3rd After Pentecost 2025

I invite you to join me in standing as you're comfortable for the processional, which will be Bob Marley as one month.

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together, Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, Jesus now and ever shall be filled with them.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have built your church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.

Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Thus says the sovereign of the vanguard of heaven, reason within yourselves, and call for the keening women, and they shall come.

Send for the wise and skilled women, and they shall come.

Let them quickly raise a wailing over us, so that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids glow with water.

For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion.

How we are ruling! We are utterly shaped because we have left the land, because they have cast out our dwellings.

Hear now, women, the word of she who thunders, and let your ears receive the word of God's mouth.

Teach to your daughters a wailing, each woman and her neighbor woman a healing.

Death has come upon us into our windows, it has entered our palaces to cut off the children from the streets, and the young women and young men from the square.

Thus says the dread God, The corpses of the woman lord shall follow like a die upon the open field, like she is behind the remote, and no one shall be the word of the Psalm 126 readers of the heaven.

When she who speaks line in the reverse of the cat, to the Zion, when our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue shouted with joy.

Revers redeeming God our captivity.

Those who sow in tears.

God will dwell with them as their God.

They will be God's peoples, and self saying, God will be with them, God will wipe every tear from their eyes, death will be no more.

Grief and weeping and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.

And the one who seated upon the throne said, Look, I am making all things new.

The one also said, Right, for these words are trustworthy and true.

Then the one said to me, It is God, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

I will give to the thirsty from the spring and the water of life freely.

Those who are overcome will inherit these things, and I will be their God, and they will be my daughters and sons.

See what kind of love has our Maker given to us, that we should be called children of God, and we are.

The reason the world does not know us is that it cannot it did not know God.

Beloved, now we are God's children, and it has not yet been revealed what we will be.

We do know that when God is revealed, we shall be like God, for we shall see God just as God is.

And everyone who has this hope in God purifies themselves, just as God is pure.

Please don't be in understanding as you're comfortable for the sequence.

When I find myself at times of trouble, love and fair becomes to me.

Speaking words will soon let it be.

Speaking words will some let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, speaking words with some let it be sound.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, oh, let it be.

Whisper as well, let it be.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke.

As they led Jesus away, they seized Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid on him the cross to carry behind Jesus.

And a great number of people followed, and a group of women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him.

But Jesus turned to them and said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me.

Weep only for yourselves and for your children.

Look, the days are surely coming when they will say, Blessed are barren women, and wombs that have never given birth, and breasts that have never nourished.

And then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us into the hills, cover us.

For if when the wood is green they do this, and then when it is dry, what will happen?

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Okay, it's back.

I'm back.

Good morning, everybody.

I uh I don't always get super excited when I see the readings, and um, at first uh when I was going through the readings, I got a nuke reading, and I thought, oh, that's a tough one, that's interesting.

Because I always start with the gospel.

Um, and then I moved to the epistle, the revelation reading, which is an epistle reading, and I got really excited.

Like, super duper excited because this passage, I think, that we have today, I think is really important for me and for how I understand what it is that we're doing.

I always sit back and ask myself, like, what are we doing again?

Like, as the church, as Christian, what are we doing again?

What's the I mean, I have to remind myself this.

And the thing about knowledge, as far as I can tell, like, you know, the fancy term for this is epistemology, but the thing I've learned about the way that we know something is it's kind of like a pyramid, right?

And so you get these base sort of knowings about life and people and movement, you know, this is where a lot of different attachments and violence and other standings of the world come in, whether you trust people, this usually happens when you're a child, a baby, and things like that.

And then based on that, you get another set of knowledge that is right on top of that, but it's limited, like what you're gonna understand is kind of limited to that base knowledge, like what is available to that, right?

And it goes up and up and up and up.

And so every time we try to learn something new, it is really dependent on like what have we already known to be true?

Like, what are the core beliefs that we have about the world, about people, you know, like the base stuff at the bottom.

And the reason I like the reading today is because I think it's inviting us to get it, what I think is like a really base understanding about God and the church.

Like a lot of times we like rearrange the chairs on the Titanic type of deal, right, when it comes to our faith and things like that, is that we're like, you know what, I want to understand forgiveness, right?

I want to understand forgiveness, but if I, you know, so I'm gonna take a course on forgiveness, I'm gonna read a book on forgiveness, but if I peel the onion far enough and I get down to the bottom, if the God that you believe in is vengeful and angry and ready to punish, forgiveness is gonna be hard.

It's just gonna be hard.

And so what I love about today is like, and as a pastor, as somebody who is constantly listening and wondering, like, how can I be somebody that provides some wisdom, some information to fellow sojourners and pilgrims, some ceremony.

How can I use what I've learned to help people along their journey?

I often think that like Mike and I are guides on a mountain of truth and love and whatever it is, and like our job, the image I think to myself, is when I run across a full pilgrim, I listen carefully and I think, you know, you might want to check out this, you know, patch of trees over here.

And you sure want to avoid this part of the mountain right now because that might not feel safe or be good.

Right?

So it's really, I'm just inviting people in to think about things, about life and relationships.

And I will tell you that what I'm about to, what we are about to talk about is one of the most common things I try to invite people into understanding.

Because I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions about Christianity, is what I'm gonna talk about today.

So the reading is Revelation 21.

And Revelation is apocalyptic literature, it's interesting literature.

I will tell you that I know as many of you probably love the Da Vinci Code and the series and all of that.

I pro some of you may love conspiracy theories.

I do, I've got to be honest.

I love hearing a good conspiracy theory.

I'm like, oh, maybe that is how the government works.

Maybe that is what happened.

I mean, it's kind of fun, right?

But the thing about that, right, is it's all about secret knowledge.

And a lot of people read Revelation as if it's sort of giving you this secret knowledge about what is gonna happen.

I mean, tens of thousands of pages of ink, probably millions of pages of ink, have been spilled on people trying to crack the code in Revelation because they want to absolutely know what's gonna happen next.

And if it's not Revelation, then it's Daniel, right?

Or it's some other piece of apocalyptic literature.

Oh, it's in there.

I just gotta look harder and I'm going to see.

I'm going to get the secret knowledge that other people don't have.

Because when we get secret knowledge, it makes us sort of feel powerful and certain.

Like I know what's going on.

Like I've got it.

And everybody else doesn't.

I mean, that's why conspiracy theories are so powerful today, right, in a world of chaos.

And that's why people are believing so many of them, is because the secret knowledge feels good and safe.

Well, because we look at revelation as it's just this sort of book of secret knowledge, like most people have looked at it, that you can sort of crack the code, we fall into what I think is one of these core like beliefs we have, which some people call Gnosticism.

Now, Gnosticism is a brand of philosophy that says the point of our earthly existence is to get secret knowledge, get your secret knowledge, so that you can transcend to the next plane.

The point, and there have been Gnostics for a very long time.

Gnostics carries all the way back to the Greco-Roman times and different philosophers, then the whole point of life is to get the secret knowledge.

And then, like a video game, you transcend to the next level.

Usually there's some boss, truly, when you look at like Manichaeism, and then you look at certain other like Gnostic traditions and philosophies, there's always like a big boss at the end of the level or something that you have to overcome, right?

So you get your secret knowledge, you go to the next level, and then you get your secret knowledge, and then you go to the next level, and then you get your secret knowledge there, and you go to the next level, and eventually you get to some place like a nirvana or someplace divine or some transcendent place like that.

But the point is that this place is bad.

Bad, bad, bad, bad.

Everything here is bad.

Matter's bad, everything's bad, it's all falling apart, it's no good, and the best that we can do is leave and get out of here.

And so we've got to get our secret knowledge so that we can get the key to go off to the next place.

I mean, friends, you may not think that you believe this, but we all do on some level.

We all do.

The way that we talk about heaven, the way that we talk about people who have gone before us, I mean, we imagine there, like from revelation, that there's this beautiful place somewhere else, and that when we die, we go off to there.

And we get there, if you come from like really bad Christian theology, but I mean, this is what a lot of people what's the secret knowledge that you need to get there?

Jesus loves you and he died for you.

Do you accept it?

I accept it.

I'm good.

This all stinks, I'll do the best I can.

And then, but the real payoff, the real thing that we're doing is we're trying to get as many people as possible to know this so as many people as possible can get to heaven, get to the next layer, the next part of the video game.

That's what our job as Christians is primarily to do.

Anybody grow up or want to name that that has been a part of how they've been formed and understand what faith is and what Christianity is?

Right?

It's to get people the secret knowledge, get them baptized, get them through the ritual, because the point is to go off to the other place.

That's really what this is.

And so the problem with Gnosticism, well, there's lots of problems with Gnosticism, but like, in my opinion, the first and most important problem that I want to get in is it's that belief system that subsidizes so many of the atrocities that we have committed and done to human beings.

The only way that we could have gotten, you know, to, in my opinion, some type of chattel slavery reality is if we believed in Gnosticism ultimately, because all the good and faithful Christians who were sitting down at the pews at the front told themselves that the people they owned up in the balcony were okay.

Do you know why?

Because we got them that secret knowledge.

So we did our part.

We got them to see, because ultimately that's what matters.

Is you know, we can build all different kinds of constructs about who's a human and who's not, but if you think about it, that what really allows you to say that really the point is we just want to get them saved.

Because this all just stinks anyway.

So I think Gnosticism is the thing that allows us, on the really hard days when we're confronted with the change that we don't want to have in our own lives or other people, we say, well, it doesn't matter anyway, I'm saved.

We're just gonna go to heaven.

I mean, it's all, you know, like that's the that's the thing, right?

But did anybody notice that in the Revelation reading, like, the kingdom of heaven is not a place we went off to?

Anybody notice that?

See, apocalyptic literature is imagery that is given to a person or they write literature, and it's about an experience that they can't put into words.

They have some experience of knowing and understanding.

They can't figure it out.

There's no words that can describe it like I'm trying my best.

So, what they do is they use imagery, like the literature developed to try to get it.

But so we know that it's a critical image.

It's not it's an image that the kingdom of heaven, the new Jerusalem, right, is not one that we go up and off to.

It's what?

It's one that's coming down.

Everybody notice that?

Let's read it.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

The first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more, and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven.

Descending from heaven.

What does that image mean?

I think there is no more anti-Gnostic image in all of Scripture than saying that the thing that we're moving towards, the thing that we're hoping towards, and by the way, apocalyptic literature is supposed to provide hope at some level.

Like it's warning, but it's also hope.

It always has a piece of hope to it.

And the hope is that the kingdom of heaven is going to come down, it's going to be here, it's going to emerge.

God is going to be present in a new way with all new things.

But my friends, it's not somewhere out there in the Great Bye bye.

It's here.

It's now.

This is why we live in what's called the already and the not yet.

The fancy term for this, for those that like to look this up, is called realized eschatology.

So if you're a nerd like me, that's the term.

Let me explain to you what it means.

It means that the point of what we're doing is building the kingdom of God as messy and as difficult and as painful and uncertain as it is right now.

That we're not, like, I had somebody literally tell me that the Bible, when I first started going to church home, I had somebody sit down and say, like, very serious.

Very, I mean, like, I'm a young, like, impressionable Christian.

I'm like, I don't know anything about this.

I had this guy sit down next to me and he was like, well, first, do you know what Bible stands for?

I'm like, book?

I don't know.

He's like, no.

Basic instructions before leaving Earth.

I was like, oh, but this dude thought this.

Like he legit was trying to tell me that that's why it was called a Bible.

I'm like, the Bible, my friends, is not basic instructions before leaving Earth to go off with a spaceship or the starship or catch the comet at the end or whatever the heck you want to do, you know?

Like, it is because it's telling us how do we participate in relationship to the God that made everything, in the continued renewing and building of creation right now, individually and as the church.

Even though it's a mess, and even though, and we're going to get to Luke, even though there seems to be suffering everywhere, and it doesn't seem like God gives a God's pituity about any of this sometimes, how are we struggling to believe that?

And then getting up and doing our part as the church, the foretaste.

I mean, I sure would hope that when people come here, it's not because, you know, Mike's and I's preaching is so good or the music is so fantastic.

They come here and they say, geez, these people kind of treat each other differently.

It feels different here.

It kind of feels like I'm in a foreign land.

Kind of feels like I stepped out of one culture and I walked into another, a culture of generosity and love and kindness.

I sure hope people have that experience.

And for those of you who are here at state, that might be what it was.

I mean, sure, who doesn't like a good sermon and good music, right?

But the whole point is that the church is supposed to be a foretaste of this New Jerusalem.

Badly.

Like, badly, my friends.

Like through a glass darkly, Paul would say.

But it is, and that's our work.

Like, how?

So, in this bottom level of knowledge and epistemology, I'm trying to yank out the Gnosticism.

I'm trying to yank out the basic instructions before leaving Earth.

I just got to get people saved and agree with me.

And I'm trying to put a piece in there that says, how would your life be different if you got up and said, Today I get to put a brick in the kingdom of God?

Like that's my work.

As I get to go out there and small brick, big brick, little brick, big, I get to like contribute in some way to building the kingdom of God.

That God that we say is someday gonna finish all the work that we know we can't do.

That's kind of the story of Revelation, the wisdom, is that we believe God is gonna break in again in some way, right?

To do the work that feels like we're never gonna be able to do it.

And I find that super interesting and energizing.

Getting up every day and trying to sell fire insurance to people doesn't seem interesting to me at all.

Trying to get people to agree with me, say a prayer.

But getting up and saying, I wonder how the Spirit is gonna help me be a part of building the kingdom of God brick by brick, that seems really energizing.

And then I gotta talk a little bit about this loop piece because I think it's really interesting, right?

If it is true that that's our call as the church, that's our call in the moment, is just be part of the renewal of all things.

And then there's this interesting bit with Jesus and Simon of Siri, where Jesus is carrying his portion of the cross out to the crucifixion.

And all three synoptic gospels record this, but Luke is a little different.

They get this guy, Simon, now they pull him in and he carries it.

And then Jesus turns to the women of Jerusalem that are wailing and weeping for him, the Jewish women, and he says, Don't weep for me, weep for yourselves.

And I don't, and he says that because he knows the pain that is gonna come.

Or scholars will say when it was written, Jerusalem had already been destroyed.

Right?

Like past AD 70, Jerusalem had already been destroyed.

And so when they wrote that, you know, they knew that that was gonna happen.

And when I tell you that Jerusalem was destroyed, let me tell you, friends, go read Josephus.

Destruction of Jerusalem was horrid and involved a cannibalism of parents and children because they were starving and murder and backstabbing.

I mean, it was a horrid reality when they seized that it took forever.

And so Jesus is saying, You're weeping for me, but your inability, people in general, to understand and to live and to love is just going to create more and more suffering for you and your children and your children's children.

That we need to wake up, as it were.

We need to live in a different reality and economy.

We need to proclaim that we can be differently with each other right now.

We don't just give in and say, well, this place sucks, so let's go off somewhere else.

We can change it now, and if we don't wake up, weep for yourselves.

God's not gonna punish you.

It's just a consequence of the way we treat each other.

That's why the world is it is.

So Jesus says, weep for yourselves, please wake up.

So what's in this interesting in this is this idea of cross-carrying and suffering in the midst of this reality of being workers building the kingdom of God.

And that's the next piece up.

So I really think we've got to push back on this Gnosticism.

Like, like we have to get that in our bones that what it means to be a Christian is to leave this place and engage the suffering of the world as best we can, both internally in ourselves, right, and externally with other people.

We engage that reality, we offer hope, we offer support, we offer community, we offer wisdom, and that is the work of building the kingdom of God.

I think ultimately this is what Jesus says is how we do it, until we believe God is gonna break in again.

And so, how do we do that?

How do we engage that?

Well, I mean, it's internal and external, friends.

It's internal and external.

And if you just pick one, if you're the type of person that just spends all your time thinking about your own self-improvement and how you're gonna become a better and holier person, right, then I would encourage you to maybe look around at all the suffering of the world to see what you can do to be a part of a helping alleviate that for maybe people who weren't as fortunate and maybe didn't have the opportunities and the privileges or the luxury of, you know, going and taking time to do that work.

And if you're the type of person that never really wants to look in the mirror or go to a therapist or, you know, have a hard conversation with somebody because you're so busy alleviating the suffering of other people.

Well, you know, I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna alleviate the suffering of everybody around me.

I'm gonna get work so hard, I'm just never gonna stop and look at myself.

Well, then I invite you to maybe take some quiet time and engage your own suffering, engage your own, you know, brokenness in the parts that, you know, it's a both and.

And that's what I think I like about the story with Simon of Cyrene, right?

Is he just he carries this cross, right?

I mean, this person out of nowhere who we know his name.

In another gospel, they give this name of his children, so something he became a Christian, because why would they know his children?

He was known to the community.

But they gave us his name, and we have this person that kicks up the cross, God breaks in in an unexpected way, they didn't ask for it, and they carry that suffering for a short period to be a part of the work God is doing.

And so I think that's my invitation to y'all, right?

Is that to one believe that like your work matters.

Like, we are not just metaphorically and, I don't know, philosophically the hands and feet of Jesus.

Like, it's not a metaphor, people.

Like, your hands are Jesus' hands, your hands are Jesus' hands, your hands are Jesus' hands, your hands are Jesus' hands, your feet are Jesus' feet.

That's the story.

We are the physical body of Christ, continuing to build the kingdom of God when he started it.

Like, I would I want you to see that.

I want you to see that this matters, that that's the, it's not about suffering through this white-knuckling it and getting ourselves and our loved ones off into the next level.

I want to invite you to believe that.

And then, if it's true that God is wanting to transform you, if God is wanting to utilize you, empower you with the Holy, if what if that is now a true thing that you are going to believe, then everything on top of that that you build to know is going to be different.

And I think the next thing is so how do you then engage the suffering that it demands?

In our own life, and personally, in the hard realities, and also the suffering of the world.

How are we a community that is holding it, being present to it, being incarnated to it?

Because the story is that's how suffering is redeemed.

It is when we hold it together as the body of Christ.

Amen.