On Seeing the Kingdom…

02 Wednesday Sep 2026

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Photo cred: Stephanie Snow, as found at https://stephaniesnowphotography.com/7-poses-for-beach-pictures-for-your-family/

Every summer, our family travels to the beach.  But unlike traditional beach stays, we stay at a community house run through the Episcopal Church.  The house has 11 family rooms, shared living spaces, and two shared meals a day.  The house is only a few blocks from the beach and a couple more blocks to the boardwalk.  Staying in a community house certainly involves some uncertainty – you have no idea who will occupy the other 10 rooms:  singletons, couples, families with either young or older children, rooms occupied by friends of another room’s occupants, or grandparents, uncles or aunts, or cousins of other housemates.  Invariably, communal meals and living spaces are shared across generations, often with people who were strangers at the beginning of the week, but friends by the end.

This year, I was struck by the magic of the multigenerational nature of the house.  I watched as my preteen joined in games with older adults.  I watched as an elementary school-aged child reveled in the design of a birthday cake of someone in her late 60s.  I watched my high schooler talk about the local amusement park with one of the younger residents.  And probably most beautiful, I watched as each morning and evening, hands joined together across family and generational lines, to offer up prayers of thanksgiving and gratitude before meals.

Our experience at the beach reminds me so much of the same beauty I find at Church.  I love watching grandparent-aged folks marveling at the princess dresses of our young ones.  I love watching parents of young children kneel next to adults old enough to be their parents – and watching them exchange looks of awe as a young kid asks for a blessing.  I love watching hugs exchanged across generations, older members asking students about their studies and extracurricular activities, and parents welcome in a harried newcomer parent whose victory that day was just getting the whole family through the church doors. 

When folks are looking for a sense of community or even more specifically for a worshipping community, all sorts of factors come into play:  the music selections, the liturgy choices, the sermon style, or even the dress code.  But probably more important than those surface differences is the way a church makes you feel:  a sense of belonging, of affirmation, of spiritual guidance, of connection – to God and to others.  In “church speak,” you’re looking for the kingdom of God here on earth.  No church is perfect – because every church is made up of imperfect persons.  But when the Church is fully being its beautiful self, there’s a magic you cannot find elsewhere.  Come see for yourself, and fold yourself into the beauty of community!

Sermon – Exodus 3.1-15, P17, YA, August 30, 2026

02 Wednesday Sep 2026

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Many years ago, I was watching an episode of a popular TV show.  The main character had arrived at a friend’s house and was asked to take off her shoes before proceeding into the house.  Now, the character was kind of a shoe diva, so she presented as being upset because 1) the shoes were a strategic part of her outfit – her outfit just didn’t look the same without the shoes; plus, 2) they were pretty expensive shoes, so the idea of leaving them behind felt akin to leaving your wallet in a vulnerable place.  The homeowners had zero sympathy, so the audience was left feeling the same upsettedness as the character removed her precious shoes and left them among the shoes of the other guests.

In hindsight, while the character was legitimately concerned about the safety of her expensive shoes and even the negative impact on her cute outfit, what the show never really addressed was what removing shoes does at a deeper level.  Removing shoes, particularly in the presence of others, makes you vulnerable.  You cannot hide the fact that you put on your socks with the holes you haven’t mended, or the pedicure you’ve failed to tend for over a month, or the ways your feet become sweaty on a hot day, or the myriad ways you don’t see your feet as “pretty” or at least “presentable.”  Removing shoes takes away any status markers and leaves you on uncomfortable footing with others. 

When we hear the story of burning bush today, Moses is asked to do exactly what that TV character was asked to do – remove his shoes.  God says to Moses, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”  Now, I have always heard that part of the passage and narrowed in on the holy ground – wondering what makes certain ground holy, where I find holy ground in my life, or whether holy ground is even a modern-day occurrence.  But this week, I have been more focused on the removal of sandals. 

In many Asian countries, removing shoes indoors is common practice.  My nephews, who were born and live in China, automatically remove their shoes when they come in your home.  In Burma, you find piles of flip flops outside of classrooms and homes.  In Japan, you remove shoes and are immediately given slippers – and sometimes a different set of slippers for different parts of the house, like the bathroom.  In a survey taken in Japan, “…81 percent of the people identified not one, but two equally important reasons for taking their shoes off when they enter their homes: 1) to keep their houses and floors clean; and 2) to be able to relax and be themselves.”[i]

Here is where I think the text is really pointing when we talk about Moses taking off his shoes.  As one scholar asks, “Is it possible that God tells Moses to take his shoes off because he wants Moses to be himself?  To remove all pretense?  To be vulnerable and open to what God has to say?”[ii] 

If we keep reading, our text talks a lot about identity.  When God calls out to Moses (before Moses removes his shoes), Moses says, “Here I am!”  But then just verses later, Moses says, “Who am I?”  As in, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  And even later, when Moses is commanded to go to the people and report that God sent him, he asks who God is – what God’s name is.  In this jockeying back and forth between Moses and God about identity and purpose, commissioning and authority, at the heart is conversation that can only happen if God and Moses enter the conversation with full vulnerability, honesty, and humility.  Perhaps there is nothing at all sacred about the ground beneath that burning bush on a molecular level[iii] – the ground becomes sacred when shoes are removed. 

I’ve been spending a lot of time this week watching old clips of Dolly Parton, Patron Saint of the Smokey Mountains.  Now shoes were important to Dolly – along with sequins, and hairspray, and makeup, and supportive undergarments.  But in a metaphorical way, I think Dolly taught us a lot about how to take off your shoes and make holy ground wherever you are.  Dolly never hesitated to talk about her impoverished upbringing, how her looks both opened doors and created liability, or how every bit of success and financial windfall was a gift from God.  By taking off her shoes so readily and regularly, Dolly taught us what happens on sacred ground.  On sacred ground, the marginalized are noticed and honored, children of any background are given an education, jobs are created in depressed areas, LGBTQ+ community members are made to feel blessed and valued, women are empowered, and conflict is accompanied by lightness and laughter.  But that kind of sacred ground could never have emerged unless Dolly took off her shoes over and over again.

Our scripture today asks us to do the same:  to take off our shoes so that we can see holy ground.  That holy ground is obvious to us in some places – at the communion rail, in our favorite pew/seat, or in our favorite prayer spot.  But this week, Moses invites us to take off our shoes so that we can see holy ground in more unexpected places – in our workplace, at school, in our homes.  Now, there may be some places that removing your shoes is impractical – while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store, on the playground at play, or in your favorite restaurant.  But I want you to at least imagine taking your shoes off in all the places you find yourself this week and see how your perspective changes.  Maybe with your shoes off, the guy talking too loudly on his cell phone seems more sympathetic as you look at the dark circles under his eyes.  Maybe with your shoes off, that silent orderly who cleans up the neighboring hospital room seems like more of a crucial part of the hospital than the doctors and nurses.  Maybe with your shoes off, that clerk at the grocery store who barely makes eye contact seems much more interesting as you ponder how she makes a living serving you.  And when you lay your head down to sleep each night this week, I invite you to thank God for the holy ground in your life and the opportunity to remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.  Amen.

[i] Karla Suomala, “Commentary on Exodus 3:1-15,” September 3, 2017, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22/commentary-on-exodus-31-15-4 on August 28, 2026.

[ii] Suomala.

[iii] This train of thought inspired by reflections by Anathea Portier-Young, “Commentary on Exodus 3:1-15,” August 31, 2014, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22/commentary-on-exodus-31-15-5 on August 28, 2026.

Sermon – Genesis 37.1-4, 12-28, P14, YA, August 9, 2026

02 Wednesday Sep 2026

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Family Systems studies is one of the most important areas of study for a pastor.  Understanding the interconnected emotional network of a congregation helps the community navigate group behavior, anxiety, and change management.  You can study as much scripture, homiletics, theology, ethics, and liturgy as you want, but all you need is one funeral or wedding to watch everything unravel in the face of generations-learned dysfunction and conflict.  To every single person who has ever whispered to me a confession that their family might be a little bit dysfunctional, I make my work to disabuse them of the idea that any family functions perfectly healthily all the time – even the pastor or the therapist’s family – probably especially the pastor and therapist’s families. 

Last week we talked about the not-so-functional family of Isaac and his scheming son Jacob, who wrestled with God after a lifetime of manipulation and grasping.  Lest you think Jacob was an outlier in his family, today we get the story of Jacob’s son’s.  Now, biblical commentators warn about drawing too many parallels between Jacob’s family and modern families.  With Jacob’s two wives, and their two servants, Jacob’s children are descendant from four mothers – all living together and all giving birth to create one family.  But things were even more complicated than that:  remember, Rachel, the younger daughter of Laban, was Jacob’s favorite wife.  But for a long time, Rachel was unable to bear children, and Leah, the older daughter of Laban who Laban tricked Jacob to marry, was heartily fertile – giving Jacob six of his 12 sons (not to mention a daughter).  Rachel’s servant was offered to Jacob and produced two children in her stead, not to be unmatched by Leah’s servant who added two more.  Needless to say, this would have been a very tricky family to minister to at a funeral.

And although we don’t bless marriages to multiple wives, let alone marital-type relations with maid servants (who also don’t exist in modern times), we are very family with complicated families.  Between divorces, blended families, and a whole bunch of stuff we don’t talk about publicly, we know plenty well about how messy family can be.  That’s why today’s story about Joseph is not all that shocking if we’re being honest.  Like his parents before him (Isaac favoring Esau and Rebekah favoring Jacob), and his grandfather before him (Abraham, who cast out Ishmael when Isaac came along), Jacob had favorites among his children.  Jacob’s favorite was a double favorite – the favorite son from his favorite wife.  And Joseph was not the most mature or what we call “self-differentiated” member in the family:  In just a few short verses (and in some of the verses we skipped today), we know that Jospeh was a tattletale on his half-brothers, that he shared aloud two dreams he had where his brothers and father were bowing down to him, he sported a beautiful, embroidered coat – one designed for royalty (not shepherds) – and that his dad was unambiguous about his favoritism for Joseph.  You can hear the anger and projection in his brother’s words, “Here comes that dreamer!”  Now, we can argue about whether Reuben is a hero for ensuring the brothers threw him in a pit instead of killing him, or Judah was being caring by selling Joseph into slavery instead of letting him die in the pit – but the triangulation, conflict-avoidance, and lack of self-differentiation in this family is off the charts!  This would be a family systems professor’s dream case study.

But here’s the funny thing happening behind all that mess.  Joseph’s brothers aren’t the first people to try to stifle a dreamer.  On April 4, 1968, after having given his “I have a dream” speech in DC, and after rallying the sanitation workers in Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered.  He was murdered because many did not like his dreams and did not want him to speak any more about them.  On a memorial sitting outside the National Civil Rights Museum on the property of the preserved Lorraine Hotel where King was murdered are etched words from today’s passage:  “They said to one another.  Behold.  Here cometh the dreamer…  Let us slay him…  And we shall see what will become of his dreams.” 

At the heart of Joseph’s story, and the reason his story is so close to home, is certainly about family dynamics – but at an even deeper level is the problem of sin.  At the root of the hatred of Joseph and the desire to kill a brother is envy.  We know envy as one of the classic seven deadly sins.  Cain murdered his brother Abel out of envy.  Envy is prohibited in the ten commandments.  As theologian Geoffrey Hoare explains, “Envy is the name given to either that desire we have for some possession or quality or talent that belongs to someone else, or the desire that the other not enjoy some possession, quality, or talent…Envy can stem from the belief that there is not enough favor to go around, from a sense that life is fundamentally unfair, or possibly from simple greed.  Any of these causes for envy are in direct opposition to the revealed purposes of God for the world, and so envy gives rise to rebellion against the Lord of the universe.  In God’s economy, material circumstance is the source of neither happiness nor salvation.”[i]  Jacob’s brothers operated out of envy and in opposition to God’s economy.  The people of this country operated out of envy when talking about sharing equal rights.  We act out of envy every time we gather around this Eucharistic table caught up in our inability to operate within God’s economy, like Jospeh’s brother also ate together while their brother languished in a pit nearby.

Edwin Friedman wrote a lot about Family Systems, talking about the multigenerational nature of emotional or family systems.  “The theory is that patterns of relationship get played out and repeated from generation to generation, unless or until someone seeks to change those patterns, largely through self-differentiation and a willingness to resist succumbing to anxiety while the family system resists this change and seeks to return to its status quo.”[ii]  Abraham couldn’t see God’s economy when his first-born son came from his wife’s servant.  Jacob couldn’t see God’s economy when he stole Esau’s birthright and blessing.  Laban couldn’t see God’s economy when Jacob desired Rachel over Leah.  Joseph’s brothers couldn’t see God’s economy when Jacob loved one son over the other eleven.

What Family Systems tell us is that we cannot fix others.  Joseph could not force his brothers to see generously instead of seeing with jealousy.  We cannot force parents, siblings, children, friends, or fellow church members to see with God’s abundance instead of life’s scarcity.  Paradoxically, that is where we find the good news in Joseph’s story.  The only way to mend a broken family system is mend ourselves – to function in a non-anxious, self-differentiated way.  We won’t get to hear the whole of what happens to Joseph in slavery next week (spoiler alert – he serves as a slave for 12 years, is then imprisoned for many more years before his ability to interpret dreams is discovered by Pharoah.  He becomes Pharoah’s number two, saving the country and eventually his own people when a famine comes).  But next week, we will find a Joseph, who, in his ability to self-differentiate in an unhealthy system reencounters his brothers with forgiveness and grace, breaking generations of hurt.  By the end of the book, Joseph will say to his brothers, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.”[iii]

Joseph invites us today to step out of our generational habits of harm, and to step into habits of good.  Joseph invites us into redefining how systems malfunction but focusing on our own healthy functioning.  Joseph invites us to look through the lens of God’s economy where there is always enough, and not through society’s economy that only sees scarcity.  Healthy functioning is not easy work, and the work takes good partners for support and strength.  The church invites you to use this table not as a place to let your hurt and envy fester, but to release that hurt and envy to God.  This table will empower you to feel and know what belonging to each other really means.[iv]  Amen.

[i] Georffrey M. St. J. Hoare, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays Year A (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 3.

[ii] Hoare, 5.

[iii] Genesis 50.20.

[iv] Gary V. Simpson, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays Year A (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 5.

On Movies, Community, and God…

05 Wednesday Aug 2026

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Photo credit: https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/digital-enterprise/central-valley-theaters-to-celebrate-national-popcorn-day/

This past weekend our family went to see a movie together.  That may sound like a common thing to do, but I cannot remember the last time all four of us not only all wanted to see the same movie, but also knew seeing the movie in the theater would be of particular value.  The experience was everything we had hoped it would be:  an exciting, engaging story, the sound and visuals so vivid that you felt the movie tangibly, and a storyline that left you with much to talk about afterwards on the ride home.

In addition to being everything we had hoped it would be as a family and as individuals, what the experience also provided was something I had not expected:  the experience of a shared movie in a theater that is quite full.  I have heard people wax about how watching a movie with a community is a different experience than watching a movie on a streaming service at home.  And while the argument makes sense intellectually, experiencing the difference in person was something different.  In part, I think the difference come from what changed for us during the pandemic:  how, in general, we came to see mass gatherings in enclosed spaces as unsafe.  Other factors come into play:  the cost of a movie that can be prohibitively expensive, the easy access of thousands of viewing options on our computers and TVs at home, the convenience of watching a film on your own couch, in pjs, with the ability to pause for any kind of personal needs. 

But none of that compares to the shared experience that can happen in community – even a community of strangers.  It started with the previews, as I audibly heard people grumble in disapproval for an upcoming movie (Too scary!  Too gory!  Too boring!), but continued as the feature film began.  The smell of buttery popcorn filling the air, and the quiet background noise of popcorn munching.  The collective jumps in seats all around you as something suddenly scared or surprised you.  The groans or hands covering eyes as something gross appeared.  Or the collective whispers of ascent or even outright cheers or laughs when something universally good happened. 

Sometimes that is what I love about Church so much.  I love the shared smiles when a familiar hymn starts playing.  I love the nods of ascents or the quiet that falls when a preacher says something particularly poignant.  I love the giddiness of children at Eucharist that can shake up even the most serious adult kneeling next to them.  And I love the sharing of those experiences as we depart as people say, “I really needed that today,” or “That one part really spoke to me today.”  Like a movie, Church can be both a collective experience (providing the comfort of shared community), and an experience that is individually experienced alongside others (we may not make the same meaning of things, but we were in the experience together).  You may or may not be motivated to go to the movies soon, but I hope you will consider making your way to the shared experience of Church.  I imagine there will be delightful surprises and shared common experiences that will awaken something in your spiritual walk with God this week!

Sermon – Genesis 32.22-31, P13, YA, August 2, 2026

05 Wednesday Aug 2026

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One of the things we often talk about in church is our relationship with God.  We talk about God as a companion on our journey – one who walks with us as we grow and develop and change in our faith life.  We talk about God as one who is in dialogue with us – one who needs us to listen as much as we talk, making sure our prayer life is more of a dialogue than a monologue.  We talk about God as one who requires vulnerability – one who wants not just the glossy versions of ourselves that we present to the public, but also the messy, angry, and sometimes ugly versions of ourselves that we rarely let anyone see.  But rarely do we talk about God as sparring partner – a prize fighter, capable of leaving real physical scars, leaving us marked visibly for others to see.

That is the image we get from our Old Testament lesson today.  To understand how Jacob comes to wrestle with God at the Jabbok, we need to go back in Jacob’s story that we’ve been hearing all summer.  Jacob is a twin, the brother of Esau and son of Isaac and Rebekah.  Jacob’s name in Hebrew means, “the one who takes the heel,”[i]  because he grabs on to the heel of his brother as he follows Esau out of the womb.  The name turns out to be quite appropriate.  Jacob will be grabbing and grasping for much of his life.

The rest of Jacob’s story unfolds like a soap opera.  When Jacob is older, Jacob manipulates Esau out of his birthright.  Then, Jacob tricks his blind father Isaac into believing that he is Esau so that he can cheat Esau out of the blessing due to him as the firstborn male.  Jacob flees for his life from his angered brother Esau, returning to his family’s homeland.  There he meets Rachel and falls in love.  Unfortunately, Rachel is the younger of two unmarried sisters, and in a twist of fate, Jacob is on the receiving end of deception when he is tricked into marrying the older sister Leah first.  Not to be outdone, Jacob manipulates Laban, his father-in-law, and manages to trick Laban into giving Jacob most of the family’s livestock before Jacob flees yet again with his large family and wealth. 

But Jacob can only run so long before fate finally catches up with him.  Some twenty years since leaving home, Esau is in hot pursuit of Jacob.  Scared, Jacob sends some gifts as an attempted bribe for Esau.  But he hears that Esau is approaching with 400 men, and so Jacob splits up his family and sends them ahead of him, leaving Jacob alone at the Jabbok in the dark of night.  This is where our story picks up today. 

The story is a bit confusing, but basically Jacob wrestles with God all night long.[ii]  We are told that the two seem to fight as equals, but at the end of the scuffle, God strikes Jacob in the hip, leaving Jacob with a limp.  Jacob asks for a blessing from God, once again grabbing in life as his name portends.  God asks Jacob his name, and instead of lying to God like Jacob lied to his father, Jacob comes clean.  “Jacob,” he says.  Now this part may sound simple enough, but God is not simply asking for and getting Jacob’s name.  Jacob is confessing.  “I am Jacob – grasper of a heel.  I have grabbed my whole way through life:  cheating, conning, scheming, plotting, and taking what does not belong to me.  I am thoroughly psychologically broken, and now you have broken me physically.  So please, give me, cheater that I am, a blessing.” 

What happens next is a total transformation.  God gives Jacob a new name, “Israel.”  No longer will Jacob be known as the grasper.  Instead, Jacob will be known as one who struggled with God – and though marked by a limp, is one who came out a new person – Israel.  With his new name, “Jacob enters into a new future, and passes his name, faith, and future on to his descendants, who bear that name even unto this day.”[iii]

The reason I retell you the whole of Jacob’s story today is because we cannot fully understand the metaphor of wrestling with God until we understand Jacob as a person.  Jacob, father of the people of God, is by no means a shiny example of faithful living.  From birth, Jacob seemed destined for a life of manipulation, attempts at control, a willingness to deceive for personal gain, and constant scheming.  And though we would like to wag our fingers at Jacob, the truth is, there is a little bit of Jacob in each of us.  The reason we disapprove of Jacob is because at some point in our lives we have been a grasper of heels.  Perhaps we have not deceived on such a grand scale as Jacob, but we have certainly tried to manipulate situations toward our own personal gain.

But we also retell this story because we learn something about God.  Earlier we talked about a God who journeys with us, who wants dialogue with us, who expects vulnerability.  We often acquiesce to this God because we trust that God is a god of love.  Debie Thomas counterargues that, “The God who goes toe to toe with Jacob is not a God whose first priority is our ease and comfort.  He’s not a God who maintains a polite distance, minds his manners, and ‘makes nice’ to keep us happy.  No, Jacob’s God is wild and mysterious, unpredictable and strange.  Jacob’s God doesn’t hesitate to muck around in the mud for several hours to bring Jacob to his knees.  Indeed, the Hebrew word for ‘wrestle’ means ‘to get dusty.’  To get dirty.  This is no dainty, breakable God.  This is a God of dust and sweat and blood and tears.  A God who is willing to ‘become dirty’ to lift us out of the dirt.”[iv]      

Thomas goes on to say, “Wrestling, as it turns out, is not an irreverent thing, because it’s the opposite of apathy, the opposite of resignation, the opposite of quitting, the opposite of complacency.   It’s even the opposite of loneliness.  To fight is to stay close, to keep my arms wrapped tight around my opponent.  Fighting means I haven’t walked away from God, and God hasn’t walked away from me.  It means we both have skin left in the game.”[v]

After seeing The Odyssey this week with our family, the girls asked me about why Athena was so present with Odysseus in the movie.  If you haven’t seen the movie yet or read the book recently, Athena appears to Odysseus throughout his twenty-year journey.  She’s on the pin Odysseus’ wife gives him before he leaves for twenty years.  She is the goddess that Odysseus dedicates the Trojan Horse to – the horse that helps them brutally defeat Troy.  She appears to him as he struggles to find his way home and fights his demons from war and loss.  And in one of the final scenes (spoiler alert – although the Greek myth has been around for a while!), she is brought to tears as Odysseus essentially confesses his sins to her, in particular the sin of desecrating her honor when he conceived of that Trojan Horse – a goddess who had journeyed with him, despite his grievous sins.  Athena does not wrestle Odysseus, but she certainly gets down in the blood, sweat, dust, and tears of Odysseus – shedding her own tears along the way.

Jacob’s story and Odysseus’ myth point us to what life with God is like.  There are parts of our lives that cannot simply be healed or gently be brought to God in prayer.  There are parts of our lives that we are going to need entry into battle with God to transform them.  The wrestling is necessary because the wrestling forces us to push through whatever is separating us from God and who God calls us to be.  And for those of us who are particularly stubborn or prone to grasping like Jacob, the wrestling is required to break down our wills enough to get us to the place of being able to confess – confess who we really are to God.  Then, and only then, will we find our transformation – a renaming of who we are so that we can be fully who God invites us to be.  But be forewarned – no one leaves the ring from a match with God without a few scars.  Amen.

[i] Denise Dombkowski Hopkins, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays Year A (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 6.

[ii] Amy Merrill Willis, “Commentary on Genesis 32.22-31” August 2, 2020, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18/commentary-on-genesis-3222-31, as found on July 31, 2026.

[iii] David Lose, “Tell Me Your Name,” July 24, 2011 as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post= 1597 on July 31, 2026.

[iv] Debie Thomas, “The Limp and the Blessing,” July 26, 2020, as found at https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2703-the-limp-and-the-blessing on July 31, 2026.

[v] Thomas.

On Loving Self and Loving Neighbor…

29 Wednesday Jul 2026

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Photo credit: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2018/10/just-kids-love-neighbor-as-yourself-mayfield/

Several weeks ago, I had a health event due to the extreme heat.  It was the first time I had experienced such a thing, and it threw me for a loop.  Since I had gotten to the point of crisis, I realized that maybe I didn’t know how to read my body as well as I thought I did.  Or maybe my body is just changing and I now need to read it differently.  Regardless, in the weeks since the event I have found myself looking inward a lot – analyzing miniscule details, observing new patterns, trying new practices, and being much more responsive to the weather forecast.

During my inner focus, our area experienced an air quality warning amidst high heat levels due to fires in Cananda.  The haze outside was thick and we were encouraged to stay inside as much as possible.  I was talking to my young daughter about the haze and the warning, still thinking about my recovering health, when she quite plainly asked, “But what about the homeless people in town, Mom?  How are they supposed to stay inside if they don’t have anywhere to go?”

Her simple question was like pulling the emergency break in my body.  Though prioritizing your health is important (helpers cannot help if they aren’t taking care of themselves first), I realized I had swung to an extreme such that I could only see myself and had paused my thinking about others.  It’s only human, and is certainly reflective of a unique short-term season, but it was eye-opening about how quickly we can forget the maximum of Jesus, “Love God.  Love Neighbor.”  If my relatively healthy body had been so impacted by the external environment, how at risk are my neighbors who are fighting not just the elements, but also a lack of basic needs like food, water, shelter, and clothing? 

I wonder what’s going on in your life that might have shifted your focus away from care of neighbor?  This is not an invitation into guilt.  This is an invitation into shifting energy – away from any wallowing you may be doing (about your body, your dissatisfaction with life, your frustration with the world) and toward something good – some change you can make for good.  Whether the invitation comes from a child, a random comment from a stranger, or the Holy Spirit:  how are you being invited to love your neighbor more fully today?

Sermon – Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43, P11, YA, July 19, 2026

29 Wednesday Jul 2026

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The parable in our gospel lesson today is a story about weeds – actually, one weed in particular, called the darnel.  The darnel is a nasty weed, wrapping its roots around the roots of good wheat, totally indistinguishable from wheat until producing seed, and life-threatening if allowed to mix in with wheat once harvested.[i]  Jesus tells the disciples that this menacing, evil, life-threatening weed is metaphorically planted in the field of the world.  These evil weeds are planted, growing, and thriving side-by-side with the nutritious, filling, wholesome wheat, intimately intertwined, impossible to separate without destruction to both.  And this, Jesus tells the disciples, is our world.  In one short parable, we have the reality of the enemy or devil, the problem of evil in our lives, and an accounting or judgment at the end of life.  Happy Sunday, huh?

In order to find some hint of grace in this parable, we first have to explore the bad news.  The bad news in this parable is like a funnel of evil, which starts out with a wide, removed description of evil, and as the funnel narrows, the evil comes closer and closer to home.  At the wide mouth of the funnel, we find the evil of the world.  We see evil in the world everyday – as people are kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.  We see evil as people are denied basic human rights, work in sweatshops, and are forced to flee from their lands.  We see evil as people live without shelter, food, or medicines.  And although we recognize the outcomes of evil, we get uncomfortable identifying “evil” because we hope for some hint of goodness in everyone and, secretly, we know that we too sometimes participate in the world’s evils.

Our funnel narrows as the master’s field becomes defined as not only the world, but also our church community.  Here is where the notion of “evil” weeds becomes even more uncomfortable.  Jesus experienced evil in the midst of his community, as individuals constantly sought to kill him.  The early Church also experienced evil in the Church’s midst.  And the evil within the Church is still with us today.  There is no perfect church.  I love this parish and the beautiful ways we care for and love one another – but I cannot claim that we are perfectly good.  In fact, each us has at some point been like that nasty weed, capable of choking the nutrients and life-giving water out of true goodness among us – a reality that makes us uncomfortable, both with the idea of judging each other, and with the potential of being exposed ourselves.

Then comes the tightest, most compressed area of the funnel – the spout through which evil finally flows.  The field in which evil is planted is also the field of ourselves.  Paul articulated this evil in his letter to the Romans, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”[ii]  Paul’s words perfectly capture the inner turmoil of being human.  Imagining the weeds and the wheat growing up together in our own beings is not difficult.  We are constantly an intertwined field of great deeds and hurtful wrongs.  We pray that the good seed will yield fruit and the weeds will eventually be burned, but we know both weed and wheat are inside of us.  And so, the funnel shows us that evil is in our world among us, in our faith community beside us, and in our very beings.

The grace is that the funnel also works in reverse.  Grace spews out of the same funnel.  When the servants ask the master about whether they should go ahead and pull out the weeds, the master tells them to wait, letting the two grow side by side, entangled and indistinguishable.  This waiting time is the grace for our own selves.  Recognizing that both good and evil are in ourselves, God gives us time:  time to continue to nurture the good; time to avoid killing the good in our efforts to kill the evil in ourselves; and time to allow God’s grace to work in and through us, so that the goodness in us might be gathered into that barn.  As God is patient with us, so we are to be patient with ourselves.

The same grace moves out of the funnel, out of ourselves, and into our Church.  God gives us time as a faith community too.  The gift of time gives us the opportunity to live into God’s grace – witnessing goodness to one another, so that the evil among us might be overwhelmed and eventually discarded.  The gift of time for the Church also allows us to make amends for those times when we are the agents of evil in the church, confessing our faults weekly, repenting and returning to goodness.  The gift of time for the church allows us to learn and grow in God’s goodness, to marvel in the mystery of God’s grace, and to prayerfully lift up the Church to God.  God is patient with the Church just as God is patient with each of us.

Finally, the funnel of goodness spills over into the world through the gift of time.  The gift of time allows us to work on spreading goodness in the world.  We have time to give one more meal to a hungry person, to comfort one more grieving person, to advocate one more time for a just society.  And we realize in this gift of time that we are not responsible for sorting out the weeds and the wheat.  God will do that.  We can only work to cultivate goodness in our lives, in our community, and in the world – and the rest is in God’s hands.

When we realize that each of us is some mixture of wheat and weed, of holy and unholy, of potentially fruitful and potentially destructive, we can then turn away from God’s work of judging, and turn toward our work of attending to that which increases the potential for holiness.[iii]  In other words, the grace for us in this parable is that we can leave the judgment to God, and do our work of promoting goodness in ourselves, in our community, and in the world.  This is our work.

Barbara Brown Taylor tells another parable of wheat and weeds.  “One afternoon in the middle of the growing season, a bunch of farmhands decided to surprise their boss and weed his favorite wheat field. No sooner had they begun to work, however, than they began to argue – first about which of the wheat looking things were weeds and then about the rest of the weeds.  Did the Queen Anne’s lace pose a real threat to the wheat, or could it stay for decoration?  And the blackberries?  They would be ripe in just a week or two, but they were, after all, weeds – or were they?  And the honeysuckle – it seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.

About the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters, the boss showed up and ordered them out of his field.  Dejected, they did as they were told.  Back at the barn he took their machetes away from them, poured them some lemonade, and made them sit down where they could watch the way the light moved across the field.  At first, all they could see were the weeds and what a messy field it was, what a discredit to them and their profession, but as the summer wore on, they marveled at the profusion of growth – tall wheat surrounded by tall goldenrod, ragweed, and brown-eyed Susans.  The tares and the poison ivy flourished alongside the Cherokee roses and the milkweed, and it was a mess, but a glorious mess, and when it had all bloomed and ripened and gone to seed the reapers came.

 Carefully, gently, expertly, they gathered the wheat and made the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked.  And the fire that the weeds made was excellent, and the flour that the wheat made was excellent, and when the harvest was over the owner called them all together – the farmhands, the reapers, and all the neighbors – and broke bread with them, bread that was the final distillation of that whole messy, gorgeous, mixed-up field, and they all agreed that it was like no bread any of them had ever tasted before and that it was very, very good.  Let those who have ears to hear, hear.”[iv]  Amen.

[i] Talitha J. Arnold, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 260.

[ii] Romans 7.19

[iii] Gary Peluso-Verdend, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 264.

[iv] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven:  Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 36-37.

Sermon – Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23, P10, YA, July 12, 2026

29 Wednesday Jul 2026

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When we read scripture in our bulletins, we mostly give scripture to you in one big lump.  We take out paragraph breaks, indentations for quotes or poetry, and certainly do not put Jesus’s words in red colored text.  If you’ve picked up a bible lately, you will also notice that the text often has headings – a descriptor to let you know what is coming up in the text:  a preview, if you will.  When I was in seminary, my New Testament professor told us we needed to be careful about those headings or story titles.  So, for example, if you call a story to tale the prodigal son as opposed to the tale of responsible brother; or you call a story the story of the Good Samaritan as opposed to the tale of the hypocritical leaders; or you call a story the anointing of Jesus as opposed to the misappropriation of expensive resources – the title makes a difference in how we read the story and how we make meaning.

Today’s gospel lesson is no exception.  Most of us hear this familiar story from Jesus and we know the story as The Parable of the Sower.  In fact, we get the story in two parts, and in my bible the second part is entitled, “The Parable of the Sower Explained.”  Countless Bible Commentaries refer to this story as the parable of the Sower, and many of us would do the same.  But here’s what’s funny about that title:  once we get into the weeds of this story, we quickly forget the title and start thinking of this as the parable of the soils. 

When we read scripture, we rightly seek to see ourselves in scripture – to discern what meaning there is for our everyday lives.  Now, I’m not sure the leap from the parable of the sower to the parable of the soils is unjustified.  When we read the explanation of why three-fourths of the seed does not flourish, we get a little skittish.  Am I soil on the path where birds snatch up the seed – because I failed to understand the Word and evil one snatches the good seed sown in my heart?  Am I the rocky soil, where growth sprung up beautifully, but died due to shallow roots – did I receive the Word of God with joy, but floundered when trouble or persecution came my way (because I’ve seen a lot of trouble and persecution lately…)?  Am I the soil covered in thorns, choking out the Good News – because the cares of the world and the lure of wealth has led me to place without Good News?  Jesus’s parable seems to indicate that for three out of four of us, we are that bad soil.  How can I be good soil?  Is there a way to fix my soil so I can bear fruit too?

Here’s the problem with substituting the title “Parable of the Sower,” with the “The Parable of the Soils.”  When we obsess about what kind of soil we are, we miss the point of this parable entirely.  This is a parable about the Sower – a parable about the nature of Jesus:  not about us – or at least not about us in the way we think! 

So, let’s take a breath, and go back to the text as Jesus intends (and why so many biblical editors chose the title of this parable as they did).  Barbara Brown Taylor argues, “If this is really the parable of the sower and not the parable of the different kinds of ground, then it begins to sound quite new.  The focus is not on us and our shortfalls but on the generosity of our maker, the prolific sower who does not obsess about the condition of the fields, who is not stingy with the seed but who casts [seed] everywhere, on good soil and bad, who is not cautious or judgmental or even very practical, but who seems willing to keep reaching into his seed bag for all eternity, covering the whole creation with the fertile seed of his truth.”[i]

That version of a sower is a bit uncomfortable if we are being honest with ourselves – because we would not go about planting in that way.  In fact, people in Jesus’ day wouldn’t have planted in that way either.  “Unlike a modern American farmer, who carefully prepares the soil with just the right pH balance and then injects the seed into the ground, farmers in Jesus’ time cast the seed and then plow the land.”[ii]  But that’s just looking at the story about literal farming.  Even looking at Jesus’ parable figuratively, we still wouldn’t follow his way.  As Debie Thomas articulates, we’ve thought “…over how to cultivate more fertile soil in [our] church or community.  [We’ve] analyzed and quantified, assessed, and judged.  [We’ve] evaluated ministry plans and strategies, pruned leadership commissions and committees, [We’ve] bought special pots, invested in high-end fertilizers and weed killers, and counted, sorted, and planted [our] seeds with exquisite care, placing each bit of God’s good news in its optimal place to guarantee an impressive harvest.”[iii]

Debie goes on to say, “There’s nothing wrong with planning and pruning.  There’s nothing wrong with honest and humble self-assessment.  But I think we miss something when we read the parable as a lesson about the ‘Four Terrains.’  Because that is not what [the parable] is.  It is the parable of the sower.  It is a parable about the nature and character of God.  God’s kingdom, God’s provision, God’s extravagant generosity when it comes to us, his creations.”[iv]

So let’s go back to the parable.  If this is a parable about who God is, what do we see?  Well, the sower does not seem care about the odds for successful reception of the Good News.  The sower doesn’t even for one moment examine the nature of the soil.  The sower sows seeds with abandon. The sower also seems to have an endless supply of seed and doesn’t seem to need to ration the seed or carefully plant the seed.  The sower just throws that seed everywhere, with abundance.  The sower also doesn’t seem to mind that the sower will only be successful 25% of the time.  The sower does not hold back, ration, strategize, or plan.  The sower throws around the Good News willy nilly, like a billionaire with so much money that she has lost sense of what each dollar means.  And here’s the funniest part about this illogical sower:  when there is a harvest in the good soil – that harvest is a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and even thirtyfold.  As one scholar points out, “Sevenfold meant a good year for a farmer, a tenfold meant true abundance.  Thirtyfold would feed a village for a year and a hundredfold would let the farmer retire to a villa by the Sea of Galilee.”[v]  This is very good news indeed, folks.

When Matthew was writing to first-century Palestine, he knew how hard a time and place Christians were in.  They were suffering poverty and persecution, massive migration out of the region, and even dissenters and false prophets.  They needed to know that the rejection of Jesus’ message didn’t mean their efforts were folly.[vi]  We know that truth today too.  For the parent offering guidance and compassion to the teen who doesn’t want to hear; to the businessman who pays a living wage and makes a quality product but watches clients buy cheaper elsewhere when times get rough; for the neighbor who seems intrigued by your passion for Hickory Neck but who seems to have an endless supply of excuses to never join you – we know what sharing the Good News is like.

For us, the invitation is the same as the invitation was for those first hearers of Jesus’ parable.  We are invited to be sowers of abundance – of extravagance.  We are invited to spread the seed of God’s love extravagantly, to liberate ourselves from the measures of success, and to give thanks for the abundant growth all around us.  “Look at [Jesus], tossing seeds to the wind with a delighted smile on his face, inviting us to release our own handfuls and revel in his joy.  He’s too busy laughing to count seeds.”[vii]  You can join his illogical, overflowing, joyful sowing too.  Amen.

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven:  Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 26.

[ii] Talitha J. Arnold, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 236.

[iii] Debie Thomas, Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories:  Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2022), 137.

[iv] Thomas, 138.

[v] Arnold, 236.

[vi] Arnold, 238.

[vii] Thomas, 139. 

On GPS and Jesus…

08 Wednesday Jul 2026

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Photo credit: https://www.supermomshuffle.com/how-to-be-productive-in-the-car-every-day/

The other day I was coming home from a meeting and trying to get home quickly.  My GPS told me to go a way that I knew had ongoing construction delays, and so I defied the GPS and went another way that I knew would bypass the traffic.  Halfway through the bypass, GPS suggested another route, but I stubbornly refused, and kept going my own way.  And then I hit a wall of traffic.  I sat still for about twenty minutes with no real possibility for turning around legally before I was able to return to normal speed (and home 20-30 minutes later!).  Once I finally cleared the backup, I begrudgingly thought, “I always trust my GPS to get me out of binds on the road.  What made me think today that I knew better?!?” 

How many times have I had the exact same experience with God?  I hear a whispering of the Spirit to go another way, and immediately think, “No, that’s a waste of time.  I’ll do it my way.”  I get a nudge from God to take action, and I resist, responding, “I’ve seen how that turns out in the past.  I’ll stay the course.”  Or I hear Jesus speak clearly about a call, and my response is, “No way!  Not today, Jesus.”  In all of those instances, despite my lifelong relationship with God, and despite evidence to the contrary, I think I know better.  I try to keep hold of the reins, instead of listening to the wisdom of God.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  God, or Jesus, or even the Holy Spirit, isn’t like a GPS.  There’s no clear voice telling me what to do, and there’s no follow-up instruction about how to recalculate the route in life.  And while that certainly may be true, equally true is the fact that both tools test our notion of control.  Both invite us to trust they have our best interest in mind.  I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been rerouted by GPS off a major highway with massive delays onto a rural road in the middle of nowhere – praying that GPS knows what it’s doing and will return me to my route. 

Our relationship with God takes some of that blind trust too.  It feels similarly scary at times – almost like falling of a cliff, trusting a safe landing.  But unlike GPS, we only need to look at our scriptural Salvation Narrative, to look at a character like Jonah, or Ruth, or even Peter, to know that God faithfully guides us in the way to go.  Sometimes we jokingly say, “Jesus, take the wheel!”  I wonder where you’ve been refusing to give Jesus the wheel these days, and what fruit you might experience if you relented. 

Sermon – Genesis 21.8-21, P7, YA, June 21, 2026

08 Wednesday Jul 2026

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Rhonda sat on her bathroom floor crying.  The bathroom was the only place she felt like she could get a moment of privacy.  Her tears were the release she found for what felt like an impossible juncture.  Last summer things had been okay for Rhonda.  She was coping with her divorce, and managing to feed and care for her son on her own, despite the fact that her income from cleaning houses was so small.  She had managed to work out some government assistance that gave her enough cushion to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.  Life was not easy, but life could be a lot worse.

But during the last year, her world began to fall apart.  After a work injury, Rhonda could not clean houses for months.  Being self-employed meant she had no one to fill in at her houses.  After several months, her customers all got new help.  Because she was not working, her government assistance decreased.  The assistance programs required that clients work to receive assistance.  Rhonda could not clean houses because of her injury, and she did not have enough education to qualify for other work.  As the money became more and more scarce, Rhonda began to fear for her son.  Her son was looking thinner and more sickly each day.  He did not understand what was happening, and his deserved frustration had led her to the bathroom to cry.  Things had gone from bad to worse as Rhonda feared they would have no food, no home, or that she could lose her son.  All that was left to do was to cry:  to cry tears of sorrow, to cry out to God for mercy.

Hagar knows Rhonda’s tears.  Hagar is the handmaid for Sarah, Abraham’s wife, whom Sarah had given to Abraham to take as a wife because Sarah was infertile.  Hagar resented this action, and has already suffered a great deal, grappling with her powerlessness and lack over control over her most private, personal space.  Today the text brings us forward a few years in Hagar’s family.  Hagar’s son Ishmael is growing into a young boy, and Sarah has finally conceived her own son.  The birth of Isaac is a joyous occasion that all the family celebrates.  But just as Hagar has begun to reclaim her personhood, Hagar suffers again.  Sarah sees Ishmael – the son that reminds her of her infertility, who will not represent the blessed line of Abraham – playing with Isaac – her own son, whom she proudly bore and who will mark the blessedness of Abraham’s line.  Sarah turns to Abraham and tells him to send Hagar and Ishmael away.  Although Abraham is crushed by the idea, God supports Sarah’s decision.  For Hagar, the world is against her.  We hear no words from Hagar as Abraham loads water and bread on her shoulders, gives her Ishmael, and sends her out into the wilderness.

Hagar wanders in the desolate wilderness until she runs out of water.  Looking at her son, whose death she imagines is immanent, Hagar puts him under the shade of a bush and walks away.  She walks away and cries out to God.  She cannot watch the death of her son.  Not after all she has been through.  She cries out to God as her last resort.

The tough part of this story is figuring out why this is happening.  Why would Sarah condemn Hagar and Ishmael to death by having them driven out into the wilderness?  Why would God agree with Sarah, especially when Ishmael’s birth was Abraham and Sarah’s choice in the first place?  Why does Abraham give up his first son so easily, without a word to Hagar?  The grief and injustice in this passage are overwhelming, and we are left pointing angry fingers in multiple directions.

Hagar’s wilderness moment is not foreign.  We know those times when we feel like everyone is against us, including God.  The wildernesses of our lives are those desolate, lonely, dark places of wandering.  The wilderness is a scary, stark place of solitude that takes us to the depths of our finitude and forces us into encounters with God.  In the wilderness, we experience God in a way that we cannot not experience God elsewhere.  In the dry desert of suffering, which is scorching by day and frigid by night, with little water, we experience a sense of nakedness and vulnerability that we try to mask in our everyday lives.

Despite the darkness in the Genesis text today, there is also an equal measure of hope for the suffering.  The last third of the text we hear today is filled with God’s action for the afflicted.  First, God hears Ishmael.  The text says “And God heard the voice of the boy.”  This word “to hear” is important on many levels.  In the original Hebrew, Ishmael’s name means “God will hear.”[i]  Already, Ishmael’s name – God will hear – comes to fruition.  Further, the word “to hear” in Hebrew, shema, connotes more than physical hearing.  “To hear” in Hebrew also means “to understand.”  God understands how Ishmael and Hagar cry out. 

God’s second action is to make a promise.  The angel of God speaks to Hagar about Ishmael saying, “I will make a great nation of him.”  We know from scripture that God does not make promises lightly with God’s people.  God fulfills God’s promises.  If God says that God will make a great nation of Ishmael, Hagar knows to believe God.  No matter how dire things seem, God makes a promise, and God does not disappoint.

God’s third action is to open Hagar’s eyes.  The text says that “God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.”  In the opening of Hagar’s eyes, God allows Hagar to perceive God’s presence and action in her suffering.  God lifts the blindness that suffering and desperation create.  God shows Hagar the gift of life that God provides in the well of water.  God’s gift is abundant, and God reveals the gift when Hagar cannot see.

God’s final action is to be with Ishmael.  The text says, “God was with the boy.”  The verb “to be” is one of the most simple and basic words.  When applied to God, “to be with” has great meaning.  The text says that in all Ishmael does, in all the experiences Ishmael has, in all that Ishmael’s journey entails, God is with him.  God does not abandon Ishmael.  God does not forget.  God is with him.

One of my favorite Gospel hymns is called “He’s an On Time God.”  The song talks about the ways that God always comes to our need just when we need God.  The refrain goes, “He may not come when you want Him, but He’ll be there right on time.  He’s an on-time God, oh yes He is.”  The song describes the Israelites who crossed the Red Sea just before the Sea collapsed on the Egyptians, the relief of Job’s long suffering, and the feeding of the 5,000 by Jesus.  What I love about the song is the booming chorus of singers and the repeated affirmation that God is on time.  Now, the theology of the song is a little tricky.  I think the song misses something by suggesting that God is not always with us.  But the song is on to something.  I might rephrase the refrain to be something like – suffering may not end when you want it, but you will realize God is with you in the suffering right on time.  In this way, God is an on-time God.

We may not understand God’s actions, or why we suffer, but God is with us.  Hagar is a great gift this week for reminding us about what our relationship with God is like.  Hagar reminds us that we have an active relationship with God.  Hagar shows us that we can cry out to God in our suffering.  Hagar demonstrates to us that God is not a faraway god who is removed from our daily lives.  By crying out to God, we reveal our earthy, dynamic relationship with God.

Meanwhile, God’s actions toward Hagar show us that God has a reciprocal relationship with us.  God is active in our lives.  God hears us, understands us, and will act in our lives.  God is with us, all of the time, especially in our suffering.  When we enter into that relationship with God, crying out to God, we let go of notions of distance from God or personal control of our lives.  We allow God to open our eyes so that we can see God’s action in our lives.  By opening our eyes, God shows us the blessings God has for us.  God did not tell Hagar and does not tell us what our blessings will look like.  But there will be blessings.  God will open our eyes to reveal the bounty of blessing for us.  As we enter into that holy, vulnerable relationship with God, allowing our eyes to be opened, we see God’s blessings – right on time.  Amen.

[i] Gordon J. Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 2 (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 88.