July 13th, 2025 - "Celebrating Jesus" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us

online at FUMCbentonville.org or check us out on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Merry Christmas.

First of all, I know that seems like a weird thing to say, right?

To say Merry Christmas at the beginning of the sermon.

But the passage that we're gonna hear today is from the

time in which Jesus was born.

And it's a passage that we don't often reflect on, but it is when

Merry and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple to dedicate him.

And that's an important marker because in the first place it is.

Required of Jewish tradition and practice, but also in the ancient

world you had until the eighth day a child was alive to choose whether or

not you wanted to raise that child.

You could choose to just abandon the child.

And so they are coming to the temple to proclaim their faith and

to proclaim their commitment to be his parents and to raise him.

And we are all so grateful that they made that commitment.

We're gonna hear words that are spoken by a prophet as they

bring Jesus into the temple.

And I want us to hear those words, not just for Jesus, because of course they

apply to him, but I want us to hear them.

For every child born into this world, for every child, because every child

is celebrated, every child is a gift of God, and that is all of us in here.

And if you have never felt like you're a loved and beloved child of God, I

want you to feel that now and know that now that you are celebrated

as you come into God's temple.

So we're gonna hear these words with that on our hearts.

A man named Simeon was in Jerusalem.

He was righteous and devout.

He eagerly anticipated the restoration of Israel and the Holy Spirit rested on him.

The Holy Spirit revealed to him that he wouldn't die before he had seen

the Lord's Christ led by the Spirit.

He went into the temple area.

Meanwhile, Jesus' parents brought the child to the temple so that they could

do what was customary under the law.

Simeon took Jesus in his arms and praised God.

He said, now master, let your servant go in peace according to your word,

because my eyes have seen your salvation.

You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples.

It's a light for revelation to the Gentiles and a glory

for your people in Israel.

His father and mother were amazed by what was said about him.

Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, this boy is a sign to be the cause

of the falling and rising of so many in Israel and to be a sign that generates

opposition so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed and the sword

will pierce your inner most being to.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray, amen.

So as I mentioned, these words are both a celebration of Jesus and a celebration

for all of the kids in our world.

And that leads us into the fact that we are in a new sermon

series called Living Like Jesus.

And this sermon series takes exactly the passages that the kids

learned in Vacation Bible school.

So for the next few weeks, we're gonna be studying the same passages that our

kids studied in vacation Bible school.

And I've always wanted to do a series like this.

I'm glad we finally got it together and made it happen.

And I also wanna share with you that as you're going along through

this series, if you have questions.

Ask our kids 'cause they learned ahead of you.

Okay.

And I want to, in this day when we're celebrating how amazing kids are in

our lives, I wanna take a few minutes and share with you some of the stories

from Vacation Bible School this week.

So my role this year in vacation Bible school was to be.

The evil tax collector.

So every day the kids were given some coins and they got to use

those coins to go to marketplace.

If you haven't seen the marketplace decoration, we put

a video about it on Facebook.

I encourage you to go look at it.

Totally transformed Heinz Hall into a Middle Eastern marketplace.

It was Wale.

So the kids would take their coins and they would pay to do different

activities in there and get different gifts and things like that.

So that's what they were given the money for.

It was my job every day to go collect that money and to do so as the tax collector.

So I'd come in and say to each of the shopkeepers, give me all your money.

I'm here to collect for the taxes.

I'm the evil tax collector.

Give me all your money.

And, uh, miss Margie asked me how hard it was for me to get into that frame of mind.

I was like, real easy.

I can do it in just a snap.

Anyway, uh, the first day that I went in, the kids were like.

Pastor Michelle and I was like, I'm not Pastor Michelle.

I'm the evil tax collector.

The second day, the shopkeepers tried to hide their money from me,

but I was not falling for that.

I knew to get their money, but by the third day, the kids made a wall

around the shopkeepers and said, you're not getting their money.

So by the fourth day, I had to have been reformed and encountered

Jesus, in which case I said, Jesus taught me not to be so greedy.

And I'm not here to collect money for taxes, but I am here

to collect money for the poor.

And before I could stop some of the kids, a couple of the kids drop

money into my bag, even though it's their money, drop money in my bag and

said, we wanna give to the poor too.

Then I have a couple of individual stories and I share these with the kids'

permission and their parents' permission.

Um, the first one, some of you all know Aiden Tesh, um, who's being raised

by Ruth Ann and Mark White Hit, and Aiden noticed through the course of

the week that there was a little boy who was struggling to feel at home.

And he was just upset every day of vacation Bible school.

So I think it was on Wednesday, Aiden brought a car from his home and he gave

that car to this little boy and said, I want you to have this and I want you to

have it so you'll feel comfortable here.

That's living like Jesus.

I also have to lift up our youth.

We had as many youth volunteering.

As adults for vacation bottle school,

and it was so wonderful to watch them do the transition from being the

kids that were learning to the young adults who were teaching the kids.

Right?

It was so wonderful to watch them do that transition.

And maybe my favorite moment of watching that transition was when

I ran into Duncan McCullough on Thursday and Duncan had to help with

the games and he came in and he said.

You know what today's game is gonna be.

And I said, what?

And he goes, well, it's really hot outside, so our game is

gonna be sit in the shade.

And I thought, man, that is, that.

Those are the words of somebody who's been in charge of kids

all week and just wants a break.

Like, right.

And I think every parent could feel that.

And I think Jesus who went into the temple at age 12 and taught to, uh, to adults, I

think he could feel that for them as well.

Like what it means to be young and also have responsibility and to take

that responsibility very seriously.

And how sometimes even in the midst of that, you just wanna break.

Which brings us to the fact that this word that we heard Simeon proclaim is

not just a word for kids or about kids.

It is also a word for all of us who take care of kids, whether we do that

as parents or grandparents, aunts or uncles, vacation Bible school,

volunteers, teachers, nurses, doctors.

Just people who love kids around them.

These are words for us as we take care of children because it is

profoundly beautiful work, and it is work of great hope because we see the

potential of our kids all around us.

But it is also hard work and it is especially hard work because I

think we have all dealt with a child who is causing confrontation or a

child who is creating opposition.

And sometimes that is their way of testing limits and exploring

their reality and who they are.

But many times it is getting us to recognize something is broken in

our world and we need to fix it.

And so we have to pay attention and respond.

But the other piece that we hear in this, and the other risk that

we have when we take care of our children and we love them.

Is that of course we may also be the people whose hearts are

pierced with a sword because there is always risk in love.

And so sometimes we are the people who see the dreams that

we had for a child not work out.

And sometimes we are a people who recognize that a child wasn't able

to be all that they could have been because of the brokenness

of this world that we live in.

And sometimes we are the people who lose a child.

I don't know what Mary must have felt like, but I know a

lot of parents in Texas who do.

I'm gonna share with you a letter written by a man named Aaron Parsley,

and it is part of a, of a recounting of the experience in the Guadalupe

River that he had with his family.

His family was at their river house, which was back from the

river and on 20 foot stilts.

And it still came down and it was him and his sister and her family and

his husband and, and then his sister had a little girl, four and named

Rosemary and a little boy Clay too.

And then Aaron's father was there also.

And everyone survived except 2-year-old Clay.

And part of the reason Clay didn't make it was because when the house

broke, the only one who had ahold of the children were their mama.

And she tried to save them both, but Clay was swept away from her.

So as we hear these words.

Acknowledge that they break our hearts and they break our hearts because we

are all carrying grief around with us.

You live long enough, you're carrying some grief, and as our bishop put it

this week, new grief hooks old grief.

So we have that and we are also going to hurt because we are created to

be in community with one another.

And in the body of Christ, when one part of us hurts, we all hurt.

But we will also feel pain in this because we know we could do better.

We know we could do better by our children.

So even as you hear these words and you feel how hard they are,

I encourage us to continue to remember to be the people of hope.

To remember to be the courageous people who work for the betterment of this

world, who work for the breaking through of the reign of God, and to see what is

possible in each glimpse and to still see what is possible in each child.

And to remember that we can always, always fight like mamas, like

Mary and like Clay's mama, elicit.

Dear Rosemary, in the emergency room you ate Cheez-Its and

sipped water from a straw.

I asked you about boo boos.

You looked at my arms and legs and said, teal.

You have a lot.

There's one there.

There's one there, there's one there.

Do you have any?

I asked you shook your head.

What about that small spot on your leg?

You said it was from falling off your bike weeks ago.

You didn't cry in the waiting room.

You sat there wearing nothing but a man's T-shirt that fit you like

a dress as you waited patiently.

I asked if you understood what had happened.

The river house broke.

You told us we rushed in the river.

That is what happened.

But I want you to know more about that 4th of July weekend when the Guadalupe

rose and broke the river house and tore our family members away from one another.

I want you to know what we lived through, how your mother saved your life, that

your father and Patrick help rescue you.

I want you to know how heartbroken we all are, that your baby brother was lost.

But how amazed and relieved we were that you were saved.

I want you to know how much your family loves you and

how much we love one another.

This was so hard, but we are strong and so are you, Rosemary.

I also want you to know that we had so much fun the day before the flood.

We swam in the river until you wanted to jump from the rope swing.

That came as no surprise because ever since you took your first steps

on your first birthday, you've been a fearless, observant, determined

little girl with Patrick on the bank and your mom in the water.

You pulled yourself up the rope and swung out over the

river at just the right moment.

You let go and splashed down in your life jacket.

We all cheered and you wanted to do it again.

You wanted your dad and your pops to see you swing out on that rope.

Your brother Clay wanted to do it too, but of course he was too small.

His mom held him in his life jacket while he grabbed the rope.

She lifted him up as if he were swinging and carefully dipped him in the water.

He giggled every time later that evening when we'd all dried off and gone inside.

Clay ran after you in his diaper while you, Patrick and I played Hide and seek.

Clay laughed and you screamed.

When Patrick dumped out from behind a door.

He followed you under the bed when I told you it would make a good hiding spot.

And when you and Patrick sat down to read a book while your mom made dinner

and your dad and pops were outside investigating a broken water pump,

clay climbed up on the couch next to you and put his head on your shoulder.

He looked up at you and smiled.

He was as always so happy to be by your side.

Your grandma Alex, who wasn't at the cabin that day, but soon came to comfort

us, told me once that she and Pops decided to buy that river house because

they wanted their grandkids to grow up.

Spending time there together among the Cypress trees, swimming,

kayaking, swinging on that rope, and jumping into the great Guadalupe.

I'm so glad you and Clay got to do that, and though he won't

be able to play with you again.

I know that by the time you can read this, you'll have had many

more adventures and a lot of fun.

Thanks to your courageous mama.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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FUMC

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everyone into our church family.

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orientation, marital status, age, physical and mental ability, national origin,

economic station, and political ideology.

We come together in action and outreach, aspiring to follow Jesus' example of

radical hospitality, love, and grace as a transformative movement in our community.

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Grace and Peace.