First Presbyterian Church, Waukon, Iowa

Crunch, Crunch

Strained, toxic, lethal.

Fragile, hostile, disrespectful. Fleeting, controlling, intimidating.

Violent, dependent, dishonest. Rude, crude, and unacceptable.

Such are the gloomy descriptors of many current-day relationships between spouses and family members, boyfriends and girlfriends, roommates and significant others, acquaintances and next-door neighbors, co-workers and classmates, politicians and citizens.

But in the Kingdom of God, where unconditional love abides, the Lord calls us to something more healthy and holy in our human affairs and associations, and Jesus Christ sets the example. For her part, the Holy Spirit implores our active participation in redeeming the relationships of the world through Christ, and by grace, the Spirit enables mutuality of affection for all Creation.

Thanks be to God, some of our relationships are mutually affective – vigorous, healthy, life-affirming, and regularly yielding fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, even as other, less-ripe relationships pit us against ourselves and put us at each other’s throats.

Our fearful, broken relationships are a miserable witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its pulsing drumbeats of humility, forgiveness, and reconciliation; grace, peace, and community.

To be sure, notable exceptions exist. Relationships forged in unconditional love, mutual care, and shared concern – many of them on display right here in this faith community – give honor and glory to the Lord in whose image we each are made.

But deep physical and emotional wounds still fester within our relationships on both sides of the walls that define this piece of sacred ground.

And now comes the gift of Lent, an intentional time to repent of rowdiness and shenanigans that destroy life and sour rapport.

Now comes the gift of Lent, a hallowed and consecrated season of turning toward decisions and behaviors that affirm life and nurture relationships.

Now comes Lent and my new sermon series, “Called to Repentance: Working on Our Relationships.”

As we once more make way toward the Cross of Good Friday, let us hold fast to those thriving relationships of healthy, authentic commitment. In full assurance that our sin and brokenness get nailed to that Cross in Christ, let us admit to associations where commitment is sorely lacking. As we wait for Easter and its full assurance of release from death, let us walk from the Tomb in stronger, closer, more committed connection with the Lord and one another.

“Commitment” and “relationship” seem like old-fashioned ideas these days. The fast pace of life, time’s many demands, and a huge world of possibilities make commitments to anything or anyone feel like relics of a bygone era. And a nonchalant “like” on Facebook or string of Snapchats passes for a committed relationship. No wonder why so many folks are feeling so lonely, disconnected, and downright depressed.

A commitment is a choice – a free exercise of your time and effort – to bind yourself to something or someone outside of yourself and to stick with that some-thing or some-one no matter what.

Commitment often comes at a high price, but commitment also brings blessings that cannot be found any other way. Which brings me to our Scripture lesson this morning –the Old Testament story of two women, Ruth and Naomi, who could have parted company but who remain committed in their relationship with one another and find themselves blessed by sticking together.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, listen for the word of the Lord.

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.

And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth.

When they had lived there about 10years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the LORD had considered his people and given them food.

So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law,

“Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The LORD grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.”

Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. They said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” But Naomi said,

“Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying?No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has turned against me.”

Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. So Naomi said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said,

“Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die – there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!”

When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them; and the women of the town said, “Is this Naomi?” She said to them,

“Call me no longer Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the LORD has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. (Ruth 1:1-18, 22)

What a pathetic pair of sad-sacks they were that day – Ruth and Naomi – as they shuffle into Bethlehem looking like 40 miles of bad road.

People feel sorry for them, but Naomi wants nothing of their pity. What she really wants is for the gawkers to get as angry with God as she is. And so she tears into Almighty God with the fury of a woman scorned:

“Time was when my name meant ‘Pleasant,’ and I used to be a pretty pleasant person, too,” Naomi laments. “But that was before God messed with my life. Now just call me ‘Bitter,’ because that’s what I am, and it’s all God’s fault! God is to blame for moving me from Pleasant to Bitter. So come on, folks: Let’s shake an angry fist at Almighty God!”

So much for putting a positive spin on the God whom Ruth just promised to worship.

But in her defense, Naomi is just about as empty as empty can be. To riff on an old Paul Simon song, “Empty as a pocket, empty as a pocket with nothing to lose.” God is deep in her doghouse, and Naomi surely isn’t looking to God with much hope. But then comes that last verse: “The barley harvest is beginning.”

The very stuff of life – barley and wheat – is coming in from the fields to the little town of Bethlehem, a name that means “The House of Bread.” The bakers of Bethlehem soon will be firing up their ovens, and emptiness and scarcity soon will be turning into abundance and nourishment.

Even now, as Ruth and Naomi pass through the city gates, grain-laden donkey and ox carts are already snaking their way through the narrow streets of Bethlehem.

As wooden wheels passed over rough cobblestones, kernels of grain are already starting to fall from the wagons and onto the streets, and the crunch-crunch sound of grain kernels are popping under the sandals of Ruth and Naomi.

Crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch: The sound of emptiness soon becoming abundance, the sounds of pain and death about to give way to hope and assurance. In the midst of Naomi’s great sorrow and intense anger, God lets the crunch-crunch sound of barley be heard. Don’t count out God just yet, Naomi. Something more is in the works, so stay tuned.

“Death and decay in all around I see” go the lyrics of an old hymn.

And the news on any given day presents us with enough sorrow and mayhem to undo us all. The whole of creation started out so full but now often turns up so empty. And then death comes calling – intense, personal and heart-breaking.

But in and through it all God remains God, and long about the time you conclude that it’s all over and there is no hope, suddenly barley crunches under someone’s foot, and we begin to suspect that there may yet be a second act to Creation’s drama. You begin to suspect that the God who created us for fullness will not be content to leave us in emptiness.

Ruth will become a distant relative of a man named Jesus. Many years later in Bethlehem – the House of Bread, from the unlikely location of an animal’s feedbox, the sound of a crying infant will be heard. And for those with ears to hear, there’ll be a sense that night, too, that God is indeed still around, truly still aiming things to move from emptiness to very great fullness.

Even if for today we feel sad and empty, angry and bitter, lost and alone, disconnected and disaffected, the barley harvest is beginning, and Bethlehem’s Bread of Life – by Jerusalem’s Cross of Hope – will surely wipe away every tear and bless us with fullness of relationship.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah foretells as much:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights

I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:

I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.

I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them. (Isaiah 42:1-9)

For that just is the Word of the Lord – ancient words, ever true!

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, February 26, 2023, the first Sunday of Lent at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. It is the firstof his Lenten series, “Called to Repentance: Working on Our Relationships. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Kathleen A. Robertson Farmer, Scott Hoezee, and Gene M. Tucker inform the message.

For God So Loved Nineveh

I know there’s at least one of you who’s been reading ahead in the story of Jonah.

And that’s OK. It’s a good thing, really. Eager hunger for Scripture is a really, really good thing.

And the story of seafaring Jonah is a voracious page-turner, as we’ve discovered in the nourishment of the Old Testament these past three Sundays. Here’s where we’ve been:

God taps Jonah for tough duty, but Jonah runs away. He vamooses aboard a stout vessel whose skipper somehow manages to sail straight into a gale, a wicked squall of stomach-churning weather that nauseates cast and crew with fear and loathing. Believing that his cowardly disobedience of God is what’s stirring the ocean’s pot – and naturally, therefore, it’s his problem to solve, Jonah volunteers to walk the plank, as it were. He’s willing to take his chances swimming with the fishes. And he does! No sooner does Jonah jump ship when the wind and water cease their raging.

But then the plot quickly shifts from Jonah’s swimming to a whale’s swallowing. Jonah gets gobbled up and gulped down by a great sea creature of some kind. Wallowing for three days in the creature’s gastric hell, Jonah cries out to God in confession of his rebellion against heaven and shouts a desperate plea for the powers that be to toss him a life ring.

And God relents, saving Jonah’s sorry hide, commanding the whale or whatever it is to spew Jonah out. And lickety spit, the reluctant prophet finds himself back on dry land, where he receives a duplicate set of the same marching orders from the Lord. “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” And Jonah does – finally.

And they do – the Ninevites, that is. They clean up their individual and corporate acts! Straightening up and flying right, the Ninevites repent of their sin, and cast their lives upon the Lord, and thus choose a different path for life and living. For his part, while still keeping open a path that goes straight to hell for the resolutely unjust and disobedient, the Lord like the Ninevites chooses a different path: One of mercy and forgiveness – a lush, wide boulevard of grace and peace, accessible to even the most spiritually handicapped.

And therein lies Jonah’s real problem. Jonah thinks salvation is a toll road open only to those spiritual travelers with means to pay the access fee. Turns out, the road to salvation is a freeway whose wide, sprawling, multilane onramp is repentance. And Jonah’s suffering with a bad case of road rage, making him more apt to cut off the next guy in traffic rather than wave him in.

Listen for the Word of the Lord. These are ancient words, and they’re ever true.

When God saw what the Ninevites did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.

When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.”

Then the LORD said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (Jonah 3:10-4:11)

As any provider of physical, emotional, or spiritual care knows, the good stuff always comes out in the last five minutes of a patient encounter.

“Good stuff,” of course, referring to the real problem weighing heavy on body, soul, and spirit. The real dilemma or difficulty finally presents itself at the end of the conversation.

And so it is with Jonah, as those of you who’ve been reading ahead have already discovered. It is not until this final chapter – the story’s last five minutes – when we learn what Jonah’s problem really is.

As his story unfolds, we slowly discover what spooks Jonah so horribly that he tries to run away from God. Jonah isn’t afraid of failing on God’s difficult mission. Jonah actually is afraid of succeeding!

Remember, now: The Lord wants Jonah – a loyal, faithful Jew – to deliver a message of salvation to the Ninevites – a group of Gentiles who, by Jonah’s reckoning, are a disloyal, unfaithful bunch of filthy, dirty sinners undeserving of even an ounce of divine mercy. After all, it was the Ninevites who sent God’s people into exile.

To Jonah’s way of thinking, God’s grace only intends to benefit elite members of an exclusive club of which Jonah, as a Jew, is a member in relatively good standing. Certainly, no greasy foreigners like the people of Nineveh have a right to be included in Jonah’s posh enclave of spiritual favor, let alone should any of them enjoy the full benefits of membership in salvation.

But God apparently sees things differently and wants to change the rules to open up the club of divine grace to some new members, and the Lord’s choice of Jonah as the bearer of that inviting Good News stirs up feelings of fear and anger in ol’ Jonah – and maybe even a little embarrassment.

As another asks, how’s he going explain to the guys back home why he did something nice for a bunch of foreigners?

Why is Jonah providing aid and comfort to a longtime enemy! This whole mission trip to Nineveh feels like treason!

I don’t know about you, but I’d be nervous, too, and I’d be tempted to run away and hope God picks someone else for the job.

And so it goes when you hear God’s call to love and serve friend, neighbor and stranger.

Sure, it’s easy enough to serve friend and neighbor, but when it comes to serving the stranger or heaven forbid the enemy, well, not so much.

When God’s taps you on the shoulder and hands you your marching orders to deliver a message of grace and hope to someone you regard as an outsider and thus somehow undeserving of God’s grace, accepting the assignment can leave you angry, frightened and worried.

You question if it’s the right thing to do, wonder what others will think, worry that you’ll look foolish and gullible! And so, like seeing scary dark storm clouds approaching in the western sky, your instinctive reaction is to run and hide. Let somebody else do it! And then you glance in your rear-view mirror only to find God still in hot pursuit.

A few years ago, we after worship gathered in love and service, grace and hope, in the church kitchen, to prepare and serve a buffet Sunday dinner for members of local law enforcement. It was one of our Worshipful Work projects, and it didn’t seem like very scary work – unless for some reason you get nervous around the police, which some folks do.

As church leaders were planning this meal of appreciation, I threw out the possibility of not just providing lunch for law enforcement but also for the inmates out at the county jail. Since God’s message of grace is for everyone, why shouldn’t our grace-filled work be for everyone, too?

As my crazy, hair-brained suggestions often do, the idea of providing a meal for the jail inmates was met with stunned silence.

I knew what everyone was thinking – heck, I was thinking the same thing, too: “They’re in jail for good reason. Why should we make a hot, homemade meal for ‘them’?” True enough – to a point. “They” surely need to be held accountable for “their” actions, and the justice system – such as it works – is giving “them” what they deserve.

Then again, you and I are one of “them,” too. You and I are guilty of breaking God’s laws, rules and heart every day – whether or not we realize it. God’s got us dead to rights, and you and I deserve to spend some time behind bars for the many ways we step out line in the eyes of the Lord.

And in more than a few cases, you and I are repeat offenders who didn’t learn our lessons the first time, and the Lord would be well within his legal rights to lock us up and throw away the key! Three strikes, and you’re out!

But, no.

God acts with forgiving mercy and undeserved love – again, and again, and again, as that pesky line from the Lord’s Prayer echoes in the ear: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

The church leaders and I later learned that the rules at the county jail prohibit us from providing a meal to the inmates. But it does lead me to wonder what might have happened had our meal made it past the locked doors and through the iron bars.

What if the worshipful work of providing physical nourishment ended up satisfying the spiritual hunger of an inmate?

And what if, upon release, that inmate walked through the doors of this church, sat down for coffee and doughnuts, and joined us for worship some Sunday morning?

What if that lone stranger with the multiple tattoos, body piercings, pink hair, ripped jeans, and rap sheet accepted the invitation to join us around the communion table to celebrate the joyful feast of the people of God?

For that matter, how would we react if that visitor was an undocumented immigrant, or someone struggling with sexual identity, or anyone else whom much of society regards as the modern-day version of a greasy Ninevite and thus just another outsider ineligible for membership in this Body?

If you and I screw up our courage to share God’s message of repentance, forgiveness, grace, and love to “those” people, what if our words or deeds actually take hold, and “those” people actually show up here?

Then what?

Be honest, now, some of us would be a little nervous. Maybe even a few of us would want to run and hide.

Those are our Jonah moments –

those stormy times when worldly arguments that might make perfect sense outside the walls of the church make absolutely no sense within these walls that define holy ground.

Jonah moments are those threatening instances when our inner warning tone wails and we grab our loved ones, head to higher ground, and circle the wagons.

Jonah moments are those terrifying times when Gospel truth confronts the status quo with clear confirmation that God’s grace and mercy are as much for teachers, doctors, farmers, shopkeepers and other “upstanding” members of the community as they are for the thief, the drug dealer, the drunken driver and the other supposed ne’re-do-wells of our community.

Even though the powers of the world believe “they” don’t deserve the gift of grace, the Powers of Heaven think otherwise, and the Holy Spirit is always working to change our minds.

Let’s give her plenty of room to work.

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, February 19, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. It is the last of his four-part series from the Old Testament book of Jonah. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee and Phyllis Tribble inform the message.

When Minds Change

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

The old adage offers a spot-on summary of the story of Jonah, whose cowardly, seaside shenanigans have been spotlighted in our Scripture lessons of the past two Sundays.

We’re halfway through the whale-themed tale of the Old Testament’s reluctant prophet, but we’re right back where we started – with the duplicate word of the Lord again coming to Jonah: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

First time around, Jonah wants nothing of being a prophet, a messenger for the Lord. So, instead of going 550 miles east in the direction God wants him to go, Jonah boards a sea-going ship sailing west more than 2,000 miles – in the totally and completely opposite direction of God’s precise instruction, simply because Jonah thinks he has better, less-risky things to do with his time and energy than a gig as God’s errand boy.

What happens next is the stuff of Sunday school lessons: The ship leaves port, into the path a nasty squall whose waves pummel the humble vessel and terrify its crew. Jonah gets blamed for stirring up the heavy rains and gale-force winds. So, he volunteers to be thrown overboard – into the churning, roiling seas – in hopes of making amends with God for running away.

And it works!

No sooner does Jonah make his big splash when the saltwater ceases its raging!

But then along comes a great creature of the deep – a whale, some say, whose gaping jaws scoop up Jonah. He slides down the creature’s gullet to begin a long, dark three-day layover in the belly of the beast. Jonah’s plea for God’s rescue includes a not-entirely-insincere confession of Jonah’s wrongdoing. And wham-bam, free at last! The creature vomits out Jonah onto a beach.

And we’re back to where we started: The word of the Lord coming to Jonah – and to us – yet again, bearing ancient truth that’s ever true.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be pleasing and acceptable in the heart and mind of Father, Son, and Spirit.

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying,

“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD.

Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh:

“By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.

“Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. (Jonah 3)

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time.

And this time, Jonah obeys – I guess, well, sort of.

While his voice is in it – Jonah delivers God’s message, Jonah’s heart still doesn’t seem like it’s in on the action.

And understandably so! Nineveh is a terrible place, the capital city of Assyria, a nation that embodies the overwhelming and ruthless power of a cunning and merciless empire. God’s people, the biblical nation of Israel, were on the receiving end of Assyrian brutality, which conquered Israel and deported God’s people from the Promised Land – stripped, shaven, with fishhooks wedged in their backsides.

In short Nineveh has made life hell for God’s chosen people.

Now comes Jonah, marching into the cursed capital city of cruelty with a message from God: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.”

That’s just five words in its original Hebrew. Jonah’s done some editing. His matter-of-fact indictment pulls the punch of God’s actual orders to “cry out against” Nineveh and its sin-sick residents. “Announce my judgment against them,” God booms, “because I have seen how wicked they are.” Instead, they get Jonah’s pantywaist paraphrase: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.”

But go figure!

Nineveh responds with complete, crosstown repentance – and, apparently, belief in God. How’d that happen? In his half-hearted delivery of God’s message, Jonah never even once mentions the Lord, and Jonah never even once calls the Ninevites to repentance.

Maybe the writer of Jonah’s story left out part of the message. Or maybe Jonah himself edited out everything except the threat of judgment. Because that’s really what’s stuck in Jonah’s craw: He doesn’t want he Ninevites to repent, and turn to God, and be saved. Jonah’s just wants them to go to hell – directly to hell, without passing “go” and collecting $200.

Or perhaps, as some speculate, the surprising response of the Ninevites arises from Jonah’s violent expulsion from the belly of the great fish. The main god of the Assyrians is Dagon, a fish god. Maybe word of Jonah’s fishy encounter has reached Assyria, and they see Jonah as an emissary from their own god. Or perhaps they quickly figure out that Jonah is an Israeli, whose God the conquering and deporting Assyrians know full well.

Or maybe the God of Israel simply over-rode Jonah’s blunt message of doom and moved the Ninevites to repent and believe. The God who sends the storm and the great sea creature surely also could send the Holy Spirit to strongly encourage even these damnable pagans to change their hearts and their ways.

All the speculation is more than academic, because the Ninevites do what the Israelites never did in response to all the words of repentance from other prophets. Even the pagan king of Nineveh joins the civic movement toward repentance with an amazing speech:

“Who knows?” the king wonders. “God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” With that, the king hitches Nineveh’s wagon to the mercy and compassion of a God that none of them really knows!

It’s said that God always hears one particular prayer – no matter who prays it: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Sure enough, God hears the plea of the Ninevites and does just that. Well, God doesn’t just hear their plea. God also sees their repentance on full display in their changed lives. “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”

Several important takeaways jump out of those words.

First, merely using that well-known plea for mercy does not guarantee salvation. It is all too possible to mouth the words without a corresponding change of heart and mind. For salvation to burst fully onto the scene, repentance must be sincere and heartfelt. And the fullness of salvation never comes until your repentance is complete. And the means of your salvation likely won’t be the process you envision or prefer.

Second, the king’s question reminds that God is free to respond in one of two very opposite ways: in judgment or in mercy. “Who knows?” God is not necessarily compelled by our prayers. God’s grace reigns supreme over our desires. So, you cannot necessarily presume God’s mercy.

But, finally, vitally, do not assume that a threat once issued is a threat that automatically will come to pass. God is free to change the divine mind, to relent, to “repent,” to choose a different direction – mercy over judgment – in response to our choosing the route of repentance.

The Church has long proclaimed God as fixed, immutable, and unchanging.

Yet here in Jonah, the Lord changes his mind. It happens a few other times in the Old Testament, too. And when the divine mind changes, it’s always in the direction of life. Perhaps then immutability is really all about God’s unchangeable will to save the world, including those whom God has threatened to punish fiercely for wicked disobedience.

Thus the Good News for God’s people comes with a banner headline that you don’t have to worry about the Lord arbitrarily changing his mind. Your salvation is secure! After all, God’s love is secure, because it depends not on your goodness or mine, but on God’s unfailing mercy and amazing grace. God forever pursues you and me in love, and surely great things happen when minds change, and God mixes with us.

God stands ready to forgive even the Ninevites, and by the same gracious love, God also stands eagerly willing to forgive you and me of our sins – and also the sins of even the most vile and repulsive of pagans. No sin is so terrible, no child of God so far gone, that the spilled blood of Christ cannot wash it clean. That is God’s blessed, enduring promise to us in Christ Jesus.

Indeed, the more things change, the more God in Christ stays the same.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit! Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, February 12, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. It is the third of his four-part series from the Old Testament book of Jonah. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Stan Mast and Phyllis Tribble inform the message.

In the Weeds

In the weeds – when you’re burdened with so many problems, or so much work, that you find it exhausting and draining to deal with life and living.

“We’re down in the weeds here in customer service! Got too many missing orders!”

“The nurses were so deep in the weeds, with too many patients, that they were threatening to walk out!”

Then along comes Jonah: “The waters closed in over me, and the deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head.” As we’ll hear shortly in our Scripture lesson, the Old Testament’s reluctant prophet is in the weeds.

In the weeds – not just overwhelmed by it all but, even more so, overly concerned with small details, much to the detriment of seeing the bigger picture and understanding who and what are truly important.

“I don’t want to get too lost in the weeds, but we’ve got a small problem here.”

“He’s one of those guys who can get down in the weeds and work on the details, but he’s forever missing the forest for the trees.”

And eventually, when you’re in sufficiently far, you pass the point of no return. The thickly treed forest and its long, weedy tentacles weigh heavy and pull you under. And you find yourself floundering, in deep and over your head.

“I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was imprisoned in the earth, whose gates lock shut forever,” Jonah bemoans before changing his tone dramatically. “But as my life was slipping away, I remembered the LORD. You, O LORD my God, snatched me from the jaws of death! And my earnest prayer went out to you in your holy Temple.”

God always hears our constant prayers. But proving the old adage that there are no atheists in foxholes, surely it often takes hellish, rock-bottom, deep-in-the-weeds circumstances for us to hear clearly and accurately God’s voice of response. We tend to hear what we want to hear, which most assuredly most often is not how the Lord intends to answer our prayers.

Which also might explain why tragedy strikes and bad things happen.

I’m not one to believe that God is the direct cause of everything, but I’m becoming more and more comfortable with the notion that God lets happen certain heartbreaking and appalling circumstances. While never letting go of our hands, the Lord lets evil pull us down into a swampy quagmire of slimy weeds, where, finally hitting rock bottom, we discover the intimate blessings of careful listening and complete trusting.

Please be in that place of careful listening and complete trusting, as through the Holy Spirit we join souls and spirits with Jonah, whom frightened sailors at his shocking request have tossed into the roiling sea, where a great creature swallows up poor Jonah like an appetizing hors d’oeuvre.

Listen for God’s Word to you in this sacred moment.

The LORD arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. He was inside the fish for three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from inside the fish. He said, “I cried out to the LORD in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and LORD, you heard me!

“You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. Then I said, ‘O LORD, you have driven me from your presence. Yet I will look once more toward your holy Temple.’

“I sank beneath the waves, and the waters closed over me. Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was imprisoned in the earth, whose gates lock shut forever. As my life was slipping away, I remembered the LORD. You, O LORD my God, snatched me from the jaws of death! And my earnest prayer went out to you in your holy Temple.

“Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies. But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the LORD alone.” Then the LORD ordered the great fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach. (Jonah 1:17-2:10)

It’s enough to make a believer nauseous: Sometimes, the great fish vomits you onto dry land.

Dry land. A far sight better than stormy seas. But neither is it a pristine beach on the French-Italian Riviera.

Sometimes, oftentimes, you don’t have much of a choice about the means through which you will be delivered – saved from stormy seas, released from gastrointestinal tracts of great-big whales, freed from the burdens of your days and nights, your weeks and months, your years and years.

As with you and me, Jonah probably had another method of rescue in mind. He no doubt would have preferred a different process. But the Lord God was just fine doing exactly what he did: Working unto the good of deliverance amid Jonah’s sea-borne encounter with a Goliath of the deep – and doing so on heaven’s terms and timing, not Jonah’s or ours.

As with us, Jonah’s deliverance comes only after his repentance is complete. Jonah isn’t just sorry for what he did, namely running away from God in abdication of the work that God wants him to do. At the urging of the Holy Spirit, Jonah not only expresses regret and remorse for trespassing into places where he isn’t supposed to go, but also Jonah repents of his self-interest and once again places his trust in God!

In the hearts and minds of you, and me, and many others, the healing works of God – vital aspects of God’s rescue and deliverance – will remain undone as long as you and I keep the Lord at arm’s length, spurn his invitation to repentance, and refuse his trust. Thus you and I, like Jonah, cocoon in womb-like darkness, joining the desperate lament and almost-giddy expectation of the psalmist in Psalm 86:

Bend down, O LORD, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I need your help.

Protect me, for I am devoted to you. Save me, for I serve you and trust you. You are my God.

Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am calling on you constantly. Fill my heart with joy and gladness, O Lord, for I give myself to you. O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.

Listen closely to my prayer, O LORD; hear my urgent cry. I will call to you whenever I’m in trouble, and you will answer me. No pagan god is like you, O Lord. None can do what you do! All the nations you made will come and bow before you, Lord. They will praise your holy name. For you are great and perform wonderful deeds. You alone are God.

Teach me your ways, O LORD, that I may live according to your truth! Grant me purity of heart, so that I may honor you. With all my heart I will praise you, O Lord my God. I will give glory to your name forever, for your love for me is very great. You have rescued me from the depths of death.

O God, insolent people rise up against me. A violent gang is trying to kill me. You mean nothing to them. But you, O Lord, are a God of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. Look down and have mercy on me. Give your strength to your servant. Save me, the child of your servant.

Send me a sign of your favor. Then those who hate me will be put to shame, for you, O LORD, help and comfort me. (Psalm 86:1-17)

Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ is the sign of heaven’s favor. And thanks be to the Holy Spirit whose courage inspires some disturbing questions of faith about heaven’s favor:

Where in your life are feeling burdened, exhausted, or overwhelmed?

Where are waters closing in? Where does deep surround?

What kinds of weeds wrap around your head and so suffocate your complete trust in the God who so constantly pursues you, because God so completely loves you?

Where in your life are you desperate enough to pray for change, to be patient in your waiting for change, and to embrace in the fullness of trust the change that only God and God alone can bring?

Deep down I suppose Jonah, the psalmist, and we all still know that, if the God of Israel – now revealed as also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – really is full of compassion, mercy, and grace – if this God of heaven and earth really is abounding in steadfast love, then that’s cosmically Good News for everyone. Because, most of the time, we’re on the receiving end of all the saving and forgiving goodness that such great love makes possible. Absent the steadfast love of the Lord, no one rests easy in God’s promises of forgiveness and deliverance.

Yet, by grace, we feast daily on the riches of God’s compassion and patience. And if basking in all that goodness also means God is patient with some whom we’d be perfectly OK with God’s not being so patient, well, we can deal with that, perhaps so long as we see encouraging signs now and then, here and there, that things are heading in the right direction – hope and assurance that is ours, even when we’re deep in the weeds.

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, February 5, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. It is the second of his four-part series from the Old Testament book of Jonah. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by David Guzik, Scott Hoezee, and Phyllis Tribble inform the message.

The Hound of Heaven

A young woman once complained, “I get so angry with my husband’s friends!”

Why? Because her husband – like her, a newcomer to Christianity – often had non-Christian friends over to watch a ballgame. And during the festivities, a couple of the visiting bros always liked to grab the couple’s Bible from the coffee table, open it randomly, and read aloud some obscure passage. Then they’d laugh and laugh at the strange sound of the quaint, outdated suggestions offered up by those ancient-but-nevertheless-still-holy words.

Week in, week out, while her hubby and his chums reveled in the thrill and excitement of game night, the young woman fumed in the next room, taking great affront and personal umbrage at the menfolk’s sophomoric attacks on her budding Christian faith and its rich, helpful rules so neatly laid out in the Bible.

For those of us who’ve been led to believe that the Bible basically is a practical, common-sense guide for living your best life ever, the young woman’s anger at such reckless disregard for Scripture is wholly understandable. Many of us, like her, have been led to believe that the Bible is a mere rulebook, an owner’s manual of sorts that’s fundamentally and primarily about us.

And so, naturally, Scripture should speak straightforwardly with clear language and relatable stories, so we might learn to follow the rules and do the right things – and, of course, prosper in the ways that the world defines its seductive, economic constructs of prosperity, free enterprise, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, surely doing the right thing – unto others as unto you – is always the right thing to do. But truth is, the Bible fundamentally is not all about us. The Bible fundamentally is all about God and heaven’s epic struggle to redeem Creation. And even our best efforts to translate the truth of God into more-or-less useful proverbs for daily living never seem to boil down to little more than a “well, it depends.”

Irritatingly so, reading the Bible is never as neat and tidy as you and I might like it to be.

Take this morning’s Scripture lesson from Jonah, the Old Testament book named for its lead human character. Ever since that kindly Sunday school teacher shared with you the harrowing tale of Jonah being swallowed up whole by a great fish, or whale – or whatever, you naturally believe that the seemingly far-fetched story is all about Jonah.

And in a sense it is: A gaudy story about Jonah’s willful disregard and disobedience, a shameful description of Jonah’s dereliction of the duty that God has in store.

Yet, it’s hard to fault Jonah for shirking his task at hand. In the great responsibility that God wants to assign, Jonah has his work cut out for him. He’ll be far outside his wheelhouse and working well above his paygrade. So, with nothing but sure trouble barreling down its way from heaven, with nothing but sure failure the likely outcome of God’s dreaded assignment, Jonah gets out of Dodge while the gettin’s good.

With good reason, most folks run and hide when they sense trouble coming. We scurry off to protected places where trouble won’t find us, inner sanctums where we feel comfortable in the face of that which makes us uncomfortable.

Thus our friend Jonah makes a fast exit and goes on the lam when God taps him for an uncomfortable job: “Jonah, head east to Ninevah, and tell its residents to shape up or risk getting shipped out.”

But rather than warming up to God’s invitation, Jonah gets cold feet.

Instead of heading east to Ninevah, Jonah pivots 180 degrees in the opposite direction and heads WEST aboard a ship sailing to far-off Tarshish, a hideaway where Jonah thinks that God will never-ever find him.

It was an epic fail on Jonah’s part, because as is so-often the case, the Lord remains committed to his choice of Jonah as the man for job, and the Lord provides some deep-sea drama to get Jonah’s attention and get him back on the divine path to Ninevah.

As another writes, sometimes God puts us on our backs (or, in Jonah’s case, in the belly of a great fish) to get us to sit up, take notice, and accept the difficult, scary, uncomfortable and often-dirty jobs that God needs to get done through you and me – and to remind us that God is the One who’s in charge, calling the shots, and writing the story.

Even though Jonah’s heart isn’t at all in it, God makes it crystal clear: Jonah will find no escape from the work that God has in store for him. The Lord sincerely intends to use an insincere servant to deliver a message of hope. Apparently, when God lays claim to your life, God’s claim is there for good. You can run, but you cannot hide. You might refuse God, but when you do, God will come after you hard.

Thus the story of Jonah – like all the other biblical dramas – is not first and foremost about us.

Like all the others, Jonah’s story is first and foremost about God.

The Lord gets top billing, because he is the One who takes the astonishing risk of setting aside his myriad other duties and responsibilities to chase after us and assign us to salvation’s work.

God’s is a daring journey of danger and devotion fueled by heaven’s loving passion. God is the One who carefully, thoughtfully, and deliberately chases after us – those of us who accidently stumble and fall in the exercise of our holy labors, as well as those who intentionally run away in defiance of God’s marching orders or in fear of God’s wrath.

It matters not whether you’re saint or sinner, lawmaker or lawbreaker! What you’ll hear in a few moments is not a story about you. It’s a story about God. And the way to allow yourself to become part of the story is to stop running away – to stop hiding from the One who yearns and searches for you.

True enough: All things reveal God, who reveals you and me.

Listen for the Word of the Lord.

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying,

“Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”

But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up.

Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”

The sailors said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”

“I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them so. Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous.

He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the LORD, “Please, O LORD, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you.”

So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. But the LORD provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. (Jonah 1:1-17)

The English poet Francis Thompson, who like Jonah spent much of his life running away from God, chronicles his odyssey in an epic poem.

And thus begins “The Hound of Heaven”:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat – and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet –
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

All things reveal God, who reveals me – and you.

God reveals to the poet and to us a hard corrective, which is this: The tawdry drama of our lives runs a distant second to God’s fundamental narrative of relentless pursuit. The Hound of Heaven pursues with all deliberate speed those whom he loves, and forgives, and claims as his own, forever and ever.

The reasons and emotions of the one running away fascinate far less than the captivation borne of God’s persistent, relentless pursuit – far less than the rapture stoked by the intensity of passion panting within the One who is the Hound of Heaven.

As none other than Jesus himself will later proclaim, the Lord – the Hound of Heaven – is One and the same with a woman rummaging for a lost coin and a shepherd searching for a stray sheep. Woman and shepherd: Each one God in Christ who knows us full well for the broken vessels that we are but nonetheless searches us out and appears in the form we’re able to receive – most amazingly, simply because Jesus is the love that will not let us go.

The love of God in Christ Jesus: The cornerstone of our faith, our sure hope in times of trouble, and our assurance of life everlasting.

O love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, January 29, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. It is the first of his four-part series from the Old Testament book of Jonah. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee, Phyllis Tribble, Francis Thompson, and Sam Wells inform the message.

Church Is Hard

Most holiday decorations now repose in attics, closets, and basements – yet another season of Yuletide work lingering in savory, still-warm memory.

But even without December’s seasonal trappings, the stories of Christmas retain their allure – like bright, red bows still tied atop the already-splendid gift of Christ’s birth. And inside that glittering package clashes a glaring contrast of characters whose ancient words have been our Scripture lessons so far this new year.

We’ve seen and heard from curious astrologers: Magi, Wise Men, lovingly loading precious cargoes of gold, frankincense, and myrrh; then fixing their gaze upon a sparkling star whose stout radiance shines like a muscular tractor beam, pulling the intrepid trio ever-so-slowly-but-surely-toward the little, backwater burg where Jesus lay.

Along their path – eventually completely charted by a different Way, the Way of heaven – the Magi cross paths with Herod. King Herod! Evil incarnate, cunning and ruthless, spawn of satan!

Ever the authoritarian strongman, Herod rules with an iron fist. Blood stains his hands like a gory tattoo, guilty-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt proof of his genocide – the vicious rage of royal envy and jealousy loosed upon every little boy whose likeness even slightly mirrors Jesus.

The Holy Family escapes Herod’s slaughter by fleeing to the safety of Egypt, several years later returning to a new home, Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph settle in to nurture and tutor Jesus in wisdom and stature, a process about which Scripture is mostly silent. That is until you get to the Gospel of Luke and our Scripture lesson for today.

Into his narrative Luke drops an empathetic scene peppered with familiar-but-hardly-fond situations to which everyone can relate: A lost, missing child. A breathless, heart-pounding, three-day search. A turbulent, white-knuckle clash with the growing pains of adolescence.

The anxious tension breaks when he who is lost finally is found. Where? Hanging out in the Temple, in community and communion with the elders, wrestling with and trying to get their heads around the great theological questions of the day. And yes, by wandering off, Jesus conveniently overlooks that pesky commandment about honoring and respecting mom and dad. But that’s really not Luke’s point.

Jesus – Luke writes – just had to be in his Father’s house!

Parental fear and agony notwithstanding, Jesus just had to be in church!

Hmmm. Apparently, Jesus astutely recognizes and fully claims his identity as God’s Son – long before the waters of baptism assure that truth and fully impart the Holy Spirit upon his humanity. Deliberately pointing himself toward his ultimate purpose and final destiny, a scrawny, skinny boy of scant 12 years grounds and solidifies his identity. Which is as it should be. Though still wet behind the ears, defining one’s identity is an adolescent task of human development.

Remember, in addition to being Son of God, Jesus also is Son of Man. Jesus thus must navigate the minefields of puberty and identity-seeking just like the rest of us once did, now are, or soon will. On the cusp becoming an adult in the eyes of Judaism, Jesus establishes his authority in claiming his identity as God’s Son!

How remarkable! Identity and authority grounded not by family pedigree or business network. Not by calling and vocation, or gifts and talents. Not by personal creeds or mountaintop experiences. Nor by grand dreams, noble ideas, morals, or ethics. All real possibilities, truly so, but none a faithful option. Ever the ironic rebel, Jesus in obedience dutifully grounds his identity first and foremost in intimacy of relationship with his Father, the Lord God Almighty.

For Jesus, faithful relationship with God is not a peripheral matter, not something you tend to when time and energy allow. Faithful relationship with God must shape the whole of one’s life – as much for Jesus as for you and me. God becomes human flesh and pitches a tent of grace and mercy among us, and our new neighbor is who defines whose we are.

Gathered, like Jesus, in our Father’s house, experience now the refreshment of invigorating, ever-true words, in this quite-relatable vignette of lost and found that concludes Luke chapter 2.

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover.

And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”

He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. (Luke 2:41-52)

Obedience: “I must be about my Father’s business.”

Obedience: “I must be in my Father’s house.”

That’s obedience writ large.

Obedience – right along with the resulting blessings that humble, honest obedience to God always brings – are the golden threads running through the stories of Jesus’s birth and boyhood.

Obedient to God’s tap of motherhood, Mary considers herself blessed among women.

Obedient to an angel’s assurance that an unwed pregnancy brings no shame, Joseph and Mary enlist in the bliss and blessing of marriage.

Obedient to the song of heavenly hosts, shepherds abiding in their fields leave behind their vulnerable flocks by night, making haste for a Bethlehem stable, where kneeling in awe and wonder they join angels in broadcasting, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward all.”

With obedience stimulated by starry-eyed wonder, Wise Men follow a star and in Mary’s little child discover blessing far beyond the earthly value of their gifts.

With obedience born of stark, heavenly warning, the Holy Family flees Herod’s wrath and rests easy in the blessing of safety.

With obedience that answers the question of “Now what,” Jesus, Mary, and Joseph find the blessing of fresh direction and the blessing of home, sweet home.

A decade or so passes, and obedience clearly and sincerely rises from the young lips of none other than Jesus himself: “I must be about my Father’s business. I must be in my Father’s house.”

When you’re blessed to be a participant in God’s business of resurrection and salvation, you can’t help but want to be in God’s house. Claimed as God’s very own and in thanksgiving for such undeserved favor, you must be in church.

But, really, who wants to do that? Church is hard!

To riff on the reflections of another, church is hard for the person walking through the doors, afraid of judgment.

Church is hard for the prodigal soul returning home, broken and battered by the world.

Church is hard for the handsome, young man who looks like he has it all together – but doesn’t.

Church is hard for the single woman and single man, praying that God brings them a mate.

Church is hard for the newlyweds and the long-married who argued and fought the entire ride to parking lot.

Church is hard for the single parent, surrounded by seemingly perfect, Facebook-worthy families.

Church is hard for the teacher, coach, or business leader uncomfortable in taking on the mantle of responsibility.

Church is hard for the widow and widower who worship alone and receive no invitation to lunch afterward.

Church is hard for the deacon with an estranged child.

Church is hard for the elder who lost a child.

Church is hard for the singer overwhelmed by the emotional weight of the lyrics.

Church is hard for the teenager who wears a scarlet letter, ashamed of mistakes or abused by negligent parents or schoolyard bullies.

Church is hard for cheaters and adulterers, liars and charlatans, scallywags and slanderers.

Let’s face it: Church is hard for sinners! Church is hard for me!

Because on the outside, church looks all shiny and perfect – Sunday best in behavior and dress, even as underneath those colorful masks and complicated layers beat the hearts of imperfect people, carnal souls, and selfish spirits.

But here’s the beauty of church – and why Jesus demands his followers be in our Father’s house:

Church isn’t a building, a mentality, or an expectation.

Church is a body, a group of sinners, saved by grace, living in fellowship as saints.

Church is a body of believers bound as brothers and sisters by an eternal love.

Church is a holy ground where sinners stand as equals before the Lord’s throne of grace.

Church is a refuge for broken hearts and a training ground for humble-but-mighty servants.

Church is a lesson in faith and trust.

Church is a bearer of burdens and a giver of hope.

Church is a convergence of confrontation and invitation – sin confronted with repentance, hearts invited to reconciliation.

Church is a community, coming together, setting aside differences, forgetting past mistakes, rejoicing in the smallest victories.

Church, the body, and the circle of sinners-turned-saints, is where the Lord resides, and if we ask, the Lord is faithful to come.

So even on the hard days at church – the days when I am at odds with myself or another, the days when I arrive bearing personal and congregational burdens heavier than my ailing heart can handle – yet masking the pain with a smile on my face; when I’ve worn a scarlet letter, lived under the microscope, fought tears and struggled with brokenness, this I will remember and therefore have hope:

Church is hard, but Jesus never fails to meet me there. So there I must be.

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, January 22, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by R. Alan Culpepper and Arianna Freelen inform the message.

Christmas Mourning

Across the 11 years that I’ve served as your pastor, the Christmas season has wrought a couple frustrating mishaps in ministry.

Along about 2015 came the Great Glitter Debacle. Sparkling bits of tiny glitter were key ingredients in a faith-formation craft project set up for the church youth, and our Fellowship Hall would serve as their art studio. Suffice it to say that the crisp edges of red and green construction paper in no way marked the limits of glitter’s easy spread.

And to this day, if you look carefully, carried there on the sticky, rubber soles of somewhat-smelly sneakers, bits of glitter still gleam in the morning sun, trapped deep in coarse fibers of the carpeting in the Overflow Room, vacuum-resistant relics of the Great Glitter Debacle of Christmas 2015.

A couple Yuletides later, the routine, annual delivery of poinsettias went horribly, fatally wrong. The hard-working delivery person, for reasons still unknown, unloaded all the blooming red beauties into one of the classrooms downstairs, in the basement – and didn’t bother to tell anyone they were there.

When we eventually found the poinsettias about a week later, all the once-thirsty, now-drooping plants were dead, and bone dry was every ounce of their potting soil. Sure wish we’d known they were down there! Oh, well: It is what it is! Thus befell the Infamous Poinsettia Crisis of Christmas 2018.

But those challenges really were no-big-deals compared to Christmas 2022, which in my book of memories forever will remain a red-hot mess of spectacular disarray and remarkable disappointment, upon which I’m not yet mentally ready to lay a witty name. Let’s fill in the blanks.

Faint lines of pale pink and blue, appearing on an at-home COVID test a mere five days before Christmas, marked the start of a long, hard, two-week slog of mask-wearing, self-isolation, and binge-watching Netflix.

With their fall semesters completed, our two college kids – one a freshly minted graduate – had both come home, reuniting with the one little birdie who remains in our nest – for at least a few more months, anyway.

Meanwhile, my wife, Julie, though on vacation from her job, was working overtime in the manse kitchen, baking and blending her usual, seasonal Chex Mix of sweets, indulgences, and delectables. For me, a Christmas Eve service loomed large on the horizon, soon to rise – hopefully without incident – from the ashes of the Great Glitter Debacle of Christmas 2015 and the Infamous Poinsettia Crisis of Christmas 2018.

But this year, for me anyway, there’d be no chestnuts roasting on an open fire. For me there’d be little appetite for salty chips, savory dips, spicy summer sausages, and tangy cheese balls. The family remember-when-ing, and yarn-spinning, and memory-making, would continue without me just a floor below. Standing proudly in the pulpit, as you each lit your hand-held candle, would have to wait for another Christmas Eve. For me, it truly would be a silent night – two weeks of silent nights, as it turned out!

A mere handful of days after our Blue Christmas Service on the final Sunday of Advent, COVID began wreaking havoc on both my body and spirit, sapping energy and fogging thought, depressing spirit and opening wide the floodgates of free-flowing sobs and fast-rushing tears.

A Hallmark, Currier-and-Ives Christmas it was not.

Yet through it all – or at least in a scattering of particularly rich and intimate moments, these I recalled to mind and therefore dared to hold out hope: God’s mercies are fresh and new with every dawn, and the Lord works together unto good in the midst of all things – at least that’s what I tell folks. And apparently time had come for me to walk the walk – with Jesus, with Mary, and with Joseph. And so also, maybe, with some of you.

Thus the Holy Spirit daily pointed me to a biblical ending of the Christmas story that most of us just as soon could do without: the Gospel’s lumps of coal in the stocking that seemingly are the final scenes of Matthew chapter 2, our Scripture lesson for this morning.

Fresh on the heels of Matthew’s heart-warming account of obedient Wise Men following a star and offering the newborn King gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh, the evangelist’s holy-day party soon ends, and life gets quite messy for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And their story becomes quite bloody. Without so much as even a veiled hint of warning, the name of Jesus – Emmanuel, God-With-Us; Dayspring, Desire of Nations, Root of Jesse – becomes synonymous with another, less-glorious designation: “Frightened, Homeless Refugee Running for His Life.”

Through absolutely no fault of their own, Jesus and his exhausted parents stumble hard over a long string of raw, dark nights that relentlessly eclipse the family soul, each flicker of heavenly light snuffed out by the vise-like constriction of gut-wrenching uneasiness and deep-seated fear – whipped up like a vile witch’s brew by Herod’s genocide of little boys and the Holy Family’s stealthy, angel-fueled escape to Egypt.

Cooped up by COVID – like Mary, earlier in her story, pondering all these things; for me, pondering the muffled chords of holly-jolly merriment rising from the living below me, I couldn’t help but feel sweaty, anxious moments overcoming this weak, vulnerable, still-wet-behind-the-ears family – when bumps in the night and gravelly crunches of sinister footsteps make Joseph jump and conjure dreaded encounters with boogey men lurking under children’s beds.

I couldn’t help but imagine long, fitful nights of tossing and turning, the sleep of heavenly peace proving elusive for Mary and Joseph.

I couldn’t help but picture flashes of Mary arm-cradling her newborn son, quietly weeping bitter tears of shock and dismay, fed with the kindling of fears known and unknown, real and perceived.

Matthew punctuates his plot with icy snowballs of harsh reality that hit us where it hurts. Nevertheless, be of good courage and listen now with eyes and ears, heart and soul, for the Word of the Lord, as you gingerly step into the after-Christmas experience of life for Mary, Joseph, and their Holy Child of Bethlehem.

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

“Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.”

Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.” (Matthew 2:13-23)

A couple days before a COVID test came back positive, thus beginning my self-imposed exile of illness, a per-chance personal devotion would prove no mere coincidence.

Through the pen of author Sarah Young and her book “Jesus Calling,” writing in the first-person voice of Jesus, here’s what turned out to be accurately prophetic, immensely helpful, and incredibly comforting:

“When you are plagued by a persistent problem – one that goes on and on – view it as a rich opportunity. An ongoing problem is like a tutor who is always by your side. The learning possibilities are limited only by your willingness to be teachable.

“In faith, thank Me for your problem. Ask Me to open your eyes and your heart to all that I am accomplishing through this difficulty. Once you have become grateful for a problem, it loses its power to drag you down. Quite the contrary, your thankful attitude will lift you up into heavenly places with Me.

“From this perspective, your difficult can be seen as a slight, temporary distress that is producing for you transcendent Glory never to cease!”

With equivalent thanksgiving for Tylenol, antibiotics, inhaled corticosteroids, and fifths of Christian Brothers brandy, I’m also strangely grateful that God allowed me to fall ill. For it facilitated a far-flung journey of different perspective, stumbling along right behind the Holy Family, amid a winter of discontent and dis-ease. That virus I so faithfully tried to avoid ended up, by God’s grace, being the Jesus-dubbed “tutor” who for two weeks remained by my side in full teaching mode. This is what I learned:

That such terrible, awful things happen to the innocent – and have always happened to the innocent – is the very reason why the Son of God becomes Emmanuel, God with Us. He comes, so that the day will come, when there’ll be no more deer-in-the-headlight stares from the refugee, the terrorized, and the trafficked; the displaced, the battered, and the bulled; the jobless, the unwanted, the unloved; the outcast living on the edge, the lost and alone going nowhere; the sick, and the dying, and all those other poor souls who hunger for an end to it all .

Jesus comes, so that the day will come, when there’ll be no more hopeless, blank, glassy-eyed stares from scared, homeless children who – even when they look to mom or dad for comfort – see only their own terror reflected back from their parents’ eyes.

As the song goes, there’s no place like home for the holidays.

And few other times of the year are as tied with going home, or with being home, or with Norman Rockwell-like homey-ness as Christmas is.

So maybe why Matthew’s Christmas story makes us fidget and squirm with the itchiness of a heavy, wool, turtleneck sweater is because Matthew confronts us with our own homelessness, which by the Holy Spirit intimately and inextricably binds us to the homelessness of God in Christ Jesus.

If you’re labored to keep Christ in Christmas, and remembered the “reason for the season,” and, with most of the decorations taken down and packed away for another year, now take on the work of Christmas for still another year, then you’re going to have to wrestle with the truth that the Word of God Made Flesh becomes homeless for the sake of your homelessness and mine.

Which really is good news, because the muscular left hook of evil that punches hard the Holy Family is the same evil that pummels you, me, and every other part of the Body of Christ like a ton of falling bricks, disrupting our lives and qualifying each of us for refugee status. God the Father knows the helplessness of those homeless times, because God the Son – Emmanuel, God-with-us – has firsthand experience with helplessness and homelessness.

So, in those horrible moments when evil has you and me on the run, the Christ – Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-Us, opens wide the gate of shelter from the storm.

From the beginning, Jesus has been with God.

But then, for a time, Jesus wasn’t “with God” but rather “with us” — Emmanuel, God with us!

Elsewhere, the Gospel distinguishes Emmanuel as God “pitching his tent among us.” Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-Us, comes on a kind of divine camping adventure in desolate, boundary waters far from home. And obviously, when you camp, you know you’re not home. Camping is temporary, often a little inconvenient, sometimes wet and waterlogged,occasionally even risky and dangerous.

And that’s what Jesus does for us. He leaves the comfort of his true home in the full glory of the Creator and the Spirit and pitches his tent here, in this world, in our neighborhood – making himself homeless for a while and thus opening up the way to an eternal home for us all.

Hard as it is to hear and wrap your head around – much as it throws a wet blanket on the parties and kills the holiday buzz, the only way life can ultimately triumph through the work of that little Child of Bethlehem is if first sin and death are met squarely and head on. You really can’t unwrap the joy of Christ’s advent without also ripping off the Band Aid of Christ’s sorrow. Jesus’s long-anticipated arrival – smack-dab in the middle of such suffering, sin and death — is the only hope we’ve got for now or any time soon.

The Lord’s advent here on this earth – into this life chock-full of those many things that vex and annoy, grieve and hurt –tells us that it is not angels and heavenly realms whom Jesus chooses as neighbors. Jesus comes down to dwell particularly so among all those folks who weep without end – all the Rachels past, present, and future whose lives are nothing more than a never-ending streams of bitter tears.

As a new year begins, we take a deep breath in grim reflection and anticipation of all that can, did, and will go wrong in our lives and in the world.

Until Christ comes again, we know it won’t all get better. There’ll still be glitter debacles and poinsettia crises, war and threats of war, insurrections and uprisings, rampant gas-lightings and festering injustices.

But if that Child of Bethlehem is who Herod and those Wise Men dimly suspect he just might be, then hope endures through even the darkest of times. The end of the story is life. The end of the story is resurrection! When we’ve cried ourselves out in this old world, there will be One who will wipe every tear from every eye.

It’s not always a wonderful life in the here and now, but it surely will be so in God’s what-is-to-come – all thanks to Mary’s baby boy! And so, with full assurance of that good news of great joy for all people, through every dark night of your own soul, you can proclaim with the cherubim and seraphim forever and always:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to all.

Those are my holy lessons of COVID.

It surely wasn’t a favorite teacher of my own choosing, and I’ll still continue to wash my hands regularly and don a facemask appropriately. In no way am I advocating for you to start licking doorknobs in hopes of becoming sick and having a spiritual awakening like mine.

What I am urging you to do is to be still, and to let God be God in the midst of your trial and tribulation, and indeed expect, one day, one way or another, that Jesus the Christ unexpectedly and surprisingly really will work together unto good. And it’ll be no Christmas mishap.

Ancient words, ever true. It is what it is – until it isn’t . In, with, and through Christ.

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, January 15, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by M. Eugene Boring, Scott Hoezee, and Sarah Young inform the message.

A Letter from Bethlehem

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking,

“Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'”

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.

When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:1-11)

My dear little children,

At this time of year, I am reminded of how we all show our love for one another. I am encouraged as I see my people come together like this to worship and to remember the true meaning of this celebration.

Sometimes, though, my little ones, my heart breaks for each one of you. I have done so much for you and yet I see so little of what I offered in love being returned – even among yourselves. The angels of heaven recognized that I am the Promised One on that evening so long ago, and they could not restrain the joy that they felt. They sang it in love from the heavens, and it echoed from the mountains.

When the shepherds heard it, they understood that I am the Lamb of God. They left their flocks on the hillsides and came in love, showing their desire to experience who I am, even at the risk of their livelihood.

Wise men – astrologers – from far-off Mesopotamia saw prophecy of my birth and came in love and at a great expense to express their adoration and joy at the birth of the new king – the Light of the World.

My mother, Mary, risking shame, brought me into this world, little understanding what it meant to bear the Messiah, but loving me as her own, and because I am the way.

Now, my beloved, I invite you to recognize, at this season, who I am. I am the savior of humankind. Come unto me all of you who labor and are burdened with the cares of the day. I am able to lift that burden from you, because I love you.

I am your loving Savior,
Jesus, the Christ

(From Letters from Bethlehem by Wayne L. Tilden. Used with permission.)

Let us pray …

For those who seek a Savior, Great God, lead them to the Stable, to the One who was born to bring forgiveness and reconciliation.

For those who seek assurance, blessed Jesus, draw them to your light, your Word, a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

For those who seek forgiveness, Holy Spirit, show them the path to mercy and grace beyond comprehension; to wholeness, healing, and peace beyond measure.

May it be so!

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

His Name is Key of David

A high-school chum somehow or other landed an after-school job as a custodian at our school.

Now, it goes without saying that his part-time gig came with some very unpleasant duties, mostly involving lunchrooms, bathrooms, and locker rooms. But the job did come with what I thought were some very cool perks – like having keys to the entire school!

When you’ve got keys, you’ve got power and control, because you’ve got access and responsibility. You can open doors, and you can lock them. You’re able to access places few others can, and you’re capable of keeping the curious and mischievous out of nooks and crannies where they’re not supposed to trespass.

My friend loved telling about the time one of his former grade-school teachers, a person he’d always viewed as an authority figure, looked to him – a 15-year-old Cheeto-fingered, rat-mustached kid – as the authority who could open the door for her after she locked her keys in her classroom.

If you’ve ever been locked out of your house, your car, or even your locker, you know how important it is for someone to have the key. The person with your key is your lifeline – the rescuer who enters your fear, anger, and embarrassment to save the day.

During Advent, we look to Jesus as our lifeline, our rescuer, our Savior – as we sang earlier, our “Key of David.” “O come, thou Key of David, come and open wide our heav’nly home; make safe the way that leads on high, and close the path to misery.”

In other stanzas of that same Advent carol, we also beckon Jesus with a slew of other names: Dayspring, Son of God, Desire of Nations, Rod of Jesse, Emmanuel – each one buzzing with holy energy more than capable of cleaning up the muck in which we all too often find ourselves mired.

The first to utter the unique handle “Key of David” is the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (22:22), who describes the king’s steward as the one who holds the key of David. As the keyholder, the steward has responsibility over the whole kingdom, though he’s not doing a very good job of it and very likely will get booted out of office.

A far-better steward and guardian speaks loudly and clearly in this morning’s Scripture lesson from the New Testament’s book of Revelation.

Through the pen of the apostle John, Jesus himself says that he holds the key of David. He, now, is the One who fully controls and reigns over the Kingdom of God with mercy and compassion – sacrificially loving others by putting their needs above his own. In that precious role, Jesus – Key of David – open doors that no one else can, and he shuts doors to prevent their opening.

With all authority and responsibility for the whole kingdom of God, Jesus by grace chooses to open the door to forgiveness and reconciliation, healing and wholeness, resurrection and eternal life. When once, because of your brokenness, you were locked out with no access to God, Jesus by his death and resurrection now offers you access to the God of Heaven and Earth. Having conquered sin, death, and evil, the path of misery is closed off, and the way on high is wide open. Thus, “Key of David” labels not only Jesus but also his Gospel – the Good News he brings when he deigns to come to earth and pitch his tent among us.

On this final Sunday of Advent, listen for that Good News. By the Spirit’s power, hear the Word of the Lord.

“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Philadelphia:

“This is the message from the one who is holy and true, the one who has the key of David.

What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open: I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me.

“Because you have obeyed my command to persevere, I will protect you from the great time of testing that will come upon the whole world to test those who belong to this world. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take away your crown. All who are victorious will become pillars in the Temple of my God, and they will never have to leave it.

“And I will write on them the name of my God, and they will be citizens in the city of my God – the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven from my God. And I will also write on them my new name.” (Revelation 3:7-8, 10-12)

The church in Philadelphia, in what is now western Turkey, has a leadership problem.

A few unruly members have unlawfully assumed authority, and the giving of the key of David intends to re-establish the authority of God the Father in heaven. In the culture of the day, a key serves as an emblem of governmental authority. Even today in the Middle East, the transfer of governmental power comes with placement of a large key upon the new leader.

And the key of “David” harkens back generations to the beloved Old Testament king well-known as a devoted shepherd of God’s people and a fierce warrior against God’s enemies. But most of all, and above all, David is a loyal and obedient worshiper and servant of the Lord.

David is a man after God’s own heart, which Heaven desires to beat strongly in the midst of God’s people. That’s the overarching story of Scripture – from Genesis, where God walks with humanity in the cool of Eden’s garden, to Revelation, where in the end a “loud voice from the throne” declares once and for all that the dwelling place of God is with men, women, and children (21:3).

The Lord expects to live with them, with us. That’s the throbbing pulse of God’s heart. Dwelling with God is where our history has been and where our history is heading. That is our ultimate destiny – living, moving, and having our being in full and complete intimacy with God, forever safe from the powers of evil and healed of every ill.

That is why Jesus comes as Emmanuel, God With Us – Dayspring, Son of God, Desire of Nations, Rod of Jesse, Key of David: To repair and reconcile all things unto God, for us and our salvation, and to open the door to our new heaven and earth.

And to those whose hearts align with God’s, the Lord is prepared to entrust the key of David.

It is to them – to us, to you and me – that God wishes to impart the authority of David through the Holy Spirit, opening doors that no one can shut and shutting doors that no one can open. As you and I more and more become people after God’s own heart, the doors we labor to open will always lead first and foremost to God’s presence. Gaining entry comes by, with, and through Sabbath worship, daily prayer, and regular fellowship – by, with, and through loving care, humble service, and generous giving to friend, neighbor, and stranger, never forgetting that small keys can open great doors.

Indeed, God asks us keyholders to heave open some thick, heavy doors, and it might feel like you have “little strength,” and you might feel of little significance in the grand schemes of a broken and fearful world’s design. But it is to those “who keep his Word and not deny his name” that the Lord will entrust his power and authority. Just as David is the least of his family and clan, a shepherd boy, yet called to a position of great authority in the Kingdom, God says of him, “He will do everything I want him to do” (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22). And so must we!

Doing what God wants must be, above all else, the desire of each and every human heart – to have no purposes, no agendas, no ambitions, beyond those which are the Lord’s. At the Spirit’s urging, we do the Lord’s bidding: Bringing reconciliation to his people and the renewal of all things, so that we can walk in communion with God and abide in God’s love. Jesus – Key of David – opens the doors of righteousness, truth, and justice, and closes the gates to illness, disease, loneliness, abuse, neglect, inequity, deception, and unrighteousness in every sphere where the Spirit takes us as the voices, hands, and feet of Christ.

The Lord seeks and calls those upon whose shoulders he can place the key of David, those who will unlock for themselves and others places where Heaven’s transforming presence in sorely needed. God seeks those beloved keyholders who can be trusted with those responsibilities, those with the heart of David, a heart overflowing with humility and obedience – a person after God’s own heart. For such God seeks.

Are you that one?

If so, you’ll need to be patient. In faith, you’ll have to endure tribulation for a little while as you wait to receive heaven’s crown. In patience, you’ll be overcome by God’s Word, which enables you to survive being despised and oppressed by the supposedly wise and mighty of the world. When you’re overcome by God’s Word and the key of David rests upon your heart and mind, you’ll suffer evil without complaint, survive trials and tribulations, and find sustenance in the Word, which teaches and reminds that the path of discipleship won’t always be a walk in the park.

Though human power is puny by comparison, the power of the Key of David is great, and because the Lord and his Word are faithful, we hold fast to that truth and thereby overcome all its opponents.

And thus we continue to pray: Come, Lord Jesus. Key of David, come! And he will – into the everyday pain and grief of our wounded living and longest nights!

Thanks be to God!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, December 18, 2022, the sixth Sunday of Advent at First Presbyterian Church. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Casey Kegley, Shyju Mathew, John Mulaney, and Bob Sorge inform the message.

His Name Is Rod of Jesse

Of the many names for Jesus, the one you very-rarely-if-ever call on is “Rod of Jesse.”

Yet, there it is – perched awkwardly atop a stanza of a familiar Advent carol: Rod of Jesse. “O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny.”

We lift up the unusual name “Rod of Jesse,” in passionate melody, during the darkening days of every Advent season – and so also too, indirectly, in our fervent prayers for ourselves and our world that better, less-tyrannical, more-peaceful days will lie ahead: “From depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory o’er the grave.”

Let’s do a little unpacking of the uncommon-yet-holy name “Rod of Jesse.”

First, “rod” – a shoot, a stem; literally sprouting from a dead stump, unexpectedly budding as a sapling branch from roots long thought to be dried-up and lifeless. Those roots belong to Jesse, father of the Old Testament’s much-beloved King David, an earthly ruler over God’s people known far and wide for being fair, just, righteous, and God-fearing – though not without imperfection. David’s royal heirs, because of their sins, eventually get themselves booted out of the line of royal succession. Yet God promises David that his seed, however cracked and flawed, will indeed establish God’s rule forever.

And thus they do – the legal right to David’s throne flowing through the generations and finally coming to rest in Jesus, a wise and just ruler like his ancestor David. Jesus is Emmanuel, God With Us, the very Son of both God and Man, brimming with both divinity and humanity.

Plus, God’s Holy Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and reverence rests upon him by baptism. And bearing those gifts, Jesus, Desire of Nations, comes to clean house, take charge, and re-establish justice.

Jesus brings hope to the remnant of God’s people who find themselves living in their own brand of bleak midwinter, a leaderless place, desperately holding on for dear life in a time when everything’s spinning out of control! Even more terrifying, the sharp ax of God’s judgment is coming, and the nation will be left with nothing but a seemingly lifeless “stump.”

But the Dayspring, the morning dawn, one day will break to renew the face of the earth and the hearts of its people. What surely now seems a dead, decaying stump will bring forth new life in the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who vows to come again one day, and to wipe away every evil and every tear once and for all.

Listen for that Good News in the Word of the Lord from the pen of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah.

Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot – yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root.

And the Spirit of the LORD will rest on him – the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

He will delight in obeying the LORD. He will not judge by appearance nor make a decision based on hearsay. He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited. The earth will shake at the force of his word, and one breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked. He will wear righteousness like a belt and truth like an undergarment.

In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all. The cow will graze near the bear. The cub and the calf will lie down together. The lion will eat hay like a cow. The baby will play safely near the hole of a cobra. Yes, a little child will put its hand in a nest of deadly snakes without harm. Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for as the waters fill the sea, so the earth will be filled with people who know the LORD.

In that day the heir to David’s throne will be a banner of salvation to all the world. The nations will rally to him, and the land where he lives will be a glorious place. (Isaiah 11:1-10)

The wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster recently picked “gaslighting” as their word of the year.

In this our age of misinformation – of “fake news,” conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes, “gaslighting” – “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone for one’s own advantage” – fuels widespread disorientation and rampant mistrust.

Here’s how gaslighting erodes our confidence: Basically, if you hear a lie relentlessly told over and over and over, its repetitive bombardment upon your conscience mind unconsciously transforms fiction into fact, alternate truth, despite the lack of solid, reliable evidence to back up those claims. Gaslighting is what stirs your desperate cry: “I just don’t know what to believe anymore!”

And then, into your confusion parachutes the prophet Isaiah, with most-welcome word of better days ahead, of reconciliation for the estranged, all stemming from a surprising sprout of truth: Fresh, new life arising from stone-cold death, a different vision of community cut from wholly different cloth, a glorious fabric woven tightly with vibrant threads of peace, justice, and the long-awaited righting of wrongs.

So, let’s paint that picture and set the record straight:

It is not true that Creation and humanity are doomed to destruction and loss. This is true: Father, Son, and Spirit so loved the world they created, that God gives us the only Son, that whoever believes in that Son shall never-ever perish but have everlasting life.

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction. This is true: “I have come,” Jesus declares, “that they may have abundant life.”

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever. This is true: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. His name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world. This is true: “To me is given authority in heaven and on earth,” Jesus shouts, “and lo, I am with you, even until the end of the world.”

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, prophets of the Church, before we can be peacemakers. This is true: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy; your young men and women shall see visions, and your old men and women shall dream dreams.”

It is not true that our hopes for the full liberation of humanity – for justice, dignity, and respect for all life – are not meant for this earth and for this history. This is true: “I knew you before you were born; I knit you together in your mother’s womb. You are fearfully and wonderfully made!”

So let’s keep slogging through Advent in hope, toward the manger in hope against hope.

Let us see visions of love, and peace, and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, and with courage: the Christ Child of Bethlehem truly is the life of the world. And indeed, our prayers have been answered: “O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny. From depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory o’er the grave.”

May it be so, sooner rather than later: Come, Lord Jesus. O come, thou Rod of Jesse. For Scripture also understands “rod” as the hook of rescue, the staff carried affectionately by a caring Shepherd. Therefore, we sing a song of David in our morning psalm:

The LORD is my shepherd; I have all that I need.

He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.

Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.

Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever. (Psalm 23)

Which is why, in another carol, we sing of the glory that lies ahead: “Look now! For glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing; O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.”

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, December 11, 2022, the fifth Sunday of Advent at First Presbyterian Church. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Allan Boesak and Gene M. Tucker inform the message.