Rev. Zach

Acts 2:1-21 ; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 ; John 20:19-23 I’m not sure if you know this, but you're on fire! That’s not meant to alarm you – especially after lighting up the baptismal font. "You're on fire!" is a phrase that comes from a restaurant I used to work in. Just like most restaurants, every server had a station of three or four tables that they were primarily responsible for, but every server was also responsible for every customer they walked by. You did not walk past a dirty dish without picking it up unless your hands were full. You did not walk by a table that had not been greeted without taking a drink order and seeing that it got to them. If two or more were gathered at the dish pit, I would say “Drop and go!” and take the responsibility of scraping dishes. The response was always, “What do you need?” If I needed anything for my tables they would get it, but not before taking clean dishes to the cooks before checking and checking for any hot food to go out ...

Acts 1:6-14 , 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11 , John 17:1-11 The sermon begins with a game called “Party Quirks.” I act as a host setting up for a party, and three people enter separately, pretending to be guests. Each will also pretend to be either an animal, a character in a movie, or a Biblical character, and I have to try to guess who they are. Well, that was fun – but how does it glorify God? My hope is that we glorify God when we express our creativity, when we are vulnerable together, and when we experience joy together. That may not be a very clear exploration of the passages we’ve read today, but I think it’s a good place to start. There’s a lot going on in our readings – clearly more than we can engage in just a few minutes of talking and listening – so I’d like to focus on the idea of “glory” as an interpretive lens. Our reading from John is all about glorifying God; or is it Jesus; or is it God through Jesus; or is it glorifying God through Jesus through the disciples? Yes. It’s al...

Acts 17:22-31 ; 1 Peter 3:13-22 ; John 14:15-21 Today is Mother’s Day, which is a secular holiday that has deep roots in our nation’s history and is celebrated in a variety of ways around the world. Mother’s Day has also taken on a special significance for me because it is extremely important to our siblings in Cuba. As they tell it, the idea of celebrating Mother’s Day was actually one of the early contributions of the Presbyterian Church in Cuba, and during the revolution, it was small groups of women who held Bible studies and kept the doors of the church from closing. One of those women is Mercedis Cardenas, who established the Sabanilla Church, and also our partnership with them, and who – at 92 – tasted the first sip of purified water from the filtration system that we partnered with them and Living Waters for the World to set up. Yes, the faith of our mothers sustains us, and we give thanks to them today. One of the many ways that my mother and hers before and others on both sid...

Acts 7:55-60 ; 1 Peter 2:2-10 ; John 14:1-14 If I were to describe our texts today in one word I would say they are confrontational. Another word I might use is prophetic. Still, another might be to say that they are encouraging. That last word is a word I try to hold onto as the purpose of the gospel, and I’ve borrowed it from Robert Johnston, the Pastor of Louisiana Ave. United Methodist Church. Every time I’ve heard him preach or pray he says, “I want somebody to be encouraged today, and I know there’s somebody out there that needs it!” I want you to be encouraged today. I want you to be encouraged because so much of the world is discouraging. So much of our news is bad news. So much of our political crisis is bent around discouragement and profiting from our despair. So, I want you to be encouraged today. I want you to know of God’s love and be held by it like a babe in her mother’s arms. I want you to be encouraged like a child whose father is running alongside their bicycle, who ...

Psalm 23 ; 1 Peter 2:19-25 ; John 10:1-18 I was talking with a friend the other day about his mother who lived to be over a hundred. Of course that made me think of Al Pfiefer, who was 102 years young when he joined the church triumphant in 2018. Al, and very few others like him, saw society move from the earliest of automobiles to the earliest of smartphones – which he used to Uber to church. Now everything seems to be “smart”. Even lightbulbs – which used to be a symbol for an idea – can be smart enough to turn themselves off when you leave a room; or when commanded to turn off or on by an app on your phone. Advancements like these are pretty commonplace, and I admit it makes me feel older (but not necessarily wiser) to marvel at the technology that is becoming ubiquitous. We live in an age of unprecedented change and ongoing tension, and sometimes that tension produces good and wonderful things. On the other hand, it can also leave us feeling like our society has become an exposed n...

Acts 2:14a, 36-41,  Luke 24:13-35,  1 Peter 1:17-23 Spring has sprung and there is a lot going on! Whether you are out enjoying God’s good creation or getting involved in some important social cause or just trying to keep the grass mowed without getting taken down by your allergies, it is a busy time of year. In fact, yesterday there were at least three places in town where you could celebrate Earth Day while supporting causes that you love, and I know some of our folks were pretty busy at two of them. Clancy hosted a table at the Earth Day celebration in Vermilionville and several others were volunteering and attending the Southern Garden Festival at Sarah Schoeffler’s house. I was able to get to both of those and each offered something amazing — conversation. Each of our texts today has some element of conversation, and they remind us that God is active and present — even when we are too busy to notice it — particularly in the space of our conversations. I want to say a bit ...

Isaiah 25:6-9 ; Colossians 3:1-4 ; John 20:1-18 “I have seen the Lord, now what?” Mary doesn’t ask that question, but that is the question our readings ask us today. Mary doesn’t ask that question, but it is the logical next step to say, “Now what?” Of course, if we really want to know what this is all about, we could ask the three basic processing questions that I’ve used in years past on challenge courses and other leadership training events. I don’t know their origin, but I learned them from a friend in seminary. The three basic processing questions are “Say what?”; “So what?”; and “Now what?” “Say what?” asks what happened. What was said? What was done? What is the content of the subject we are figuring out together? “So what?” asks what this information means. Why does it matter? “Now what?” asks what we are going to do with this information and our newfound understanding of it. Our readings are the answer to the question, “Say what?” Isaiah speaks of a rich feast where God will s...