What We’re Not Giving Up
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who holds all things together—and brings all people together in unity and love.
I promise I won’t make a habit of this, even though this makes twice already this year.
What follows is the text of my sermon from Sunday. It kicks off the series we’ll be in through Lent, and introduces the idea that some practices and habits are just too important to let anyone dismiss them or limit them—even when it’s our government doing it.
I invite you to read it and wrestle with it. We’re in challenging times these days, and we need to be diligent about living and representing our faith in Christ.
Blessings to you as we journey together through this season of Lent,
Pastor John
How’s Lent going for everyone? I found a website that offered some general ideas for what to give up for Lent.
Give up certain social media sites.
Sleep without a pillow
Wake up without hitting the snooze button
Shower without hot (with only lukewarm) water
Give up coffee (this is NOT recommended)
And of course, Country Living magazine, everyone’s go-to source for Lent ideas, has an article called “32 Ideas for What to Give Up for Lent.”
It’s not a great list for developing spiritual depth, but it’s practical.
Commenting on Social Media
Road Rage
Skipping the Gym
Playing video games
Swearing
Maybe it’s not such a bad list after all.
Entering into a season of reflection and repentance can be more meaningful when we deprive ourselves of something. This year I’m going to turn that on its head.
Yeah, there are things that all of us probably ought to give up, but this year more than others, I think there are some precious ideas—some very important words and phrases—that we should hold on to.
So this year for our Lenten series, we’re going to reflect on some ideas and practices as Christians that we are not giving up.
Here’s my inspiration. The current administration in Washington is ordering the removal of certain words and phrases from publication on US government websites. Here are a few examples:
Accessibility, Activism, Anti-racist, Belonging, Climate, Community, Culture, Cultural heritage, Cultural Sensitivity, Dignity, Empathy, Empowerment, Equality, Equal Opportunity, Female, History, Historic, Historically, Immigrants, Inclusion, Multicultural, Racial Equity, Respect, Sense of Community, Social Justice
Seriously. If you don’t believe me, this story was first reported by Texas Public Radio, and a longer and more detailed account was in the New York Times last week.
I’m doing my best to stay calm here, but I’m so angry that my biggest fear today isn’t that some people will disagree—I mean, go ahead and make your case that the American government shouldn’t say things like Community or Dignity or Female.
No, I just need to get through these next few messages without swearing—that’s my biggest fear. On the rest, I think I’m on pretty solid ground.
For this season of Lent, I am politely pushing back on the idea that these ideas are harmful for Americans, and in particular for American Christians.
Some of these words are central to our faith, and to the way we’re commanded to live our faith with each other and in public. Over the next few weeks we’re going to look at some of these words and phrases, and what scripture has to say about them.
In the process we’re going to affirm that in fact no—we won’t be giving them up for Lent or at any time in this or any other year.
We’re going to start with a bang, with three words that drive some people crazy—that lead some people to lie and cheat and manipulate, just because they don’t want to lose their power or influence.
Of course, I’m talking about subversive words like diversity, equity and inclusion.
Diversity is the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds.
Equity is the quality of being fair and impartial.
Inclusion is the practice or policy of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized.
Such scary words—they make some powerful people sweat and shake and act like children.
You may know them as DEI.
DEI is very prominently on the list of banned words on government publications, both individually and as a set.
That’s a problem, because diversity, equity and inclusion are at the heart of our text this morning.
Read Acts 6:1-7
In our story, Christian converts from all over the world are gathered in Jerusalem.
The argument in our text is among a group of widows—of Jewish converts to the Christian faith.
There were two kinds of Jewish converts at the time this story happened.
In the 1st century, just like now, more Jews lived outside of the region we call Israel/Palestine than live in it. In Jerusalem at any given time, some of the Jews from Greek speaking areas would be living or visiting there. These are the Hellenistic Jewish Christians in the passage.
So they’re all mixed together. The early church had Jewish converts from the area around Jerusalem—they had the most privileged place, and they were suspicious of outsiders. Those are the Hebraic Jews.
The Hellenistic Jews were the Greek-speaking Christians from the outer ethnic groups outside of Judea. They were the foreigners—they were second-class members of the early church.
Let’s walk through the story again.
1In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews[a] among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
We might look back on the early days of the church and think:
Wow—I wish we could go back and be just like them.
We pretty much got our wish on that one.
Even in those early days there was discrimination in the church.
The Hebrew-speaking widows were getting more support than the Greek speakers.
2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. 3 Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
I love this part. The leaders of the church didn’t want to get bogged down in the details of serving food and “waiting on tables.” So they decided to form a committee—people full of the Holy Spirit.
Actually, they decided to form the first group of Deacons. They’re not called Deacons in the story, but the work of sharing resources and providing food and helping people in need—that’s called deaconing in the story. When the Twelve said they didn’t want to wait on tables, the literal translation is that they didn’t want to deacon the tables.
So everyone seemed happy about the resolution to the problem. Here’s what Luke says next.
5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.
Here’s where we get to the key moment in the story.
Here’s where we see how the early church tried to right a wrong.
Here’s where the first diversity, equity and inclusion program comes in.
The Hebrew speaking group has all the power,
and it’s the Greek speakers who feel like they’re getting shortchanged.
So what do they do?
They choose seven Greek speakers to distribute the resources fairly.
Every one of those seven names are Greek, and not Hebrew.
That’s right, in an argument over the unjust treatment of Greek Jewish converts to Christian faith, the apostles chose representatives from the group who had the grievance to resolve things.
Wait, what? That sounds exactly like a DEI plan.
You mean that’s in the Bible?
It’s not some lefty woke liberal socialist plot to ruin the early church?
No, it was a way not only to distribute food and other resources fairly, but also to make sure that the team overseeing the distribution was over-represented by the very people who had a grievance.
And did it work? Or did this early DEI project ruin the church? Hardly.
Listen to what Luke says—this is the result of establishing a program to make sure that provisions were shared fairly.
7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
Whaddya know?
See what I mean? Why would we give that up?
This season of Lent is going to be so much fun.
What do we learn from this text?
First: Even in the miraculous beginnings of the church, the problem of prejudice and fear of the other was there. It’s like it’s hardwired into us to mistreat people who are different to us.
That’s why the miraculous origins of the church are important for us.
It’s the Holy Spirit that reaches into our individual hearts and changes us.
It’s the Holy Spirit that does the same thing in our collective heart as the church.
Second: It’s also a reminder that the church is at its best when it welcomes and celebrates and shares with people who are different from us. We are at our most whole, when every person—every person created in the image of God, is welcome to join and serve and thrive here.
And finally, we move into that holy experience of Lent when we surrender some of our ownership and leadership to the people we want to reach. That may be the hardest lesson here—just because some of us were here first, doesn’t mean this place is always going to be ours.
Being the church means looking for where God is working, and joining in. We should always be reaching out, welcoming, including, and learning from those who aren’t like us in race or ethnicity, in gender or class or lifestyle, or even in in age.
Our commitment to diversity and equity and inclusion are at the heart of who we are as Christians, and they’re at the heart of what we should be able to expect from our government and our society. Yeah, it can be done poorly, but that’s no excuse for not trying at all.
Let’s review what we learned in this text:
Diversity is the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds.
Equity is the quality of being fair and impartial.
Inclusion is the practice or policy of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized.
Here’s why that’s important right now.
Here’s what it means for us during this special season.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is being misrepresented by our government right now.
People who use and abuse the name of Jesus are preaching something that goes directly against the message of the gospel as we see it in the real, flesh and blood word of God.
Instead of hearing that we should worship God and love our neighbors, we’re hearing that God is there for us to manipulate, and to heck with any neighbors we don’t like.
That’s a lie—it’s a perversion of the truth.
And we’re not surrendering to it.
We’re not giving up diversity, equity or inclusion, not during Lent or at any other time.
To give those up would be to give up some of the distinguishing marks from the very first days of the church.
To give those up would be giving up our identity as people who look to Jesus as the model for our lives—not any king or CEO or president or political party.
And that’s something we’re never giving up.
Next week we’re hear about another dangerous word that we’re not going to surrender: Community.
Let’s pray together.
Welcome to Lent
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Messiah, the one whose life breathes into ours, so that we can love the world he made and saved.
We begin a new season of Lent today.
There will be signs… News reports will be talking about the excesses of Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, a traditional feast that regularly gets out of hand. You’ll see marks of ash on peoples’ foreheads, proof that they’ve been to a service at some point during the day. And there will be notes like this one, introducing the season and inviting you to participate.
Lent is an annual season of reflection and repentance as we prepare for the celebration of Easter. It’s a rhythm that has grown in importance for me as I’ve gotten older—maybe it takes a few miles to really start to value “coming clean” before God and the people I love.
If you know me at all, you know that my faith is framed by the covenant God made with Abram in Genesis 12:1-3, and the way that covenant embraces us in the life of Christ. We are people who receive the twin blessings of life and calling from the God who loves us. In response—NOT in payment—we turn outward and share those blessings with a hurting world.
New Testament scholar J.R. Daniel Kirk puts it this way:
At Lent we take hold of this peculiar Christian calling, to embrace the death of Christ in hopes that this death in us might work the newness of resurrection life in those with whom we come in contact. Lent is not only a remembering of some reconciliation made ages ago, it is an enactment of the reconciliation we bear within ourselves for the sake of the world.
Note how the death and resurrection of Christ are central, as they should be, but also how quickly they’re meant to pivot in our lives to become a blessing for others. That’s the point of our faith—it’s the point of our lives—it’s the meaning behind just about everything else we believe and teach at this church.
And so let me invite you to make this “peculiar Christian calling” yours this Lenten season. Take hold of what Christ has done for you and for the world—hold it in such a way that it might share a little of that resurrection life with the people you encounter, whether they’re as close as family, or as distant as strangers in the street. Bear some of that reconciliation for the sake of the world.
Welcome to Lent.
With Blessings, Pastor John
Whose Kingdom?
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the one true King, Jesus the Messiah, who came to save us and show us how to live.
I’m doing something a little different this week. The sound was garbled on our livestream and recording of Sunday’s service, and some of you have asked for the sermon so you can read it. So…here it is. Below is my manuscript of Sunday’s message, “Whose Kingdom?,” kicking off our new series called Jesus and Power.
This Sunday the message is based in John 13, and it’s called “Make Faith Great Again.”
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
Whose Kingdom? Matthew 22:15-22 Feb 9 2025 FPCSLO
I remember once I was in high school, the teacher was called out to speak with someone in the hall. While she was gone, a student thought he’d be funny and started pretending to be her; he got really into it—lots of mocking and imitating. What he didn’t notice after a while was that the teacher had come back in. The teacher was not amused. She reminded him that she was the teacher, as she packed him off to the principal.
Sometimes we forget who’s really in charge.
Sometimes we have to be reminded.
Today we begin a new series called Jesus and Power. There’s a lot in the Bible about Jesus and the powers. I think this is a helpful journey for us to take as we live through this historical moment.
Because it’s good for us to be reminded of who’s really in charge. It’s also good for us to bear witness to who’s in charge in front of the rest of the world.
Text: Matt 22:15-22
We’re in Matthew’s gospel again—it was written to a Jewish Christian audience.
So who are these Herodians?
After the Romans conquered Judea and Palestine, King Herod and his sons were the Jewish kings elected by the Roman senate to keep control of the people.
The Herodians in our passage were followers of the Herods—
they were Jews who wanted to see Israel strong again,
no matter what they had to give up in their faith.
I won’t be coy about this. You’re hearing me correctly.
The Herodians watered down their faith so they could Make Israel Great Again.
Think about how they behaved toward the coming of Jesus.
King Herod didn’t want the baby Jesus to survive and lead his people, and had every newborn Jewish boy murdered.
Herod’s successors didn’t like Jesus’ teachings about love and mercy and forgiveness and humility and sacrifice and—you get the idea.
They rejected their Messiah in order to hold on to their political power.
You can’t make this stuff up.
It’s so important to notice where this text is placed in Matthew’s story of Jesus.
Chapter 22 begins with a parable about the Kingdom of God. A King prepares a celebration for his son’s wedding, and takes on all of the planning details.
Let’s get this straight: The King in the story, clearly representing God,
invites people to his son’s wedding. He prepares a feast—he creates the menu and preps the table and decorations. It’s the King who creates the content of the gathering.
His guests reject the invitation—they even abuse and kill the messengers who tell them about the feast the King has prepared. Don’t miss that.
The villains in the story reject the content of the King’s message and invitation.
A few verses later, the thought-police of the day—the Pharisees—decide to try and catch Jesus saying something that would get him in trouble. They’re still rejecting the content of the King’s message, and that brings us to our story.
Let’s look at the verses.
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
This is the response of religious people who have given up their authority to political power. The Pharisees, who were established to help prepare the Jewish faithful for the coming of the Messiah, switched their allegiance to the Herods—to the people who abandoned their faith for a chance to rule.
Don’t miss how this 2000 year old story speaks to our present situation.
And that’s just the first verse in our text.
16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not?”
The junior Pharisees and representatives of the government go to try to trap Jesus in some error so they can discredit him and maybe even get him to disappear. They butter him up, they compliment his teaching, and then BAM! They ask him:
“Are you loyal to Caesar?”
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied.
Jesus takes the air out of their attack by asking an innocent question of his own.
Whose face is on the coin? They answer: It’s Caesar’s face.
Then he said to them,
“So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
The people who came to challenge Jesus just went home when they got a hard question. We don’t have the privilege of walking going away. Here’s why.
We spend so much time on the first part of Jesus’ answer,
and not nearly enough on the second.
Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Fine, Jesus says.
Pay your taxes and fly your flags and argue your politics online.
But there’s more to the story.
“…give to God what is God’s.”
Being a citizen is great, but Christians answer to a higher calling.
I can be proud of being an Italian-American with a little Scottish mixed in; but what defines me is my place in the world as a child of God through the grace of Jesus Christ, holy and dearly loved.
The reminder is that we have an answer when someone says:
“Who’s the real king around here?” It’s Christ, and only Christ.
That means one thing for us:
We can never, ever, give away the allegiance that’s owed to God and God alone.
When people forget who they are and whose they are, bad things happen.
In an interview a couple of years ago, Evangelical leader Russell Moore said that multiple pastors had told him disturbing stories about church members being upset when they heard the words of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus talks about the principles of forgiveness and mercy that are central to the Christian faith.
Moore said: “Multiple pastors tell me the same story about quoting Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and having someone come up after and say:
“Where did you get that liberal nonsense?”
When people forget who they are and whose they are, bad things happen.
So what do we do about all of that?
The words of Jesus in Matthew 22 remind us to keep our citizenship and our status as children of God in their right places.
It fits with what we say and hear every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.
NT Wright and Michael Bird write about this in their book: Jesus and the Powers.
“We pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. If all of us are true to the giver of the prayer, and to those in the first Christian generation who prayed it and lived it, then we must be building for, and working and praying for, the kingdom [of God].”
When we say “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we’re committing ourselves to one King over all things—to one set of principles and values to guide our lives—to guide the ways we live and love and spend and vote.
And out of all the things we find in the Bible, it is the teachings of Jesus and the way that he behaved that define what it means to live by Christian values.
That means that Jesus is the one who is meant to define our politics, too.
And defining our politics that way has teeth to it.
Wright and Bird continue:
“We must act in all earnestness to hold the State accountable and remind it, whether this is believed or not, that even the State is answerable to the Lord Jesus. This Lordship is established neither by terror nor by tanks, but by the fruit of the Spirit manifesting itself wherever the followers of Jesus may go.”
It is our job to hold our government accountable to the values of the Kingdom, whether those values are believed or not. And how do we define those values of the Kingdom? By the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Seeing a lot of that these days?
I have news for you: there wasn’t enough of that in the last administration, either.
Just ask the people in Gaza—at least the ones that are left.
When we say “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we’re committing ourselves to one king over all things—to one set of principles and values to guide our lives—to guide the ways we live and love and spend and vote.
Talking about the Lord’s Prayer, Wright and Bird said this:
“Such prayer, and such action, constitute the Church’s “program.” This theo-political vision shapes all that Jesus’ followers must ‘do’ in the world.” N.T. Wright and Michael Bird
They stray into a little academic language there, so let me translate.
The words of the Lord’s Prayer are the marching orders of the church of Jesus Christ. Alongside the rest of the teachings of Jesus and the fruit of the Spirit, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is meant to be a guide for our lives as individual Christians, and for any plans we make as a church here on this corner in San Luis Obispo.
Conclusion
There will always be someone who thinks they’re really in charge—
who want us to believe that they’re the final word on behavior and ethics and morals and government.
There will always be someone who wants us to give up the teachings of Jesus in order to hold on to some political power.
We’re invited—no, we’re called—to live differently.
This is the Kingdom of God—the reign of Jesus the Messiah.
And that same Jesus has something to teach us about power,
and about the powers that think their values are more important than the ones that Christ himself teaches.
News flash: That’s not true. No matter how much the headlines say otherwise, this is Christ’s Kingdom—the values of that Kingdom are how we were meant to live—how we were meant to treat each other.
Those values will win in the end.
Those values can begin to take over, right now.
May that be so, today and forever. Let’s pray together.
Navigating Power and Discipleship
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of King Jesus, the one whose reign covers all people and places—all thrones and administrations.
Let’s get right into it.
When I was traveling in a poor section of the West Bank in Palestine a few years ago, I looked over and saw a medical building under construction. It had a sign on it that said: This Construction Funded by USAID. A Gift of the American People. I asked my guide, a Palestinian Christian, about it and he said that the funds given by Americans were tangible evidence that they were committed to the peace process in Israel-Palestine.
I honestly felt proud in that moment. It was proof that no matter who was in office at any given time, American funds were representing us—representing our hope for a peaceful resolution in that troubled place.
Who would believe that now?
Earthly power can be wonderful, and it can bring suffering. The Bible has a few things to say about power, or the powers. Over the next month we’re going to look at what the Scriptures say about power—what Jesus says and models for us about our relationship to whoever occupies any earthly throne…or strangely shaped office.
Some of it you’ll like, some of it you won’t, but all of it will remind us of just who’s ultimately in charge in this crazy, pain-filled world.
The goal isn’t to provoke yet another pointless argument about politics. The goal, as any good teaching should always be, is to deepen our understanding of what God expects of us in this life. The goal is to grow together in what it means to be Christ’s disciple. Hint: It has very little to do with what country we’re from or which flag we salute.
Speaking of flags, I fly a good-sized American flag at my house at various times in the year. I fly it because I believe in the promise of what this country is supposed to be, I fly it to commemorate special days in our history, and I fly it to honor my dad’s oldest brother—an immigrant from Italy who only lived here for three years—who gave his life for this nation in the Second World War.
This life is complicated, but we only make it worse when we jump to conclusions and make unfair judgments about each other. Between now and Easter we’re going to focus on the intersection of discipleship and political power, and also on the non-negotiables of being a Christian in any state.
Come and see—come and hear—and then go and do.
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
PS: This Sunday’s text is Matthew 22:15-22
Living Our Faith Out Loud
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you. I mean that—in the name of Jesus the Messiah, I wish you all a lavish measure of grace and peace.
I changed the greeting here because I think we’re all going to have to be a bit more intentional with our words and actions over these next few years. We can’t let our expressions of care and love fall into the trap of sounding like something we just say.
We’re going to have to mean it.
It’s hard to leave politics out of our daily conversations. You’re going to hear my typical disclaimer a lot for a while: I won’t do partisan politics—I’m not here to tell you how to vote. I’m here to teach and proclaim what God has done in Jesus Christ for you, and you, and you… Some of that is naturally going to sound like I’m commenting on our current political situation, and there’s a good reason for that.
I’m going to be commenting on our current political situation.
That’s because what is coming from our elected leaders, more than usual, is straying into our lives as followers of Jesus. It’s happening in two ways: First, our government is making decisions that impact our neighbors in serious and harmful ways. When something bad happens to our neighbors, the people that Jesus told us to love, we are required to speak on their behalf. Cornel West said it this way: “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” We won’t forget that.
Second, so much of what is happening politically carries the veneer of Christian faith. Decisions that go directly against the teachings of Jesus are being rebranded as Christian. I’ve said this before, and it looks like I’ll be saying it a lot: You can’t simply slap the name of Jesus on something hateful, then call it Christian. It doesn’t work that way, and it is my calling and my job to say so. And news flash: it’s your calling, too.
This past week there have been multiple intrusion of churches by ICE agents across America. Now don’t get me wrong—I believe that immigration oversight is a mess in this country, but churches? And hospitals and schools? I’ll be raising these questions with our session soon so that we can form a response plan together. Here’s my personal plan: If agents invade our church during a worship service to arrest someone there, I’m going with them.
See what I mean? We’re going to have to mean what we say when we say we follow Jesus, or why would anyone else join us?
There is plenty of room for differences of opinion on a wide range of political issues. Let’s be clear, though, whether or not we’re going to love our neighbors is not negotiable. Every Christian has the responsibility to protect people who can’t protect themselves.
I’m tempted to say “welcome to the resistance” here at the end of this letter, but I think that might disturb some of you. I’ll say this instead:
Buckle up, as we choose together to live our faith out loud, in public, in the name of Jesus.
Pastor John
Embracing Community Through Faith
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, the one who holds all things together, even when they seem to be falling apart.
The fires in Southern California continue to dominate the headlines. As I said on Sunday, Shelley and I have more than 20 friends who have lost homes—lost everything. I think that number has popped over 25 in the last few days. Friends from church, friends from seminary—today I learned that someone I went to high school with lost her home in Altadena.
So much loss.
Life is like this too often. We walk in a world that is full of pain and anguish just as often as it is with beauty and hope. Nothing in the life of faith guarantees that this kind of suffering won’t touch us—that’s the hard truth. What a life of faithful discipleship offers is the possibility for meaning—the promise that this is not all there is.
In baseball terms, the Gospel of Jesus bats last.
This month we’re talking about what it means to be the church. If you’ve been with me over these last five years, then this sentence will be familiar to you: A healthy church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ, and expressed through Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission. Each of those four expressions come from our place as children of God, holy and dearly loved.
Last Sunday I mentioned a friend of mine who had just lost his father. That father was a well-known biblical scholar and theologian—he wrote gently and clearly about how his mind had changed over time on some of the most divisive issues confronting Christians and churches these days. In a book written by my friend and his father, here’s what the dad had to say about who and how we’re meant to be as we gather in our churches.
It’s easy for people in churches today to be quite content to be separated from those they disagree with. Whether ‘the people different from us’ are ‘liberals’ or ‘conservatives,’ there’s surely another church down the road where they’d fit in better. But that’s not exactly the ideal symbolized by the metaphor of the church as ‘the Body of Christ.’
The vision that Paul offers is quite a different one: ‘Welcome one another, just as Christ as welcomed you, for the glory of God.’ That’s not just a shrugging compromise; it is the climax and consequence of the intricate, passionate argument of the whole letter [to the Romans]. Paul proclaims that the gospel is all about the unsearchable, inscrutable mercy of God (Rom 11:33-36). All of us are recipients of that mercy. That’s why we are called, even in the midst of conflict and difference, to welcome one another.
Richard B. Hays, in The Widening of God’s Mercy, by Richard and Christopher Hays
Isn’t that beautiful and hopeful and challenging all at the same time? We’ve spent so much of the last decade divided by politics and social issues and poorly expressed faith. These words offer healing and a new direction on so many of those fronts. At the very least, we ought to be able to get this right in the church—our fellowship, worship, discipleship and mission work ought to stand as a remedy for so much of what ails us.
That’s what we’re seeing, both in the church and in the wider culture, in response to the fires in Los Angeles. People gathering, sharing what they have, and helping neighbors who have lost so much. The point is this: We were made to be in deeply committed community—we’re hardwired for the kind of life Jesus invites us to in the church.
As you move through this week, and as we journey through these reflections on what it means to be the church, I invite you to follow that impulse to join together for a greater purpose—to welcome one another. There is so much good work to do. That’s why we are called, even in the midst of conflict and difference, to welcome one another.
May that be true for you and yours, today and every day.
Blessings,
Pastor John
Call to Prayer and New Year Reflection
Special Call to Prayer
The news from Southern California is intense and frightening—many of us have family or friends who are in the path of the fires and damage from strong winds. Please join me in praying for the safety of the people affected, and also of the first responders who are working to save lives and property.
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who makes all things new…even the years!
I hope your Christmas celebrations were a blessing to you and yours. It’s such a busy season, but hopefully with some time for rest and connection. This was our (mine and Shelley’s) first Christmas working in different churches, which was quite the cultural change for us. It was busy right up until Christmas Eve, and we drove to the Los Angeles area on Christmas morning to spend time with our families.
And so we begin a new year…
In the devotional that I use, there is a prayer that I like for starting a new season or a new year. It was written by John Baillie, a famous Scottish theologian of the 20th century. Here’s what he prayed:
Give me grace, I pray, to know you so well and to see you so clearly that in knowing you I may know myself as completely as you know me; and in seeing you I may see myself as I really am before you…Help me today to keep my thoughts centered on the life and death of Jesus Christ my Lord, so that I may see all things in the light of the redemption which you have granted to me in his name. Amen.
I’m not sure I would have prayed that prayer if hadn’t been written for me. How about you? We don’t often willingly enter into that kind of careful self-reflection and self-examination, but it’s worth doing as a way of starting a new year fresh.
That’s my invitation to you. Make this your prayer as we all start 2025 together. There is so much good work and fruitful worship ahead—it’s good to make ourselves ready for it.
Blessings to you and yours in this new year,
Pastor John
About the upcoming messages… We’ll be entering into our annual series on what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ. If you’ve been around these past few years, you know the sentence that I’ll be saying each week: “A healthy church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ, and expressed through Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission.” Those four expressions will be the focus of our next messages together.
One last note. Over this past year my recovery from heart surgery has been very positive—everything continues to go well and my prognosis is for many years of healthy life. I have, though, turned out to be a little more susceptible to colds and flu than I used to be. In the interest of staying healthy and being able to do my work as your pastor, I may be a little more careful about shaking hands and giving hugs. It’s nothing personal! I’m just going to try harder to keep from picking up the normal bugs and viruses that we all come into contact with. Thanks so much for understanding! JD
The Grinch and the Growing Heart
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, who came as a child so we could all grow into our cherished place as children of God.
When I was a kid, long before cable TV and streaming services, there were special events on television for people to build their evenings around. The Christmas season was filled with shows that you could only see in the runup to December 25th—who can forget “Frosty the Snowman,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and my favorite: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
The Grinch special aired for the first time on this date in 1966—I was three and a half years old. I don’t remember that first showing, but after that it was a regular part of the season for me. Here’s an ad for the first showing of this holiday classic.
In the story, the Grinch has a heart that was “two sizes too small,” and he hated Christmas and anything that reflected joy or happiness or generosity. After stealing the gifts from an entire village, he notices that they still celebrated—they still sang songs and cared for each other, even though all the material gifts they expected to give and receive were gone.
Then something amazing happens.
The Grinch, when he sees that Christmas had a meaning beyond all the spending and decorating and wishing—when he starts to understand what’s really happening, his heart grows three sizes. Now my math might be wrong, but if his heart was two sizes too small and it grows three sizes, then the Grinch’s heart was bigger than it was supposed to be all along. It was a Christmas miracle.
Maybe the lesson of the Grinch is an important one. No, I’m not saying that any of you need to grow your hearts (well…), I’m suggesting that in the coming of Jesus—in the birth of the Messiah in fulfillment of all of God’s promises—I think that is what grows our hearts and shapes us into mature and healthy disciples.
The Grinch didn’t trust that anyone was good or generous or loving, and it stunted his growth. That kind of cynicism and negativity is all over our culture and even in our church at times. As we think about the meaning of Christmas, the glorious gift of God becoming human and living with his creation—as we wrestle with what the Christmas miracle means for us, maybe a big part of it is simply that God wants to grow our hearts and make us vessels of his love and mercy and grace.
Wouldn’t THAT be a thing.
Maybe God came to us to change our bitterness for grace, our stinginess for generosity, and our capacity for loving each other from empty to full? What if that turned out to be the meaning of Christmas?
I think that’s exactly what Jesus came to do and to teach.
As you move through the holiday season, with its pressures and busyness, my prayer for you is that you can take some time to think about what this holiday—this holy-day—is all about. Find some moments to see where you can share with someone else the love that Jesus showed you.
It’ll change your life.
It might even grow your heart a few sizes.
May that be so, today and always. Merry Almost Christmas!
Pastor John
Strengthening Our Church Together
Dear First Pres Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the one who loves us and provides for us!
Advent is such a great time of the year, as we learn again to watch and wait for the coming of the Messiah. Christmas is coming, but first we remember how to live in expectation for Christ’s arrival—a little longing is good for all of us.
This season also has us paying attention to the business of the church.
We’re coming close to the end of the year, and as we look at our numbers we have some very specific gaps we’re hoping to close. Here are the details.
Over the past year we’ve very carefully strengthened our facilities and our team in order to accomplish ministries and meet the needs of our congregation. For example, it has been such a blessing to have Gregory Riley as our organist and accompanist—I think you’ll all agree that he helps to make our Sunday worship beautiful and meaningful. We’ve also improved our technologies and tried to keep up with the repairs of our aging facility. Getting the heat working again a few weeks ago was important…but unexpected.
Some of this we planned for, and other parts not so much.
Our church bylaws allow us to dip into reserves to cover these extra costs, but only within certain limits. At this point we’re going to be about $23,000 over that limit at the end of this year. The good news is that we have the money. The less-than-good news is that digging too deeply into those reserve funds leaves us exposed if there is an emergency or some other unexpected repairs come up.
And so yes, I’m writing to ask if we can all share some of this cost.
If we can pool that $23,000 together from new giving, we can protect our reserves and move into 2025 in a much healthier position. There are so many good things happening here, but we’re not immune from the challenges that face other downtown churches around the country. Keeping our reserve account health is a wise and faithful way to manage our resources, and help our church stay healthy and nimble for the coming year.
Thanks for considering this extra support!
Blessings to you and yours this Advent season,
Pastor John
Embracing Active Hope
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who came, and the one we expect.
This past Sunday I talked about Hope, traditionally the theme for the First Sunday in Advent. My main point was that our hope is found in learning to live the life that Jesus modeled for us, and that we do that best when we devote ourselves to looking at his life and love and ministry.
But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
We don’t just stumble into hope, though. Hope is something we develop and practice and learn to do better and more effectively. It’s important for any follower of Jesus, and it’s absolutely a requirement for any kind of Christian leadership.
Hope is different from optimism in a crucial way. Optimism is great—it’s good to have the positive outlook we associate with optimistic people. But the key difference is this: optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the trust that things will be fulfilled.
Our Christian hope isn’t simply that God will help us do this or that. Christian hope is our trust that God will fulfill his promises to us and to all creation. That’s a much, much bigger thing.
The musician and poet Nick Cave talks about another distinction, between hope and cynicism.
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like…keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.
Isn’t that good and challenging and convicting, all at once? Hope isn’t neutral. Hope takes a side, and that side is with all people and all of creation. When we treat each other and the earth with care and love and respect—when we remember that God’s first response was to call all of it “good” right from the beginning—when we love God and each other with creativity and tenacity, we become living examples of Christian hope.
What a wonderful world that would be, right?
As we move together through this Advent season, may we all step into those places where some active hope will do the world some good. May we all live into that “warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.” And in the end,
after all that loving and defending and hoping, may we all find what was true
all along: this world—all of God’s people and creation—all of it is worth believing in.
Blessings to you this Advent season.
Pastor John
Embracing Advent Hope
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the King, the one who takes our ideas about what it means to rule and reign, and turns them on their head. Yeah, that Jesus.
This is a week of transition for us. We’ve just celebrated Christ the King Sunday, the end of the Christian Year. I showed a clip in the sermon about a high school runner in her final race, seeking to record her personal best time, but at the end of the race she saw a runner from another school—a stranger to her—struggling to finish. She stopped to help the girl, giving up her own chance to achieve her goal. Here’s what I said about that.
“Sometimes the idea of Christ as King makes us uncomfortable.
We think of kings as absolute rulers, people who only care about themselves and their power, people who don’t care about us. But Christ as King is more like that runner we saw at the start today. Christ gives up his power—his right to win—his position as the ruler of the universe. Christ gives that up so that he can pick us up at our lowest point, so we can cross the finish line with him, no matter what kind of shape we’re in.
That’s the kind of King we have.
That’s the kind of life we’re invited to live and share.”
It’s a good reminder for us as we transition from Christ the King Sunday to the season of Advent. Every year we do this—we exalt Christ as King, then turn around and start all over again, waiting for the birth of the Christ Child.
We are called to live the discipline of Advent hope. Hope is a rugged and difficult practice—it’s not simply optimism, which is the belief that things will get better—hope is the daily habit of living life as if God’s promises will be fulfilled. It’s a much stronger and more challenging task for us.
But we live it each year. We sing our Kingly hymns and celebrate Christ as King, only to start again with the hope that a baby will come and change everything. Advent hope is the antidote to the cynicism that takes root in us when the world disappoints us. Make it your practice this Advent season, as we wait again for the birth of Jesus.
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
Commitment to Our Shared Ministry
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who was and is, and is to come.
Advent is coming (more on that next week). For now we’re moving toward the end of the church year—this week we celebrate Christ the King Sunday.
This week is also Commitment Sunday at First Pres—it’s a time to honor and pray over your pledges for the coming year of ministry together. I like to emphasize the partnership we share—all of you, the session, and myself as we listen for God’s leading and look for meaningful ways to serve our community and the world in Jesus’ name.
My hope is that each of you sees this as an invitation to the work God calls us to do.
Church budgets can be such a buzzkill sometimes—all this talk of numbers and deficits and year-to-date realities. Sometimes budgetspeak can sound like the farthest thing from joyfully serving Christ together. We miss the point when we allow that to happen. All of us know—from both our home lives and working lives—all of us know that most things happen in that combination between what we want to do, and how much it all costs.
In that sense, budgets breathe life into our vision for ministry.
As we enter the homestretch of 2024, we find ourselves behind in the revenues we hoped to have by the end of the year. We added a key staff person and expanded (modestly!) some of our existing ministries. We’ve dipped into reserves more than we wanted to, but there’s time to make up some of those shortfalls. Let me invite you to make sure your own 2024 pledge is complete, and also to consider an extra gift at the end of the year. I’ll be doing that too.
This reminder about 2024 isn’t meant to take our focus off of the coming year! We’ll be looking to make sure that our budget planning is a little tighter for 2025, while still providing the services and demonstrations of Christ’s love that this church is called to do.
All of this will happen because of you.
I’ll be increasing my pledge for 2025, and I’m asking you to consider the same.
Next year will be pivotal for us as we work to grow our ministries to children and youth, and also with older adults. Our staff is preparing, even now, to increase our effectiveness in all of the areas of our shared ministry. In order to meet the challenges—and accept the opportunities—of the coming year, we will need to be sure of our finances and capacities for growth.
You are the people who will make this happen, not only through financial support, but by your willingness to roll up your sleeves and serve where you’re called.
In this coming year, our prayer will be: “May we choose You over all things.” Please take some time to pray and reflect on your part in the work of First Pres, and to being a partner in all that we do. A pledge form is attached to this letter.
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
Will It All Be Ok?
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, who lives and saves and restores, even when his name is abused and misused.
How’s that for a start?
Some of you have asked for a copy of Sunday’s message. I don’t usually do that, but I think that there’s a part of the sermon that I want everyone to be able to read and wrestle with. You can find that section below.
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
Will all be well? Will things really be OK?
I can’t stand up here and lie to you.
The only honest thing I can say is: I don’t know.
But it doesn’t end there. Just because I don’t know how this story ends, doesn’t keep me from having a lot to say about how the middle of it goes.
People who follow the teachings of Jesus still have a lot to do in this world, and in this nation. And that job just got harder.
It got harder because people are using words about Jesus and the Christian faith to defend their hatreds and fears and lust for power. Let’s be 100% clear: There is none of that in the teachings of Jesus.
Again, none of this is about party politics.
This is about the expressions of hatred, the promises of retribution, and the blaming of immigrants for the economic problems we caused for ourselves.
Here’s the problem with all of that.
Here’s what pokes at my trust issues.
What we’ve seen in this past year, maybe for the first time in this nation’s history,
is a party that ran a hate-your-neighbor campaign, and won a convincing victory.
Ponder that for a moment.
An American party ran a hate-your-neighbor campaign, and won a convincing victory.
One thing is certain: Don’t ever again think this is a nation built on a foundation of Christian principles. The party coming into power has clearly and explicitly both denounced and renounced the way of Jesus.
That’s the bad news. Here’s the good.
I mean it. In all of my study and prayer and reflection this week,
I managed to find some good news, and here it is:
We followers of Jesus find ourselves planted in the middle of a mission field.
There are truths about Jesus that this nation needs to hear.
There are lessons about life and sacrifice from Jesus that this nation needs to hear.
There are expressions of love from Jesus that this would needs to experience.
All of that is meant to come from us, from Christ’s church.
And it’s a message that is aimed at both sides.
The white supremacy of the American church we all inherited isn’t going to cut it. The close identification between white America and the gospel of Jesus just isn’t going to fly anymore.
Neither is the smug and contented liberalism that denies the miraculous life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Taking the supernatural message out of the gospel isn’t streamlining it for a modern audience, it’s creating completely different religion altogether.
Only a faith that believes that Jesus is who he says he is can help this nation.
Only a faith that is willing to do what Jesus asked us to do, can be an agent of healing in this land.
Anything else is a colossal waste of time.
The Christian faith in its American form has had 300 years to get this right, and it has failed miserably. Sure, there have been bright spots, but if 300 years of claiming to be built on Christian principles led us to people slapping Jesus’ name on hatred and cruelty, then we have to say it’s been a failure.
It is the call on each one of us to try and do it better, more faithfully, more closely aligned with the Jesus we read about in the gospels.
Be a Republican. Be a Democrat. I don’t care.
But if we’re going to call ourselves Christians—followers of Jesus the Messiah—then how about we try it his way just once?
How do we do that?
First. We have to see ourselves and our society with new eyes.
There weren’t many Christians at the founding, but America in the 1800s was overwhelmingly a Christian nation, both by faith and in its culture. Even after that wasn’t true anymore, we kept it as a part of our identity—and we assumed everyone meant the same thing when they used the word Christian. They didn’t and they don’t.
If we assume that our society is in need of hearing the gospel message as Jesus taught it, then we need to learn to see our society as a mission field. Not to go back to some great time in the past—the past wasn’t that great.
Not to return to the past, but to see a new future where the teachings of Jesus are the definition of Christian faith. Not our race. Not our nationality. Not our politics. Not anything that isn’t rooted in what Jesus actually said.
Second. Embrace being in opposition, not to a particular party or person, but to secular power in general. This may be the hardest part. Christians in America—mainliners like us and evangelicals too—Christians in America have always thought of themselves as part of the structure—part of the foundation—part of the furniture of what it means to be an American.
That was never really true, and now we have to start living like it.
That means learning to live in the role of the opposition.
Folks, this part is long overdue, no matter who won the election.
Even when we agree with what happens in Washington, that doesn’t mean we fall lockstep behind them.
I’ll freely say here that I liked President Obama a lot. I loved his intellect and his compassion—I loved the way he adored his wife and kids—I appreciated that he genuinely cared for all Americans, even when it made them angry at him.
But I still spoke out publicly against his actions in his last year of office, after more than 26000 American bombs had been dropped on 7 different countries on his orders.
As Christians, our natural place is in opposition, anytime anyone fails to love their neighbors—even when those neighbors might be enemies. That’s not the American way, it’s the Christian way, and it’s how we’re meant to see and engage the world.
Finally. Make sure your words and actions and faith and service are always and only rooted in the teachings of Jesus. This one thing is entirely within your control. Politics is one thing, and there’s a place for politics—it’s how we govern ourselves.
Politics is one thing, but following Jesus is another thing entirely.
Whatever we do as Christians, it has to match up with the things Jesus actually said, with the life Jesus actually modeled for us to live.
And so I don’t know if it’s all going to be OK anytime soon.
What we’ve heard about the plans for the next government here are pretty dire.
I don’t know if all will be well.
Here’s what I do know from our text today.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.”
We are the ones who’ve been called according to his purpose.
Never, ever forget that.
I don’t know if all will be well. But here’s what I do know.
I know what we’re called to do in the meantime.
I know who we’re called to be in the meantime.
I know that because of what God has done in Jesus the Messiah, that we are going to love God and worship God for what he’s done. And we’re going to love our neighbors and demand that anyone else who calls themselves Christians will do the same.
Anything else is a waste of time.
It’s the call on each one of us to try and do it better, more faithfully, more closely aligned with the Jesus we read about in the gospels.
Be a Republican. Be a Democrat. I don’t care.
But if we’re going to call ourselves Christians—followers of Jesus the Messiah—then we’re going to try it his way this time.
In or out. Here we go.
Let’s pray together.
Holding Together in Uncertain Times
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who holds us and redeems us in difficult times.
It’s a hard day. Whether or not your candidate won or lost, it has to be hard knowing that our country is so divided and angry—and now you can add wounded and fearful.
Others who are more qualified than I will do the analysis. They’re sure to mention the economy, deep divides on social issues, and the impact of social media. They better start addressing the way working people in this country have been abandoned by both parties. They better make the point that twice now, decent and qualified women have been rejected by American voters. Are we really so afraid to be led by a woman?
But I have to stay in my lane.
On Sunday I reminded all of us that whatever our party affiliation, God calls us to defend principles that reflect the ministry and teachings of Jesus. Our allegiance to one party or another should never—ever—be more important than our faith in Christ and making sure that our nation is fair and gracious and welcoming and peaceful—things that have already made this place great to live in.
And yet it feels like all of that is falling apart.
In the first chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, he reminds of who Jesus really is:
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
That’s meant to be a comfort in uncertain times, and it is. The Son of God is the source of all things—the earth, the ways we’ve created to govern ourselves, and even our very lives.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Think of Jesus as the glue that holds everything together—the one who keeps things from spinning out of control, and into a state of chaos. Whatever else is happening in our nation and in the rest of the world, it is Jesus the Son who stands in the brokenness, gently tugging the fragments of our wounds and divisions back into place.
In our own Presbyterian tradition, our modern creeds and confessions have tried to address these important issues. In the Confession of 1967, written in the aftermath of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as the war in Vietnam was heating up, and as riots revealed the racism and injustice present in too many American cities—with all of that in the background the Confession of 1967 reminds us that we are all in need of what Christ offers.
Wise and virtuous men and women through the ages have sought the highest good in devotion to freedom, justice, peace, truth, and beauty. Yet all human virtue, when seen in the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is found to be infected by self-interest and hostility. All people, good and bad alike, are in the wrong before God and helpless without God’s forgiveness. Thus everyone falls under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than those who assume that they are guiltless before God or morally superior to others.
And so I leave you with that today. Whatever else happens, remember our need of Christ’s love and redemption, and also our responsibility to work for freedom, justice, peace, truth and beauty.
Mostly, though, remember that Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That includes us.
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
A Call to Faithful Engagement
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the one who loves us with a perfect love, the one who demonstrated that love by serving and healing and dying—all for us.
I wonder what God thinks about this election season in the US. Maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t think about it at all—maybe God has more important things to do than watch as a segment of our nation tries to use his name to validate all kinds of behaviors he doesn’t like. Maybe God doesn’t care about our politics at all.
But then again, maybe God does.
It’s true, there’s nothing about democracy in the Bible. Through most of the years represented in our Old and New Testaments, democracy didn’t exist, and when it did it was unrecognizable to ours. In ancient Greece, only a few people got to vote or hold office—their version of representative democracy wasn’t very, well, representative.
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn a few things from the Bible about our own politics—about the values that matter in our public lives.
Here are a few things that God wants from people of faith during election seasons—these are more or less in biblical order, not order of priority.
First, God wants the earth to be cared for and protected. That’s the real sense of Genesis 1:28, where God says we should “be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”(The Message)
Second, God wants the people on the margins to be welcomed and cared for. There are literally too many passages like this to list them all, but here are a few. About migrants and strangers God says this: “When a foreigner lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the foreigner the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once foreigners in Egypt. I am God, your God.” (NIV)
Third, God wants all people to be treated fairly and humanely—the courts can’t only be for the wealthy, they should serve everyone. Through the Prophet Amos God says this:
“For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.
14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.” (Amos 5:12-15)
All of this is before Jesus, who said that the poor, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, and the peacemakers were closest to his heart. (Matthew 5:3-9)
Jesus adds, just a few verses later, that when we get hit we should offer up another part of us to take the pain, instead of retaliating (5:38-42). And just in case that wasn’t clear, Jesus calls us to love our enemies (5:43-45).
I could go on…
Here’s the point: It seems that God cares very much about how we organize ourselves—how we live together in community, and also how we engage the strangers and foreigners and aliens. I’m not making this up—GOD said it, not me.
And so maybe, just maybe, what happens in our election next week matters to God…a lot. Since that appears to be true, make sure that the views you hold and the people you support will reflect the ways that God wants this world to run. You’re hearing plenty voices on all sides of these issues. The deciding factor on who you vote for isn’t your party, your pocketbook, or your pastor.
The deciding factor in whomever and whatever you vote for is Jesus, and Jesus alone.
We’re going to talk about this on Sunday, too. If you can, make sure you’re there.
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
A Call to Love and Service
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, who showed by his life and ministry, and his death and resurrection, that the promises of God could be trusted.
It has been a tough news cycle these past few weeks. Storms in the Southeast, wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, and our own election season that pits many of us against people we would otherwise love dearly.
Anyone else feeling weighed down by it all?
Karl Barth wrote: “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”
But that’s not easy.
I think that Paul felt much the same as he wrote his letter to the church in Rome. The occupation of his homeland reminded him every day that his people did not control their own destiny. His calling from God turned him into a nomad, traveling far and wide to share the gospel of Jesus with the Gentile world. And within the early church, there was conflict—sometimes minor squabbles and at other times, major theological problems to solve—would there ever be a time when Christians could just relax and live in peace?
I’m not sure any of us are going to like the answer to that.
It’s not that we can’t enjoy ourselves. Our journey through the Book of Ecclesiastes earlier this year reminded us that in the midst of all that life throws at us, we’re called to enjoy what life has to offer us every day. But none of that removes our connection to the needs of the outside world and the opportunities for service that those needs place before us.
There is a time for relaxing and seeking peaceful rest (God invites us to enjoy Sabbath breaks), but our lives are meant to be filled with engagement and service. It’s what our lives are like when we allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit. In Romans 8 Paul says:
“…those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” (v.5)
In other words, when we’re led by the Spirit of God then our priorities and values will align with God’s. We’ll care about what God cares about, weep when God weeps, rejoice when God rejoices, and so on. When God is our compass, we’ll follow in God’s direction.
Somehow that’s a comfort to me in these trying times. There’s so much that I can’t change—so much about the world that reminds me of just how powerless I really am. But that’s not the whole story. When I allow the Spirit to lead me in my living and working and spending and interacting with other people, I’m sharing in the way God becomes known to the world God created and loves.
That’s our contribution, yours and mine, to the struggles and conflicts facing the world today. When we love as God loves, we become a visible and tangible extension of that love for people who need that message so badly.
Let that be your contribution to the world today. Be a reflection of God’s love and heart for justice in your neighborhood, your office, your classroom, and your household. Make that your answer to the invitation to love God and love others.
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
Embracing Authenticity Through Romans
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, whose life and ministry teaches us so much about who and how we’re meant to be.
If you’ve been at church these last two Sundays, you’ve heard a couple of messages that will prepare us for Paul’s Letter to the Romans. First we talked about Paul himself—about his life and background, and how his deep faith in God allowed him to see Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Then this past Sunday we talked about Rome—about the way the city became the home to a diverse church that grew into a worldwide movement. The point was that each of us are tied to places, where we’re from and where we’ve been, and that those places become a part of the way we share the gospel of Jesus.
Now we’re on to the 8th chapter of Romans. It’s such a rich and meaningful part of our Bible—it gets at the heart of so much of the Christian message. N.T. Wright said this about the chapter: “It’s about the call to become genuine human beings through being filled with God’s own life.”
All of us who follow Jesus can relate to the desire for a more authentic and meaningful life. That’s what Romans 8 introduces for us. We’ll see so much of that as we move through the chapter together.
For now, let me invite you to read the chapter for yourselves this week. For all of its practical truth, it’s still a 2000-year-old text, written in a different language and culture—its meaning isn’t always clear when we read it for the first time. Still, I encourage you to read the chapter and listen for what the Spirit is teaching you there. We’ll unpack some of the depth together on Sunday mornings.
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
Embarking on a Journey
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who came to fulfill the promises of God, and to draw the world together in love, grace and service.
This Sunday we begin a journey in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Once we do a little introduction, we’ll focus on the 8th chapter, where we see the heart of the Apostle Paul. During my study leave I read a biography of Paul by a leading scholar of the New Testament—he’s one of the most fascinating people in the entire Bible, up there with Moses, David and Mary.
Over the next two Sundays we’ll look at Paul, and also the city he was writing to: Rome. Here’s what N.T. Wright said about Paul.
“When people in churches today discuss Paul and his letters, they often think only of the man of ideas who dealt with lofty and difficult concepts, implying a world of libraries, seminar rooms, or at least the minister’s study for quiet sermon preparation. We easily forget that the author of these letters spent most of his waking hours with his sleeves rolled up, doing hard physical work in a hot climate, and that perhaps two-thirds of the conversations he had with people about Jesus and the gospel were conducted not in a place of worship or study, not even in a private home, but in a small, cramped workshop. Saul had his feet on the ground, and his hands were hardened with labor. But his head still buzzed with scripture and the news about Jesus.”
― N.T. Wright, Paul: A Biography
Paul is someone we can identify with—maybe not with his intellectual achievement and his self-sacrifice, but with his hard work and willingness to grow in his faith. Paul was just a person—he was a person called by God to do something special, but he was a working person at heart.
Over the next few months we’ll see Paul’s heart as he pours his life and faith into a church that was trying to survive in the most powerful city the world had ever known. It’s an important letter to a congregation at the center of the western world. And what a letter! Take some time to read Romans 8 for yourself over these next weeks. I’ll provide the background, first of Paul and then of the city itself, and together we’ll see what God has to say to us in our own little corner of the world.
This week we’re in Romans 1:1-6. Come and start this journey with us!
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
Called to Serve
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the one who takes our broken and used-up places, and makes all of them new.
Just a brief message today.
Churches are made up of people who share their talents and spiritual gifts and financial resources—people who bring what they have so that together we can be far more than we could ever be on our own. In the New Testament the church is referred to as the “ecclesia,” the “called out ones.”
Isn’t that wonderful? I love that we’ve been called out—in both senses: challenged to change, and welcomed into community. That’s us. That’s the Church Universal, and that’s First Pres SLO.
Every Fall season we offer a day where you can see all the ways you can jump in and serve this particular church. It’s an intentional way of providing a glimpse at the work we do together, and also a chance to find your place in it. This Sunday is our Fall Kickoff. After the service we’ll have a salad lunch together, and then a chance to see and join the various ministries and groups of the church.
Consider this your day to be called out! (In a good way.)
Sunday’s message is taken from a story of hope during a very difficult time in the life of Jeremiah the prophet. Come and hear, as we prepare to come and DO.
On Sept 15th we’ll begin our journey through the 8th chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. This is going to be a season of encouragement and challenge for all of us—don’t miss it!
Blessings to you as we all join together for this new church year.
Pastor John
Embracing New Beginnings
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, the one who fulfilled old promises by making all things new.
I was so ready to share stories of our travels through Scotland and England—of our pilgrimage through old Christian sites along the Fife Pilgrim Way, of visits with friends I still have from serving as a pastor in Edinburgh in 1992-93, and of sharing some of my old places in London with Shelley.
None of that happened.
Instead, I’ve been wrestling with a lingering cough from the flu that sent our plans sideways. Shelley and I spent a week in the Fuller Seminary library, where I got to read some books in preparation for our fall messages and Bible studies. Then I came back and worked at the church for a week to get a head start on some upcoming projects. We just wrapped up a week of vacation split between Mammoth Lakes and Southern California to visit our families.
Not exactly Scotland and England, but we still had some adventures.
Now I’m back and ready to get started on the new church year—in my Kirk article for September you’ll learn a little about what I plan to do between now and the Advent season. We have some good and meaningful ideas for our shared ministry at First Pres. There are needs to meet, people to serve, and opportunities to grow into a deeper relationship with God. I can’t wait!
Before I get too future-oriented, I want to thank the people who stepped in while I took some time off. Jen Rabenaldt led VBS, preached, and took some of my duties on Sunday mornings. We heard from Rev. Luanne Griguoli a few weeks ago, and this past Sunday Joel Drenckpohl of Front Porch shared a good word.
But I’d like to offer a special thanks to Shelley Irvine D’Elia, who took two Sundays when I was very sick and seamlessly led our congregation in worship—on that first Sunday at the end of July, she never saw the sermon until the morning of the service. All of this while we were both so disappointed about missing the trip to the UK and our pilgrimage in Scotland. I’m grateful for her gifts and talents and willingness to step in!
This Sunday I’ll wrap up the People in the Bible series with a message on a woman named Phoebe (Romans 16:1-2. We don’t have much of a record of her work, but the Apostle Paul entrusts her with a crucial mission in the 1st century, one that continues to bless the wider church and us, too.
I’m looking forward to seeing you all again! Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John