know very little about. And maybe, just maybe, Thomas had a right to be a little skeptical and doubt them just a little. After all, they had been locking themselves away in fear. Thomas might be thinking they were creating wild stories out of their isolation and that fear. So, perhaps, rightly so, Thomas doubted their story. And by the way, Thomas wasn’t asking for anything more than Jesus had already provided the other disciples – to see the marks of the nails and the large wound in Jesus’ side.

    So, now let’s move a week ahead in time and reenter that locked room. This time Thomas is with them, and Jesus reappears and greets them saying, “Peace be with you.” Jesus then turns directly to Thomas and invites him to put his finger into the marks that the nails had made and his hand into Jesus side where the spear had pierced him.

    Now STOP! Stop breathing and hold your breath and be silent. Because I am sure that is what must have happened in the room at that moment. The disciples must have all stopped, crowded around Thomas and Jesus in anticipation to see what Thomas would do.

    What was it Thomas did? What was it Thomas said?

    He looked at Jesus and finally saw him for who he truly was. He says, “My Lord and my God.” What that was is a clear and emphatic declaration of his faith with an explanation point (!).

    Now, it is important to realize what has just happened here. We rush through this because we make a judgment that Thomas’ doubt is a weakness and that he is to be rebuked and we want to move on to the end of the passage.

    But consider this. Mary sees Jesus and reports to the disciples simply, “I have seen the Lord.” Then the disciples report to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord.” Thomas is the FIRST to actually see who Jesus truly is. His response is, “My Lord AND my GOD!”

    Thomas is the first of Jesus’ followers to understand what had happened, what IS happening and who Jesus really is.

    Jesus is Lord and GOD.

    This is perhaps the single most important thing Thomas has done for us in providing his witness. Because he arrives at it through his doubt. He has questions. He is unwilling to be accepting of things he does not understand. So, he demands answers. Or, if not answers then he demands clearer insight. And when he gets that from none other than the risen Lord, the faith that he arrives at is rock solid. At this point, Thomas’ faith is built upon a firm foundation. The poet Tenneson wrote, “There is more faith in honest doubt than is half the creeds.” Thomas’ faith is a result of working through his doubt and arriving at a truth that he can be sure of. And once he is sure, he goes all the way. Thomas declares, “My Lord AND my GOD!”

    Now this is a faith-changing witness for us. Yes, Mary, the Lord is risen. Yes, Peter and John, the tomb is empty, and you have seen the Lord appear in a locked room. But it is Thomas who sees who Jesus is. He is Lord AND God.

    If this isn’t enough, there is more grace in this passage for us. This passage gives us hope. It provides hope and encouragement for us in how Jesus reveals himself to his disciples on the first evening and then to Thomas one week later.

    Thomas and the other disciples have questions, doubts, and fears. None of them is sure about what has happened at the Cross or at the empty tomb. They, all of them, had doubts like Thomas. The other disciples [Peter and John among them] were hiding in fear. They had questions but no answers. None of them had a rock-solid unwavering faith without a moment of doubt. The scene we see re-created here by John can be any day in our own lives, in our own faith journeys. I want us to dwell upon this for a moment. The doubt and fear that Thomas and the other disciples had is common for human beings and for Christians. We cannot always be mighty pillars of the Christian faith that can strut out and say look at me, “I have the light of the risen Lord within me, and I will never display any fear or doubt. My light will never be dimmed.”

    Yeah, it doesn’t work that way. We are no different from this huddled group of cowering and fearful followers of Jesus hiding behind locked doors.

    But Jesus did something for them, for Thomas, that he will do for all of us. Jesus goes to the disciples where their fear is, into that fear-filled dark and locked room. He goes to Thomas where his doubt is. Jesus doesn’t ridicule him. Jesus doesn’t belittle Thomas. You don’t hear, “Oh, yea of little faith. Tsk. Tsk.” Instead, Jesus goes to Thomas, where his doubt is and helps him to see the proof that he needs to see. Jesus isn’t aloof; he isn’t impatient or judgmental. Jesus understands their fear and doubt and walks with them through it.

    Now what of us? Are we pillars of the faith, unwavering and steadfast? Are we rock-solid examples of the Christ’s resurrection? If you think back just a short while ago at the start of our worship today, we confessed our sins before God acknowledging our failures and weaknesses. So, the answer to those questions would be an emphatic, No.

    So, that is why we need Jesus every day to do the same for us that he had done for Thomas and the others. That is, to walk with us through our fear and doubt. Faith journeys are long Treks through dark valleys of doubt. Our journeys are messy and filled with doubt and questions, ups and downs, trials and tribulations. If you don’t think so, just read the Book of Daniel. And that’s OK. It was OK for Thomas, and it is OK for us. Jesus understands. Jesus is here to walk that Journey with us. Don’t lose sight of his outstretched hand. See the marks that the nails had made and take it and let him walk your journey with you.

    And all God’s people say Amen.

    Charge: My friends, my charge to you is a simple one. Asking questions of Gods IS a pathway to growing in our faith. Jesus told us, “Ask and you will receive.” We don’t usually think of these words of Jesus as having to do with our doubts. But know this. As Jesus did for Thomas, Jesus will come to you in your doubt and give you his Peace.

  • Unrequited Love

    Luke 13: 31.35

    Offered to the Congregation of the Highlands Presbyterian Church, Long Valley, NJ during the Lenten Season

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder, PCUSA

    There is a lot going on in this very short passage from Luke. It is only 6 verses long, but it is packed. In it we have some sympathetic Pharisees coming to Jesus to warn him about Herod’s plot to kill him. We hear Jesus answer them. When he does, he hurls some pretty harsh insults at Herod. And at its close, Jesus laments about how Jerusalem is receiving him, or not receiving him.

    But if we are to understand this passage, we have to get at something which for the most part, I think, is glossed over. We have to feel Jesus’ emotions in this exchange. You know we have heard these passages so many times in our lives that perhaps we don’t actual feel the depth of the anguish and pain in the words Jesus is speaking.

    I am going take a risk and share with you a personal story and recount to you an episode in my younger life. Now I know that every one of you have gone through it, too. But I am going to share this because I want you to recall something from your own lives that will perhaps be painful for you.

    In my college days, I had met a young woman who I had fallen head over heels in love with. Right from the start, I thought she was the one. Although I will forever thank God that it was not the case as the woman that God had guided me to was my real forever love. Thanks be to God. But I didn’t know that at the time. She and I spent our entire freshman year at college together. In fact, we were together more than apart even though she boarded at college and I lived at home. I would like you to understand how much in love I was. And at the same time, think about a similar episode in your own lives. Now perhaps you can also feel how devasted I was when she told me it was over and that she simply didn’t want to continue our relationship. It came out of the blue as a complete shock. There were no indications that I saw that anything was amiss or that something ominous was about to happen. In fact, she dropped that bomb at a family gathering that I was invited to. I was there to meet mom and dad, brothers’ families and their wives and children and then after it all when I was getting into my car to leave for home, she told me, “Oh by the way, It’s over.”

    When she told me, it was like I was cut off from reality and set off spinning out of control. I was lost. I was experiencing pain I had never imagined before. It was if she had ripped my heart out of my chest, spat on it and stomped it into the dust of the ground. I cried for days.

    That was my experience. And, I know that every one of you has had this experience in your lives or something like it. It is not like it was unique to my youth. It is something as human beings we have all experienced. We have all been there. And as unpalatable as it may seem for a Sunday worship message, I ask you to recall those memories, now. I ask you to recall that painful moment so that you can have a sense for what is happening to and inside Jesus’ heart in this passage. I don’t want you to understand it. I want you to feel it.

    The scene today is that Jesus is curing people and casting out demons. And while he is in the midst of this ministry, certain sympathetic Pharisees come to him to warn him that Herod is plotting to kill him. Now it probably comes as a surprise to you that there were any Pharisees at that time that were sympathetic to Jesus. But remember that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and there were probably a couple other likeminded men. They came to Jesus to warn him that he needs to get out of town, now.

    What was Jesus’ response? Well, the first words out his mouth are, “You go tell that fox…” Right here, as the first words exit out of Jesus’ mouth, we need to sit up and take notice. These words should be something that should get our attention because these words are no compliment. In our political rhetoric today, it might something akin to saying, “Go Brandon”. That is something like what Jesus is doing in his characterization of Herod as a fox. For Jews, the fox was the slyest of animals, but not in a good or positive sense. It was thought of as cunning in an evil way. It was thought of as the most destructive of animals attacking domesticated livestock, a killer, a destroyer. That is how Jesus is characterizing the Jewish King. When used to refer to a man, it was symbolically representing that man as worthless and insignificant. Wrap all these together and you can get a sense that Jesus was hurling some really harsh insults at Herod Antipas, the king of Galilee. And for obvious reasons, these sympathetic Pharisees would never be able to repeat it to Herod.

    Wow! Is this our loving Son of God Most High? Is this the teacher who in chapter 5 of Luke spoke the words, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Love your neighbor as yourselves.” “Turn the other cheek.”

    Well, yes, it is. It is the same Jesus. But it was a Jesus under stress. Perhaps now, you can begin to sense in him a heightened degree of frustration and that perhaps the weight of what was before him, the Jews rejection of his message, and what would ultimately come to pass on the Cross is also beginning to weigh on him.

    So, Jesus answers the Pharisees, “You go tell that fox. I am here [right here] casting out demons and curing the people.” This is as if to say, I will not be hard to find. This is a challenge. I will be here today, tomorrow and on the third day when I will finish my work. Jesus is speaking in terms of his life and ministry. I am doing God’s work today. I will be here tomorrow doing God’s work, and my ministry will go on until I am finished on the third day. I think this is a foretelling by Jesus of his resurrection. But his tone, I think, is strained. Because immediately following, he begins to lament about how Jerusalem treats its prophets. The city kills and stones them. Here you have to begin to hear with your heart and not simply listen with your ears.

    Now, you have to begin to imagine the tears welling up in Jesus’ eyes. Now, you have to begin to hear his voice breaking up as he utters his next words.

    “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills its prophets … How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you are not willing.”

    Oh, my gosh! Do these six verses begin to feel like something more; that on a grand scale begins to open Jesus’ heart so that we can begin to feel his anguish and pain?

    This moment is the reason I asked you earlier to recall your most painful memories of a love that was refused, of a lover that spurned you and tossed off your affections as meaningless nothings whispered by a dreamy-eyed, star-crossed lover. For that is what the leaders of God’s chosen people were doing. They were rejecting Jesus as God’s Messiah. They were refusing to return the love that God was extending to them. And Jesus is experiencing that pain of rejection. He was not above it. He was not immune to it. If you can recall that hurt, that pain of when it happened to you all those many years ago, then you can begin, but only begin, to feel the depth of pain that Jesus is feeling here.

    This passage is describing what Jesus is feeling on a human level. He came as God’s Son to save the world, not to judge it. But here God’s chosen children are judging him and refusing him as God’s messenger. Here he is beginning to sense that ultimately, they will reject everything about him, they will reject God’s love, they will reject God’s mercy, they will reject God’s redemptive desire for reconciliation with creation, and he is being crushed by that pain. For what was coming was God’s demand for the atonement that needed to be made for our breaking of the covenant God made with Abram. What was coming for Jesus was his submission to God’s pledge to uphold humanity’s half of the covenant. Which we failed at, and which now must be atoned for.

    That is what God / Jesus was feeling in this passage. But now, I want you to imagine that God feels this same pain on every time we turn away, every time we choose some willful act of self-entitlement, or of self-love, and every time we rely on our own wiles and cunning like that fox Jesus refers to instead of trusting on the loving mercy and grace of the Father.

    This season of Lent in our church calendar ultimately leads us to Holy Week where we will see the atonement for our failings, our sins played out and paid up. The Crucifixion on Holy Thursday is the atonement for our sins promised on our behalf for our failure to uphold the Covenant that God made with Abram. Jesus went to the Cross weeping and with a broken heart that the people whom he desired to hold with arms rejected him for they were not willing.

    Highlands Church, Jesus longs to gather you together in his arms like a loving mother does her brood, as a loving brother does his siblings, as a loving Father does his children. Pray that you will be willing.

  • What’s Golden about the Golden Rule?

    Based upon Luke 6: 27-38

    Offered to the congregation of the Community Church of Chester, NJ on February 20, 2022

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA

    This morning, the lectionary takes us to one of the most notable of Jesus’ teachings. We have here what is referred to as the “Golden Rule”. It may be the most quoted phrase in the Gospels next to John 3:16. But my questions for us today are, what was so special about the Golden Rule and how should it impact us? How are we supposed to respond to this teaching? What’s so golden about the Golden Rule?

    Throughout the theological and philosophical history of mankind, there have been many theologians and philosophers who have taught something like Jesus’ Golden Rule. Here, let me read a couple of them for you and see if you can pick out the difference.

    Hillel was a great Jewish Rabbi several generations before the time of Jesus. He was once asked to teach the whole of Jewish law while standing on one leg. I don’t know if this was an endurance challenge to prove the breath of his knowledge of the law or simply a request to simplify the whole of Jewish law. You know after the 10 Commandments that God gave to Moses, Jewish teachers created over 600 mitzvahs detailing how those commandments impacted daily life. Hillel responded, “What is hateful to thee, do not do to another.” This is similar to Jesus’ Golden Rule but not quite the same. If I can paraphrase what Hillel was saying it might be, “If you don’t like being on the receiving end, don’t be the giver.”

    Philo, was another great Jewish thinker in the city of Alexandria. He said, “What you hate to suffer, do not do to anyone else.” Sounds the same. Isocrates, a Greek orator, said, “What things make you angry when you suffer them at the hands of others, do not do to other people.” The Stoics taught, “What you do not wish to be done to yourself, do not do to any other.” These all are pretty much the same.

    Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher was once asked, “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of life?” He responded, “Is it not “reciprocity”? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

    All of these teachings from Teachers, theologians and philosophers all have a similar ring to them. And today, people [even Christians] use some form of these sayings as if they were different versions of Jesus’ Golden Rule. But they’re not.

    All of these teachings and how we use them today, are all on the flip side of what Jesus is teaching. All of these are negative versions of Jesus’ Golden Rule.

    What Hillel, Philo and Isocrates said was, if you don’t like something to be done to you, don’t do it to another. In other words, if you don’t like being spat upon, don’t spit. If you don’t like being cheated, don’t cheat. If you don’t like being lied about, don’t lie. All of these are based on the negative premise of what we don’t want to happen to us. I don’t want to be spat upon, lied about or cheated. So, if you don’t spit, lie or cheat me, I won’t spit, lie or cheat you. These teachings don’t really express a care or concern for the wellbeing of the other, your neighbor.  In each case, our own well-being is the central focus of these teachings.

    Confucius’ statement is a bit more curious, though. He answered by using the word “reciprocity”. “What you do not want done to you, do not do to others.” But reciprocity, also allows for further response, doesn’t it? It allows you to say, if you hurt me, then I hurt you. Tit for Tat. That word reciprocity leaves that door open for a whole host of nasty things to follow. And isn’t that apparent in all of these philosophies and teachings. The door is always open for reciprocity. They create cycles in which pain and anger continually come around.

    Now here’s a side bar thought I’m going to slip into our conversation. You can think about it as we go forward. God’s ultimate aim for creation is to bring it all back into Shalom with God. That is, that God’s Peace should once again reign throughout all creation; not the chaos we experience now; not the sinned filled world we have created. If we follow these negative theses for living with one another and have them be the basis for how humanity gets along, then how does any of it promote God’s Shalom in creation. Tit for Tat is NOT a basis for building Shalom.

    So, all of these teachings may appear worthy; they may appeal to us and make some kind of sense; or seem to express some element of fairness; but they all fall woefully short of what Jesus is asking of us.

    I said before that these teachings are negative in their postulation and premise. Jesus, however, proposes a positive postulation. Jesus doesn’t say use your neighbor’s actions as a measure for how you should act. All of these prior teachings use as a rule, what you do not like done to you. But Jesus teaches that we should be the first to act. We should act with kindness and love, regardless of how your neighbor acts towards us. Love your neighbor as yourself, first.

    Now listen, I don’t want you to think that the bar that Jesus is setting is so unreasonably high that it just isn’t possible for us to accomplish. I don’t want you to say, “You know what. It’s a nice thought but, really? Let’s just skip over this passage and jump over to John 3:16. You know that part where it says God gives up God’s Son for our salvation. This love your neighbor thing is not something I can do. I just can’t love that jerk next door. You don’t know him. If you did, you would understand why I can’t love him. He’s an idiot!.”

    Hey, we’ve all been there. Yeah. So, let’s break this teaching down into something we can do.

    Our reading from Luke today begins, Jesus says, “to anyone who listens”, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who ill-use you.” This is a phrase that we shutter the most at. How can we do that? How can we love the terrorist, love the murderer, love the racist, or love the enemy threatening to launch nuclear missiles at us and any others that would do us harm? Don’t we have to be on our guard? Don’t we have to build fences to protect ourselves? After all, good fences, make good neighbors. How can we love them when they are out to destroy us? All of these arguments are swirling around us every day, and they distract us from what we are being called to be.

    So, how do we as American Christians living in a hostile world, love all of these enemies?

    Well first, let’s understand what the word for “love” is that Jesus was using and what it is he is asking us to do.

    There are three words for our word love in the Greek language. There is “eran” which describes a passionate love that is the strong, emotional and heated love between two people for each other. That is not the word that Jesus uses here. So, Jesus is not asking us to go and kiss our enemies on the lips.

    The second Greek word for love is, “philein” [phil-lain]. This is a word for love that describes our feelings for our nearest and dearest family and friends. It is an affectionate feeling of the heart. But again, this is not the word for love that Jesus uses here. So, He is not asking us to care for our enemies as we would our children, family members or our best friend.

    The word that Jesus uses is “agapan”. Agapan means a feeling of benevolence towards other people. It means that no matter what others do to us, we will never allow ourselves to desire anything for them but their highest good and that we will deliberately, with a “purpose of mind” set out to do only good to them and to be kind to them. That’s a mouth full. I’ve just used fifty words to define one Greek word. So let me boil it down so that we can focus on one key phrase, that is, “with a purpose of mind.”

    We cannot love our enemies as we do our partners. We cannot love our enemies as we do our children, or as we do our closest friends here in this congregation. That would be exceedingly difficult, superhuman in fact. These are forms of love that are spontaneous, that come deep from within our being and sometimes cannot be understood or controlled. We cannot conger up an erotic or familial love for our enemies. And that is not what Jesus is asking us to do. That is not the love that Jesus is using here.

    The love that Jesus is calling us to is not something of the heart. It is of the will, of the mind. It is something that [only by the grace of Jesus] we can “will” ourselves to do. This is what separates Jesus’ teachings from the former negative ones that preceded him. It is not unduly difficult to keep ourselves from harming our neighbors if they do not harm us. But it is very different to go out of our way to do a good to others. This is the essence of the Christian ethic. It is based upon doing the extra thing. Walking the extra mile, giving up your tunic when a cloak is asked for, turning the other cheek. It consists, not of refraining from doing bad things, but actively doing good things.

    In this passage this morning, Jesus asks, “If you love those who love you, what special grace is there in that? Even sinners do that.” Your enemies love those who love them. “If you are kind to people who are kind to you, what is special about that? Even sinners do that.”

    That is what falls short with all the previous negatively based teachings. They are all based upon what others do. But Jesus says that if you follow me, if you are listening, you must do more. You must go further. You have to make a concerted effort of the mind to love your neighbor and Jesus tells us, that God will provide the grace to help us to do that. He knows we can’t do it on our own. And yes, that is a fair response to Jesus’ commandment to us to Love our neighbor. We CAN’T do it on our own. We can’t love the jerk next door on our own. You can’t. I can’t. We will need help. And where does that help come from. It comes from Jesus, our ROCK, our source of strength. Jesus tells us that help will always be available. We can access it through prayer. It is there in the Spirit that Jesus sent to guide and walk beside us.

    But why? Why has Jesus set this high standard apart from any teaching that mankind had developed on its own previous to Jesus? Well, Jesus tells us, “Your reward will be great and you will be the sons of the Most High.” Now that is nice, and it would be nice to cut the line off right there and end it with a period. Right? We get a reward. That’s why we do it, right? Good enough, let’s go home.

    But Jesus is not finished, he continues… “BECAUSE He [that HE is the Father, it is God] is kind to both the thankless and the wicked. Wait! What? Yes. Hear Jesus’ words again, “God is kind to both the thankless and the wicked.” Jesus continues, “Be merciful AS YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN is merciful; do NOT judge and you will not be judged; do NOT condemn and you will not be condemned; FORGIVE and you will be forgiven.” Jesus tells us to do these things because our Father in heaven does them and because doing them will make us more like the Father.

    And that is the bottom line for Jesus isn’t it? Don’t you see that? Jesus calls us in all ways to know who the Father is and to be more like that Father. The Father is kind. Be kind. The Father is merciful. Be merciful. Do not judge or condemn but be forgiving for the Father is forgiving. Doing these things brings us closer to the Father. Now Jesus knows that we cannot love our neighbors as we do our partners. Jesus knows we can’t even love them with the love we have for our children and friends. But with God’s grace, Jesus is asking us to “set our minds to the task”, to make the decision to do good for all of those who are against us. That is Agape love. That is a love that we can and must decide to have for others.

    CHARGE:

    So, my charge to you this week is a simple one. It is to go out and love the jerk next door. Yes. You will need help. So, I say to you again, go to Jesus in prayer and ask for that help.

    BENEDICITON:

    May the God of mercy and forgiveness make his face to shine upon you and give you Peace.

  • Here I am.

    Based upon readings from Isaiah 6 and Luke 5

    Offered to the First Presbyterian Church of Long Valley, NJ – February 6, 2022

    Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA

    “Here I am.”  Out of curiosity, I googled the phrase. It has been used as a popular song title by artists such as Bryan Adams and Air Supply. It’s even the title of a gangster rap song by Rick Ross. Dolly Parton uses the phrase for the title of a documentary on her life’s journey. As romantic love songs, it seems to be used as a lament to tell the world, Here I am, broken hearted. Rick Ross uses it to announce to the world, Hey!, Here I am!. I’ve arrived. Dolly Parton wants it to reflect on her life experiences and how they had brought her to where she is today as a performer, activist, feminist and Christian. Each one uses the phrase in one way or another to announce that they are here.

    It’s a Hymn in our own faith tradition and we often use it during confirmation and ordination ceremonies as a pronouncement of our faith saying “Here I am, Lord. I’m ready to serve.”

    These are very recognizable words from our Bible tradition. I did a little investigation and found that the phrase, “Here I am” appears over 800 times in the Old Testament. It is Joseph’s response when his father Jacob calls him to check on his other sons and his flock. Jacob calls Joseph. Joseph responds, “Here I am” and Jacob sends Joseph out to check on his brothers and as you may recall that begins for Joseph a most tumultuous life’s journey. Most notably, we recognize it as Isaiah’s response to God’s call when Isaiah experiences a vision that has him at the throne of the Most High.

    The two readings selected for today’s lectionary focus very clearly upon the action of being called and the responses of Isaiah and Peter.

    Being called, what does that mean? It would be an understatement to suggest that being called is different for each of us. A call to ministry such as the one that Pastor has answered is different from how one responds to leading our music ministry or to leading our Youth ministry. A Deacon’s call is different from a Ruling Elder’s call. Our Bible study leaders have responded to calls by bringing their strengths to this congregation. Our Building Care Elders tend to the physical plant of the church making sure that we have a well-maintained structure to worship within and bring our ministries to the community. And let’s not forget how we use the buildings. We house the Food Pantry which brings food to the needy in the Long Valley community. We allow community groups to use our facilities for their activities. All of these ministers have responded in different ways to answer calls to ministry.

    It is as Paul suggests. We all have different strengths to exploit and employing them all is what builds up the body of the church. Many have heard God’s call; and many have stepped forward to find some way within this church community to be a part of the work of the Body.

    Hearing or experiencing a “Call” can be different for each of us. Take Isaiah. He sees a vision. And in that vision, he sees the God Most High sitting on a throne. God is attended by Seraphs, and they are calling out praises to the God Most High. Their voices are so powerful that their sound shakes the foundations of the throne room. Isaiah feels and sees all this and falls prostrate and cries out, “Woe is me for I am a man of unclear lips.” In other words, I am not worthy. I am not clean; I am a lowly human from a people who are unclean. He must be thinking to himself, “What am I doing here?” Isaiah might be suggesting, if anyone is unworthy of being brought into the presence of the Lord, it is me! Does that describe you? Most times, I think it describes me.

    Yet, yet, that does not seem to bother God. God does not look down on the lowly [we sinners] and grunt at our lack of worthiness. God sees within each of us a talent, an ability to contribute to God’s plan of bringing all of creation back into Shalom, back into God’s peace. One of the Seraphs comes down to Isaiah, who is lying face down on the ground, and puts a coal to his lips to purify him, to make him worthy. This is an act clearly initiated by the God Most High. For it is only God’s grace and mercy that can purify us of our sins.

    What is the significance of this? It can be suggested this is no mere coal. It is a symbolic representation of the Messiah Yeshua [Yes-shu-a -that is Jesus]. It is symbolic in that it displays how something very low [a mere piece of coal] is raised to the heights of being able to forgive and wash away the stain of sin. That is a foreshadowing of the ultimate work of the Christ. So, here in Isaiah, we have both a Messianic prophecy [the forgiveness of sins] AND an example of how one should respond to that forgiveness and that cleansing. After receiving God’s mercy, when God calls and asks, “Whom shall I send?”, Isaiah responds, “Here I am. Send me.” He had gone from feeling woeful to being boldly and fully filled with grace.

    Now what happens when God calls us? I am not going to suggest to you that there might be a dramatic earth-shaking event such as Isaiah had experienced before the throne as a sign that we are being called. That would be too easy for us, wouldn’t it? I mean it would make it too easy for us to refuse a call because it isn’t bombastic enough. Instead of committing when asked to serve, we can respond by saying, “Well, the earth didn’t move”. I mean, picture our Gifts & Talents Elder coming to you and asking if you could serve as a member of some work group within the ministry of the church. And you put out your hands to steady yourself, and look around, then when nothing happens you respond, “No, I think I should wait.” That would make it too easy to say, “No.”

    No, it might be something simpler like Jesus suggesting to Peter, “Hey, that spot looks good. Go fish over there.” That is when we experience something, feel something, and a bell of recognition goes off in our head and we realize that in a very quiet way that small, faint voice of God has called.

    In the Gospel passage from Luke this morning, many people refer to the amazing catch of fish by Peter as a miracle. I read in a commentary that there are three conditions for a miracle. The first is that the eye needs to see. What I mean by that is that we have to take the time to see what is happening around us. We need to see the need, the hurt, the places where God is pointing us to. Take for example, Jesus’ suggestion to Peter that he fish over in some spot that Jesus was pointing to. Now, we can think that Jesus miraculously created a shoal of fish in that spot and directed Peter to fish in it. But I think that would be missing the miracle. The miracle, I think, was in Peter’s response.

    The truth is Lake Gennesaret was teeming with fish. It is acknowledged that from the shoreline, you could literally see shadowed areas so densely filled with fish that they would be jumping into your boat. All Jesus needed to be was observant. Jesus observed that the conditions were right for an abundant catch. An exhausted Peter couldn’t see that. He thought it was hopeless. The night was a total loss. Fishing in the morning would be hopeless. But Jesus had an eye for possibilities.

    So now step two. There needs to be a spirit willing to make an effort. Peter was exhausted. This was early morning. He had been fishing all night and now they were cleaning their nets which signified the end of their workday. What was next was a meal and sleep. But Jesus, this teacher that was surrounded by hundreds of people on the shore was telling him to go out again and fish over there in that spot. If Peter wasn’t willing. If Peter gave into his exhaustion. If Peter said, “You know what Mr. Preacher Man, I work long hours and I don’t have time to go chasing your fantasies.” If Peter responded in that way, there would have been no miracle.

    But no. Peter responds with a spirit that is willing to attempt what seems hopeless. That is step three. Many times, that is what church work, what servant work, is like. We could have looked at the need for food in our community years back and said, “You know what. There are too many people who need assistance. We can’t possibly provide for all of them. It bigger than us. It’s a job for one of those bigger catholic churches. They have more people. Their better equipped.” If LVPC had that attitude years ago, we would have never had built the coalition of congregations known as LVCAP that now provides food security for more than 100 families locally. There was a spirit willing to attempt the hopeless.

    About a decade ago, LVPC decided to start a ministry to the Dominican Republic. We partnered with the Foundation for Peace. It started small. We were helping a struggling congregation to build a place of worship. That was their hopeless dream. We were pointed to a spot and told to build there. The work was slow and tedious. It was all back breaking, manual labor. They started by digging a foundation, and then the next year laying concrete block, then in the next years building walls and then a floor and a ceiling until after many, many years, they had built a church, a place of Worship in a spot where was nothing before. When that was finished, they began a second building. The first was already being used as a community center providing needed health support and services to the community and the new building was to become the new sanctuary. That was when I finally dragged my sorry butt down to participate. It was an unbelievable experience. The timing wasn’t perfect. I had to take time off from work as did many others in our group. But we were there when we finished building a church. We poured the floor and ceiling with concrete bucket by bucket. I can remember passing buckets to others in a bucket line. We did that for hours over several days. Ultimately, when the work was completed, we were able to participate in the first worship service in that new house of God. What seemed hopeless more than a decade before had become community and worship centers. Can I get an Amen?

    The circumstances were not perfect for Peter. Peter wasn’t coming off of a good night’s sleep. It was the opposite. He was exhausted because he was working all night. He was dead tired, but Peter had a spirit that was alive. Was something stirred in him by the words Jesus was teaching from his boat? We don’t know. Luke doesn’t tell us what Jesus was teaching that day. But whatever it was; whatever was said, it stirred in Peter a spirit of willingness and a spirit to act. Peter responded to what might have been hopeless with a willingness to act.

    Now this speaks to us today about when, how, and why we respond or do not respond to a call. Sometimes, we wait for the perfect set of circumstances. Sometimes we expect that call for us should be like it was for Isaiah. That the earth should shutter. That there should be visions of Angles swirling around overhead. That the circumstances would be that we are finally rested, that we are finally financially secured, that we are available because the kids have moved on and setting up households of their own. Sometimes we are thinking, I should wait for the circumstances to be perfect. But you know what, the circumstances will never be perfect. We will never be rested enough. We will never be financially secure enough. We will always find a reason that our kids will need our help. If we wait for the perfect time, if we wait for an Isaiah moment then nothing will happen. We would have missed the opportunity to see with our eyes the hopeless situation that Jesus is calling us to. We would be burying within us that spirit that burns to be fired up and set free. We need to make the effort to see and do the impossible. We must take Jesus at his word when he bids us to attempt the impossible. We need to be faithful to the possible in hopeless impossibilities. When we hear that wee small voice of God ask, “Whom shall I send?” We need to respond, “Here I am Lord, Send me!”

    Charge: My friends, listen for the wee, small voice of God calling you. It may sound like another church member asking for help on a project. But remember that our God is awesome. One of the awesome things God can be is a ventriloquist. God can sound like so many different voices. So, if you listen and hear one of God’s voices, step out and say, Here I am!

  • Sabbath Work

    Based upon Mark 3: 1-6

    Second Sunday of Advent, December 7, 2025

    Offered by Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA to the congregation of the Presbyterian Church at Bound Brook, NJ

    So, I will begin today by asking you the same question that Jesus asked the religious leaders of the synagogue. “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do evil?” Consider the question. Is it lawful to do good or is it lawful to do evil?

    As Jesus entered the synagogue that Sabbath day standing around him were the religious leaders and the deputies of the Sanhedrin. They were watching his every move – listening to his every word hoping only to find an opportunity to accuse him of breaking the law – that’s their own Jewish law with a small “l”, not God’s Law with a capital “L”. They were looking for grounds so that they could arrest him.

    Jesus was gaining a reputation as a troublesome teacher. The word was out that he should not be allowed to teach in the synagogues. Those doors were closing to him. That is why we have gospel stories of his teaching on the hill sides and from boats on the shorelines. And if he showed up, he was to be watched carefully for infractions of their law. It was actually a great show of courage for him to confront this danger and to go and teach inside a synagogue. But Jesus’ trust was in the Lord.

    Proverbs 3: verses 5-6 teach us: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

    Being barred access to synagogues and teaching centers were now the circumstances Jesus was finding himself in. It was dangerous for him to enter them. The orthodox leaders of the religious community were aware of his controversial teachings and were at odds with him. He wasn’t keeping the law. Specifically, he was healing people on the Sabbath. That is why they were there. Would he break the law, yet again? If he did, then they could pounce. They were ready. The deputies of the Sanhedrin were the policing agents authorized to arrest and take him in for trial.

    That is the backdrop for what is happening in the Synagogue that day.

    This is the scene. There was a man standing in the congregation. According to writings called the Gospel of the Hebrews, he was a stone mason. We have limited fragments of these writings, and I referenced them here because I believe it helps us to understand what is happening. His hand and arm had been injured in an accident, and he was no longer able to work at his trade. I would suggest that he may have come to the synagogue that day hoping that this miracle working Rabbi might see him, have mercy on him and heal his injury. Make him whole again.

    Jesus calls him to the center of the congregation. Jesus turns to the synagogue leaders and the deputies of the Sanhedrin and asks them the question, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? Or evil?”

    Now I have asked you this same question already and I can hear you thinking out loud in your heads. Dah! Of course. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Of course we should do good on the Sabbath. Why would you ask such a question?

    Well, for the orthodox leaders of the synagogue and the deputies of the Sanhedrin, the answer to that question wasn’t so simple. You see they had a law – again that’s law with a small “l” – and they ardently followed that law. Their law was the foundation of their religious rituals. And that law told them that work on the Sabbath was forbidden. And healing, according to their law, was work. You see Jewish law was very detailed on this matter.

    According to Jewish law, medical attention on the Sabbath could only be given if a life was in danger. And healing someone on the Sabbath whose life was not threatened was forbidden work.

    Bible scholar William Barclay explains some of the details of the law regarding work on the Sabbath. For instance, you could help a woman in childbirth because her life might be in danger. But if a wall fell on someone, you could only clear enough of the wall to see if he was alive. If he was alive, you could help him but only to the point that he was stabilized. But if he was dead, the body had to be left for the next day to clear away. If the family wanted to remove the body, they could not. That is how detailed the law was in limiting what work you were allowed to do on the Sabbath and specifying what you were not allowed to do. This man who Jesus called to the center of the congregation was not in danger of losing his life. His arm was injured in an accident, but it was not life threatening. According to the law, a fracture could not be attended to. You could keep it from getting worse, but you could not make it better or heal it.

    So, for these believers in the orthodoxy of their law, this was not a simple question to answer. Everything they believed – that their religious law told them was that healing was work and work on the Sabbath was unlawful. It was a crime. When Jesus healed that was work and on the Sabbath that work was a crime. By their definition, Jesus was evil.

    But the question Jesus asked them was, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? Or to do evil?” He didn’t ask if it was lawful to heal which was all they were there to determine.  Their myopic focus on their law prevented them from hearing and seeing the Word of God.

    Jesus knew the Jewish law, but he also knew God’s Law and more importantly God’s Will and by that, I mean that Jesus understood the spirit of God’s Law. The spirit of God’s Law and God’s Will is that we be compassionate and to do the work of healing the brokenness of Creation. Jesus is telling them that God’s Will is that we do good on any and every day and that includes the Sabbath.

    Now, be alert to also hear the flip side of Jesus’ question. What Jesus is suggesting in his question is that if is unlawful to do good, does it become lawful to do evil. Because in Jesus’ mind leaving this man broken as he is – without showing love and compassion – is the same thing as doing evil. That is the conundrum Jesus is presenting to them. That is the conclusion that their Jewish law would point them to.

    Jesus’ question challenged the very foundation stones of Jewish law and its religious rituals. And to that challenge, the religious leaders had no answer.

    Jesus called this man to the center of the congregation hoping that the religious leaders would see him and have sympathy for his plight. But they did not. As shepherds of God’s fold, they were failing in their charge. Their rituals and law had become more important to them than the welfare of the people.

    So, they didn’t answer. They stood there silent. The gospel text tells us that Jesus became angry. The text tells us that “he was grieved at the obtrusiveness of their hearts.” Jesus became angry that when these shepherds of God’s fold were faced with the question of whether the law allowed them to do good or if it required them to do evil, the religious leaders stood fast and remained silent. They knew the people there would want the man to be healed. The man wanted to be healed. But their law didn’t allow it. So, they didn’t answer him.

    Jesus tells the man to stretch out his hand for all to see. And there before them all, his hand was restored.

    Now there is some fine print in this story probably more important than the miracle that Jesus performed. Come with me to dig deeper into its meaning. This incident was a head on clash of two very fundamental ideas of what religion is.

    Bible scholar William Barclay breaks it down this way. For the Pharisees, synagogue leaders, and the Sanhedrin, religion was ritual. For them the practice of their religion meant obeying rules and regulations. But their rules provided them with only rituals to follow in their practice of religion. And by obtrusively following their rules, they were closing their hearts from seeing the needs of God’s children. Those were their rules, and Jesus broke their rules, and then because Jesus broke the rules they were convinced he was evil. He was evil and he needed to be eliminated.

    That brings us to Jesus’ second question that were heard later in the text. “Is it lawful to save a life, or to kill it?”

    The final verse in our reading today tells us that the Pharisees immediately met with the Herodians [agents of Herod] to concoct a plot against Jesus. Their intention was to eliminate him – to kill him.

    Jesus’ second question struck at the very heart of their intentions. These religious leaders cared nothing about the Law – that’s God’s Law with a capital “L”. God’s Law stated quite clearly that “…thou shall not commit murder.” Yet that is exactly what they were plotting to do. They were going to break a core commandment of God’s Law in order that they could protect the integrity of their law – again that is law with a lower case “l”. Their rituals were more important to them than opening their hearts to the Word of God standing before them.

    Jesus, on the other hand has a different notion of what religious practices should be. Jesus’ idea of religion was service. For Jesus religion meant love of God AND love of neighbor. Being a servant that brings God’s love and compassion to our neighbors and to others was the most important thing he could teach them. Barclay writes, “Rituals were irrelevant when compared to love in action.” But their hearts were obtuse. They were hardened and could not see what it was that God’s Law required of them. They could not see how love would enter into the fray. To quote from Tina Turners’s lyrics, “What’s love got to do with it?”

    But that’s exactly what Jesus was all about – service borne out of love. This is his message. This is his good news. And they – the religious leaders – didn’t get it. They couldn’t see it. They couldn’t understand it. Their rituals and their law didn’t allow for it. When confronted with the needs of the people, they did not act. They remained silent.

    And that my friends is the lesson we have to grapple with today. When confronted with the needs of our neighbors and others around us, how do we act? Do we reflect God’s love and compassion?

    There is hunger in our communities. There is homelessness. There are people living in fear. Like Jesus’ disciples, they are hiding behind closed doors living in fear of the authorities. How do we respond to the cry of human need from our neighbors and others?

    We are here today to worship God. But if all this is only ritual and not a call to service, then what are we doing? We can go through the motions – sing hymns, say prayers, participate in Communion – and we can look like a good and priestly people but that’s not the same as being a servant people.

    That is what Jesus was trying to explain to the religious leaders in the synagogue that day and it is also what Jesus wants to say to us. Don’t let the practice of religion become ritual. Don’t let your minds and hearts fall into that trap of doing things and thinking that is what God desires of you. Jesus wants us to approach God with a heart yearning to serve God by sharing God’s love and compassion with everyone who needs to be comforted.

    Remember at the end times, the Son of Man will gather all the nations before him. “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me.”

    Then perhaps without thinking you might respond, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothed you?When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”

    Then our Lord will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.”

    Jesus is telling us that sharing God’s love and compassion with our neighbors and with the others who are hungry, homeless, hurting and in need of healing is what Jesus calls his servant people to do.  

    My friends, during this Advent Season as you prepare for the day of the coming of the Christ child don’t let rituals decorate your path. Let your prayers be heartfelt and intentional. Sing your hymns with praiseful fervor. When you share Communion celebrate it knowing Jesus gave us this meal to do it in remembrance of him. But not only remembering his sacrifice on the Cross but also to remember his love and compassion for us.

    As Christmas Day [the coming of the Christ] approaches, prepare for it knowing that your redeemer came to walk and live among us. Know that he came to show us what a life of love, compassion and service looks like. The life of a servant people is what we are called to. Sharing God’s message of love and compassion and healing with your friends, your neighbors and the others you do not know is the service life we are called to. This is the Sabbath work that is good and that we are called to do.

    Charge to Congregation:

    My friends, my charge to you this week is this. As you journey through this Advent Season examine your rituals: the lighting of the Advent candles, the hymns you sing, the prayers you recite, and the your devotions each day and make sure you do them with a desire to be God’s servant people to the world infusing everything you do with God’s love and compassion for all God’s children.