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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her sermons from our most recent sermon series on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our current series is called BESIDES JESUS and will examine some of the people who walked besides Jesus and helped him, or opposed him, in his ministry of Grace. Enjoy.
Andrew and Philip
March 19 & 22, 2026 5th Sunday in Lent
John 1:35-42 John 1:43-46
In the first three synoptic gospels, Peter meets Jesus when he's fishing on the Sea of Galilee. In John’s Gospel, Andrew and Peter are in the wilderness being baptized by John the Baptist, and they meet Jesus while they are camping by the river. I’ll try to resolve this discrepancy in a bit, but today we’re going to introduce you to Andrew and Philip, the first of Jesus’ evangelists.
It’s mentioned that Andrew is a disciple of John’s. Now being a disciple of a holy man did not necessarily mean that you had to follow him around all over the place. I can imagine that Andrew met John the Baptist at some point, then Andrew went to the river Jordan to be baptized. It’s even possible that he went home and returned with his brother Simon-Peter, or that Peter went with him on the first trip. It was while they were by the river that John said to Andrew: There is the Messiah. And Andrew went to talk to Jesus.
The Gospel isn’t clear if this is before or after Jesus’ forty-day fast, but I think it was after because, in the Gospel, John testifies to having baptized Jesus already. It is quite possible that Jesus came out of the desert after his fast and stayed in John’s camp for a few days to recover from his ordeal.
John made it very clear that he was not the Messiah but that everyone should prepare themselves to be ready to receive the Messiah when he did come. John knew that it was time for Jesus to begin his ministry, and that he was going to need to start collecting his own set of disciples to help spread the word of God's love. He says directly to Andrew: There is the Messiah. He must have trusted Andrew's judgment and felt that he would be a person who could help Jesus in his ministry. Andrew, after speaking with Jesus, goes and gets his brother Simon and brings him to meet Jesus, and Jesus gives him the name of Peter. The brothers Andrew and Peter become the first two disciples of Jesus.
Jesus then goes to Galilee. I think that the brother’s went home to their village of Bethsaida, and Jesus went to Nazareth where he preached in the synagogue and then got thrown out of town. He then went to Andrew and Peter’s town and preached in their boat on the Sea of Galilee and then told Peter and Andrew to lower their nets. This is when they pull in the huge catch and Peter tells Jesus to get away from him because he’s a sinful man. I think that Peter didn’t quite believe that Jesus was who John said he was until that point. But after that he did accept him as a holy man, if not the Messiah. (I think that all of the disciples had to think about that possibility for a while before they could fully accept it.)
Then Philip is introduced to Jesus and also becomes a disciple. Philip then goes to recruit Nathanial, who is skeptical. Nathanial says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” And Philip replies, “Come and see.”
That line can anything good come out of Nazareth always puzzled me. Seems a little rude, don’t you think? So, I did a bit research and found out a few things that might have led to Nathaniel feeling this way.
First, Nazareth was an insignificant village, with population of only about 400, not connected to any trade routes and tucked away in the countryside. Nathanial is expressing a common sentiment that the Messiah, a figure of great importance, could not possibly come from such an unremarkable place. (Although I feel personally that it was a perfect place for Jesus's parents to hide him and keep him safe while he was growing up.) Also, some scholars have suggested that the town might have had a reputation for something bad that had happened in the past, socially or morally, causing Nathanial to have a prejudice against it.
But I think that the most significant reason that Nathanial is skeptical is that there were no direct prophecies about the Messiah coming from Nazareth. Micah points to Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah, which is where Jesus was born, and I imagine that a lot of people assumed that the Messiah would have grown up in Bethlehem. Although we know that wasn't possible because Herod the Great killed all the baby boys under two years of age, when he learned that Jesus, the future King of the Jews, was to be born in Bethlehem.
However, Nathanial does meet Jesus and becomes a disciple.
I mentioned that Andrew and Philip are the first evangelists – people who are leading people to Jesus. I know that evangelism can be a scary word for many of us. I often think of people knocking on my door or yelling at me on the street corner, and I don’t want to present that image of myself or be seen as overly pushy. But Andrew and Philip aren’t like that. There is a phrase that is used in this scripture that we can use as well: Come and see.
Jesus didn’t yell at Andrew and his friends or insist that they join them. He invited them to his camp where they probably talked around the campfire about what Jesus believed in. I’m sure he told them about God’s love, forgiveness, atonement, the promise of Heaven and God’s grace. Jesus didn’t push anyone to become his followers, he just said come and see my message of faith. Come and experience who I am and what I am offering in the name of my Heavenly Father, and make up your own mind as to whether or not you want to be involved with my movement.
That is probably how Andrew got his brother Peter to meet Jesus: Come and see. Look, bro – just come and check this dude out. He’s got some important things to say that you might like to hear. And Peter went, and listened, and decided that he wanted to follow Jesus. Of course, I think that a lot of that was because he trusted his brother, so he was a little more receptive than Nathanial.
Philip did the same thing for Nathanial, but he was met with more resistance. Nathanial had his doubts and expressed them. Come and see said Philip. Notice that there isn’t any pushing or yelling in the story. There is an offering to go and see what this Jesus is all about. And Nathanial liked the message and stayed.
Now we are told to go out and make disciples, and I think that the Come and See approach is a good way to go. Come and See gives the invitation; not in a pushy way – just come and see for yourself. There are some people in our lives who we’re close to, like Andrew and Peter, who are easier for us to approach. We don’t have start out by inviting them to church. We can say: Come to our Soup’s On; come to our Mine-Kill worship, or our Family Fun Day, or our blessing of the animals. And yes, we can say, come to worship and see. Easter is coming up. Is there someone you know who might like to go to one of our Sunrise or Regular services? All you have to do is say: Come and See.
And there are some people, like Nathanial who we know are going to be skeptical. But we shouldn't let that put us off. We need to be open to God working with unexpected people in unexpected ways. God sometimes chooses unlikely people for his plans, so we shouldn't discount someone because we might think that they’re the type of person who would never be interested in God. We don't know what's going on in their lives. Maybe your moment of invitation is the request they need to take a step towards a personal relationship with God through Jesus.
And finally, we need to respect people's personal encounters with the divine. Sometimes we have certain ideas of how people should encounter Christ, but everyone encounters God differently. Our job is not to monitor the encounter, our job is to offer the invitation in a spirit of love, fellowship, and grace.
Andrew and Phillip didn't just stop with Peter and Nathaniel. They spent the rest of their lives inviting people to come and see Jesus. Some people said no; some people laughed at them; some people went and said: No, not for me. They weren't 100% successful in their evangelism efforts. But that didn't matter because to the people they did offer the invitation, who came, and saw, and found Christ’s love, that made all the difference to them and probably changed their lives for the better.
So, let's follow the example of Andrew and Phillip to come and see Christ. Let’s keep ourselves from getting discouraged by remembering that everyone has free will and their own spiritual journey, and they can accept or refuse Christ as they find them. Who knows? Maybe each of us can help one more person connect to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Kingdom of God. That will be a measure of a life well spent for anyone of us.
Nicodemus
March 16, 2026 4th Sunday of Lent
2 Corinthians 5:17-20 John 3:1-12
Nicodemus appears three times in the Gospel of John. And if you think about all the people who are only mentioned once in the Gospel story, that tells us that Nicodemus had a continual connection, or maybe even a relationship, with Jesus throughout Jesus’ ministry.
In the first encounter that he has with Jesus, we learn that he’s a Pharisee and a Jewish leader. He comes to Jesus at night, which implies that is a private meeting; not one that Nicodemus wanted to have in public when Jesus was preaching in the market, or even at a dinner party where Jesus might have been talking with people about theology and philosophy. It is very probable that Nicodemus came to Jesus for two reasons. First, because he was personally curious about this man he had heard about and wanted to check him out. And second, because he’s a Pharisee, and it’s very likely that a group of Pharisees decided to send him to talk to Jesus to see where he stood theologically.
Nicodemus starts out the conversation by saying to Jesus: Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God. That gives us a clue that the Pharisees were very aware of Jesus's ability to heal and that he had been actively healing people. It was believed that only people who were truly holy could access the healing power of God and use it to heal others. The devil could only destroy or bring illness or misfortune on people. At this point in the Gospel story, it’s before Jesus has declared to anyone that he is the Messiah or the son of God. So, at this point Nicodemus simply views Jesus as a holy man of great faith.
I think that Jesus knows that there's a little bit of a challenge and evaluation going on here and that Nicodemus is probing him to find out where he stands theologically, which is why Jesus jumps right in and says: Very truly I tell you no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.
Now we need to clarify this line a little bit, because there are several different ways to translate the Greek adverb which was used to talk about being born. The adverb can mean again, meaning one more time; from the beginning, suggesting a new creation; and from above, that is from God. And I have seen all four of these translations used in different Bibles: Born again; born from the beginning; born from above; and born from God.
Why would Jesus jump right into this statement/argument? Well, Jesus would later in the discussion describe Nicodemus as a teacher of Israel, implying that he was well trained in Old Testament law and tradition. (We also find out later in the Gospel of John that he was a Sanhedrin, which is a member of the ruling authorities of the Jerusalem Temple – Jesus probably knew this when Nicodemus came for their little chat.) And as a teacher of the law and traditions Nicodemus might stand on the very traditional side that ONLY people who were descendent from the original twelve tribes could be Jewish and therefore blessed and accepted by God.
Jesus preached to anyone, and taught everyone, that they were loved, cherished, accepted, and forgiven by God. Jesus didn’t care if he spoke, healed, or socialized with Jews or gentiles, slaves or free; healthy or ill people; men or women. We are all equal and loved by God. And Jesus lived and demonstrated that belief.
As a member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus was a wealthy, educated, and powerful man, well respected by his people, and a descendant of the patriarch Abraham. Yet Jesus said to him you must be born again; born from the beginning; born from God. Jesus told Nicodemus that physically just being alive on this planet was not enough to guarantee a connection with God. Neither could his descendance from the line of Abraham guarantee his salvation. Only a person who has a spiritual awakening, a birth from above, will be able to see and experience the Kingdom of God.
This is a belief that has been continually present in Christianity.
There is an old saying that a person is born, bred, and dead in a religion. To use our own denomination: A person is born a Methodist, bred a Methodist and dies a Methodist. In other words, the creed that your born into is the one that you live in all your life. But it also implies that you don’t have much agency to explore new ideas outside of your creed or even change your theological construct if you want to.
But life impacts us. We are constantly coming up against experiences that cause us to question who we are and the value of what we believe in. And there’s nothing wrong with that. As we see with Nicodemus, Jesus constantly called into question people’s assumptions about the validity of what they thought was right.
We can assume that Nicodemus came to Jesus with the assumption that only those who were born Jewish would be loved and forgiven by God. Jesus challenges him to think about his relationship with God as a spiritual connection – not an automatic you’ve been born and bred to this therefore you have a connection to God.
We might be born into a social construct, but that doesn’t mean we have to live all our lives in that social construct, or even that the construct will remain the same all of our lives. Change is a constant in our lives that we need to learn how to deal with. And is one of the elements of life that Christianity deals with by accepting that: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.
Many of us see that statement as the point in our lives when we realized that we are spiritual beings. Maybe before we had an inkling that there was something more out there than this physical world, but then we have a moment when it hits us that we have souls that connect to the infinite power of the universe. And everything seems possible. Everything seems new. Everything before seems only to have led to this point of revelation. In our story Nicodemus is presented with that revelation.
But how do we maintain that connection? It’s so overwhelming and hard to know how to continually grasp it, and we can also feel that we are unworthy of it. And that is where Christ comes in. If we are willing to have the discipline to follow Christ, and to show our love for God, that infinite universal power, by showing our love for each other, by loving each other as Jesus loved us, then we can maintain our relationship with that power.
In the Gospel it’s presented that Nicodemus had a change of heart; that he started to view life in a new way. Unlike Peter who changed right away and was with Jesus all the time Nicodemus is the person who comes to Christ gradually. The next time Nicodemus appears in the Gospel of John he’s acting against the Sanhedrin, demonstrating his sympathy with Jesus. When the Sanhedrin began to denounce Jesus as a false prophet Nicodemus counselled the court by saying “Does our order judge a man before it hears him, and knows what he’s doing?” And then he appears at Jesus’ burial and donates the spices to be placed between the folds of the cloth in which Jesus was buried. So, he goes from someone who is curious and questioning Jesus to someone who respects and possibly believes in him.
The Bible doesn’t say what happened to Nicodemus. But Christian tradition has it that Nicodemus was baptized by Peter and John, suffered persecution and lost his membership in the Sanhedrin, and was forced to leave Jerusalem because of his Christian faith. He became a follower and teacher to Jewish people showing them how Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of the Messiah.
I like to think that Nicodemus changed. That he connected with God in a spiritually personal way and that through Jesus’ teaching saw things in a new light. And that he realized that all people were loved and cherished by God, and he began to love and cherish them.
I think that is the story we should all strive for in our own lives. Let us try to open our hearts to make things new everyday with the love of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And every day we will be born anew into God’s kingdom.
Scribes and Pharisees
March 8, 2026 3rd Sunday of Pentecost
Matthew 23:23-26 Mark 11:15-18
Today we're going to talk about two of the bad-guy-groups in the Gospels: The Scribes and Pharisees. But first I want to give a little bit of background information about what these two groups were.
Many scholars believe that the Pharisee movement started back in Babylon as a means to preserve Jewish thought, law, and tradition. It was actually a resistance movement against the Babylonian belief that if people who were conquered lived in Babylon that they would, after two or three generations, forget their culture, and become Babylonians. Many Jews in Babylon had to compartmentalize their lives – Babylonian with their business in the outside world, but Jewish once they walked through the door at home.
After the Jews returned to Israel, the Pharisees continued to be teachers and advisors within communities to help people discern the best way to live Jewish lives. A Pharisee could be a Rabbi, a local teacher, or even a businessman. You trained to become a Pharisee by studying law, custom and rhetoric, and were granted the status of Pharisee when it was decided that you knew enough.
A scribe was a profession of people who knew how to read and write accurately. Ancient Egypt praised it as being the best and most honorable profession. And it was needed because many people didn’t know, or only basically knew, how to read and write. You could pay a scribe to write a letter for you or to read a letter to you. Regular people used scribes to record deeds, create wills, and notarize documents. Politicians used them to write and record important documents and to issue official decrees.
However, there were also specific scribes who were responsible for transcribing the Torah and other holy books. This wasn’t an easy job because your translation had to be exact. When a scribe copied a page, it was reviewed by other scribes to make sure he had not made a mistake, and the page was destroyed if it wasn’t perfect. But since scribes were exacting in their copying of the law, they started to become interpreters of God's law and teachers of the Torah.
Now both the Pharisees and Scribes sound like they would be pretty good guys, right? They're just trying to make sure that Jewish law is observed and that the Jewish culture survives. The Pharisees just wanted to help Jewish people lead good Jewish lives. And the scribes had the very sacred job of making sure that the books, that we know today as the Old Testament, would be copied accurately so that there weren't any misrepresentations of the sacred writings.
But over the years both the Scribes and the Pharisees had started to become professionals at spelling out the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit behind it. Their regulations and traditions that they interpreted with the law became more important than the law itself. And they also started to have the power to condemn people who they felt were not following the law and traditions correctly. To give an example: They could fine someone, or even banish them for a period of time, for tying a knot on the Sabbath because that was considered to be an act of work, not of rest. Even if that tying of the knot was to fix a bandage of someone who was injured.
Jesus condemned this kind of oppression. When following the letter of the law, and maintaining tradition, is not done for the sake of helping and loving your neighbor, then this is not living a holy life.
This is why Jesus says: For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. The mint, dill, and cumin refer to the payments of spices that Pharisees and Scribes would demand for their services. Spices that very often poor people could not pay. Jesus implies that they're so concerned with their payment that they're not even considering how justice, mercy, and faith impact the people they’re advising.
Jesus goes on to say: For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. In other words, stop putting on a show of being holy on the outside, by elaborately cleaning your eating utensils publicly, but not being holy on the inside, by not caring for your neighbor. Jesus is challenging them to walk their talk, which they are mostly not doing.
And now we get to one of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible, which is Jesus overturning the money lender tables in the temple. How does that connect to the scribes and the Pharisees? Although the Sadducees were the administrators of the Temple, the Scribes and Pharisees were very influential in promoting the temple tax and the necessity of perfect sacrifice that people had to make during Passover.
When you walked into the temple there were three courts. The outer most court was the court of the gentiles, which was accessible to non-Jews and anyone who was considered to be impure. It gave space for anyone to come and worship or observe Jewish practices. The second court included the court of women and the court of Israel, which was reserved for Jewish men. The innermost area of the temple was called the Holy of Holies, which only priests could enter, and where the sacrifices were performed.
Now for a person to perform a sacrifice they had to do two things. First, they had to exchange ordinary money into Temple money. The reason being that only traditional Jewish money could be stored in the Temple; foreign money wasn’t allowed because it was considered to be impure. The money changers would charge a base fee to exchange the impure money for pure money – to be fair that fee was their salary. But it was well known that they would cheat people by manipulating the weighing scales and over charge them. Then a person had to buy an animal for sacrifice and the animals inside the Temple were charged almost twice the going rate. However, the animals in the Temple had been approved by the temple administration. If you brought your own animal in it might not be approved by the priest and you would have to go ahead and buy an animal anyway. The temple was condoning and taking a cut of these very exorbitant fees.
This den of robbers was happening in the court of the gentiles. A supposedly sacred space set aside for people from all nations to come and experience God.
Jesus was understandably angry about this, but in overturning the tables he was only demonstrating what most people were feeling, and was protesting against the corruption for people who had no political voice. Jesus preached love and tolerance; Jesus preached non-violence; but Jesus never tolerated oppression and always spoke against hypocrisy.
When Jesus overturned those tables, he confronted hypocrisy in a very specific space political space. The Temple authorities didn't mind Jesus preaching out among the people in the countryside. Out there the Scribes and the Pharisees were the ones he mostly confronted with their hypocrisy. But now he is taking it to the center from where it all that radiates. Now it’s not just a theological statement but a political one, which is why the Scribes, Pharisees and the Temple Authorities got so angry and started to plot to kill him.
Where John the Baptist urges us to strive for more holiness in our lives and Peter shows us that we are disciples who are taking our steps towards holiness, messing up sometimes, but still walking along that road, the scribes and the Pharisees show us how NOT to be.
We need to watch that we don't live like scribes and Pharisees who are only considering following the rules and disregarding compassion. We need to guard ourselves that we don’t fall into hypocritical patterns. Also, the turning of the tables is a warning to churches to keep our places of worship from falling down the rabbit hole of thinking only about money. This is a place to worship and connect with God, not a place of commercial gain. Jesus' actions challenge us to align our hearts and minds with divine standards rather than standards of profit or convenience. Plus, by using the court of gentiles for profit the Jewish leaders were saying to non-Jews that they were not really worthy of a space of holiness. We need to be careful that we don't treat people who come into our church like second class citizens; we need to welcome them with the heart of Christ’s love that encourages them to worship with us as equals.
Open your heart to be like Jesus. Speak up against the hypocrisy of the world and challenge it with compassion. If we do, we might find that we also are turning over tables of negative social and political convention and making the world a better place.
Peter
March 1, 2026 2nd Sunday of Lent Communion
Mark 8:31-38 Matthew 14:22-33
When Jesus goes into the desert he is tempted by the devil in three ways. The first is with bread and water, which represents physical comfort. The second is when the devil tells him to throw himself off the top of the Temple of Jerusalem, and that the angels of God will keep him from breaking himself. This represents his physical safety and complete control over the events in his life. The third is when he offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world to rule, which would give him complete political power. The catch is that Jesus will worship the devil and not God. Jesus rejects these temptations and the devil leaves him. But the end of the story says that the devil leaves him to tempt him at another time.
In today’s first scripture Jesus is telling his disciples what's going to happen to him once he reaches Jerusalem. He declares that he's going to be rejected by the chief priests and the scribes, and then he's going to be arrested and executed, but on the third day he's going to rise again. Jesus isn’t talking to the general public, just the inner group who have been with him since the beginning. These are the people who have spent the most time with him. He has taught them his philosophy and showed them how to access the power of God for themselves. He has sent them out on preaching and healing missions. He has spent late nights debating with them. These are the people that have lived with him, and worked with him, and have really gotten to know him. Jesus is being honest with them and not sugar coating anything. He's not saying: Oh, we might have some problems when we get to Jerusalem. He’s telling it like it is.
But the disciples have a hard time accepting this, and Peter is the one who speaks up, and voices his concerns. Throughout the Gospels you see Peter being the spokesperson for the other disciples. Peter is the disciple who first recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah. He’s the one who Jesus says will inherit the keys of heaven. Peter in many ways has become Jesus’ right-hand man. So, I think after this very startling revelation from Jesus, Peter feels compelled to speak the thought that many of the other disciples have: No way! No way this is going to be how Jesus ends his ministry and his life.
Remember that Jesus has already confided in his disciples that he’s the Messiah, but the disciples grew up with very definite ideas in their minds of what the Messiah was going to be. There were several points of view about this. For some people the Messiah was going to be a great warrior, like King David, who would liberate the Jewish nation from Rome and reestablish Israel as a sovereign nation. For others he would be a great holy man who would rid the Temple of its corruption and restore it to being a place of right worship for God. This Messiah would become the high priest and because Israel would be restored to holiness, all the nations would acknowledge that Israel should be sovereign. And some people thought that the Messiah would be part warrior and part high priest. But in every scenario Israel would be restored to a nation unto itself.
But none of that happens if the Messiah dies. I think the disciples are pretty shocked by Jesus’ statement and they look to Peter to say something. But instead of assuring Peter and the disciples Jesus says: Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. That seems harsh, but I think that Jesus is recognizing that Satan has returned and is tempting him, through Peter’s fear, to abandon his mission to bring redemption to the world. Satan is working through Jesus’ love of his disciples. When we love someone, we don’t want to see them hurt. And sometimes we do make the mistake of not being truthful or sugar-coating bad things to spare those we love from pain. But Jesus doesn’t. He faces the truth and he gives his disciples, his friends, the truth so that they can begin to face it.
There is dignity and respect there. Jesus has faith in them. He has faith that they can drop their cultural misconceptions of the Messiah and live with the reality of what he must do. I think he knows that this is hard for them, which is why he tells them quite a distance from Jerusalem. Humans don’t always suddenly re-wire in our brains our preconceptions of things. Jesus was giving them time to think about what he said and allowing them space to realign their conceptions into something new.
Peter’s story is that of the disciple who shows us how someone gets realigned and changed into someone new.
Do you remember where Peter starts out? Jesus sits in his boat and preaches to the crowd and then tells Peter to lower his nets. Peter does and pulls in a huge haul and then falls to his knees and tells Jesus to get away from him because he’s a sinful man. We don’t know what Peter did that made him so sinful. Did he gamble his money away, get into bar fights, or cheat on his wife? It doesn’t matter – when Peter meets Jesus, he believes that he is not worthy to be loved by God. But Jesus sees the good in him and tells him to follow and become his disciple.
During the gospel story we see Peter grow. He learns from Jesus and realizes that Jesus is the Messiah and is strong enough in that conviction to say it out loud. Peter sees Jesus transfigured on the mountain. Peter learns how to preach and to heal others with the power of God’s Spirit. Peter grows so much in his faith that he’s able to get out of the boat and walk to Jesus on water. Yes, he gets freaked out and Jesus has to pull him up, but he walks on water.
Of course, Peter isn’t perfect. He stumbles a lot, and during Jesus’ trial he denies him. But that’s all of us. Personal and spiritual growth is not linear; it’s sometimes three steps forward and then one step back, and sometimes we can get sidetracked, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t growing closer to God.
Sometimes following Jesus is hard. We do have to deny things in life that might give us physical comfort or status, like a fancy car or the temptation of addiction that might pull us away from love into selfishness. We have to conquer our fear of personal safety sometimes to stand up to oppression – I’m thinking of people who’ve had dogs or firehoses of water set upon them while they were peacefully protesting. And we need to be careful of gaining social and political power. Having power can be a great thing when you can use it to help others, but we need to guard ourselves from the trap of collecting power for the sake of having power.
When Jesus says: For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it, he is talking about giving up the life of selfish gain that the world asks us to be a part of and to see the world differently. The world asks us to think about only our needs in this material space within our limited time. But Jesus asks us to see ourselves as interconnected souls who are working together to support each other during our time, in this space. And then Jesus asks us to see that this time and space isn’t the only one. Jesus wants us to see that there is an eternity beyond this one that we can access if we believe that it’s there and get ourselves ready to cross over to it by learning how to love each other. Love is the ticket to ride that train.
Peter lost his life of fear and hatred of himself by following Jesus and then learned how to be a better person who lived with Grace. Think of what Peter did after Jesus was resurrected.
Peter managed the new church and led the disciples in a godly life. He preached on Pentecost and helped to convert thousands of followers who took Jesus’ message to the ends of the known world. He opened his mind beyond just being Jewish and accepted people from other cultures, like the Roman Centurion. This man from a fishing village in Galilee traveled all over the middle east and into Europe. He started the church in Rome, and yes, he was arrested several times and eventually died a martyr at the possible age of 67 defending his faith. But he lived a long, full life of adventure as a disciple of Christ working on building the church we know today.
Unlike Peter, who did live with the fear of prosecution, we can be thankful that we live in a time and a place where we can develop and live out our faith peacefully. But are we taking advantage of that? What practices are we doing to grow our faith? How are we connecting to others in love? And how can we do more and be better?
Peter is us. We sometimes don’t think we are worthy of God’s love, but Jesus thinks differently. We sometimes have revelations of our purpose and certainty that we can do anything. But we also sometimes get overwhelmed and start to doubt and sink, but Jesus is there to pull us back. We sometimes get pulled into the selfishness of the world, but our hearts can be open to when Jesus says: You’re going the wrong way, let’s get back on the right track. We can keep growing and keep learning and keep doing God’s work. And when we are done, God and Jesus will say: Well, done good and faithful servant. Come on home and rest with me.
So be like Peter and open your mind and heart to Jesus’ love. And you will have a life of adventure in Christ.
John the Baptist
February 26, 2026 1st Sunday in Lent
Matthew 3:1-12 Matthew 14:1-13a
Today we're going to begin a new sermon series for Lent called Besides Jesus. Besides has two meanings. First of all, because the people we will talk about, at some point in the Gospel story, walked beside Jesus. Second is that these people, other than Jesus, are examples or reflections of Jesus’ ministry of Grace.
The first person we're going to talk about is John the Baptist. Usually, we tell the story of John the Baptist at the beginning of Epiphany on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The first Sunday of Lent we usually examine Jesus’ 40 day fast in the wilderness and his temptation by the devil. But John the Baptist is often mentioned as a second scripture because Jesus is baptized right before he goes into the wilderness.
Let's start out by saying that John the Baptist didn't invent baptism. Washing your sins away is a standard ritual in the Jewish religion to become pure before God. The practice is mentioned in Leviticus, so we know that centuries before Jesus was born, people were purifying themselves for holy days or because they had done something unclean like touch a dead body.
In Jesus's day we know that there were specific pools built into the Temple and local synagogues to fulfill this purity obligation. But before that, it was traditional to immerse yourself in a natural water course. So, you see, John is harkening back to an older time and tradition by having people come to the river Jordan to be baptized there.
Besides the regular routine of becoming ritually pure, in the ancient Jewish culture, someone who wanted to do a holy discipline would often go and get cleansed at the Temple or their local synagogue before they started a period of fasting and praying. You could fast and pray in the Temple or synagogue, or pick a spot in the wilderness. The forty days reflected the forty years of the Israelis wandering in the wilderness until they entered the promised land by crossing the River Jordon. To fast for 40 days and nights was a standard rite of passage, and someone wouldn't be considered to be a holy man unless they had done this ritual.
To get to the River Jordon you have to leave the fertile land and enter an area of desert wilderness. Most of the people who John was baptizing were ordinary people and probably wouldn't go out into the wilderness to do forty days of fasting afterward. Still, since they had to go into the wilderness to get to John and the Jordon, they were symbolically recreating the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness. And by being emersed in the Jordan for their baptism, they were connecting with the experience of the Israelis crossing into the promised land.
But why would Jesus go to John if he could just cleanse himself at the synagogue in Nazareth and then pick a local spot for his fasting? Forty days and nights is a long time to be fasting and praying outside; no one would have disputed that Jesus hadn’t done the ritual.
First of all, remember that John and Jesus were basically the same age although John was the older cousin. Jesus had been raised in a normal Jewish household; his father was a carpenter, and his mother was a housewife. But John's parents were members of the priesthood. His father had after all gotten the message from God that his son was going to be born while he was doing his rotation at the Temple in Jerusalem. His mother was also descendant from a family of priests. So John had been set aside from an early age to be a priest. And remember that you weren't considered qualified or of age to be a holy man until you turn thirty. By the time John turned thirty he had been prepared and probably already had a reputation for holiness. So he carried some legitimacy when he started to preach in the wilderness. And I think that since people were waiting for a Messiah, and believing the possibilities in the possibility that a Messiah could come, people would listen to John.
Of course, people are looking for a Messiah and they actually asked John: Are you the Messiah? But John knows that his younger cousin Jesus is on his way in a few months. So he prepares the way of the Lord, and he encourages people to think about their lives and tells them that they can change their hearts and minds to be ready for Jesus when he begins his ministry. The ordinary people would accept John’s holiness as an authority who could give Jesus’ a baptism, but also as someone who stood outside the corrupt system. Standing outside the system is something that Jesus did during his ministry.
But there's a hidden story in the Bible about John. It’s a story that's implied but not written out for us to read. The only interaction that we see between Jesus and John is when John baptizes Jesus. But think about who they are. Think about the fact that they grew up in the same family. They were cousins; they were the same age. Their parents knew what their destinies were, and although I don't think they burdened the two boys with their destinies when they were younger, I'm sure that they encourage friendship between the two boys.
This is pure supposition on my part, but I am sure that those two kids played together; ate meals together; stayed in each other's houses; learned stuff from their respective uncles together; wandered around the countryside together; and talked through a lot of stuff together. You know, just the general meaning-of-life conversations that friends have with each other when they're trying to figure out what's happening around them. I really believe that there was a bond between them and that they supported each other in their ministries. After all once Jesus appeared on the scene John didn't pack up and go home. He kept on baptizing people. He kept on preaching against injustice and a corrupt political system to the point where he was finally arrested by Herod Antipas. And eventually he was executed.
I can't imagine how John's death made Jesus feel. He had lost his childhood friend who knew him the best and who he probably considered to be his equal. John wasn’t his disciple; he was the one who could support Jesus and say: I got you and you can do this. It says in our scripture that when John died, Jesus retreated and went away to a deserted place by himself. Jesus was grieving. That little line is the proof positive that Jesus knows our griefs; that he has lost people he loved just as we have. Jesus knows that when we lose someone, we need to take time to grieve for them.
I think sometimes that Americans are a bit two independent. Independence after all is part of our heritage. We started our country with a Declaration of Independence. Our culture teaches us that we all need to develop our independence and stand on our own two feet. And I think on some levels that it’s a very important to be able to take care of yourself.
But on the other hand, as a species we are meant to be and work together. We cannot survive effectively and efficiently completely alone in the world. We are meant to be a family helping each other; we are meant to be a tribe or community helping each other; we are meant to be a village helping each other. We are meant to be a culture that supports each other and gives strength to a nation. And that support begins with one-on-one with friendship towards each other.
During Lent we often hear John's fiery rhetoric of repentance, and then we’re supposed to look at what is we're doing wrong in life and work on trying to make it right. That’s a good thing to do. But I think during this time we can also lift up John's support of Jesus by reconnecting with and lifting up our own friendships that maybe we've been neglecting. I can think of a few people that come to my mind that I haven't talked to or checked in with for a while. After all I've been busy. But thinking about it, I can take a little bit of time to reconnect with them and just see how they're doing. And I know that like Jesus, if I suddenly was to learn that they were gone from my life there would be a big hole in my heart and I would have to go retreat a little until I had acknowledged and come to terms with their passing. If I connect with them, I’ll probably avoid the regret of not connecting with them before it’s too late.
So, this week I'm going to challenge you to think about someone who you haven't talked to for a while and connect to them. Just see how they're doing; listen to what they're going through; and if they're in difficulty encourage them and help them out. Say to them: I've got you and you can do this. In that little act of friendship, you will be living the love that Jesus had for John. And any time we connect to someone we are living in the love of Christ. So, take some time to nurture your friendships and you’ll feel God’s love and some of the healing power of Lent.