… This commentary is true about scripture, as well. Bad Bunny’s halftime show overflowed with meaning. Our story this morning also overflows with meaning. It begins with an ominous sentence, and, if our ears prick up at that, surely, we want to know more about it. Ours is a story of green grass, and compassion, and hurting people being healed, and hungry people being fed. But it takes place in the shadow of verses that came before it, in the New Testament and the Old. Our story also provides a kind of glimmering looking glass into events that will come after it…

Image: Swanson, John August. Loaves and Fishes, 2003, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56553 [retrieved January 23, 2026]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.

All our lives we have all been taught that this is the story of the fall of humanity from God’s grace. ….From the time of Saint Paul, this story has been depicted as the first sin that was spiritually deadly to all of humanity who came after. But neither that word nor that concept is found anywhere in the story. Our Jewish and Islamic friends do not see this story as depicting a fall. Rather, they see it as the first sin, and a kind of coming-of-age story, in which the participants emerge wiser and smarter, though there is a great cost to them….

Image: Monet, Claude, 1840-1926. Artist's Garden at Giverny, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57338 [retrieved January 23, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Artist%27s_Garden_at_Giverny_by_Claude_Monet_1900.jpeg.

…Make no mistake. Lent is about love. It is about our participation in remembering the most profound expression of love a people ever experienced.

So what does this have to do with our passage? What’s Jesus talking about? Is he saying that public prayer is always bad? I don’t think so. Jesus loved and took part in communal worship, and he preached regularly in the synagogues and the great outdoors. Jesus isn’t talking about the where of prayer, fasting, or giving, he’s talking about the why.

Why do we pray? Lots of reasons. We pray out of habit. We pray out of gratitude. We pray for urgent needs. We pray for relief from pain, physical, mental, or spiritual. We pray for those who have asked for our prayers, we pray for those we believe need our prayers. We pray for our loved ones. If we’re really listening to Jesus, we pray for our enemies. And all these are fine reasons to pray.

The only poor reason for prayer, according to Jesus, is the desire for praise and approval from other people. Jesus calls those who seek that approval, hypocrites. But it’s important to know that the original meaning of that word was “stage actor.” Jesus is warning against prayer as performance. He wants our prayer to be a heartfelt reaching towards God. Undergirding all our prayers, whether we’re aware of it or not, is the deep need for a relationship with God. Undergirding all of it, is love…

Image: Praying hands, courtesy of wallpaperaccess.com.

This morning we have a story from scripture that brings us into a liminal space, a moment when the veil between the world we see around us and another world is pierced. Jesus takes three disciples up a mountain to pray.  But before we get to that, I think it's important for us to talk about what happened six days earlier.

Six days earlier, Jesus was talking to his disciples, asking them what the crowds were saying about him, and also, what they, his closest followers, believed about him. Peter responded with a powerful declaration. He said, I believe that you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. Jesus blessed Peter for his words. He affirmed his wisdom and recognized him as a leader and bedrock of the church he was building. And Jesus told all the disciples to keep quiet about that. But then the conversation took a turn. Jesus told Peter and the disciples something unthinkable. Something horrifying. He told them that he would go to Jerusalem, where he would suffer at the hands of the authorities, and be killed, and then, on the third day he would be raised from the dead. Whereupon Peter responded by saying NO. Absolutely NOT. This must NEVER happen to you. Jesus, who had only moments before called Peter a bedrock of the church, said get behind me, Satan. You cannot interfere with the plans of God. Jesus ended this conversation saying that anyone who wanted to follow him would need to deny themselves and pick up their own cross and then follow where he leads.

That's what happened 6 days earlier.

Now, Jesus takes his inner circle—Peter, John, and James—up a mountain, presumably, to pray…

Image: Transfiguration of Christ, 1600’s CE, Benaki Museum, Athans, Greece, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56416 [retrieved January 23, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Transfiguration_-_Google_Art_Project_(715792).jpg.

The unnamed woman with the hemorrhage has faith that Jesus will heal her. And… this seems like a good time to ponder what faith is, after all. Many of us feel that faith is a thing, a noun, a solid block of thinking or feeling that never changes, never alters, is always right where we left it… until it isn’t. This can mean that when we have a change in how we experience our faith, it is unnerving, even frightening. Where did it go? Can we get it back? Presbyterian font of wisdom Frederick Buechner counsels,

…faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than a possession…it is… on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. [1]

Instead, he suggests that faith is, “not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.” It is “a journey without maps.” In this context, doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is a very natural part of it. We need to remember that. We need to trust the process that our faith may wax and wane like the moon, that, even when we can’t see or feel it, it is still a part of us.

Image: Jesus Raises Girl to Life, National Children’s Hospital, Tallaght, Dublin, Ireland, Metal relief sculpture, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55237 [retrieved January 23, 2026]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feargal/6410830967/.

…I’m betting that, at least once in your life, you responded to someone or something like that, . Maybe it was when you were seven and your friend said, “Let’s try out for the team.” Maybe it was when you were in High School, and something inside you said, “I’m going to be a…. teacher, doctor, engineer, parent…” something in your insides said, “Oh, yes!” to a long-term plan for your life. Maybe it was that moment when you laid eyes on him, or her, or them, for the first time, and something in you said, “That’s the one.”

We receive all kinds of calls in our lives. I believe God has a hand, even in the ones that seem to have little or nothing to do with our faith. We experience calls to friendships, careers, volunteer work, and prayer. We experience calls to rest and to awaken and to read deeply something that is speaking to us in a powerful way.

There are so many call stories in scripture…

Image: Mosaic of Christ Pantocrator, Anonymous, 521-547 CE, from Saint Appolinaire Nuovo Basilica, Ravenna, Italy; from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59393 [retrieved December 14, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christus_Ravenna_Mosaic.jpg.

…All this… all this… is prayer. The people are not yet living in this time of true safety. They are not yet free of this terrible leader. They are watching as he throws away, not only the treasures of God’s Temple, but also everything they have been taught about their faith and what it means to live it out.

So they pray. They pray as if the things they are pleading for have already been accomplished—because God can do this. They pray the reality they long for into being. They pray with joy and confidence because they know that God is trustworthy…

Image: Coventry Cathedral - John Piper's baptistery window, Stained Glass, 1956-1962, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54907 [retrieved December 14, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgeezer/2426416488/.

…There are all kinds of reasons why this moment might appear in this gospel. I believe this is about the incarnation. God comes among us as a vulnerable baby, and at the age of 30 is ready to respond to the purpose of his life. Let me be clear. We don’t know what this was like for Jesus. It is easy to say, well, he is the Son of God, he doesn’t need to be baptized. But I think that diminishes the incarnation and moves us in the direction of, “Well, he only looked like he was human.” The incarnation is a truly madcap phenomenon, God completely divesting Godself of divine power, so that God could truly be in it with us—all of it. Growing up. Learning things. Learning a craft or skill. Navigating relationships. Listening for what God was calling him to do. If we let the idea of Jesus being one with God lead us to think this was all no big deal for him, we have lost the thread. This whole thing only works if Jesus is truly human, as well as truly divine…

Image: Valente, Liz. Baptism of Jesus, Drawing, 2021, Church of Vicosa, Vicosa, Brazil, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59319 [retrieved December 14, 2025]. Original source: Liz Valente, https://www.instagram.com/donalizvalente/.

…We have before us this morning a story that is at once awe-inspiring and laced with the sinister. We have the magi, noble personages from the far East—most likely Persia, what we call ‘Iran’ today. And we have a king, whose response to the presence of the magi and the news they bring is nothing short of panic. We have a natural phenomenon turned supernatural, divine, holy; and we have the most ordinary thing in the world: a child, not quite a newborn, whose family loves and protects him when the king’s true nature is revealed. Awe. Fear. And, in the end, an epiphany, leading to great hope…

Image: Dürer, Albrecht, 1471-1528. 1504. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. Adoration of the Christ Child by the Three Wise Men, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46303 [retrieved December 14, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albrecht-D%C3%BCrer-005.jpg.

Have you ever wondered why a story begins, the way it begins?

“Call me Ishmael…” Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

‘“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.’ Little Women, by Lousia May Alcott.

Every writer begins their story with something essential. A name. An opinion. A situation. Immediate insight into a main character. Whatever it is, it is something the writer wants you to know.

The gospels are no different. They give the hearer or reader essential pieces of information, so that we will fully understand the story being told. Our passage from Luke’s gospel—such a familiar passage, so beloved—begins, oddly enough, with the names of some politicians. Luke locates the story in time and place for us, telling us that Caesar Augustus is the emperor of the mighty Roman Empire, and that one of his lieutenants, the one who is requiring this trip of Mary and Joseph, is Quirinius, the governor of Syria.

Why does the writer tell us this? Why should we care? …

Image: Nativity on Ivory, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=31702 [retrieved November 7, 2025]. Original source: Prof. Patout J. Burns.

I think of Joseph, a somewhat shadowy figure. No gospel records his words, but three of the four gospels tell us that he was a teknon, a word that has been misunderstood as meaning carpenter, but which probably indicated that he was a stone mason. The gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us that he embraced Mary and her son as his own. Matthew further tells us that, when Joseph was told that Jesus’ life was threatened, he took his wife and child and they became refugees in Egypt. He accepted Jesus as his son; he raised Jesus as his own, and he protected Jesus when he was threatened.

But that’s all we know. Who was Joseph? And how did he feel about… all this?

Image: Gandolfi, Gaetano, 1734-1802. Joseph's Dream, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54282 [retrieved November 7, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:'Joseph's_Dream',_painting_by_Gaetano_Gandolfi,_c._1790.jpg.

Why do people create genealogies? Why do we sign up for 23 and Me or Ancestry.com? I think the answer is this: We want to know about our families, so that we can understand ourselves. Joyce, a cousin on my dad’s side, was fascinated with genealogies long before internet searches and mail-in DNA tests via spitting in a tube were ways of exploring our ancestry. She went to libraries, and post offices, and wrote letters to the City Halls of small towns in places like Poland and Latvia. She sent in requests for birth certificates and copies of ships’ manifests from the early 1900’s. She learned that my paternal grandfather was Jewish, something none of his children knew until Joyce discovered it in the 1980’s, long after his death.

Unlike the Old Testament genealogies, which are lists of ancestors and descendants, meant to tell the stories of entire family trees, the New Testament genealogies in Matthew and Luke are all about Jesus. They all lead up to him. We are being shown his lineage—the fact that he is a descendant of Abraham, which makes him a son of God’s covenant; and he is a descendant of David, which, for us Christians, is an indication that he is the Messiah, the one whom the prophets assure us will come to judge and to heal.

We have just read a very unusual version of the genealogy in the gospel according to Matthew chapter 1. In any Bible, Matthew’s list will show you the traditional form of this same genealogy: Father to son. “Abraham was the father of Isaac; Isaac was the father of Jacob;” and so on. Scholar and Roman Catholic nun Ann Patrick Ware compiled the genealogy we have before us today based on information found in scripture. It is a genealogy telling of Jesus’ descent by way of the mothers…

Image: Swanson, John August. Story of Ruth, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56561 [retrieved November 7, 2025]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.

…The story begins with Zechariah, a priest, serving in the Temple. A messenger of the Living God approaches him. The messenger tells him, Fear not, calls Zechariah by name, and tells him, “Your prayers have been heard.”

We can make assumptions about those prayers, can’t we? My first assumption is based on the next sentence: Zechariah’s been praying for a child, probably a boy, who could go into the family business of priesting. But… that’s not the only thing Zechariah may have been praying for. Maybe Zechariah has been praying for the coming of the Messiah. And…we have no idea when Zechariah has been praying. Is this a current prayer? Did Zechariah dare to hope for a child, even in the couple’s advanced years? Maybe Zechariah is the kind of person who prays for miracles. I know some who do this, unapologetically. Ask for miracles—why not, as long as you’re already praying?…

Image: Zechariah Coming out of the Temple Speechless, Cathedral of Amiens, France. 1508-1519, painted medallion on choir-screen, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=29361 [retrieved November 4, 2025]. Original source: image donated by Jim Womack and Anne Richardson.

I have a question for you: Do you like to know the ending of a book or a movie before you’ve read or watched it? Or do you do everything possible to avoid knowing the ending? I’m the latter… I will avoid reviews, shush people who’ve already read or seen it, and in every way bury my head in the sand, metaphorically speaking, in order to NOT know the ending of something I haven’t yet read or watched.

Then, this week I heard this, by the marvelous preacher, Anna Carter Florence:

When I was in high school, I had an English teacher named Miss Hayes who was famous for giving away the endings of the books we read. In fact, she’d do it deliberately. On the first day of class, she’d stand up front with the list of novels and short stories we were going to read that semester and speed-talk through every plot, like a movie reviewer. And because she was so good at it, we were always drawn into the story—spellbound 16-year-olds, ready to go home and tackle Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter—and then, with no spoiler alert…she’d tell us the ending. Every time. We’d groan, and she’d grin, and say, “The most important thing about a story isn’t what happens. It’s how it happens. I’m telling you the ending so you can read the story backwards.”[i]

And, in a way, that’s what both Jesus and the lectionary for the first Sunday in Advent are doing: They’re telling us the end of the story. And the end of the story is this: God’s love makes right everything that is wrong. God’s love banishes everything that is evil and amplifies everything that is good, and spreads it over the whole world, so that all creation lives in peace and joy and gratitude…

Image: Harpursville, after the storm. 2014. P. Raube

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the observance of Christ the King Sunday, introduced by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Quas Prima (“In the first…”). Today this feast is celebrated, not only by Roman Catholics, but by numerous protestant denominations, including the PCUSA. We celebrate Jesus Christ as a king unlike any other king in history. At the same time, we need to understand that this very same observance is being used in many quarters as part of a drive toward theocracy—rule of our governments by the Christian church. And that was the Pope’s intention in writing the encyclical—that a Roman Catholic theocracy should replace secular governments.

It's complicated.

It’s complicated to talk of kings at all right now. That complication begins in scripture, with God’s stern message to the people of Israel, who came to the prophet Samuel demanding a king, only to be told by God, “You’ll be sorry. But I’ll give you a king, if that’s what you want.”

It’s complicated because. After seeing a vision, the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the year 312 CE, installed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the year 313. Before that, the world knew Jesus as the rabbi from Galilee who preached repentance and renewal and the kingdom of God, but never, himself, claimed a title of kingship. Jesus was the one who walked the length and breadth of Judea and beyond, teaching, healing, and feeding people, casting out demons and calling out the religious authorities of the day, and advocating for the poor, the outcast, and those called sinners. Jesus was the one who was crucified because he was believed to be a threat to Rome, and was raised again. And not once did he wear a crown, aside from the one fashioned from thorns which he wore on the cross.

It’s complicated, because we live in an era when, on the one hand, there are such things as “No King” rallies in protest of a government that was formed in rebellion against a king, and, that very monarchy against which we rebelled seems frayed and unstable at best.

Why do we call Jesus “king”? It’s complicated.

Image: Catacomb of Callixtus, 3rd Century, Rome, Italy - The Good Shepherd, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54382 [retrieved August 19, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/2594526135/.

…Throughout the ages, people have watched and wondered and waited for the end of the world. In the year 999, there was such great confidence that the end would come in the year 1000, people flocked to churches and monasteries to turn over their worldly goods in hopes of saving their souls when the end came.[i] (After the year 1000, there was a building boom, with churches being built and rebuilt throughout Europe.[ii])

It seems that just about every generation has believed it would see the end of the world. So why was Jesus talking about it almost 2000 years ago? And how do his words about it affect us?

Bokvoed, Temple Mount, Jerusalem, 2019. Creative Commons License, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

…I know that each of us can conjure moments when we stood in the midst of devastation—a broken life, a fractured marriage, a diagnosis; losing a job, losing a home, losing a parent; feeling failure, feeling rejection, feeling lost. Each of us can recall the bodily experience of grief, disbelief, and dread that come with those moments. But each of us can also understand—now, if we didn’t then—that God was with us. We felt God’s presence in a card we received, or a phone call, or an unexpected moment of peace. We were shown God’s presence through the love of friends, the caring of community, the counsel of someone we trusted. And even if we didn’t experience those things in that way, later we understand. God was with me, we think. God must have been, otherwise… we’re not sure we’d be here now.

And so is God with us, in this very moment, in this, our entirely loving, astonishingly generous, and ever-joyful community of faith. We are still and always a part of God’s beloved community, whatever has happened in the past and whatever God has in store for us in the future. We still worship a God who urges us to remember those words, “I am here!” any time we are feeling dismayed or disoriented or dispirited….

Image: Swanson, John August. Presentation in the Temple (1988, Los Angeles, CA), from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56557 [retrieved August 19, 2025]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.

I love a story of the saints of God. I especially love a story where we find an unexpected saint—someone we initially are pretty sure will turn out to be a villain….

…And that’s it! The heartwarming story come to an end. A tasty Middle Eastern dinner awaits, and the community has witnessed Zacchaeus’ transformation. Like the beggar in chapter 18, like the victim of robbers in the parable, Zacchaeus has been healed. The End. Or, is it?

What if that’s not actually what we just witnessed?

Image: Hochhalter, Cara B.. Zacchaeus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59050 [retrieved October 28, 2025]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.

Merriam-Webster gives us two additional definitions of guilt:

3. feelings of deserving blame especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy
As in, “Even looking at the expensive dress made her feel guilty.”

4. a feeling of deserving blame for offenses
As in, “Wracked by guilt, he confessed his affairs.”[ii]

One of these can become problematic. In fact, one of these may well have kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

Augustinian Friar Martin Luther was a scholar and a priest. He was a theologian, pondering the nature of God and God’s relationship with human beings. He translated scripture into German, his native tongue. However, Luther suffered a terrible case of scruples. No matter what he did, no matter how often he prayed to God; no matter how many hours he spent in confessing his perceived sins to a priest, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he deserved blame and punishment. He feared hell, and despite his best efforts, had no confidence he would avoid it. Here are his own words, describing the spiritual scruples that plagued him:

They were so great and so much like hell that no tongue could adequately express them, no pen could describe them, and one who had not himself experienced them could not believe them.[iii]

Image: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther, 1528, Public Domain courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1. Prayer. Prayer is mentioned all through the Bible. In fact, with 254 individual uses of the word, prayer is mentioned, on average, 3 to 4 times in each book of the Bible, which is a lot. And that prayer doesn’t always look like sitting or kneeling in a sanctuary, eyes closed, hands folded, silent words on people’s lips. Sometimes it looks like a heartbroken psalm—“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1). Sometimes prayer looks like a horrifying petition for heartless killing: “Happy shall they be who take [the] little ones [of Babylon] and dash them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:9).

In fact, as one friend has written, “In scripture, humans argue with God ALL THE TIME, and convince [God] to change both [the divine] mind and [God’s] actions regularly. We ignore that ancient conversational possibility at our peril.”

Prayer is certainly about our petitions, our asking God for what we desperately need or want. But prayer is far more than that, far more complex and nuanced. One of the most moving prayers in scripture is David conceding to God that he has not always understood what God wants of him, but that he trusts in God’s promises to him (1 Samuel 7:18-29). And this prayer is followed by a list of David’s victories in battle—an account of an acquisition of land and treasure that resulted in what might be considered the golden era of David’s reign.

Luke advises us that prayer is at the heart of this parable. But what does that look like?

Image: John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Parable of the Unjust Judge (1863;  illustration for “Parables of Our Lord”), Public Domain.