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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her two most recent sermons on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our Easter Season sermon series is: Called to More. Enjoy.
The Gods We Make
June 1, 2025 Ascension Sunday Communion
Exodus 32:1-14 John 15:1-6
The Israelites have been led out of Egypt by Moses. They have witnessed ten plagues that decimated the Egyptian nation. They’ve been protected by a pillar of fire, and they’ve seen a sea parted so that they could cross safely away from the pursuing armies Pharaoh.
They've been camping under this mountain called Mount Sinai for several weeks now. And Moses has told them that he's going to go up on the mountain to confer with God and to find out what their next steps are going to be so that they can return to their ancestral lands which will be their own home in the future.
But the Israelites get impatient, and worried because Moses hasn't returned yet.
This isn't surprising. The Israelites had originally gone into Egypt as refugees from a famine. We know that they were probably nomadic herders who had been accepted into Egypt country, and had lived productive lives there. But at some point, they had lost whatever power or independence that they had, and had become second-class citizens and then enslaved citizens. Their culture, that was based on a tribal system of governance, was repressed by the dominant theocracy of Egypt.
When you’re enslaved, you’re totally dependent on and submissive to the rules and whims of who owns you. You're not allowed to decide anything for yourself, and your mentality is: I have to please the person who owns me, because if I don't my life is forfeit. And in the greater society you have no power. You are the lowest of the low and there is no way for you to have a say in anything.
You don’t learn or know how to think for yourself; you don’t have any practice with it. That's where the Israelis were. They didn't really have any knowledge or experience of how to govern themselves as a group. Moses went up on the mountain to receive the rules that God wanted them to live by as their guidelines, so that they could start to be a self-governing nation.
But the people think he's been gone way too long, and they don't know if Moses is alive or dead. They go to Aaron, who they have accepted as the substitute leader, for guidance. They know that there are the children of this God of Abraham, but they want something that they can point to and say: This is our God. They want to worship and give thanks. They want to create a connection to a spiritual identity.
Now when we have times of uncertainty in our lives it's human nature to go back to what is familiar;. What were the Israelites used to seeing in Egypt? They were used to seeing golden bulls and other animal idols being worshipped. In fact, the Israelites probably chose a golden calf or bull, because the bull was considered in ancient societies to be one of the most powerful creatures on earth. This is because there were still aurochs. These huge cattle were about 7 feet tall and weighed about 3,000 lbs. fully grown. They were very fierce and dangerous creatures from the ice age and were still running around in the wild, in fact they didn’t die out completely until the 1600’s.
So they create a golden calf to worship it and give thanks to, and the ensuing party becomes very wild. They’re celebrating their freedom; no nasty slave holder is going to tell them what to do now. But God notices what's happening and says: What am I going to do with these people? I led them out of Egypt, but they decide to go their own way. I'm just going to get rid of them and start over with Moses. He's going to be the new Abraham.
But Moses calms him down. It's one of the places in the Bible where somebody argues with God. He makes the case for the people. He says: Hey, you did this great thing, and if you kill off these people, all the nations are going to say that you brought these people out of slavery just to kill them. You have to give them a chance.
And God relents. He decides to give the people a chance to learn the laws and apply them to their lives and see if they can make them work. Which is something that we have been doing every generation since.
This story of the golden calf has become a metaphor for creating an idol that substitutes for God and reveals the process of how we fall into making those idols.
First of all, idol creation usually starts when we’re in a new territory or situation, someplace we've never been before, so, there's a feeling of uncertainty: What are we doing here? How do we make this work and how do we move forward? So, we look around for something familiar that we can grab onto and work with; a goal or set of guidelines that will help us.
For an adult who's beginning to make their way in the world their new idol might become making money. You can see how they might create this idol. They're figuring out the rules of employment and the rules of how to make money. They're figuring out how to save and spend the money in the best possible way to give themselves a good life. So, they put that in the center of their lives as their goal and guideline.
Some people might not care about money, but they do care about the prestige of a good job, so they devote their life to advancing their career. Some people might only care about fame, they're willing to do anything to sell that record to be on the stage, or in that new movie. For some people it might be relationships. They are willing to manipulate people so that they have the perfect friendships or the perfect romance partner.
Now there is nothing wrong with figuring out how to make money, or working to advance your career, or being famous, or devoting yourself to having good relationships. All these actions will give us some fulfillment. The thing about an idol is that you put it in the center of your life and everything you do serves that idol. Your idol becomes your guidance, moral code, and fulfillment.
But God wants his people to see that the most important thing in our lives is actually our relationships to the divine, and with the rest of the world. If you look at the Ten Commandments they lay down a set of rules that ensures that we will have a good relationship with God, a good relationship with each other, and a good relationship with ourselves.
The reason why we put God in the center of our lives; the reason why we worship him with all our being; the reason why we take time to give ourself a Sabbath to connect to him; and the reason why we honor him in our words and our deeds is because then we also honoring each other and all of creation. Putting God in our center brings our minds and hearts into the realization that we are all connected with each other.
Think about what Jesus said: Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. Jesus followers understood that grapes were connected to the soil, seasons, and climate. That grapes have to be nurtured and pruned to produce good, sweet fruit. Have you ever tasted a wild grape? They’re usually pretty sour and stunted things.
I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.
Like us, the Israelites wanted a relationship with God. But we need to be aware of the danger of a false-idol coming between us and God. A false-idol will cut us off from our relationship with others because you are only thinking about fulfilling the needs of the idol with you; not the greater God that is outside of all of us. When we have a loving relationship with God, you have a loving relationship with all of God’s creation because you act in God’s love.
So, watch out for those false idols in your life that take your focus off God, and sneakily put it on only you and your needs. Ask yourself, does this get me closer to God and in a better more loving relationship with others? Or is it going to leave me an empty, hangover type feeling, that doesn’t feel very good in the long run? If you join with God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit you will find that you have a bountiful harvest of love, along with a gardener who will always be there for you.
Staying on Track
May 25, 2025 5th Sunday in Easter
Philippians 3:12-16 Mark 1:35-39
In my 40s I had a conversation with a friend who went on about the problems that exist in public school systems. Kids weren't reading up to their grade levels; difficult math was being introduced too early; homework was too easy; students didn't even know what the 50 states were. While I listened to this tirade, the only thing I could think of was that I had heard practically the same tirade when I was in my 30s, 20s, and when I was in high school.
In education every generation has to reinvent a lot of what we're teaching because the world has changed. When I first started teaching computers were not used in classrooms, in fact laptops didn't even exist. The world changes, and we have to change with it. And sometimes it seems that we’re going so far so fast that we're not able to keep up.
So, how do we hold on to our sanity in a world of ever-increasing change? One way is re-evaluation and adaptation into new action. At the end of each semester, I would look at my material and ask: What is no longer relevant and what do I need to teach instead? One year I realized that my students didn't know how to punctuate. Apparently, it had been de-emphasized from the English curriculum in high school. The next semester I added punctuation to my curriculum. I always knew that something was going to be irrelevant the next semester, I just didn't know what it was until I got there.
Until I accepted this change-over, I was frustrated as a teacher because of course I wanted everything in my class to be perfect, relevant, and accessible to my students. I had to learn to accept that not everything I planned was going to work. I had to learn to listen to my students and see how they reacted and what they needed. Every year was slightly different.
But that's life. You think you’ve figured out how things work, and then all of a sudden a new factor comes along and you have to adjust. Sometimes things get torn down; like a tornado comes through and our homes get damaged and we have to learn how to rebuild. Sometimes unexpected things happen; like we lose our jobs – not because of our own work performance, but because the company is downsizing. We have to figure out how to do something different in order to survive. Sometimes we make an honest mistake. One time I diligently studied the wrong chapters for a history test. Fortunately, some of the chapters were right and I knew enough basic history to fake my way through the rest of the test. The grade wasn't as good as it could have been, but I didn't fail. Sometimes we only know part of what we're getting ourselves involved in and then, the next thing we know, we're improvising as best we can.
In today's verse from Philippians, Paul admits that even though he is an apostle who has been saved by Christ; even though he is good friends with Peter and all the other original disciples; even though he is going around and preaching this new system and process that Christ taught us to help us connect with ourselves, each other, and God; that he doesn't have the whole thing figured out yet. He stumbles, he questions, he gets it wrong sometimes. But he has a goal and that keeps him on track.
His goal is that he is going to be as much like Jesus Christ as he can be. Paul is trying to live as Jesus would want him to live. Like the original disciples, we need to ask ourselves: What did Jesus model for us and how do we put that modeling into action?
Now I mentioned before re-evaluation and adaptation into new action. But there was always still a baseline of what I had to teach as an ESL teacher: Vocabulary and grammar, within a set of conversation subjects that we all deal with on a daily basis. That baseline never changed.
Christianity has a baseline that we all start with which is our constant and provides us with the system that we can apply to everything in our lives. That what Jesus was trying to teach his people, and Paul was trying to teach to his congregations.
The first place we can all start with is that Jesus wants us to love God with all our being. He wants us to take time to connect with him, to learn how to feel his presence, to be aware of how the Holy Spirit sends us messages to guide us. That takes time to learn, it's not an automatic thing. Which is why the idea of prayer and spending time alone with God is so important.
Our gospel passage today says: While it was still night, way before dawn, he got up and went out to a secluded spot and prayed. Think about that: Jesus was the son of God. Jesus was this person who was healing people with his touch, who was blessing loaves of fish so that they could feed 5000 people. He was raising people from the dead. If anyone could connect to the power of God, it was Jesus. And yet, there are many places in the gospel where Jesus goes alone to pray and takes the time to connect with God. This probably helped him to renew his energy, gave him some time to consider what he was doing, helped him to evaluate what was happening around him, and to seek guidance for what he’s going to do next.
What is interesting is what happens after the disciples all come to him and Jesus says to them: Let’s go to the rest of the villages so I can preach there also. There is cause and effect in the Gospels of Jesus praying and then doing action afterwards. This is why I’ve come. He went to their meeting places all through Galilee, preaching and throwing out the demons. But the action is done with a clarity of purpose and a certainty of connection with God. When we take the time to pray before we take action, we have clarity of purpose and know that our actions are connected to God.
The next commandment that Jesus gives us is to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus gave us the way to do this by saying that we need to love each other as Jesus loves us.
The first way that Jesus loved us was he operated on a principle of equality. All people were equal to him, precious to him, and had value because all of them were God's creation. All people were God's children and therefore they were all his brothers and sisters. Jesus healed lepers, cripples, and people with grave illnesses. He talked to women, and Samaritans, as well as Pharisees. He had exchanges with people who were very rich and very poor. He talked to people who were Jewish and people who were gentiles. So to be like Christ, we have to put aside whatever prejudices we might have about other people and start to treat everyone as equal.
The next thing that Jesus did was that he forgave people. He forgave people in general like saying to someone you are forgiven for your sins, but he also forgave people who hurt him personally. He forgave Peter for betraying him three times when he said that he didn't know Jesus. When he was up on the cross, he forgave all the people who put him there. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Forgiveness is a really hard thing to do sometimes but the more we do it, the more we practice, the better we get at it. Forgiveness gets us out of the trap of hatred and anger that keep us inside the negative emotions which prevent us from moving forward to fixing the problem and heal.
The final thing I think that Jesus does for us is that he gets us to think more broadly about our lives. Jesus was trying to get his disciples, and the people who were listening to his preaching, to think beyond their immediate world. He tries to get them to imagine a world that encompasses all of God's creation and people.
When he tells his disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations that was a bold move. His disciples we're mostly from Galilee, a province that was kind of out of the way and in the country. His disciples weren't very educated, nor did they have political standing. But Jesus told them to go out into the world, out of their comfort zones, and preach his gospel. Now this doesn't mean that we all have to go to exotic places in order to do God's work in the world. But I think it does ask us to think beyond our own actions and how they affect others; how they are going to ripple out and affect many people down the road. Jesus wants us to see that the world is bigger than we are, and that we can begin the energy of goodness that will ripple out from us when we are as kind, and generous, and loving as Jesus wishes us to be.
When the world is crazy, and you think that you just can't adapt to it, go back to your baseline of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Operate on the principle that all people are God's children and that they are deserving of love kindness and respect. Operate with generosity and compassion. Be forgiving of yourself and others, because we all make mistakes. And keep your mind and heart open to new experiences that God leads you to. And remember that all those actions of compassion and respect ripple out to places that we will never know. And help yourself to stay on track by giving yourself some time to pray meditate and connect with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. When we stay on track to Jesus, we will find that we are able to run the crazy race of this changing world with God’s love. And we will keep ourselves open to God’s love now and always.