Understanding the Jesus of the Gospels

Sermons from the Gospels

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  • What Have You Done for Us Lately?

    John 6: 24-35

    I had spent my working career as a salesman. Dirty word, I know. But I was one of the good guys.

    As a salesman, the question, “What have you done for me lately?” was the reality check that sales managers would use to bring a successful salesperson back down to earth. You might have concluded a difficult negotiation and booked the biggest, most lucrative sale in decades for your company – but then on the next day – the day after everyone had been slapping you on the back and congratulating you on what a great job you were doing – your sales manager will confront you and tell you, “That was yesterday. This is today. What have you done for me today?”

    Having this image as a backdrop to today’s Gospel lesson, let’s consider how Jesus and the people who are following him interact. In this scenario, Jesus is our top salesperson. He is on the road traveling from town to town making his presentations about God, his Father and the story of God’s steadfast love for his Creation and his chosen people. And he has been successful at it. He is attracting crowds wherever he goes, and their numbers are growing by the day.

    If we look back in the lectionary, what precedes today’s lesson is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Now that head count was of the five thousand men who were in the crowd. But if you consider that these crowds were on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, you would also know that these men were probably traveling with their wives and families. Conservatively, we could say that the crowds numbered closer to twenty thousand. Now that would be on the day of the recorded feeding in John’s Gospel. Perhaps on the day that we are learning about in today’s lectionary – the day after the feeding – those numbers are continuing to grow. After all, now the word is spreading – there was free food being served. Hey, if you sit and listen to this Rabbi teach, afterwards, they serve you a meal. It’s not the fanciest buffet, but it is all you can eat.

    Well now you’ve got this crowd. This huge crowd is looking around and searching for Jesus and their next meal. They can’t find Jesus, but they do see his disciples sneaking off to cross the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum. So, they take off by foot around the shoreline and eventually they find Jesus there in a Synagogue.

    They ask him, “Why did you leave?” “Where did you go?” “How long have you been here?” “Oh, and by the way, what’s for dinner?”

    Jesus decides it’s time to get down to brass tacks. He quite frankly says to them, “…the only reason you are here is NOT because you have seen signs but because you were fed.”

    You see, that is the beauty of Jesus. We can’t hide from him. We can’t put on any airs or pretense. Well, we can but they just don’t work with him. He see right through us just like he did with the five thousand. “The only reason you are here is because I fed you, not because you saw the signs that I did and not because you heard anything special in what I said. But because I fed you.

    Now a lot of Christian evangelists and missionaries subscribe to that theory. Bring the people in, feed them and when their bellies are full preach to them the word of God. Their thinking is that no one can hear you when they are crying out for food. And admittedly, it works – to a degree.

    Well, Jesus is the one who started that – but he doesn’t allow it to string out. He won’t become the people’s waiter. Yes, he has fed them but now he challenges them. “If you labor for the food that perishes, you are wasting your time. If you are looking for the things of this world, you are wasting your time. Work instead for the food which will give you eternal life.” That is a right relationship with God. “That is the food that the son of Man can give to you. God has set his seal upon Him.”

    Wow! Food that gives eternal life. Now you’re talking. How do we get that?

    Jesus’ answer, “Believe in him who God has sent.”

    Now picture this. Jesus is probably standing right in front of them. There’s a crowd around him and he’s probably got his arms outstretched and he says, “Believe in Him who God has sent.” In other words, believe in me. I have shown you the signs, haven’t I? Believe in me.

    And how does the crowd respond? What does this crowd that has been fed until its collective bellies were full say to Jesus in response? “Then what sign will you do for us that we may see and believe in you?” The day before they were ready to seize him to make him king. Today, they respond by saying, “What have you done for us lately?”

    Jesus and his disciples may have tried to remind them of the food that was miraculously catered out to them the day before, but they retort, Moses [our greatest prophet] gave us manna that fed the entire Hebrew nation for the entire time that they wandered in the wilderness. What do you think? That we will follow you because you fed a mere five thousand – once. Really, Jesus, you’ve got to do better than that. We want to see bigger and better signs that you are God’s Messiah.

    What have you done for us lately? Prove yourself. Show us signs that you are truly God’s Messiah.

    Wow! They were a tough audience.

    But what about us? How tough are we? Do we come in search of Jesus and the salvation that the Son brings kneeling prostrate before him in humble prayer or do we hand him a list of Honey Dos.

    Think for a moment about what our personal prayers sometimes sound like:

              Jesus, help me to be successful.

    Lord, hear our prayers.

    Jesus, help me to get my children into the best schools.

    Lord, hear our prayers.

    Jesus, we need a bigger house in a better neighborhood.

    Lord, hear our prayers.

    Jesus, I need a raise.

    Lord, hear our prayers.

    Jesus, die for me and give me my salvation.

    Lord, hear our prayers.

    Jesus, what have you done for me lately? Prove to us that you are the Son of Man. Fill our bellies with our wants and demands, and we will believe in you. Is that what we sound like to Jesus?

    Are we very different from the crowds who chased after Jesus for a quick meal?

    But Jesus won’t play their game. He tells them flat out. Moses gave you nothing. It was God, my Father, who gave you bread in the wilderness. And it is the same God which gives you this bread – the bread that will give you eternal life. This bread comes down from heaven and gives new life to God’s Creation.

    AHH! [a light goes on] a bread that gives eternal life. That’s the bread we want. “Give us this bread,” they say.

    And Jesus responds to them; I AM the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger. Whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

    No tricks. No more signs. The show is over. It is time to believe.

  • A Message for Communion Sunday

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    Luke 24

    What we do here at this table is an extraordinary thing. Granted the elements that we begin with are quite ordinary – common bread, grape juice or wine, ordinary plates & cups, a cloth and a wooden table. Ordinary things – “signs” Augustine would have called them. In ancient Greek and Latin, a sign is something which reveals a truth beyond itself. Augustine went on to say that signs “when they are connected to divine things become Sacraments.” A sacrament then is some ordinary thing which has a divine meaning beyond itself. Extraordinary!

    But what meaning?

    What we do here is supposed to be a celebration filled with outrageous joy. In our communion litany we call it a “joyous feast”. Is that how you approach the table?

    For some time, I have been conducting an informal survey of sorts. On Communion Sundays, I have been asking people what it is that they think of when they come to the Table to share Communion. The responses that I had gotten most often is that they recall the last Supper. When I ask how that makes them feel, most often I heard the words: sadness, inadequacy, and sorrow.

    Now, most assuredly, the Last Supper is at the core of what we do here. The very words of institution, “Take, eat. This is my Body…Do this in remembrance of me” come directly from our recorded text of Jesus’ last Passover Supper that he shared with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. But is it somberness that we are supposed to share here?

    Take a look at the Cross above us that hangs over our Cancel area. What do you see there?

    It is an empty Cross. As a sign it represents resurrection and salvation.

    It is empty. Our Cross is empty as is the Tomb. Now, that is not to say that we are not aware of the weight and the cost of our sins that the Christ bore on our behalf. Rather, it means that we focus more on the Triumphant victory of Christ resurrection over the death of our sins. We focus on the Christ once crucified, but now risen. We focus on the joyous gift of Salvation that God has given us.

    Well, the same thing is true of this table. We focus not so much on the events of Jesus’ last Passover but on the day of his resurrection. We focus on his rising and victory over death and sin from which he has set us free. That is what we celebrate at this table. The meal we share more closely follows on the meal Jesus shared with the disciples he met on the road to Emmaus on the evening after his rising.

    Luke says to us, “On that same day [which we understand that to be the day of his rising], two of Jesus’ disciples were on their walk returning to their homes on the road to Emmaus.”

    Consider for a moment, their mood. They would have been despondent, devasted. Their spirits were broken. The one leader, their Lord, who they had put their trust and hopes in was dead. Not only was he dead, he had been humiliated and executed in a most horrible way – crucifixion on a Roman Cross. Luke understates their mood calling it “sad and gloomy”.

    As followers of Jesus, they had thought that He was the one who would deliver Israel and set her free from foreign rule and domination. But the harsh realities of Israel’s political circumstances dashed their hopes, and their expectations of deliverance were destroyed. So, there they were on the road – lost without hope – when a stranger appears on the road walking alongside them.

    Now we know with hindsight that this stranger is Jesus but at the time, they didn’t recognize him. This was a strange reality of all of the sightings of Jesus after his resurrection. It was Jesus but he was different. He was coming into his glory, and they didn’t see the Rabbi who had lived among them for three years. When Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room, he had to show them the wounds in his hands and feet. He had to show them to Thomas. Even to these two, he would have to provide a sign.

    What transpires is a Q&A. Jesus asks questions of them, and they answer blindly without seeing what was before them. Then, the stranger speaks to them about the Messiah and explains the Scriptures concerning him and why it was he had to suffer and die on the Cross.

    As he speaks, Luke tells us later that something was burning in their hearts and it excited them – but still they did not recognize him. Still the Word was a stranger to them.

    After a seven-mile trek back to their homes, they arrive at Emmaus near sunset. The stranger seems to want to continue on, but they ask him to stay with them for dinner – to share a meal together. He agrees.

    Now this is where the story becomes interesting and begins to weave itself into our celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

    The women who were a part of the Passover pilgrimage prepare and set up a meal. Then when it was ready and set before them, the stranger takes his place at the table. The stranger takes the bread and does a typical Jewish thing. He takes the bread and holds it up before God and offers a blessing. He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it and shares it with them. He does this very ordinary thing and something extraordinary happens. Their eyes are opened, and they recognize him.

    Don’t miss this. Please understand what Luke is telling us here.

    Jesus’ disciples, who knew him well, who had spent the better part of three years listening to him teach them, who they had walked alongside for seven miles in intimate conversation did not recognize him until he broke the bread and shared it with them.

    The Word was a stranger to them – yes it burned in their hearts when they heard him speak – but it remained a stranger until he broke the bread, and their eyes were opened. Calvin would insist to you that in our Worship the Word and the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the Lord’s Supper are two parts of critically equal importance. Without one the other is diminished. Without a sharing of the bread, we cannot recognize the Word. Without the Word, the sharing of the bread has no extraordinary meaning.

    We are called to Worship God. We hear the Word spoken to us and interpreted each week in Sunday Sermons and so our hearts burn. But our eyes are not opened to recognize the RISEN Lord until we share with him the bread of this meal. He has prepared a place for us. A setting has been laid out for us, and he welcomes us to come and join him here. This is where we make the connection between the Word of Scripture that speaks of him and the RISEN Lord. Here is where we connect the Word to the Rising.

    Then what happens next? Jesus disappears from their midst, and they are suddenly overwhelmed with joy. They rise from their table and in near hysterical euphoria they return to Jerusalem to share the good news that they had seen the Risen Lord with the other disciples who have sheltered themselves behind locked doors.

    In a reflection of that euphoria, we come to this table to share in this joyous feast.

    In the fullness of our Worship, we are called by God to be gathered in, to hear the Word of God spoken to us and to see and experience the Risen Lord and then to affirm what we believe with the assurance of the Holy Spirit. From here we are led to go out into the world to share in an outpouring of our outrageous Joy what we have heard and seen and that we know to be the Truth. 

    Jesus Christ is Risen. Indeed! Extraordinary! Amen

  • The Father’s Good Pleasure

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    Luke 12: 32-34, Offered to the Berkshire Valley Presbyterian Church, August 10, 2025

    Jesus’ comments at the beginning of today’s good news story from Luke start with the words, “Do not be afraid…for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”

    That is the starting point isn’t it, for everything that Jesus is trying to teach us about the Father. That, it is the “Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” That sets the stage for everything we can come to know about the Father. In all Jesus’ lessons, all the parables he told us, all the insights he gives us about the Father all begin at, “…it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom.”

    The Creator Father created the cosmos in his “good” pleasure and made it good, called it good. In each step of our Creation story in Genesis, our Creator God spoke into existence the elements of the cosmos from out of nothing and called them good. He created Light, night and day, the stars and the moons, all of the creatures that swarm under the seas and over the dry land. And God pronounced all of them good.  It was in the Father’s good pleasure that he created us, humankind – male and female – and placed us into the garden to walk with him and that was good. God blessed us, gave us stewardship over God’s creation and told us to go forth and multiply. That was good, until we screwed it up.

    After humankind’s fall from grace into sin, our righteous Father called Abram to become the father of the nation to whom our steadfast God would make promises on behalf of all of God’s Creation and then strive to keep those promises even in the face of his chosen people’s constant betrayals.

    The Father’s good pleasure has been and always will be to have a righteous relationship with you and to give you every opportunity to be with God through all eternity in God’s Kingdom.

    This is our starting point – our jumping off point for today’s lesson in Luke.

    Then Jesus builds on this premise by telling us how to take advantage of God’s good pleasure. But to understand what Jesus is saying here, we have to go back a bit in the lectionary to a parable Jesus taught perhaps just minutes before in real time. This twelfth chapter of Luke probably made more sense to Jesus’ listeners in real time than it might for us because our lectionary breaks these teachings up into separate passages. So, let’s go back to verse 13 when someone in the crowd surrounding Jesus calls out to Jesus, as a respected Rabbi, to be the arbiter of a dispute between two brothers over a family inheritance.

    The voice calls out, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Ordinarily, this would have been the role of an elder or a Rabbi to listen to disputes and then in their wisdom make a decision, so that justice could prevail in disputes between the people.

    But when presented with this request to settle a dispute over earthly wealth and possessions, Jesus’ response to the man is, “No. No way. Ain’t going to go there.”

    However, Jesus, sensing an opportunity for a teaching moment goes on to tell them a parable about a rich fool. You will recall the story. The rich man has a bumper harvest and is faced with the challenge of what to do with this vast surplus in the harvest – which by the way God had provided him.

    The rich man had many choices. He could have thought of all the people in need around him and shared a portion of his surplus with the needy. Or, he could have brought it to the Temple’s treasury to be used by the chief priests and elders. But he did neither of these. Instead, he decides to build bigger and better barns in which to store up this unexpected bumper harvest for himself.

    In the parable, as Jesus speaks for the rich fool, the man uses the words, “I, my, and myself” ten times. Never once does the rich man consider the needs of anyone else other than himself. When he had built up all his new barns and stored away all of his surplus harvest, he remarks to himself that he now has everything he needs to live a long and happy life. So, he says to himself, “…relax, eat, drink, and be merry.”

    Then God steps into the picture and chastises the rich man, calling him a “fool”, telling him that very night his life will be demanded of him. And then God asks, “then what will happen to the things you have prepared? Whose will they be?”

    That reminds me of a quip. Would you like to make God laugh? Tell God your plans.

    Now after God chuckles at that man, God tells him that He has called the rich fool for his life. God then asks, what will become of the things that you thought were so very important to you in this world. You have stored up things that robbers can steal from you, that moths can invade, eat and destroy. In the purse that is your heart, you have stored up only things that will ultimately be stolen or rot away to dust.

    Instead, Jesus tells us to store up treasures in our purses [in our hearts] – the kinds of treasures that will not rot away, – unfailing treasures in heaven where thieves cannot get near and moths cannot destroy. Build up our treasures by building up our relationship with God, Jesus is telling us. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

    In other words, where your focus is in this life – on a right relationship with God, there your heart will be also.

    So now we have progressed back to our starting point in today’s reading. Once we have worked on building up a right relationship with God, Jesus tells us, “Do not be afraid…for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”

    Now comes a verse that is probably the one that is most difficult for us to comply with. “Sell your possessions and give alms.” I know it is a difficult one for me. Sell my possessions? God, really? God, I already support my home church congregation. I already make gifts to multiple charities and care organizations. Heck, I even gave blood yesterday. Why would I still have to sell off my remaining assets? I’m hoping, No.

    But, Jesus tells us, yes. If your possessions are going to distract you from knowing God; if your earthly wealth is going to blind you from seeing and knowing the God who has called you good; if we turn what God has created as good into an evil choice which leads us to choose to leave God’s garden, then yes, you need to sell that off and focus back on God.

    And then, he tells us to rely on God to provide for our needs. I’m sorry. Let me be honest with you all, this is a big ask. And to be openly honest with you, I don’t know how to respond to this challenge.

    I search my heart for an answer on how to make this work. So, I have to tell you, I need to be careful here not to go to Scripture looking for the answer I want. I hope that I am finding insight into Jesus’ wider meaning of how we should live out our discipleship.

    When hearing today’s Word, I find myself also thinking of Jesus’ parable of the three servants. The ones whose master assigned talents before he went to travel abroad. The parable is that talents were distributed to each of them. The first is given ten and he doubles them. The second is given five and likewise, he doubles them. The third takes the one he is given and buries it in the ground. He is chastised as being slothful and lazy, having wasted the talent he was given. However, the two servants who invested their talents and made them grow are praised and rewarded.

    How does this parable which encourages us to use our talents to the best of our abilities and make them grow balance against this teaching that tells us to sell everything and rely on God. Are we talking about Apples and Oranges or is there a message here which explains to us how to balance the two.

    I think there is. So, let’s try to take a look at how that might work out.

    Let’s look at the rich fool and the servants and what they were given and what they did with these gifts.

    First the servants are given the talents by the master of the house. The premise here that Jesus is trying to stress to us is that the talents, the gifts we receive in this life come from God. The two servants never lose sight of where their talents come from and to whom they belong. The rich fool, however, never acknowledges where his surplus harvest comes from. He believes everything that he amasses in his lifetime comes from his own hands, his own work, his own efforts. Recall if you would with me that Jesus begins the parable of the rich fool with this opening line, “The ground of a rich man yielded an abundant harvest.” In other words, Jesus is telling us that God had caused the ground to yield up an abundant harvest. God is where all good things come from. But the rich fool never sees or acknowledges that.

    Now in both of these parables, the two servants and the rich fool work feverously to make their fortunes grow. However, where the servants are working on behalf of the Master of the house, the rich fool is working solely for himself.

    In the end the two servants return to the master all the proceeds of their efforts. They return to the master this wealth to be used as he sees fit. The rich fool, however, stores his harvest up for himself and no one else.

    The focus of the servants of the master are to serve the master and make his household grow. The focus of the rich fool is to hoard, to store up, to lock away. Sharing or placing any part of his wealth – even a small portion [10%] – into God’s hands never crosses his mind. His focus is single minded. It is self-serving. He is focused on only one thing and one thing only – himself.

    So, the point I guess I am suggesting is where is your focus? Is your focus on building up your personal wealth and setting it up apart from God as the rich fool did. Or is your focus on building your talents up so that they can be returned to God for God’s use?

    So, Jesus presents us with this question still referring back to the rich fool. Obviously, the rich fool was concerned only with how to provide for his lifestyle and how to extend it longer into his future. Jesus’ question is, “Can any of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life span?”

    The answer of course, we cannot. We cannot live our lives as the rich fool did planning it out in the greatest of detail, not seeing God as having any part of it. Nor can we live our lives as the foolish servant did, in fear, burying the talents we have been given into the ground. Both were ignoring what God’s plans for them might have been.

    Instead, I think we need to look at the two servants who took the talents that they were given and made them grow. The caveat however is where do we place our focus. Working for ourselves or working for God. Are we working out God’s plan?

    Working out God’s good plan – which is to bring God’s Shalom to all of creation – should be our sole focus. That should be the treasure that we store up in our hearts. If that is where our hearts lie, then how we steward our resources using them for God’s good work will also be called good.

    If so, if in God is where you store up your treasures, then I think it would be God’s good pleasure to give us our place in God’s Kingdom.

    May it be so.

  • Are You Locked In An Upper Room?

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    Offered on the Second Sunday after Pentecost 2010

    I did something unusual [this morning] with the readings. If you noticed I placed the Gospel text first before the Psalm followed by the readings from Acts and the Revelation of John. I did that for a specific reason. It is that when you give them this sort of chronological sequencing, they tell a connected story of fearfulness and fearlessness building ultimately to an explanation of the “why” in John’s Revelation.

    Let’s take them one at a time. In the passage from John’s Gospel, we are told that Jesus’ followers are locked in a room hiding from the authorities in fear. Jesus, their teacher and leader had been a highly visible figure. He could be seen any day walking & teaching throughout Judea and the surrounding communities. He is gone. Everyone knows this. He has been crucified by the Romans; murdered by the authorities. He is gone. Although, there are some witnesses who claim that they have seen him – alive. That would be Mary and the other women at the tomb. It would also be the disciples who claimed to have met, walked and conversed with him on the road to Emmaus. But despite the stories of these witnesses, the core group of Jesus’ disciples is cowardly hiding in a locked room. I want you to get a clear image of this group of disciples hiding in fear in a room lock so that neither the outside world can get in nor, even more importantly, so that what is inside remains locked inside. They had been betrayed before…perhaps, again. That is the first image we get from today’s readings.

    Then, Jesus arrives. The text says that he suddenly appears. At first, they don’t recognize him. Something is different. He greets them and shows them his scars and wounds. Finally, they recognize him. There is no doubt now who this person is. The text tells, the disciples saw the Lord AND they were HAPPY!

    John’s narrative continues. Jesus speaks to them. “I am sending you, just as the Father has sent me.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Now you will recall that the story continues on, and we see the interchange between Jesus and Thomas. But I don’t want to go that far today. I want you to stop here and focus on the disciples fearfully hiding and locked up to protect themselves; that Jesus came to them and breathed the Holy Spirit on them. It is a little different from the Pentecost story in Luke  where the Holy Spirit comes as tongues of flame. But today I want you to listen while the Holy Spirit teaches us something new.

    There is something else that I would like to draw your specific attention to. Jesus says, “I am sending you, just as the Father has sent me.” How do you understand that? I mean, what do you think the expectations are of you when Jesus tells you that he is sending you just as the Father has sent him? What kind of expectations did God have of the Son when it was sent into the world? Was Jesus ministry a pleasant day trip into the countryside? Well first recall that Jesus’ ministry began with a 40-day sojourn in to the desert to fast and pray. So no, it wasn’t a pleasant walk in the park. Well neither is the commission that Jesus is sending us on. Fortunately, though, Jesus has not left us alone. He has left us the Holy Spirit. So, take heart.

    In the second lesson from Acts, we next see the disciples in the midst of a conflict. Here, Peter and the rest of the disciples have left their safe harbor and are out teaching about Jesus. In this story, they have been taken before the Council – that would be the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, and the Chief Priest. The Chief Priest begins by chastising the disciples, “…you had been plainly told not to teach about Jesus. But look what you have done”, he says. “You have been teaching all over Jerusalem and blaming us for his death.” He sounds just a bit peeved.

    How do the disciples respond?

    Well, they are not timid and fearful any more – as they had been before. Peter steps forward and speaks. Now if you have ever gotten an impression of Peter’s personality, you would know that Peter is head strong and blurts things out. He had chastised Jesus when he spoke about dying. He swore that he would never abandon him when Jesus said he would fall away and deny him. Peter said what was on his mind. So now, Peter answers.

    “We don’t obey people. We obey God. You killed Jesus by nailing him to a cross. But the God … that our ancestors worshipped – raised him to life and made him our Leader and Savior. Then God gave him a place at his right side so that the people of Israel would turn back to him and be forgiven. We are here to tell you about all this, and so is the Holy Spirit, who is God’s gift to everyone who obeys God.”

    Wow! What happened to those timid people hiding in the upper room? What happened to Peter, the man of three denials? Forgive the pun, but Peter nailed it. Did you hear him when he said, “We are here to tell you about this, and so is the Holy Spirit…” That is what tips the scales in their favor. Hear Peter’s words again, “…we are here…and so is the Holy Spirit.”

    The Holy Spirit is the catalyst. The Holy Spirit is that known factor for Christians that converts mere fearful people into emboldened witnesses. It is the Holy Spirit that flings locks doors wide open exposing what is locked inside to the outside world and exposing the outside world to the message that had been locked within. If you think about it, Jesus’ criticism of the Jewish authorities was that while they were God’s Chosen People, they were not chosen to hoard or lock away God’s steadfast love and mercy. They were chosen to spread God’s Shalom with all the nations. Abraham was told he would be the father of all nations. Where the Jewish authorities had squirreled away that message to save it only for themselves, now the Holy Spirit has flung open the doors. From there, the Pentecost story tells us that 5,000 people were baptized by Peter and the Disciples that day. Jesus was out of the tomb, and they were not going to be able to put him back in.

    But let us return to our emboldened witnesses. Peter was not a great man. He never had the tools that successful public speakers seemed to be born with. Peter was a peasant fisherman. He wasn’t educated in the rabbinical schools like Jesus and other great teachers of his time. He wasn’t from a royal family so that he could immediately demand attention and respect when he spoke. As a fisherman, he was probably a physically strong man. But as a fisher of people, he had only one talent, one skill, one advantage. That was the presence of the Holy Spirit within him. That is the Spirit of God who, Peter tells us, “is God’s gift to everyone who obeys God.” That is what I want you to hear more than any other part of my message today.

    So what do we have so far in today’s lessons?

    • We have fearful people hiding in a locked room.
    • We have Jesus coming into that locked room and breathing onto them the Holy Spirit.
    • And now, we see the result of that event. We see emboldened disciples out of their safe haven and teaching in the world and even challenging the religious authorities.

    OK, now let’s turn to the lesson from John’s Revelation. John is writing to the seven churches in Asia. He opens with prayer.

    He begins, “I pray that you will be blessed with kindness and peace from God, who IS and WAS and IS coming.” This is some very important phrasing.

    I have to stop for a moment here because there is something that I want to call your attention to. On that first resurrection morning, when Peter and John entered the empty tomb where Jesus had been, they noticed and it is mentioned in the story that Jesus head cloth was neatly folded on the table. What does that mean? In Jewish tradition when someone rose from the table and was finished with their meal, they dropped their napkin on their seat. But if they were not finished and intended to return, they neatly folded their napkin onto their place at the table.

    In the resurrection story, Jesus’ burial cloth is neatly folded on the table signifying to us and to anyone who will listen that he was/is not finished. That he is coming back. So, John says in his blessing, “…peace from God, who IS, and WAS, and IS coming.” Sometimes these things slip by us. It is important to see them.

    John prays that the seven churches will be blessed by the God that IS and WAS and IS coming…May peace be you from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness.”

    From his blessing, John teaches who Jesus is and why he did what God asked of him. He tells us that Jesus was the FIRST to conquer death. What does that mean? The simple and obvious intention is that there will be others who will follow him. Who will follow him? Well, you of course, if you believe and obey God. He tells us that Jesus, the faithful witness, was the FIRST to conquer death. His intention is to say to us that all those who are also faithful witnesses will also follow Jesus and conquer death.

    Further, he tells us that Jesus loves us and by his blood he set us free from our sins … and he lets us serve God his Father as priests.

    Ok. I cut out the part of the phrase where John says, “He lets us rule as kings…” Let’s face it. That is the part you want to hear, and it is probably the only part of the text you have heard. “He lets us rule as Kings.” The problem is John doesn’t stop there. He ends his blessing by saying that Jesus set us free … to serve God as priests.

    Does that frighten you? Does that make you fearful? Does that make you want to hide in a safe place? [make physical motion to the surrounding of the church]. It should. If Jesus had left us alone with nothing or no one to guide us, it should leave us fearful. However, that is not how Jesus set us free. He breathed on his disciples with the Holy Spirit, and he breathes it on you & I, too. He set us free to be God’s priests and to be his witnesses but not without support. Remember, Jesus had told us that he would be with us “…even until the end of the age.” We are not left alone.

    But I ask you, are you still locked in an upper room? Why? Why are you still there? You have the perfect spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. It is a gift that is given you, breathed on you by the very breath of Christ. With all this to empower you, why are you still locked spiritlessly in the upper room? With the same Spirit that emboldened those fearful disciples to go out beyond their safe haven, to go out and witness about Jesus; with that same Spirit that Jesus has breathed on you, you are now called to share the story you believe – that you know to be true – and to be his witnesses. So, get out of here. Go and witness.

  • The Challenge of Pentecost

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    Presented during Easter Season in 1995

    Last week we listened to a reading from the gospel of Luke. It retold the story of Jesus’ ascension into heaven. And if you listened closely, you know that Jesus stopped before ascending and turned to his disciples. He blessed them and as he began his final charge to them, he began with the words, “You are witnesses.”

    As he charged them with what he expected of them, he prefaced it all by declaring to the world and to them that they were his witnesses. This small group of disciples knew what happened. They had seen the signs. But most importantly, they had seen, touched, talked with and ate with the risen Christ. These followers of Jesus knew the truth. And now they were responsible to tell that truth. So, he said to them, “You are witnesses.”

    This week we read the text from the book of Acts. As a follow up to Jesus’ charge before his ascension, we retell one of the most exciting events in Christian history. That is of the first Christian Pentecost. The meaning of Pentecost for Jews was to mark a seven-week period after Passover when God gave Moses the Law. For Christians, we celebrate it as the day Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit.

    It begins with those witnesses hiding in a room in Jerusalem for fear of their lives. They were cowering behind locked doors for fear that the authorities would hunt them down and make every attempt to silence them from speaking out about this Jesus. But after the Holy Spirit descended upon them in the upper room and touched them with those tongues of fire, they became emboldened. Confident in what they believed they were able to walk out onto the streets and marketplaces of the city to tell the story of their witness to the risen Christ. And by the end of the day 3,000 people were baptized and came to believe in Jesus as God’s Messiah and that he had in fact risen conquering his death on the Cross.

    Imagine if you will the disciples sharing the good news and telling of their witness and then 3,000 people responding by coming to the Lord. Imagine it and become excited about it. It is recorded for us by Luke in the book of Acts as part of our history as a young start up church.

    Can you imagine something like that? The sight of people sharing their witness and then other people listening – being so moved by it that they stopped everything that their lives were about and turned in another direction to believe in the Christ and to follow Jesus?

    I experienced something like that many years ago when I attended a Promise Keepers event at Shea Stadium in NYC. After two days of witness, song and praise to the Lord, late on the second day, a speaker called to the more than 50,000 men gathered in the stadium and asked those who had not already to come down and dedicate their lives to Jesus. Come on down and stand here in front of the stage and before your brothers in faith and bow yourselves to Jesus.

    It was a chilling and a most moving moment. I watched as waves of bodies rose up out of their seats and began flowing down the isles and ramps of the stadium down on to the playing field at Shea. And as the tide of men and boys flooded the area in front of the stage the speaker called to them to give their lives to Jesus. He prayed over them and blessed them and all of us looking on. Tears were running from my eyes. It was the most spiritually amazing thing I had ever seen – to witness what was possible when the Holy Spirit moves people of courage to tell their witness. I saw what was possible when the Holy Spirit moves people to respond to God’s call.

    Awesome!

    And that was only a little bit of what it must have been like on the first Pentecost Sunday.

    Imagine first to be hiding for fear of your lives – of being arrested and stoned to death like Stephen. In a somewhat similar way, we are hesitant to share our witness because –you know- its personal – not something we would want to get up on a soapbox and speak out about. But imagine overcoming not only that but a fear of execution, too; and then walking out boldly in public and professing what you believe in. Well, that’s what the Holy Spirit can do to you.

    On that first Pentecost day, the Holy Spirit – the great enabler, the great encourager, the great counselor came to the people hiding in that upper room in Jerusalem and filled them with the confidence their faith, that their witness was true. It put the words in their mouths and sent them rushing out on to the street to share all that with anyone and everyone that they met.

    And as they walked out into the street of Jerusalem, they began to speak out to the people that they encountered. And it didn’t matter whether they were Greek or Roman, Arab to Egyptian everyone understood what being said in their own languages. It was a miracle of Faith. I’m not going to try to give you an explanation of how that happened other than to say that the message of the risen Christ is a universal one. One that needs to be shared with all people of all nations. The Holy Spirit spoke the words universally through the mouths of the disciples. The message is meant for all. To all, it is spoken. And by all it needs to be heard.

    On that day, critics of what was happening said that the disciples and the rest of the faithful were drunk. But Peter, Simon – the Rock [the same failed man who denied Jesus before his execution], came forward and spoke in their defense. No, they are not drunk because it is only 9 am. No, these people are filled with the Holy Spirit of God and what they speak is true witness that Jesus is the Christ. They are saying that although he was crucified, he is not dead. They are saying that although he was buried, God has raised him up. They are saying that he lives, and they are saying we are witnesses to the fact that he is alive. We saw him with our own eyes.

    And they told the story of their witness with enthusiasm and fervor. And the result was on that first day 3,000 people came to the Lord.

    Awesome!

    Can you imagine how excited Peter and the rest of those first witnesses were to see the results of their efforts as wave upon wave of people came and bowed down to accept Jesus and to be baptized.

    Now this Sunday we celebrate again that first Christian Pentecost. We celebrate it as a great mystery and miracle of our faith. But if that is all we do, we will never experience its true meaning – and this is my fear – we are complacent and settle to celebrate it as a date in our church history. We celebrate that it happened. But we don’t celebrate that it is happening. We don’t participate in it. We hang banners. We begrudgingly wear red to signify our being touched by the Spirit when the truth be known we prefer that pastors and sessions didn’t come up with these corny ideas in the first place. Why can’t we just come to church and worship in peace and quiet without being bothered by all this hoopla.

    Well, if the truth be known, Christian faith and witness is not supposed to be peaceful or quiet. Jesus told us that faith in him would be difficult. It would split up families. It would set father against son and mother against daughter.

    He told us that it would take great courage to be a follower of the Christ.

    But the Holy Spirit – yes, that spirit of God that was to be our guide and protector, revealer and encourager – would fill us with a burning fire that would burn off our iniquities and that would refine us into pure spiritual gold empowering us to make difficult choices. Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would fill us with the knowledge and courage of our faith and enable us to walk out and witness. Jesus said don’t worry about the words. I will put the words in your mouth. All we need to do is let the Spirit take control and go where it leads us.

    So, now the question I ask this Pentecost Sunday is how will we live out the call of the Spirit this Sunday and throughout our lives? What must we do in order to live Pentecost rather than just celebrate as a day on the church calendar? We can remain behind locked doors sheltered in our upper rooms, or we can submit to the Spirit’s calling and ask God to breathe that Spirit into our hearts, to light a fire in our souls so that we can be cleansed and filled. So that we can step out to be his witnesses. To tell the story of God’s steadfast love and God’s promises to heal the rift between our sin and God’s righteousness and bring all of Creation back into Shalom with God and that the risen Christ has fulfilled those promises.

  • “I”, “my”, and “myself”

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    Taken from Luke 12: 13-21, offered on August 3, 2025, at Hilltop Presbytery Church, Mendham, NJ

    The Story of the Greedy Farmer

    [I am providing the text from the Message – of particular interest is the transcription of verse 21]

    13 Someone out of the crowd said, “Teacher, order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.”

    14 He replied, “Mister, what makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?”

    15 Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”

    16-19 Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’

    20 “Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’

    21 “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”

    I, My, and Myself – [sermon message begins here]

    In today’s passage from Luke, there is embedded a parable. We can refer to it as the parable of the “rich fool.” This parable consists of one hundred and twenty words. Now make note of this, ten of them are either the words “I”, “my” or “myself”. I tried to stress them when I read the passage for you but let me read it again for you now that I have called your attention to them.

    “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 Then he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

    20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

    One hundred and twenty words and ten of them are I, my, or myself. That is eight percent of the total. But if we go on to include the words, he, himself, and you – all of which refer back to the “I”, there are four more words that refer directly to the rich man himself. Now we are almost at twelve per cent.

    Why is this important? What is Jesus trying to say to us here? What is it that Jesus wants to be said here in this morning’s worship service to the affluent community of Mendham, New Jersey? We are his audience today even as he spoke this parable two thousand plus years ago. So, what is Jesus saying to us today?

    Let’s begin by taking a look at what precedes Jesus’ parable. Luke tells us that after the events of the day Jesus is confronted by the young man demanding of Jesus that he settle a dispute between himself and his brother. We are a part of his audience today as were his followers two thousand years ago. What Solomon like wisdom does this Rabbi, Jesus, offer the man calling for a division of earthly property?

    The first observation that I will call our attention to is that this man yelling out from the crowd, asking for Jesus to settle a dispute between he and his brother probably has no claim on the estate he is demanding to be split up. As you may be aware, in ancient times after the passing of the father an estate would go to the oldest son. After that, the brothers that followed would be dependent upon the eldest son’s generosity for a livelihood. So, Jesus rightly extracts himself from that argument. No way. Ain’t gonna go there. But sensing the opportunity, Jesus seizes on it as a teaching moment.

    Jesus seizes upon this man’s desire to gain some earthly wealth from his father’s estate, to gain from the wealth his father had amassed in his life and Jesus tries to refocus the man and his other listeners on treasures of greater importance.

    So, what is it that Jesus is saying to those of us who have an abundance of material possessions – to those of us who have stored up the riches of this world.

    Now, relax and take a deep breath. I am not going to tell you to sell all you have in order that you can be a good Christian follower of Jesus. I don’t think that is where Jesus is going with this parable.

    What I do think is important for us all to focus in on is the attitude of the rich man in Jesus’ parable and what exactly makes him a fool.

    In this parable, Jesus takes great pains as a teacher to make it plain that this rich man never focuses on anything other than himself and his wealth. There isn’t a possessive adjective or pronoun in this story that doesn’t focus back on the man himself. “I”, “my”, and “myself” – even, the pronouns, “he”, “you” and “yourself” refer only back to himself.

    This first lesson we should observe here is that this rich man never sees the world beyond himself. This rich man is aggressively focused on the “self”. There is no “other” in this story.

    Bible Scholar, William Barclay, suggests you might say that the man’s world is bordered on the north, south, east, and west by himself. Think on the image of that. On his horizons, he could see only himself. His world, his entire existence was filled only with his own ego. Never once in the parable does the rich man consider the needs of the “other” and what good his surplus wealth might be used for.

    In the abundance of his wealth, he never once considers what good may come of it. His only concern is to store it up for himself.

    So, he tears down the barns he already has to build bigger ones large enough to store up all the riches he has amassed in this world.

    So, this might be the first question Jesus poses for us today. Where is your focus? Who do you focus on? Is your focus on yourself, what you possess, what you have amassed. Or, does God play any part in how you store up your wealth – or more precisely, does God play a part in the treasures you consider worthy to store up?

    Greed is a dominant underlying theme in this parable. Jesus prequalifies the man as bring rich. This rich man already has, but he wants to possess more. But Jesus point of the parable is to ask the question, what will his earthly wealth gain him.

    In a commentary by William Barclay on this passage, he quotes a Roman proverb, “…money is like sea water, the more you drink, the thirstier you get.” I think this is an apt insight to the motivation of the rich man in Jesus’ story.

    The driving force in this rich man’s world is how much more he can store up for himself. This is the definition of greed, is it not? The rich fool never sees the world beyond his own self-centered wants.

    And that word “want” is important. When I was writing this message, I almost used the word “needs” here. But what the rich man was doing was going well beyond providing for his needs. What the rich man was doing was amassing wealth well beyond what his needs could possibly require. He never considered a world, a kingdom beyond the barns he was building up to store his earthly wealth.

    Bible scholar William Barclay uses this story to drive the point home.

    “There is an ambitious young man and an older man who knew life. The young man announces, “I will learn a trade.” The older man asks, “And, then?” the younger man answers, “I will set up my business.” Again, the older man asks, “And, then?” “I will make my fortune”, was the young man’s reply. “And, then? the older man asks. “I suppose I will grow old and live on my money” was the young man’s answer. “And, then?” Now, the young man’s response, “Well I suppose that someday I will die.” The older man’s final question is, “And, then?”

    This was the question the rich man never considered. “And, then?” What happens then? After he had built up all his earthly riches and stored them up in barns that he constructed in this world, what happens then? He never took a moment to consider what comes next. He never – in all the work that he expended amassing his wealth – he never spent a moment working on his relationship with God. He never once thought of building up a treasure in heaven so that he had a home that he could be welcomed into – so that he could relax, eat, drink, and be merry in the eternity of God’s Kingdom. He had an opportunity to build up something for all eternity but instead he concentrated on storing up wealth and riches that would rot away and die consumed by rust and moths.

    That is when this rich man becomes a fool.

    God tells him, his life will be demanded of him on the evening of the very day he completes constructing his barns. Then God asks him, “…these things that you have prepared, whose will they be?” In other words, God asks the rich fool, “And, then?

    Then Jesus stresses this final thought. “So, it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich [in their relationship] with God.”

    Jesus drives this point home in the verses that follow today’s reading. He tells his disciples [and us] not to worry about what we are to eat or about what we would wear.

    Now I don’t want to trivialize our needs to eat and to be clothed. These are two very important needs in our world. We need to be able to find sustenance. We need to be able to clothe ourselves to protect ourselves from winter’s cold and summer’s sun.

    But Jesus rightly points out that we also need to look to God to be fed by God’s Word. We need to be able to clothe ourselves in what Paul calls the armor of God. Jesus is telling us that looking to God to be fed and clothed is more vitally important than how we look to be fed and clothed in this world. Although, I might suggest that the two are NOT mutually exclusive.

    Look. We can worry and obsess about all our troubles and angst of our lives. We can let our to-do lists obscure our vision and distract us from what is important; or we can rely on God to be fed and to guide us, to clothe us in God’s Word. Now Jesus doesn’t present this as an either/or choice. He clearly is telling us that placing our reliance on God to provide and nurture us is by far the more critical way to go.

    Jesus asks, “Which of you, by worrying, can add a few days to the span of your lives?” And so, I ask the same of you. Can you by worrying extend your days? No. You can’t.

    Now hear me clearly. I don’t believe that Jesus is telling us to chuck it all and live our lives without any attention at all to the world around us. The world around us is broken and God requires us to be God’s hands and feet and to go into this world to heal its brokenness.

    But what I think Jesus is telling us is that there is a way to put focus in our lives and a way not to. Jesus also told us the parable of the workers and the talents. In it, the master of the household leaves to travel abroad, and he assigns three of his servants with Talents. Jesus tells us that when the master of the household returned, he demanded to know of the servants what they had done with the talents he had provided them. The master of the house expected his servants to use the talents he had provided them with and to put them to good use and to make them grow to the benefit of his household. Clearly, we are not to be lumps that ignore the gifts and talents we have been given and bury them into the ground. We are called to invest the talents we have been given and make them grow.

    Recall with me the opening line of Jesus’ parable from today’s reading. It is: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.”

    In other words, this rich man had been gifted the harvest just as the servants had been gifted the Talents by their master. Now we know that the third foolish servant buried his talents in the ground where it could rot away. The other two invested their Talents to make them grow.

    But to grow how? This is a question we need to consider for ourselves.

    Should we grow our Talents for our own benefit? To fill our barns, our bank accounts, to store up our wealth as possessions that we alone would own. No. It is to grow our talents and gifts to the benefit of God’s Kingdom. The servants who doubled their Talents returned them to the master of the house for the benefit of the household.

    The focus Jesus wants us to make in our lives is on God. Focus on our relationship with God, first. That will guide us in how we make our talents grow in this life so that we can reap rewards in heaven. We would be taking our Talents and building up treasures in our relationship with God. So that when we are asked, “And, then? We can respond that we have stored eternal life up in a place in God’s house where we can eat, drink and be merry.

    May it be so.

  • Jesus is Tested in the Wilderness

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    This message was delivered at a Vesper’s service back in 2014. My reference and commentary resources were from William Barclay’s writings on the Gospel of Mark.

    This is quite a turnaround, isn’t it? Just two weeks ago, we were celebrating Jesus’ victory over death and God’s great gifts of mercy and salvation in the resurrection of the Son; and now, here we are again right back at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, this story precedes Jesus’ ministry.

    There are a couple of things that I would like to mention as background to this story before I get into it. The first is that this story is a personal account from Jesus as retold in the Gospels. What do I mean? The Gospel tells us that Jesus went into the desert alone. So, there was no one there to witness or record the events of those forty days. So, the story we have MUST have been told directly by Jesus to his disciples. This is a personal spiritual autobiography of Jesus’ concerning his own faith journey. I get excited because this is a retelling by Jesus about his own struggles and temptations.

    Second, and perhaps the more important element is that Jesus goes into the wilderness to grabble with a core problem for his ministry. Remember where we are. We are at the earliest part of Jesus’ ministry. He has just been baptized by John the Baptizer. God opened up the heavens and spoke saying, “This is my beloved in whom I am greatly pleased.” The Holy Spirit of God came down and alighted upon him like a dove. At this singular moment, Jesus is made know to all who will hear and see AND indeed to himself that he is the chosen “One”. If there had been any doubt in his mind or anyone else’s, God has put an end to it.

    So Jesus, as you will recall in Mark’s Gospel is immediately driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit. At this critical moment, Jesus is faced with an immediate problem. How does he make God’s vision of how he will lead & teach the people a reality? How can he identify himself with the people’s search for God? He has to find a way to turn that vision into a reality. How does he do that? What method can he choose to work out the task that God has set before him?

    You see Jesus had a choice. He could seek to attract the people to himself by providing a little razzle dazzle. He could use the awesome power of God to provide the signs that the authorities were constantly demanding of him. You will remember that when Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple, the priests came to him and demanded, “What signs will you do to prove your authority?” The problem with that is that slick tricks are addictive. Each day the people would want some new sign that is more outlandish and awesome than the one they saw the day before. No. That would not do; that could not work. Jesus would have to make another choice and you will see how it unfolds in this text.

    But first one more tid bit. The word in Greek that we have as “tempted” means less tempted and more “tested”. Think about it. If God tempted us with the purpose of enticing us to “sin”, then that would mean that God was enabling sin. But God does not enable sin. God desires us to conquer sin. So, we must think of this whole incident in the wilderness as the “testing” of Jesus. How is that different? When you are tempted there is a possibility of one of two outcomes. You either overcome it or you fail. If God’s only purpose is to tempt us, we would fail at every time. What good could that accomplish? Instead in testing us and Jesus, God is purifying. God is perfecting God’s plan. How are we going to do this? What is the best plan? “Jesus had to get things straightened out before he started his ministry; and he had to do it alone.” [Barclay]   

    Let’s look at the circumstances of Jesus going into the wilderness. First, as you will recall, it is immediately following his baptism. Here is one of life’s great truths. Right at the moment of our greatest triumphs is when we are most susceptible to failure. Bible scholar Wiliam Barclay suggests to us to remember Elijah, the Prophet. He defeated the prophets of Baal. Elijah baited the 100 prophets of Baal to a test of whose God was the more powerful. Elijah challenged the priests of Baal that they both would build an altar to their own god. He said you pray to your god to ignite a bull for sacrifice. The priests of Baal tried first but nothing happened. They prayed to their god Baal but Baal did not respond. They couldn’t ignite the fire. Then Elijah soaks down his altar, the bull and the kindling with water and then prays to God and God hears his prayer and responds by igniting a fire and the sacrifice.

    This was a great victory of Hebrew’s God over Baal, which was also the god of Jezebel, the queen of Israel. In this moment of Elijah’s great triumph, he suddenly hears that Queen Jezebel is out to get him. But rather than relying on the awesome power of God to protect him, he flees into the desert to hide. Right at the moment of his great triumph he fell victim to his own insecurities.

    So now, here we see Jesus, at the great moment of his anointing by God, he is pushed out into the wilderness to be tested. And what is the first thing that he encounters? The Great Tempter – the Evil One.

    But we can also say, Jesus encounters his greatest fears and insecurities. These fears and insecurities will be used by God to test Jesus – to purify him. Purify him in the sense that he  overcomes those fears and insecurities.

    What are they?

    There is the temptation to use God’s awesome powers to wow the people – to do great things that would cause them to flock to him. But Jesus knows that the people need more than a good show. They need to know that their God offers them mercy and reconciliation. How can Jesus bring the people closer to the God that they yearn for? In working all this out is how he deals with these tests?

    What is the first test? It is after 40 days of fasting, Jesus is hungry. He is walking in the desert where the little limestone rocks look a lot like small loaves of bread. The temptation is to turn these stones into real bread to eat for himself. It was a temptation to use his awesome powers selfishly – to serve his own needs. You see God has given everyone of us gifts. But there are always two questions we must ask ourselves. One is, what can I make of this gift for myself? The other is, what can I do with this gift for others? Jesus had to decide how he was to use the power of God – for himself or for others?

    How does Jesus respond to this temptation? Jesus quotes scripture. “No one can live only on food. People need every word that God has spoken.” He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3. Jesus goes to scripture for the strength of the Word of God.

    Next, the Tempter takes Jesus to the top of the Temple. He says to Jesus, “If you are God’s Son, jump off for the Scriptures say, ‘God will give his angles a command about you. They will catch you in their arms, and you will not hurt your feet against the stones.’” Now it is the Tempter that is quoting Scripture. It quotes Psalm 91: 11-12. He is tempting Jesus to use the power of God to attract attention and men to his cause. But Jesus realizes that there is no good news if it is built on sensationalism. That kind of Gospel is doomed. But more importantly, Jesus knows that this is not the way to use the power of God. What does Jesus do? He goes back into Scripture. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:16. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Once again, Jesus draws his strength from the power of the Word of God. He refuses to submit to the temptation of using God’s power to his own ends. Why?

    If Jesus were to jump off the pinnacle relying on some miracle where the angels would intervene to save him it would not in fact be trusting God, It would in fact actually be distrusting God. It would be like saying, I know that you have a plan and have selected me for this great task. I know that you have a plan for me to go to the Cross. But I’m going to take an easier path. I jump. You save me. The people will see a great sign and believe. But that would be demanding that God jump through our hoops and working out a plan for salvation on our terms.

    That was the Tempter’s proposal to circumvent the Cross. But Jesus wasn’t buying into the Tempter’s plan. He knew that was not the path he was called to travel. God needed more than cheap tricks from God’s Messiah.

    Next, the Tempter tries his third attack. He shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and he says to him, “I will give you all of this, if you will bow down and worship me.”

    What was the Tempter saying? Compromise. Don’t set your sights so high. Come to terms with me. Let me bring the people to you. I know you think my ways are not exactly how you might want to do it but a little evil now and again will go a long way in catching the people’s eye. The temptation, Jesus’ test, was to sink to the world’s level instead of uncompromisingly presenting God’s demands to the world. Don’t try to change the world, the evil one says. Try to become a little more like the world. Make it easy on yourself. Don’t go to the Cross to be lifted up in sacrifice. Stay on the ground with the rest of the people and me.

    Jesus shot back, “Go away Satan. The Scriptures say: Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” This was from Deuteronomy 6: 13. Once again, Jesus goes to the Word of God for his defense, for his strength.

    What do we learn from this personal spiritual episode in Jesus’ life? First, that Jesus like us was tested. He was tested at the moment of his great triumph as any of us could be. His greatest strength was attacked as a vulnerability. The Tempter didn’t only try to get Jesus to churn out some meaningless tricks. He tempted Jesus to subvert the power of God; to use the power of God for selfish motives. Ultimately, the Tempter was aiming at driving Jesus off his path to the Cross. The Tempter wanted Jesus to compromise his values, God’s values, God’s plan. But as Jesus progressed through his personal faith journey being purified and prepared for the task before him; he held to the uncompromising core of that faith in God. He would not stoop to the level of this world where the Tempter distracts us with his evil ways. Instead, Jesus calls that the world rise up to God’s level. Jesus asks us to be less like ourselves and that we become more like God. And if we can learn anything from this story of Jesus’ own faith journey, we will find that the strength we need to overcome the Tempter and to work through our own testing will be found in the Word of God. When we go to scripture to listen and learn from the Word of God, we will find the strength we need.

  • Lord, Teach Us to Pray – Luke 11: 1-13

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    First, let me begin by admitting that a lot of this message below comes from out of my studies of the commentaries of William Barclay on the Gospels and the in specific here of the Lord’s Prayer. So, if I spark interest on your part to discover more, I recommend Barclay’s book on the Lord’s Prayer. It is not a difficult read – just over 100 pages.

    The words given to us by Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer appear in two of the four Gospels. There is a short version in Luke 11. There is a slightly longer version that appears in the Gospel of Matthew 6.

    The scene in Luke 11 is that the disciples are watching Jesus pray. When he concludes, one comes forward and asks that Jesus teach them to pray. This was not unusual – that a Rabbi would teach his followers a prayer or how to pray. The fact was that it was customary to teach their disciples a prayer out of their own theology so that their followers could go to God in prayer.

    The Jewish heritage of prayer goes back to the time of Moses in Hebrew history. The Jews were characteristically a praying people. The ancient Jews believed with absolute confidence that God not only heard prayers, but that God desired them and listened to them fervently. A Rabbi in Israel’s tradition taught that “the Holy One” yearned for the prayers of the righteous. In Psalm 145, the Psalmist tells us that “the Lord is near to all who call upon him.”

    Moses gave the people a wonderful style of prayer. It was the habit of “blessing” the Lord. It was an attitude of continual thankfulness toward God that expressed itself through brief prayers that acknowledge God as the source of every good thing.

    It goes back in the Scriptures…(Deut. 8:10-11, when Moses admonished the Israelites not to forget the Lord. Moses instructed the people:

    When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God.

    The Jewish people never doubted the power of prayer. One Rabbi taught that “prayer was the weapon of the mouth and as such is mighty.” Did you hear that? “Prayer is the weapon of the mouth.” The people believed that even if God had set God’s mind on punishing Israel for its sins that they could appeal to God and petition to God to change God’s mind and instead be merciful to his people.”

    Also, it was a Jewish tradition that prayer should be constant. We should not reserve prayer only for those times when we are in need of God’s intercession but be in continually conversation with the Holy One. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, we are taught “…before misfortune comes, anticipate and pray.” [Eccl.  33]

    Bible Scholar William Barclay makes this comment, “Prayer is not so much an emergency appeal in times of need as it is a continuing and unbroken conversation and fellowship with God.”

    That is a beautiful thought, isn’t it? That we should think of our prayer time as an ongoing, unbroken, life-long conversation with the creator God that is a Father to us all – a Father that loves us and wants to hear us when we pray.

    Here’s another thought on prayer from a nineteenth century Jewish scholar by the name of Michael Friedlander. He suggests that in prayer, we should first bring our love to God. In Psalm 34, the psalmist tells us, “I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise will continually be on my mouth.” Please make the connection here that Friedlander makes. That when we go to God in prayer, the praise we bring should be an act of love.

    Friedlander next suggests that when we pray, we must be mindful of the holiness of God. A Rabbi Simon taught, “In our prayer, we should think that the holiness of God is right there before us. When we go to God in prayer, we should be mindful that we are entering a sacred and holy place. These are all examples of how leaders of the Jewish faith community taught their followers how to go before God and pray.

    As I had said before, it was a common practice for Rabbis to teach their disciples prayers. As we heard in the text, John did it for his disciples and Jesus’ disciples wanted a prayer from him that they could pray.

    Why was this important? Prayers that the Rabbis taught their disciples would be a distinguishing element that might set one group of followers apart from others. Perhaps, followers would be able to say I follow John, this is the prayer we pray. So, Jesus’ disciples wanted to be able to say, the Lord has taught us this prayer. Whatever the motivation, Jesus taught them the prayer we refer to as the Lord’s prayer.

    Jesus told them, when you pray, say:

    Father,

    Hallowed be your name

    Your kingdom come

    Give us each day our daily bread

    And forgive us our sins

    As we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us

    And do not bring us to the time of trial.

    Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer is shorter than the one that appears in the gospel of Matthew. Luke omits the lines, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And at the close after the phrase about temptation, Matthew closes with, “…and deliver us from the evil one.”

    This is a simple seven-line prayer. It is not long-winded. It is not an arduous prayer. Jesus does not set a difficult high bar for us. He has made prayer quite simple. It tells us much about how Jesus prayed and how he would want us to pray.

    This prayer that Jesus taught his disciples can be viewed in two ways. First, that it is a stand-alone prayer for them and us to use when we don’t have the words or know how to approach God. For those times when our minds go blank, Jesus has given us the words.

    But be attuned to what more he has given us. It is not intended to be a litany. It is not a pages long confession. It is not a prayer that drones on or that becomes repetitive and prattles. In Matthew’s Gospel, we have heard Jesus criticize the Pharisees that pray in public for all to hear. Jesus’ criticism is because they are not praying to God but instead putting themselves on public display so that they can be admired for their piety. That is not this prayer. If you were to stand on a street corner and start saying this prayer aloud, you would be finished before anyone took note of you. It is a short and simple prayer that brings us to the heart of how we should come to God. It is simple but it gets the job done.

    But it is also more than a simple prayer. It is a template for prayer. It is a form for us to use when we come before God in our own private prayer. Let’s take a look at what Jesus is telling us about how to approach our God in prayer.

    The first word of Jesus’ prayer tells a lot. It is that we should address God as “Abba, Father.”

    In this opening word, Jesus gives God a personage, not one of male personage. Instead, it is used to impress us that God is more like a loving parent than an uncaring, far-off deity. Jesus did not want his disciples, or us, to approach God as a far-off impersonal deity, as a terribly fearsome God who we should approach with trembling hearts and certainly not one with whom we have no relationship. Jesus makes it so we can approach God with a confidence in knowing that God has showered and continues to shower us with blessings upon blessings. No, Jesus wants us to approach God as a loving parent whom we can know, whom we respect. Yes, we should be in awe of God, but not so fearful that we cannot understand the love God has for us. This is a God who we can live and interact with us every day of our lives, and one in whom we can have the confidence of knowing we are loved. This God that Jesus calls Father is a loving parent.

    The next line, “Hallowed be thy name.” There are two things going on here. The initial thing before all else, is that we need to praise the “Name” of God. “Hallowed be thy Name.” This is an elemental and first criteria of Jesus’ prayer. It is to first praise God’s name. Give due reverence to the holiness of God. Realize that in prayer we are entering a sacred place before our God.

    The second thing about this line is that Jesus is telling us that we can know the “Name” of God. This is important to understand. That is because in ancient cultures to know a person’s name meant that you truly know who that person was on an intimate level – inside and out. It means to know the whole character of a person. For instance, for me to say, I know a person’s name would mean I know as much about that person as their spouse does or any of their closest friends. Jesus wants us to know God with that kind of closeness and intimacy.

    Knowing God’ name means to know the whole character, mind and heart of God so that once you know God in this way, you can put your trust and confidence in God. That is how Jesus wants us to know God.

    This is the relationship Jesus wants us to have with God – intimate and personal. Now we will never know all there is to know about God, but Jesus reveals enough so that we can have a start at knowing God. So, this line calls us to praise and know the Name of the God we call Father.

    “Your Kingdom come.” Here, Jesus is telling us that God’s kingdom is at hand and that we should actively pray for it and expect it. This line means that we should pray for a time when God’s rule will cover all of creation, that all of creation will turn to God and that all the brokenness of this world will be healed.

    “Give us this day our daily bread”. This is a line that is sometimes misinterpreted. Muslims criticize Christians for having the audacity of asking God to provide food for us each day. In the Exodus story we know that God provided manna each day so that the Hebrews could be fed – so that their physical needs could be met.

    But for us, “food” is not alone what “Daily Bread” means. As Christians, our daily bread is the “Word” of God spoken to us by the Christ. This is the food of life that Jesus is telling us to ask God for. Jesus is telling us to ask that God provide for us the “Word” that will sustain and feed us as we go through our daily lives.

    Also, this line is telling us that we should not be concerned about the future days of our lives. That would distract us. That would be too burdensome. No, focus only on the day before us. Ask for what we need today. Ask for the Word that will feed us and nourish us today. And where do we find that nourishment? We find it in God’s Word spoke to us in Scripture. For in Scripture, we will find the Spirit of God that can fill and guide us through our day.

    “Forgive us our sins.” This is simple enough. But Jesus is making the point that we cannot approach the righteousness of God with sinful and unrepentitive hearts. We cannot go before the Holy One thinking that we can stand before God in a righteousness of our making. We have to stop and make the point of confessing that we are sinners, to ask to be forgiven and ask God to cleanse our hearts. Only then can we come before God.

    As an aside, I would like to share an insight with you about how we Presbyterians order our Worship. We place the confession of sin right at the very start of our worship. In fact, if you look at it, our Presbyterian order of worship is built upon the Lord’s Prayer. It is the template that we use. We are called to come before God, praise God’s name in song, confess our sins, hear the Word, affirm our faith, make our petitions and give Thanksgiving.

    The next line is, “As we forgive those indebted to us.” That is a “Red Flag” for us. It is a challenge if you will, isn’t it? Jesus is telling us that forgiveness works both ways. We can ask for forgiveness of God for our sins but if we harbor ill will towards anyone, if we deny anyone reconciliation for a deed or action, that “ill will” would become an impediment to our being forgiven. It is a challenge to us to be forgiving.

    “And do not bring us to a time of trial.” There are a couple of things going on here. First, many of us will think in terms of asking God to keep us from sin. We equate temptation with sin. And this line certainly has that meaning. But it is more than that. Temptations can be any of the trials in life. A temptation could mean not dealing fairly in business, it could mean allowing ourselves to submit to the temptation of anger. It can be any situation that could be a test of a person’s humanity, integrity, and fidelity. We cannot escape these trials in life, but we can meet them and work through them if God is with us.

    You will recall I pointed out that Matthew’s version specifically refers to keeping us from the evil one. In omitting the last line Luke gives temptation a much wider meaning. That is not to say that temptation does not come from the evil one, but it does say to us that temptation can come from a wider horizon of possible storms. And it is with God’s help that we can weather those storms.

    Now this passage continues beyond the words of this simple prayer.

    Jesus then tells the disciples a parable. Now it is important to understand what Jesus is doing in this parable. It is not a lesson that teaches us how God reacts to our prayers. It is the antithesis of God reacts.

    The parable is about a man who receives a guest knocking at his door that he is not prepared to receive so late at night. In his own home, he lacks the resources to greet and provide for his late arriving guest. This is a major faux pax in ancient cultures. In desperation, this man goes to HIS neighbor house knocking at his door asking for the things necessary to receive his own guest properly. At first, the sleepy and annoyed neighbor refuses to get up out of bed to help. Go away! Can’t you see my door is shut. Don’t bother me. That is a typical human reaction, don’t you think? I mean, if you got a phone call in the middle of the night say 2:30 am, from a friend asking you to come out to help them set up a barbeque for a party because some late arrivals had just showed up, you would not receive that call with a joyous and loving heart, now, would you?

    But Jesus tells us that if for nothing else that neighbor’s obstinacy can be worn down with persistence. Now remember I said that this parable reflects negatively on the truth of how God hears our prayers. Jesus is not saying that God receives our first petitions with a deaf ear and that we need to be persistent so that we can wear God down. What he is saying is that we can expect much more from a God that loves us than from a neighbor who is annoyed with us.

    So, this passage closes with some very familiar phrases.

    “…Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

    Now this is not card blanche. There is some fine print.

    Ask, and it will be given.

    What will be given? Everything that YOU want? No, you will be given everything that God knows you need.

    Seek and you will find, what? Seek the Word of God and you will find it.

    Knock and it will be opened to you. What door? The door to your neighbor’s house? The door of opportunity? No. You should not expect that these doors will suddenly swing wide. But you can expect that the door to the kingdom of God and eternal life with God in God’s house will be opened to you.

    Now that’s pretty FINE print, wouldn’t you agree?

    This is the prayer that Jesus gives us. One very simple prayer for when we can’t find the words. But also, a template that can provide structures for how we can speak with God. Jesus tells us when you pray, say this. Not only with these words but with the assurance of the underlying love that the Father has for you.

    And finally, Jesus gives us the assurance that when we do pray to God, God will hear, and God will answer our prayers not with every we want or demand but with everything we need.

  • Sending Workers into the Harvest

    Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    In this passage in Luke this morning, we see Jesus considering the task he has at hand. Jesus is looking ahead at the many opportunities and possibilities that lie before him in his ministry. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” At the same time, he is seeing the great burden that lay before him – the oh, so many towns and villages to whom he still had to bring the word, love and mercy of God. It was a daunting task. So, Jesus looked at the resources he had available to him. He had been traveling around Judah with his disciples. He had been teaching, curing and healing and had been gathering an entourage of followers.

    We think of Jesus’ group of followers as being limited to the twelve whom he had called. But right away in this passage, Luke tells us that there were at least 70 additional followers who he could rely upon to do some of the work that lay before him.

    Seventy. That is a symbolic number in Israel’s cultural tradition.

    If you remember our Old Testament, seventy was the number of elders that Moses had selected to assist him in leading the Israelites through the desert. Also, seventy was the number of the Sanhedrin – the supreme council of the Jews. Significant because Luke is saying that this is the same number of workers that Jesus had called to be harvesters of the people. Luke is drawing a direct comparison between the leaders of the Jewish council and these new leaders that Jesus was commissioning for the harvest. One group was dedicated to its own political survival. The other, the 70 laborers commissioned by Jesus would be selflessly dedicated to the harvest.

    Finally, in ancient times, seventy was believed to be the number of nations in the world. This is significant because it gives us a glimpse of Luke’s universal view of Jesus’ ministry and how widely he believed the story of Jesus needed to be shared. Luke was looking forward to the day when all the nations of the world would know and love the Lord.

    Now, let’s take a look at the instructions that Jesus gives his harvesters and what we can learn from them.

    “Do not take a purse or wallet or sandals.” In essence, Jesus was telling them to travel light. Don’t carry with you the burdens of your everyday life. Don’t pack up to carry with you your financial concerns about how you will pay your way. Don’t even wear sandals on your feet. In other words, go out completely dependent upon God to supply your needs. This was the complete opposite of how the priests in the Temple operated. They were paid per diem out of the Temple’s treasury. They worked independent of God’s providence. They had made their ministries a business designed to support their own lifestyles.

    Jesus was saying the opposite. Jesus wanted these seventy to set an example – his example – that his ministry and theirs should be completely dependent upon God to provide for their needs. What Jesus was sending them to do was so important that he needed them to be totally committed and focused on the task at hand and not encumbered by the angst and distractions of everyday life.

    This is particularly important when you remember that in the previous passage, Jesus calls two from his followers to follow him. One responds that he needed to bury his father first. The other’s response is that he first needs to say goodbye to his family. Both had placed other concerns ahead Jesus’ call to follow him. Jesus sends them both away making it clear that he cannot abide with lukewarm devotion. If you choose to be a follower of Jesus, you need to do it on his terms, not yours. You need to be all in.

    So now, Jesus is being deliberate and clear with the seventy as to what expects from his harvesters. He expects them to follow his example – to be totally dependent upon God to supply their needs. He wants the people to see the difference between self-aggrandizement and a pure, selfless devotion to God.

    Now Jesus does say that laborers [the harvesters] deserve to be paid for their work. He tells them to cure those who are ill and heal those who are broken and in need of being made whole again. He tells them to proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near. As compensation, stay in the house that greets you and eat whatever is placed before you. That would be relying upon God’s providence to supply their needs. Don’t bounce around from house to house looking for a better deal. Servants of the Lord deserve to be paid but make this note – servants of the Lord cannot be seekers of luxury.

    Two thoughts struck me as I wrote this and about how we can reflect on this notion of traveling light and relying on God to supply the needs of his workers. At LVPC, we recently commissioned workers to go down to the DR to work on constructing a new church building for a congregation there. I know from experience, when they arrive, they will go to a Pentecostal community center where they will be given mattresses and where they sleep each night on the gym floor of the community center. They eat meals cooked for them by members of that church. I know also, when you here send workers to Kenya to participates in the Presbytery’s work in that harvest field, you do much the same – sleeping and eating where and what God has provided for you.

    OK. So, Jesus’ light traveling workers have been sent into the harvest. Jesus tells them one of two things will happen. Either you will be welcomed and greeted warmly exchanging God’s peace with one another, or you will not be greeted with welcome and your message that the kingdom of God is near will be rejected.

    In some intervening verses, Jesus mentions two towns in Syria that were notorious for their sinful ways – Tyre and Sidon. He tells them that judgement will be harsher on the towns that reject his message – more so than it would be on those two notorious and sinful towns. Why? Because those towns had never heard of Jesus. The harvest message that his seventy workers are carrying to the households and villages that they visit is that the Kingdom of God is near. As proof, these seventy workers are healing and curing and making whole the brokenness of the people in Jesus’ name. They have been given the opportunity to hear the Word; to know that God is reaching out to them. This is a great privilege. But it is also a great responsibility. Because it is a terrible thing to hear God’s voice and then reject it. That rejection becomes their judgement and those who reject God would be casting that judgement upon themselves. 

    Bible scholar William Barclay makes this comment. “If we receive these promises [of God’s steadfast love and mercy] they will become our greatest glory, but each one that we have rejected will some day be a witness against us.”

    What does that mean? It means that we have been given the opportunity and privilege of hearing the voice of God. And if we listen, we will hear God’s promises of mercy, steadfast love and salvation. Jesus says, “tell them the Kingdom of God is at hand.” But if we hear those promises and reject them, we are piling up judgements against ourselves. It is an awesome responsibility that we have in deciding the fate of our souls.

    Now let’s look at the euphoric outpouring of joy of the seventy when they return to Jesus. They are radiant. They are triumphant. They are eager to share their stories of casting out demons and of curing and healing the brokenness of the people. They are jumping up and down with excitement, chomping at the bit in their enthusiasm. They want to tell Jesus of their successes. They want to tell it from the mountain tops.

    A couple of years ago, a crew at LVPC finished construction of a church in the DR and we celebrated the first worship service in the new space with that congregation. We came back with videos and photos of the event. We came back to our home church and wanted to tell everyone what we had accomplished. Now, we knew that we had accomplished all that through the grace of God. But we did take a few moments to share our enthusiasm and stories with our church family. And they deserved to know, didn’t they. Afterall, they had supported the cost of sending out the workers to the harvest. But Jesus’ casts this warning shot across our bows.

    “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”

    Two things here. First, it is that Jesus was before the beginning and was with God to witness Satan’s fall from grace. Second, it is that hubris is destructive. It can sneak up upon us and suddenly distract us causing us to lose focus on the fact that it is God that is working through the laborers’ hands in the harvesters.

    Jesus says to his workers. “Look, I have given you all this authority and power over the enemy… But do not rejoice in this… rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” [Barclay]

    That’s a slap in the face with a wet towel. A wake up call, if you will.

    Yes. I have given you this power and authority and you have dealt a death blow to the forces of Satan but be leery of your pride. Jesus is saying to them, “You have had your triumphs, but so had Satan – for he was once chief of all God’s angels. But Satan fell victim to his own hubris and pride and was cast down from God’s heavenly kingdom. Keep your pride in check.

    Jesus is once again asking them to follow his example. You remember in the garden before his arrest; Jesus knelt before God in prayer asking that the cup before him be passed away from him. But he concludes his prayer saying, that it be God’s will be to be done and not his own.

    Jesus could have been praying, “Look at everything that I have done in your name and accomplished in spreading your word. I sacrificed being one with you to come down to work in your harvest. Why are you demanding this final sacrifice of me?

    Jesus could have gone to God pronouncing his laurels, expounding on his victories, praising his own glories. But he did not. Instead, he subjected his pride and bowed obediently before God as his servant.

    That is the example that Jesus has set for us. Again, Barclay provides this comment, “It will always remain true that our greatest glory is not what we have done – but what God has done for us.”

    Consider these words from the great hymn, Rock of Ages.

    “Nothing in my hand I bring,

    Simply to thy cross I cling;

    Naked, come to thee for dress;

    Helpless, look to thee for grace;

    Foul, I to the mountain fly;

    Wash me, Savior, or I die.”

    Again, I turn to Barclay for a closing comment on this passage. “Pride bars [us] from heaven; humility is the passport to the presence of God.”

    So, I say to you my friends when we look at the work of our hands, when we look at all that we have built up, this church, this community, this congregation; when we laud all our accomplishments, let us say aloud. God is Good. God is gracious to us. Look at what God has done for us.

    “Blessed be God because he has not removed his steadfast love from us.”  [Psalm 66] Amen!

    Reference Source: The Gospel of Luke by William Barclay, Westminster John Knox Press, 2017

  • Don’t Let the Trees Block Your Vision of the Forest

    Luke 8: 26-39

    Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA

    This passage in Luke’s Gospel this morning is a difficult one to preach on. To phrase it succinctly, there are two issues that we modern day readers come up against here that make it difficult to see the forest for a couple of trees that get in our way.

    First, there are the demons. We modern readers don’t usually have firsthand experiences with the kinds of demons that first-century ancients believed in. You see, in ancient times, the people took for granted that evil spirits and demons really did exist. The ancient peoples believed that demons were active and regularly involved in their lives. These demons were very destructively working in harmful ways. It was the only way that they could explain conditions such as mental illness, schizophrenia, paranoia, addictions, obsessions, and other destructive habits. So, in the absence of medical science that could explain some of these conditions, they believed that evil spirits were actively working to make their lives miserable.

    The second obstacle that we face today is how we feel we should treat animals influenced by our modern 21st Century sensibilities. Some people will listen to this story – of when the herd of swine is possessed by the demons that Jesus has extracted from the possessed man and who then run head long over a cliff and drown in the lake below – they will listen and take offense at how the treatment of the swine is depicted. They shake their heads and step back their vision clouded and unable to see what Jesus was doing and how he was working in the life of this possessed man. Some people can’t get passed the notion that Jesus would allow these animals to be slaughtered in such a way. They feel it is inhumane, and they shut down not being able to see – as I had said before – see the forest because of a couple of trees blocking their vision.

    As I said, I had difficulty understanding what was happening here; so, in preparing for today’s message, I am relying heavily on an outside resource for insight. I found a commentary by a Professor of Preaching from the Lutheran Seminary of St. Paul, a person by the name of Michael Rogness. His thoughts on the passage helped me and I hope you to understand this it better.

    OK. So, let’s get into it.

    The first thing that will help us is that we should not be reading this as a stand-alone story. Our reading today comes from Luke 8. But we should note that it is the same story that appears in Mark 5. And in Mark’s version, in his condition, the man is doing a great deal of harm to himself. The man was “bruising himself with stones.” No one could restrain him, even with chains. The man, in his condition had developed unusual strength. In his rage, he was able to break whatever restraints that were put on him. So much so that the town people had given up trying to help him and preferred that he be consigned to living in the tombs [the dug-out caves] reserved for the dead. Finally, this man believed that he was so possessed by demons [plural] that they numbered in the thousands – as many soldiers as would be in a Roman legion. So many in fact, that when Jesus began to draw a demon out of him, he refused to believe that he had been cured. He fought and convulsed against Jesus’ efforts every step of the way.

    So, we have some additional background being offered by Mark and that gives us more insight. But more than that, [again with the assertion that this passage should not be treated as a stand-alone story.] we need to look at some of the other miracle curing stories before and after today’s text so that we can begin to see the forest – the wider scope of the lesson the Gospel writers are offering us.

    In the previous chapter in Luke, Jesus was invited into the home of Simon the Pharisee for dinner. While Jesus, his host and guests are seated at the dinner table, a woman, who we are told is a sinner, bursts in with a jar of alabaster. She rushes to Jesus and sits at his feet and washes his feet with her tears and then dries them with her hair. She then continues to kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.

    Now in the story, Simon – the host, takes offense. He must think to himself, if this man [Jesus] really is a prophet, he should have known what kind of sinner this woman is and should have pushed her away. So, in his very unloving way, Simon accuses Jesus of being a charlatan [not the prophet everyone thought him to be] and the woman of being a sinner with whom no respectable person should be associating with. In the end, after Jesus has told Simon a parable which was meant to put him in his place, Jesus turns to the woman to tell her, her sins have been forgiven. “Your faith has saved you, go in peace.”

    In this story, Jesus’ healing actions begin by forgiving the woman her sins. In other words, the comfort and healing Jesus gives the woman reaches into her soul to relieve her deepest pangs of guilt so that she could go in peace. According to Professor Rogness this is the first connected story that will help us to see beyond the trees and into the forest. It is that the scope of Jesus’ power and authority to heal goes to the very depths of our souls.

    In the paragraph immediately preceding today’s text, Jesus and the disciples are crossing the Lake in a boat. You know the story. Jesus lay asleep at the stern of the boat a great storm comes upon them. The disciples are terrified that the boat will capsize and that they will most assuredly drown. They rush to Jesus to shake and awaken him. Jesus rises and Luke tells us that he rebukes the wind and the waves, and they cease to rage. The disciples may have believed that the storm was an evil force, a demon if you will. But Jesus shows us and them that he commands even the forces of nature be they demons or not. In other words, the scope of Jesus’ authority and power can heal even the forces of nature. The bigger message here is that Jesus’ role in God’s plan is to bring God’s Shalom to all of creation. Jesus has the power and authority to heal even creation.

    The story that immediately follows today’s text is of Jesus double healing of a 12-year-old girl who has died and the woman who had been hemorrhaging for many years. These are the stories of an innocent girl who has died and a woman who according to the Law was ritually unclean.

    Jesus has been summoned to the home of the young girl by the grieving parents. On the way, a woman reaches out from the crowd to touch Jesus’ robes. Jesus feels power go out from him and turns to confront whoever had touched him. He finds the woman. She tells her story. Jesus forgives her intrusion and tells her that her faith has made her well; go in peace.

    Jesus then turns his attention to the parents who are begging for his healing touch for their dying daughter. But by this time, servants have arrived to them that the girl has died. Jesus hears this news and despite the fact that all have given up all hope, Jesus announces that the girl is not dead and that he will still go to her. “Do not fear [he tells the parents], only believe and she will be saved.”

    Now Jesus goes to the house and despite jeering form the crowds who were assembled to grieve for the family and the girl. Jesus enters the house and resurrects the girl and gives her a new life.

    Both lives in these stories were changed by Jesus. They were healed – one from a debilitating illness and the other from death. These healings we are told by Jesus are accredited to their faith – that of the woman and the girl’s parents. The power of Faith is another means by which we can see beyond the trees that block our vision.

    Now in these connected stories, we can see how Jesus brings deliverance from a sinful guilty conscience, from demons, from a raging storm, from a long-term ailment, and even from death itself.

    Now, I think we can turn our eyes to today’s text.

    Jesus arrives in a gentile country on the eastern side of the Lake Galilee. It is an early attempt to reach out to a non-Jewish community. Immediately, he is confronted by a man who believes he is possessed by demons. Now the medical reasons for his ailment we can understand today may be mental illness brought on by schizophrenia, paranoia, obsessions, destructive habits and so on.

    Whatever his condition was, the man believed [and the townspeople who knew of him believed] that he was possessed by demons. However, Jesus sees the man as he truly is. He is a broken person in pain. What were the causes? We don’t know the causes. But Jesus allows him to come to be comforted and healed much like the woman who reached out to touch his robe. Unlike the woman though the man struggled. He didn’t have the same faith in Jesus that the woman and the parents had in our other healing stories. He may have heard of Jesus, but he did not have the faith that the others had. He was fully convinced that he was possessed not only by one demon but by a legion of demons – as many as the size of a Roman regiment. So, despite Jesus’ attempt to heal his mind the man clung to his belief that his demons were still in control of his mind. So much so that he probably convulsed and screamed uncontrollably to the point that the nearby herd of swine were agitated and began to stampede. Following the lead pig, they rushed away down a slope and into the Lake.

    At this point, let’s address that elephant in the story – the herd of swine. Let’s take a moment to understand that this story is being told from a Jewish perspective and in the Jewish culture pigs were an unclean animal – one which Jews had no care for. If a herd of swine were destroyed as a part of this story, our Jewish authors would not have been distressed about it. So, take this with that grain of salt.

    So, at this point, Jesus may be using this unfortunate end to the lives of the herd to convince the man of his healing. That his demons had entered the herd and were gone. They had all perished with the herd. The man seeing this was able to finally calm down enough to be able to accept that Jesus had cured whatever his mental illnesses were, as well.

    So, animal rights activists, let’s not let this tree block our vision of what Jesus can do for us. Instead, let’s focus on the point of the story – that the man had been healed. The Greek word used by Luke is “sozo”. Sozo can be translated as “saved”, “delivered”, or “made whole.” What we need to focus on is that this man was not only delivered from his demons, not only cured of a terrible burden, but all together healed, made whole and saved. The forest to see here is that is what Jesus and his miraculous healing powers can do for us.

    Now we come to two important points at the close of this passage.

    First, let us consider the reaction of the townspeople. Unlike the Syrian woman at the well when she realized she was speaking to – the Messiah. She rushed to the townspeople to share that good news, and they all rushed out to believe and welcome Jesus into their town. Their response was to accept the Good News.

    Unlike that story, these town folk reacted with distain and asked Jesus to leave them immediately. They rejected the Good News of Jesus’ saving and healing touch. They were more concerned with the loss of their swineherd than with the healing of the wild man who was now sitting calmly at Jesus’ feet, clothed in the loving embrace of the Christ. It was unfortunate that they could not get beyond that tree. That loss blocked their vision, and they were not able to see the miracle before them.

    Now the final piece of the story that we need to reflect upon is Jesus’ instructions to the man. Recognizing that Jesus had healed and saved him, he no longer wished to stay in this community. However, Jesus does not allow him to become follower. Instead, Jesus makes him a proclaimer.

    This is something of a “Great Commission.” But instead of sending his disciples out to evangelize and baptize the nations, this man is sent back to his hometown to declare how much God had done for him.

    This is perhaps the last lesson in this story for us. Our Great Commission may not be to go out into the world to proclaim Jesus is Lord but to go into our own communities, towns and villages. There, too, we are called to proclaim the risen Lord and what he has done to save, deliver, heal us and make us whole. We need to proclaim how Jesus has made us whole. We need to tell the story of our own salvation and rebirth in Christ. That is the forest that lies beyond the trees blocking our vision and that we need to see and proclaim.

    We need to help the world to see the forest – that is the wider scope of Jesus’ healing touch. We need to do that by telling our stories of healing and how he has taken our brokenness and made us whole. You – each of you – have a story to tell. Go and share it.

    Reference Source: article written by: Michael Rogness, Professor of Preaching from the Lutheran Seminary of St. Paul,