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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. Currently we are examining the I AM statements of Jesus. Enjoy.
I AM the Vine
October 5, 2025 17th Sunday in Pentecost World Communion Sunday
Luke 22:14-20 John 15:1-15
I am the vine is one of my favorite metaphors of the Bible because it gives us an image of linking. A vine is a plant that continues and connects growth. Jesus starts by connecting himself to God, his Father. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. Jesus wants us to see that if we are connected to him then we are also connected to the Divine Force and Parent-Creator of the universe.
Look, God is huge, and awesome, and overwhelming. Do you ever have a moment when you’re looking at a sunset, and you feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the world and the intricacy of the universe that we’re placed in? It’s moments like these when we can feel immensely blessed to be here but also tiny and insignificant. What are we to all the billions of people, plants, animals, oceans, volcanoes, stars, supernovas, and galaxies? How on earth are we, tiny souls that we are, to connect with all of that?
Maybe we can’t know or understand all that divine power, but we can feel ourselves a part of it if we follow Jesus’ teachings. Jesus came here to teach us how to make our connections through our faith to God, the world, and the people around us.
Jesus’ disciples would understand his image of a grapevine because grapevines were cultivated everywhere. They would know that you just can’t plant a vine in the ground and expect it to grow and yield something good and tasty. Have you ever eaten wild grapes? I have, and boy-o-boy are they bitter! You can taste how they could be good if you spent some time cultivating them, but they’re hard to eat in their wild form.
Managing grapes is an intense job, just like managing our lives. You have to figure out a good place for grapes to grow, just like we evaluate the conditions of our lives. What’s the best place for us to flourish in our jobs, where we live, and who we hang out with? Most of us try to find a positive job that can let us use our creativity and gives us purpose. We try to find a place to live where we are safe and can raise a family. We try to find friends who will support us and who will help to build a better community that surrounds us. Sometimes we’re lucky and the perfect growing space for us presents itself, and sometimes we really have to look and test the soil before we commit.
Once we plant ourselves in a place, just like a grape-farmer, we have to fertilize our area with good stuff to make our vines grow. We need to work productively at that job, maintain our house and neighborhood, connect with and support good people around us, and work on maintaining and improving our community.
And during the vine’s growth, the farmer has to cut away small shoots, as well as dead or dying wood, so the main stalk will become thick and strong. Do you know that the word decide comes from a base word meaning “to cut?” When we make a decision, our intention is to cut away the bad stuff so that we can focus on the good. Sometimes we have to cut away a bad job and find one that’s more positive and productive. Sometimes we have to cut away bad habits or actions that keep us from connecting with God and others, or prevent us from maintaining or growing into our best selves. Sometimes we have to cut away people because they cause grief or distress for us or others.
All this positive maintenance will produce good, positive, and nourishing fruit that we can all enjoy and will sustain us. Now some people think that the fruits we should produce is a high paying job, or a nice house or car, or people who will scratch your back when you scratch theirs. But Paul once said that the fruits of our spirit are love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, gentleness, forbearance, faithfulness, and self-control.
Paul didn’t invent that. The book of Proverbs is about how to work towards and learn how to live those virtues. Jesus wants us to love God, ourselves and each other. He wants us to have joy and peace in our lives. He wants us to be kind, to show goodness and gentleness to others. He wants us to be strong and persistent in our actions of faith. And he wants us to have self-control so that we can channel our energy and do all of the above. Would you rather be a negative person or a person who is positive? The way of Jesus gives us a positive attitude that sustains us and others by producing good fruit.
All this connects us to God. Jesus ends this speech saying: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Jesus is trying to get his disciples to see that his love doesn’t just connect him to the twelve central disciples, or the disciples who are in the Upper Room with them. It doesn’t just connect to Jesus’ disciples who are living in towns in Israel, or even the few Gentiles who have joined his movement. His love is meant for everyone in the world, and they are all connected through the love of God.
Have you ever heard the saying 6 degrees of separation? Actually, I don't like the word separation because it implies that we are separate from each other. I prefer the term 6 degree of connection. It’s the idea is that we are all somehow 6 degrees related to everyone else in the world.
I have a family story about this concept. My mother’s cousins are sisters who are 4 years apart from each other. Now sixty years ago, these two sisters didn't get along very well when they were teenagers, and their parents decided that if they took a vacation together to England that maybe, by needing to rely on each other while they were travelling, they might develop a good sisterly relationship. So, they were given a gift of a trip: The eldest for graduating from college and the youngest for graduating from high school.
They had a lot of adventures and did manage to come back as friends. One of their adventures was that they met a very dapper gentleman in their hotel’s restaurant (who they found out later was a Swedish film actor) who invited them to go to a famous nightclub in London. They had a good time and spent nearly all of the evening hanging out at a table and dancing with a young guitarist who was rising in fame called Keith Richards. Yes, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Think about that – the connection goes myself, my mother, my cousin, and Keith Richards. I am 4 degrees connected to Keith Richards. It just goes to show that we can be connected to so many people who we don't even know we’re connected to.
Today is World Communion Sunday, when we celebrate the fact that all the Christians around the world are coming to the table of Grace with us. Consider that at this moment there are millions of people celebrating the joy of Christ in their lives with us. Today we are reminded that we are connected to all of those people who have dedicated their lives to living as Christians.
We have dedicated ourselves to love God with all our being by loving our neighbors and ourselves as Jesus Christ loves us. We are renewing our connection with Jesus so that we may help each other live with love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, gentleness, forbearance, faithfulness, and self-control. In this church and beyond, we are all connecting with the Holy Spirit which give us a direct line to the power of the universe. We are all living on that vine that God and Jesus have planted. We are all producing the fruit of God’s love. We are all his children who come to His table to be nourished.
Jesus said: I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. Everyone out there who is a friend of Jesus is also a friend of you. Yes, sometimes we may quarrel and sometimes we may stumble over each other. But every time we connect to God through each other, we also connect to that great power of love that can change the world.
So, as you take the bread and wine and remember what Jesus did for you, remember what he’s doing for all those billions out there who you don’t know, but who are your brothers and sisters who are also working for the kingdom. And celebrate that throughout the world we are blessed in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and that connection and blessing can strengthen you and lead you to a better life with God.
I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life
September 29, 2025 16th Sunday in Pentecost
Deuteronomy 5: 28-33 John 14:1-7
Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life during the Last Supper. Jesus is trying to prepare them for the future when he will no longer be with them. He’s outlining a path that they, and future Christians, can walk on. He wants the disciples to follow the way, supported by the truth, which leads to a good life for everyone here and now, but also to an eternal life that continues with our souls.
In many ways Jesus is echoing what Moses said in Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy is a speech by Moses to the Israeli tribes who are about to enter the promised land. Moses talks about their tribulations in Egypt, the forty years that they had been wandering in the wilderness, and about how they had to learn how to reconnect with and follow their God.
While the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, their faith was subservient to Egypt’s needs and they weren’t allowed to govern themselves. To become a new nation, they had to learn two new skill sets: How to connect to their God and how to govern themselves by taking responsibility for their own lives and actions.
At first they didn’t do very well. In fact, they slipped up and started to worship a golden calf. God then decided that they need to wander forty years in the wilderness until all the people who were trapped in an old subservient way of thinking and behaving would be gone. Those who entered the promised land were the generations who grew up as a free people, who began to live God’s commandments and learned self-governance.
God commanded Moses to tell them that they must be careful to do as the LORD your God has commanded you; you shall not turn to the right or to the left. You must follow exactly the path that the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess.
When we follow the commandments of God, we put God first in our hearts and minds, and then we live to create a community where all people respect each other, can follow God, and live within their faith.
But there needs to be a balance to this. Living our faith can either be a positive or a negative reinforcement loop. It’s positive if we follow our faith and the commandments with the intention of working with everyone to create a just society that deals with life as it comes, and do justice in the best way possible in the moment. Our faith informs our actions, our actions lead to justice and equality, and in turn our faith and actions support each other and the greater community.
But it’s negative if we just follow the law because those are the commandments of God, but we do not consider the circumstances that people are living under. Then our faith is lacking the major components of mercy and grace. When you don’t consider people’s circumstance, or try to have compassion for what they’re going through, then we’re not connecting to the divine within each other, and we’re not connecting to God. This is a negative loop because the law becomes more important than compassion.
That negative loop was what Jesus was trying to reverse. Following the law had become more important than having justice and mercy for your neighbor. Jesus was always coming up against this type of situations with the Pharisees. Think about the time that the Pharisees didn't want him to heal on the Sabbath. Why? Because the law says you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath and healing someone, even if it's with the divine power of God, is work. By healing on the Sabbath, Jesus was not being a good, holy Jew because he wasn’t following the law.
Jesus’ way to God is to obey the commandments but to take each situation that comes into our lives and look at it with mercy, compassion, generosity, and love. And then to apply our actions to help and support as many people as we can on a daily basis. To simply follow the rules for the sake of the rules and to never consider the circumstances of what is happening around you is to be a Pharisee. When you put the rules above God's compassion then the rules are your God, not God.
Christianity is about a mind-set and a heart-set of love, compassion, and the desire to see that everyone is treated fairly. That is the way that Jesus wants us to walk.
So where does the truth come into this? It’s not just accepting that Jesus has shown us the best way to live our lives. We must also be willing to accept the truth of the circumstances in our lives.
One of the most annoying phrases for me is, “There are always alternative facts.” Facts are not alternatives. I am 5’8’’ or 175 cm tall. Those are two different ways to measure my height, but I’m still the same height. I am not 6’ like my cousin, or 182 cm like my son. It’s true that sometimes we find out new facts that correct our perception. But we can’t go backwards once we have found out a truth – you cannot make the round earth flat again. We need to be careful about verifying our facts before we act on them.
Of course, human interrelationships are much more complicated than my height or the shape of the earth. In our interactions with people, we need to learn how to listen and learn as much as we can so that we have a broad world view of what is happening, not a narrow world view. Have you ever dealt with someone who is always negative? They have chosen a world view in which nothing is ever right or good enough, so everything will always fail. But is this a true view of the events? Sometimes things do go wrong in our lives. But to believe that everything or everyone is against you is a trap that makes us never change things for the better.
To avoid this trap Jesus wanted us to have the truth that God is always with us, forgives our mistakes; loves us because we are his children; and always has a place for us. That’s why He sent Jesus to us to teach us through his love, example, and sacrifice that we will always have Him with us in our lives and that we can move on from our mistakes and be better.
Looking for Truth gives us possibilities. Sometimes possibilities are hard to see but they are there, and we can always ask God to help us find them. When I first heard about teaching in Japan, I knew nothing about how to find a job in Japan. But I asked God to help me and all of a sudden I was meeting people who either knew about Japan or could help me find some information about Japan. And I learned the good and the bad stuff, so I really felt that I made an informed decision. I went to Japan expecting the good and the difficult. Some of my colleagues only expected the good and left disillusioned when they encountered difficulties.
Living with the way of Jesus’ with positive compassion, a desire for justice, and a seeking of the truth will lead us to a full life. We will have an abundance of friends and love. We will have purpose because we will know that we are building a better community around us. And we also will have the blessed assurance that our lives do not end here and continue on in God’s glory. So, although death might be a mystery it is not a fearful unknown that rules our actions and makes us think only of our own self-preservation.
But finally, there is a challenge in the statement: I am the way, the truth and the life. A challenge to not only believe but also to walk the path of Jesus, with God’s love, as we open ourselves up to the power of the Holy Spirit. What does that mean for you? What do you see yourself doing to bring compassion and love into this world? How can we all listen better, support better, forgive better, and love better? How can we say: I am following the way of Jesus, living in the truth, and being inside life with the love of God?
God has gifted us a lifetime to walk this path. If we dedicate ourselves to connecting with God, ourselves, our families and our community in mercy and grace, if we hunger for the truth and live in the positive, then we will have a full life of purpose. And we will be able to face anything because we will know that God is there supporting us.