Discussion Questions:

1. Reading Genesis 18 in Context:
   ● The sermon describes Genesis 18 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as one of the most misunderstood passages in the Bible. What interpretations of this story have you heard before?
   ● How does reading the story through the lens of hospitality, violence, and the treatment of strangers change the way you understand it?
2. Practicing Hospitality:
   ● The sermon emphasizes that hospitality to strangers is a biblical mandate. Why do you think Scripture returns to this theme so often?
   ● Where do you see opportunities for RPPC to practice deeper hospitality in our church, neighborhood, and wider community?
3. Scripture, Love, and Harm:
   ● Pastor Mark challenges interpretations of this passage that have been used to shame or exclude LGBTQIA+ people. How can communities of faith repair harm caused by harmful readings of Scripture?
   ● Augustine wrote that if our interpretation of Scripture does not lead us to love God and neighbor more, we have not understood it correctly. How might this guide the way we read difficult biblical passages?
4. God’s Covenant and Mercy:
   ● The sermon suggests that Genesis 18 shows God being held accountable to the covenant God has made with humanity. What does that image of God stir up for you?
   ● Abraham speaks honestly with God, asking whether the righteous should be swept away with the wicked. What does this conversation teach us about prayer, courage, and trust?
5. Justice, Mercy, and Our Intertwined Lives:
   ● The sermon raises a hard question: How do justice and mercy relate to one another? Where do you feel that tension in your own life or in the world around us?
   ● Pastor Mark asks how we think about the ways our fates are “inextricably tied.” What does that mean for how we live as neighbors, citizens, and people of faith?
6. Faith That Wrestles:
   ● The sermon says faith is not a static statement of beliefs, but a living, evolving relationship with God and one another. How has your understanding of God changed over time?
   ● Have you ever felt like you needed permission to question or wrestle with your image of God? What helps make a faith community safe for honest questions?
7. Applying the Sermon:
   ● What is one way you can practice hospitality to someone who feels like an outsider this week?
   ● How can RPPC continue to be a place where all are welcome, where questions are honored, and where love of God and neighbor shapes how we read Scripture?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Disputing with God: Advocating for others appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Our reading this morning comes from Exodus chapters 33 and 34. This is the follow-up to what we read two weeks ago, where Moses was up on the mountain talking with God. The people were down waiting for Moses to return with a word from God. And it was taking longer than they expected. So they turned to Aaron, Moses’ brother, and said, “Moses and God seem to have abandoned us. Please fashion for us another God that we can worship.”

Aaron said, “Give me all your jewelry” and melted it down, made a golden calf, and the people worshiped. God looked down and saw what the people were doing and said to Moses… This really upsets me. And I think I’m just done with these people, and I’m going to just wipe them out like we did with the flood. And Moses reminds God of God’s promises and faithfulness to God’s people. At the end of the passage, we find out that Moses has changed God’s mind. God decides not to visit destruction upon the people again. But this is what happens next:

Exodus 33:1–23; 34:4–9                                                                                                                  

The Lord said to Moses, “Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

When the people heard these harsh words, they mourned, and no one put on ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, and I will decide what to do to you.’ ” Therefore the Israelites stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each of them, at the entrance of their tents and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise and bow down, all of them, at the entrance of their tent. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then he would return to the camp, but his young assistant, Joshua son of Nun, would not leave the tent.

Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.” He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”

The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord,’ and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.” The Lord passed before him and proclaimed,

“The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children
to the third and the fourth generation.” 

And Moses quickly bowed down to the ground and worshiped. He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, my Lord, I pray, let my Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

The older I get, and the longer I have been in this gig of talking about God for a living, the more and more I am convinced that those that speak of God the loudest, those that speak with the most certainty and authority of eternal matters, those that claim the mantle of faithful and true, are actually most likely to be worshiping an idol of their own creation.

The god they proclaim is so often small and unworthy of the title. This god only cares for some people, not everyone. The god they proclaim is bound by formulas that make little sense and force God into making decisions that are cruel and capricious. The god they proclaim offers salvation by syllables: if you say the right words in the right order, forgiveness and mercy and salvation are yours, no matter what you have done or said previously. That magic incantation is like an eternal get-out-of-jail-free card.

This god is available to those who are willing to turn off their ability to think critically and freely, and just believe certain things to be true. If you call on the name of this god or pray in a certain way, this god will always answer.

Just listen to them and ask, “How big is this God, really?” And does this sound like the God we encounter in scripture? Barbara Brown Taylor makes it plain that it is not. She writes, “Only an idol always answers.”

The God that we encounter in the Bible is no idol. And let me be very clear, I am not talking about idols like the Hebrews built with Aaron, a statue made of their gold jewelry. I am talking about the kind of idol that we make with our minds, false gods of our own making.

Now, to be sure, we all make God in our own image to one degree or another. Recognizing the human proclivity to idolatry is, perhaps, the first step to a more authentic and robust faith. That is why the Bible talks about it early and often. There is little that makes God angrier than idolatry. But again, not for the reasons we may have been led to believe. It is not because God has such a fragile ego that God must be worshiped alone and given credit for everything. Again, what a small god that is. Rather, it is because making God in our own image is the first step into us believing that God is in our corner and on our side, which can be used to justify all sorts of atrocities. Anne Lamott reminds us, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Passages like the one we just read remind us of the dangers of such idolatry, not only because they explicitly tell us so, but because they present us with a God which does not fit neatly into any of our boxes or preconceived notions. The God of Exodus is not a divine therapist sent to make everything in our lives better. The God Moses encounters is wild, free, and not subject to any limits we might set on the divine.

In today’s passage, Moses continues to argue with God over what should be done with the Hebrew people in the wilderness. Let me offer a quick recap up to this point. The people found themselves captive in Egypt, slaves to Pharaoh. Sent by God who heard their cry, Moses frees the people and leads them into the wilderness, where they wander for generations, guided by their hope in the promise of a better life.

But when things take longer than they expect, when they are hungry and tired, when they start to lose faith in Moses and question what kind of God would bring them out into the wilderness just to let them starve to death, they begin to hedge their bets. They start to crave a god who will do what they want them to do.

The biblical witness tells us that when people start to take matters into their own hands, when they start to remake God in their image, God gets angry with them. And not just angry, but furious. So much so that in the passage we read two weeks ago, Moses has to convince God not to wipe the people out. You may remember that Moses won the argument, and the text tells us that God changes God’s mind about the fate of the people. But the story goes on.

In today’s passage, God is still mad, and so while God has decided not to destroy the people, neither does God want anything more to do with them. God tells Moses, “Fine, they can find their own way to the promised land. I am done with them.” Again, Moses intervenes—this time listening to both sides, like a mediator.

Here is how one commentator summarizes what happens: “By the end, God and Israel seem to accept one another as they are. The people confess they are stiff-necked, but God commits to being with them in spite of their shortcomings. Likewise, God reveals a divine Self that is anger as well as compassion. This relationship is messier than we might like, but God and the people remain together in the messiness, committed to a future together.”

That’s all well and good, but what are we to do with this mess? How does it help us in our faith today?

Rabbi, professor, and leader of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Abraham Joseph Heschel, distinguishes between the God of wrath and the wrath of God. He writes, “When I consider the violence my own country, my elected officials, and my tax dollars now inflict on the world, I think of divine wrath. Divine wrath is the cry of the mother whose child has gone to war, to prison, to poverty, to hatred. It is the ache in the heart of the universe—when love is mocked, when power crushes the weak, when truth is twisted into a weapon, when life is thrown away like trash.

“I am told that wrath is not the final story, that God does not give up on us. That beneath the fury, there remains love—fierce and aching. A love that grieves what could have been and should have been, and works toward what still can be, even amid the tragedy. But we must taste the wrath in order to know the hope. We must feel the burn of divine pain before we can feel the balm of promise.”

Passages like those we are reading in our Disputing with God series, like the one we have read today with Moses and God, show us that our relationship with God is not a one-way street, but God invites our whole selves, including our brains and our experiences, into the relationship. Look again at our passage. God is displeased with the people who think of God as a far-off dictator. God is pleased with Moses, who feels free to disagree with God. As Richard Rohr reminds us, “The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people—always meet a lover, not a dictator.”

Friends, this summer I invite you to shed the image of God as a taskmaster in the sky, the god who cares more for formulas of sin and righteousness, the god who needs you to change before you can be loved and accepted.

Moses shows us that the God we find in the Bible is a God of relationship. It is the God who loves us. All of us. Period. No qualifications and explanations. That is the beginning and end of everything. In between, there is a whole lot that matters too. God does not want us causing harm to one another. God does not want us taking creation for granted or damaging the world we inhabit and on which we depend. God cares about these things not because God cares about some arbitrary rules, but because God cares about us, about how we live together and treat one another.

This type of faith may be messier than we would like. It does not offer the comfort of certainty. True faith humbles itself before a mystery. To paraphrase Paul, “It is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way.”

What I think we will notice as we continue this series of Disputing with God is that it is the image of God that we carry with us that needs to change. It is not God, but our version of God, that is the problem. The move, counterintuitively, may be toward more doubt and less certainty. After all, which takes more faith?

As Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, “Only an idol always answers.” The God of Moses, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of you and me, is not an idol, but a partner. This God invites us into a relationship that is messy, yes, but is full of love and truth. Amen.

The post Disputing with God: Repairing Relationships appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Recognizing Our Images of God:

• Pastor Mark says, “The god they proclaim is so often small and unworthy of the title.” What are some ways people, including ourselves, can make God too small?
• How can we tell the difference between the living God we encounter in scripture and an idol we have created in our own image?

2. Idolatry and Certainty:

• The sermon reflects on Barbara Brown Taylor’s line, “Only an idol always answers.” How does this challenge the desire for certainty in faith?
• Have you ever experienced a season when God felt silent, mysterious, or hard to understand? What did that season teach you?

3. Moses and Honest Relationship with God:

• In Exodus 33:1–23; 34:4–9, Moses argues with God and acts as a mediator for the people. What does this suggest about the kind of relationship God invites us into?
• Pastor Mark says, “God is pleased with Moses, who feels free to disagree with God.” How might disagreement, questioning, or wrestling become part of a faithful life?

4. Wrath, Compassion, and Repair:

• The sermon describes God’s anger not as fragile ego, but as grief over harm, injustice, and broken relationship. How does this change the way you understand divine wrath?
• What does it mean to say that God remains committed to relationship, even in the messiness?

5. Faith Beyond Formulas:

• Pastor Mark invites us to shed “the image of God as a taskmaster in the sky.” What images of God do you need to release in order to trust more deeply in God’s love?
• How does the idea that God loves us “period” — with no qualifications or explanations — shape the way we treat ourselves and others?

6. Applying the Sermon:

• This week, where might you practice a faith that is more honest, humble, and open to mystery?
• How can RPPC continue to be a community where people are free to ask questions, repair relationships, pursue justice, practice hospitality, and engage curious faith?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Disputing with God: Repairing Relationships appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Our reading today is from Exodus 32.

Exodus 32:1-20 & 30-35

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel.

The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”

But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and on the back. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said,

“It is not the sound made by victors
or the sound made by losers;
it is the sound of singing that I hear.”

As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’s anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.

On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will only forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of the book that you have written.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; see, my angel shall go in front of you. Nevertheless, when the day for punishment comes, I will punish them for their sin.”

Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf—the one that Aaron had made.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

There is an old Jewish teaching, which is almost like a koan. You all know what a koan is right? In Zen Buddhism, a koan is a thought or question which has no real answer, but which helps your mind concentrate and focus. The classic example is What is the sound of one hand clapping? Though koans are usually more profound than corny.  So the ancient rabbis, their koan, they wondered if God prays? And if so, what is it that God prays for?

But instead of leaving this koan unanswered, the rabbis attempt to fill in the blank. Their answer? God prays that God’s own mercy will outweigh and outlast God’s anger.

We see the struggle between divine mercy and divine anger in today’s passage. Moses, who at God’s sending, helped free the people from captivity in Egypt, led them out into the wilderness, has gone off on some sort of silent retreat. But really, we know that he is up the mountain receiving the Torah, the ten commandments from God. The rabbis say that the Torah is a gift of love from God to God’s people, but like an impatient child at Christmas or their birthday, the people can’t wait to open their gift. Actually, it is really Moses that they are missing. After all, it is Moses who has led them all this way.

Well, again, it is God through Moses, but practically speaking Moses is their connection to God. To them, no Moses, no God. And Moses has left them on their own for 40 days. One ancient commentator postulated, “How late was Moses after 40 days?” Six hours! Just six hours!

They have only been waiting six hours before they lose their ever-loving minds. But that just shows their level of anticipation, their level of dependence on Moses. And so fearing that Moses, and by proxy God, has permanently abandoned them after only six hours, they seek comfort in the next best thing, Moses’ brother Aaron. They go to Aaron and say, “Come, make god’s for us.”

Now if we were to pause here and speculate about Aaron’s response, I am guessing most of us would say that Aaron would refuse their request, remind them that the God of Moses, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one true God, and that God alone, led them out of Egypt.

Instead, Aaron says, collect all your gold rings, all your gold jewelry and melt it down so we can build a golden statue. What? I mean, I get the impatience of the people. They only seem to have a tenuous grip on what is going on, but Aaron? Aaron is Moses’ brother; he is part of the inner circle. Surely, he should know better!

But before we throw Aaron under the bus too hard, let me point out one redeeming factor: the people ask Aaron to produce for them gods, the generic Elohim in Hebrew. Aaron responds with the name Adonai, which is a direct reference to the God of Moses. So essentially, Aaron consents to the overwhelming need of the people to connect with something greater, but he does not help them build a statue to replace God, rather he does so as a substitute for Moses.

You see, what Aaron fails to recognize is that God acts through people, not inanimate objects like statues, even statues made of gold. God has used Moses, but God can use Aaron too. God can use any of us.

One of the fundamental claims of our faith is that God chooses not to be God without us. Presumably God could have. God didn’t have to create all that is, but God chose to. God could have just created beings which would do God’s will, no questions asked, but God chose to create beings that are free to make their own choices, free to experience joy and pain, love and loss.

Too often life makes us question, what kind of God would allow innocent people to suffer, children to die, disease, war, violence? What kind of God? The only answer I know to that question, and I admit it is not the one we are looking for, one that brings great comfort, is that it is a God who doesn’t want robots as children, but is willing to risk giving us freedom, which means the freedom to experience all the ups and downs. Because love is not love if it is forced or coerced.

So really, in this story, what we have is the sting and pain of rejection that God feels when the people God has chosen, so quickly abandon them and seek comfort elsewhere. The text tells us that God speaks to Moses saying, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”

There is a lot going on in this short passage. God is clearly upset. We get that. But then God tells Moses to leave God alone so that God’s wrath may burn hot. In other words, God knows that Moses will try to talk God out of it. But not only does God tell Moses to leave them along, God makes Moses an offer. If Moses lets him wipe out the people again, like we are told happened in the great flood, God will appoint Moses as the new Noah, the new Abraham. He will raise up a new people, a new nation, through Moses. It is a temptation not unlike that which Jesus faces in the desert.

But Moses is the hero of this story. He refuses to give in to temptation. He refuses to leave God alone to stew in his anger. Moses argues with God and reminds God of God’s own compassion and mercy. And then we get this gold nugget: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”

Moses won the argument. God is persuaded. Mercy wins. Love wins. Anger subsides. God’s own prayer is answered and God acts out of compassion, not judgment.

The picture that emerges from this text is that the relationship between God and humanity, between God and creation is much more of a two-way street than we may have been at first led to believe. If God chooses not to be God without us, if God wants a genuine, not forced or coerced relationship with us, if God gives us the freedom to choose, then God also chooses not to remain far off and distant. The god we first met, the god who is in charge of everything, and makes everything happen, who has us like puppets on a string, well it turns out, according to the biblical witness that this god may be as false as the golden calf the people built at the foot of Sinai. This god may be one we invented to absolve ourselves from responsibility. We say, God is in charge. God will fix it. If it happened, it must be God’s will. As pious as these sound, they are golden calves of our own making.

The true God, Adonai, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of Jesus Christ, is not a bully or a tyrant, but a partner. And arguing with God, disputing with God, is not blasphemy, but the living out of that relationship. Notice who in the text argues with God. It is not, as we often suppose, those who are against God, those who are far off. It is Moses, God’s own right-hand man in this scene. The one closest to God, who trusts God. Disputing with God is a sign of faith!

What does God pray for? I might answer that question a little different than those ancient rabbis. I think God prays for us to love God and to love one another, the way that God loves us. And that, I believe, is beyond dispute. Amen.

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Our reading today is from Paul’s letter to the Philippians chapter 1. Just a reminder that outside of the Gospels and the book of Acts, most of the rest of the Christian scriptures, the New Testament is one side of a conversation. We’re essentially reading Paul’s outgoing mail, and we don’t have the other side of the conversation. Although we can kind of sometimes piece it together from other clues from Scripture.

We may remember a few weeks ago we read from the book of Acts when Paul and Silas visited the town of Philippi in northern Greece, how they kind of encountered some trouble there and were jailed, and how even in the midst of being jailed they sang hymns and prayed and were attracting people to the faith, even their jailer. Paul established a community there and last week we read the beginning of his letter to the Philippians as he’s writing to them some years down the road after that visit.

This is a community, and this is not always the case with Paul, where he has great fondness for them and he really just wants to kind of encourage them along. Some other times he’s kind of addressing problems or dissatisfaction within the community in Philippians, by and large, Paul is just trying to encourage them along. They’re doing well. He wants them to continue to grow in love for one another and grow in faith and in service of others. And so we encounter this reading then from Philippians:

Philippians 2: 1-13

If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

So today on the National Mall in DC, the White House is sponsoring a nine-hour event called Rededicate 250. Thousands of Christians will gather to reclaim what they believe to be the Christian roots of our country and to rededicate our country as one nation under God.

Now, as a Christian pastor, you might think I would be in favor of such a thing.

But you would be wrong. And I will tell you why.

Now, to be completely transparent, many of my objections could be rightly categorized as political. I think you all know we certainly address politics here. I don’t know how to preach and not address politics, because politics is life, right? But the pulpit is not a place for partisan politics—except when they step into my territory. And I would say Rededicate 250 is firmly in my wheelhouse here.

So my objections are—even though I do have political ones—I’m going to try my best to put those aside and concentrate on the theological reasons, not of what it means to be an American, but what it means to be a Christian.

So to be clear, I think there are plenty of reasons to object to this as Americans, but I do want to claim something really important about what it means to be Presbyterian.

Because, see, as Presbyterians, we actually value a diversity of thought and opinion. We not only value it, we invite it, we expect it, okay? Just to give you a feeling for how important this is to who we are as Presbyterians: part of our Constitution as the Presbyterian Church (USA)—most of it can be amended, because we expect that rules and guidelines will change over time, that we can grow in wisdom, and that practices need to be relevant to the time.

There’s only a small part of our Constitution which cannot be amended. These are the things that we think are pretty timeless, are important, are kind of as close as we can get to universal truths, okay?

And one of them is captured in this phrase: that we fully expect people of good conscience to disagree. That’s an essential part of who we are as Presbyterians.

We expect people of good conscience to disagree.

So didn’t we just read from Paul about having the same mind? A full accord with one mind? What is that if not a like-minded community? And how can we then reconcile our Presbyterian value of diversity of thought with what Paul seemingly upholds here as like-mindedness?

Well, first of all, I would argue that what Paul calls us as Christians to be of one mind—what he really means might be better translated as like-hearted rather than like-minded.

I actually cut out a little piece there of what Paul said. He doesn’t just call us to be of the same mind, he calls us also to be what? Part of the same love.

And then he goes and reminds us of the example that Jesus gave us in his life.

The verses that follow are what scholars call the Christ hymn. And there are many who believe here—this is really interesting, perk up for a minute—there are those who believe that what Paul is quoting here is actually a very, very early Christian hymn.

In fact, this section that’s kind of formatted differently maybe in your pew Bibles is thought to be maybe one of the very earliest pieces of Christian writing: a piece of music. Makes sense, right? It makes sense to them that this hymn is something that would have been known and spread, and that Paul here is just quoting it because he knows the Philippians know it. And so he’s grounding them in what they already know.

But if that’s the case, that’s really interesting, because this little bit shows us a whole lot of what the earliest Christians thought about what it meant to follow Jesus.

Professor Catherine Shaner writes, “The Christ hymn is clear: domination, conquest, exploitation—exactly the patriotic images that the Roman Empire embraced—are antithetical to divine power. Jesus’ death and resurrection reject our human displays of power and violence precisely because we know the divine was present in the worst kinds of violence, fear, stigmatization, and brute force. Violence, fear, and death are not God’s plan.”

But wait a minute.

Isn’t part of this hymn that every knee should bend? On earth and under the earth, at the name that is above all names, Jesus Christ? That sounds a little bit forceful, doesn’t it?

Maybe. I would suggest that we read it that way because that’s our lens. We come out of this lens of thinking about power as domination. But what Paul is doing here is something different.

He’s not saying that every knee shall bend because they will be forced to against their will, but that the vision for all of creation—for all of creation, for all of humanity, for all of it—is that we will be so into the love of God that, in the end, we will all come to realize that that is the greatest power of them all, and not all of our other attempts to amass power and wealth for ourselves, to dominate others through violence and through force.

Now, it would seem to me—and actually not just seem to me, because the Christian nationalist leaders who are organizing and participating in today’s rededication have explicitly said this, and I have quoted them from this pulpit before—that it is their intention to force their brand of Christianity on everyone else.

Matthew Taylor, a religious scholar of the ICJS in Baltimore, has been studying the leaders of this movement for the past five years. You may remember he came here a couple years ago and gave a talk on his book, The Violent Take It By Force, which was his attempt to explain the Christian leaders who were involved in the January 6th insurrection.

About the event today, he writes, “Their goal is not merely Christian nationalism, the claim that the U.S. is especially Christian. It is Christian supremacy, privileging Christianity over other religious and nonreligious worldviews in policy, and offering premium citizenship to their kind of Christian.”

So while at first we may look at this passage and they can find their justification for “every knee shall bow,” look at the rest of the hymn. Look at the rest of the passage. Where is it saying that this will happen by force?

No. God does not work by force, but by attraction.

So what are we to do? How can we make a difference? Should we just moan and complain, wait patiently for the next vote, withdraw from what’s going on in the world and just tend to our own souls, our own like-minded communities? Or do Paul’s words here in Philippians have something more to offer us?

I’ll tell you what—it’s really amazing what happens when you just pay attention, when you just have that. So often, you know, we’re rushing from one thing to the next.

I always have this pause in my morning when I’m out in the car waiting for the kids to come out so I can take them to school. And this happened last week, actually, as I was thinking about this passage and this like-mindedness and this “every knee shall bow,” and I’m thinking, “How am I going to—what am I going to say?”

And two really interesting things happened.

So one was, for some reason—even though 99% of the time I pull into our driveway head first—for whatever reason, and I don’t even remember, it’s like a week ago, I don’t remember why, but I backed into the driveway. So I’m sitting there in the car waiting for a few minutes as the car kind of warms up, and I’m looking outward. Where I would normally be looking toward our backyard, I’m looking out toward the street.

Now, the other thing you need to know is that we live in a neighborhood that has a lot of walkers, a lot of dog walkers, people that walk for exercise, people that run and jog. And so they’re out all the time. And these people—I mean, you can set your watch to them. You know that if you leave at this time of day, I’m going to see this person walking, or I’m going to see this person walking their dog.

And I may know them by name, or I just may recognize them. I may see them every day of the week. That’s how much a part of my life they are. But I don’t really know them. So you get the idea, right?

So I’m there sitting in the driveway, facing out, and this couple walks by. Not unusual, except I don’t recognize them. Never seen them before in my life. So that strikes my curiosity. Who are they? What are these people doing in my neighborhood? No, not really. But, you know, that’s kind of why I paid attention. I’m like, huh.

A couple, I’m going to guess in their sixties. And the remarkable thing is they were walking so in sync. Now, they were walking at a pretty good clip, so I only had about twelve strides that I could see them as they were walking through my view. But this couple, who I assume had been together for a long time, they were walking exactly in sync.

And I’m not exaggerating to say it wasn’t just that the stride of their legs was in sync. I’m talking heel to toe, touching the ground precisely the same.

And I thought to myself—one, I thought, they’ve been together a long time.

And I thought of the long-term couples that I’ve known. I don’t know very many of them that are like-minded. Some that are more like-minded than others, but that’s not what gets them there.

And I realized from this couple that they were in sync in a different way. It wasn’t that they agree on everything, but they’re so used to walking together that, without even thinking about it, their strides just matched up.

And it just hit me. That’s what Paul means. That’s what he’s talking about. That as individuals and communities, our job is to walk with Jesus.

And when we start, we’re not going to be in sync. We’re going to be out of step. But together, the more we do it together, the more in sync we can be.

Not like-minded. Something closer to like-hearted.

As Christians, it is our job to walk in the way of Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, humbled himself.

And we walk this way not just as individuals, but as communities of faith. We support one another. We encourage one another. We do not force our way of living and our way of thinking on others.

How little faith in God does that take, to force our way on others? If we truly believe and have faith, force is not necessary.

I think what Paul is calling us to is submitting ourselves to love—God’s love for all people.

Together, we try to walk in sync with our Lord and Savior. As we Presbyterians say, as a sign to the world of what God intends for all humanity.

Friends, that’s what we can do. Not hold huge rallies and try to force other people into our way of thinking, but to be a sign here of what can be, to be a community where love and generosity and compassion rule, not power and force.

Walking step by step with Jesus, we can show the power of humility and the strength of love.

Like-hearted, not like-minded.

Amen.

The post Like-Hearted, Not Like-Minded appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Paul in Athens:
   o Paul is troubled by the idols in Athens, but instead of reacting with anger, he enters into conversation. What does his approach teach us about engaging people whose beliefs or practices differ from our own?
   o Pastor Mark describes this as almost “a master class in interfaith dialogue.” Where do you see opportunities in your own life to be curious, respectful, and honest in conversation?
2. A Faith That Grows:
   o Pastor Mark says, “Faith is not static. It grows, it evolves, it changes.” How has your faith changed over the course of your life?
   o What parts of the faith you learned earlier in life still serve as a foundation for you? What have you had to rethink, expand, or let go?
3. Something Old and Something New:
   o The sermon reflects on how old and new can come together to create something that has never been before. Where do you see that happening in your own spiritual life?
   o How can a church honor its history while also remaining open to transformation, new questions, and new ways of serving?
4. Remembering Those Who Came Before Us:
   o Pastor Mark tells the story of Joe Day and the lasting impact of his generosity, love, and faithfulness. Who is someone whose memory is a blessing in your life or in the life of the church?
   o Joe’s gift helped the congregation understand that even a small church could do great things. What gifts—financial, relational, spiritual, or practical—help sustain a community of faith?
5. Grace, Gratitude, and the Table:
   o Pastor Mark invites us to come to the table remembering all those who gathered before us and all those who will gather after us. How does that image shape your understanding of communion and community?
   o Frederick Buechner’s words remind us, “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are.” How does this understanding of grace speak to you today?
6. Applying the Sermon:
   o What is one way you can practice a living, growing faith this week?
   o How can RPPC continue to be a place where people experience grace, belonging, and transformation across generations?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Something New and Something Old appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions: 

1. Paying Attention to the Overlooked
   o In Acts 16, the enslaved girl speaks the truth about Paul and Silas, yet her story quickly disappears from the narrative. What do you notice about her role in the passage?
   o Who are the people in our communities, churches, workplaces, or families whose stories are too easily overlooked?

2. Paul, Silas, and Imperfect Faithfulness
   o The sermon names both Paul’s faithfulness in prison and his failure to fully attend to the enslaved girl. How does this more complicated picture of Paul help you think about your own faith?
   o Why is it important to tell the truth about both the good and the harmful parts of our actions, even when our intentions are faithful?

3. Liberation and Responsibility
   o Paul and Silas are freed from prison, but they do not run away. Instead, they stay and care for the jailer. What does this teach us about liberation, compassion, and responsibility?
   o Where might God be calling you to stay present with someone who is afraid, ashamed, or trapped in a harmful system?

4. Seeing Others as God Sees Them
   o Pastor Mark reminds us that “no one is unimportant in God’s eyes. No one is overlooked. No one is unloved.” How does this challenge the way we see others?
   o Isaiah’s words, “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you,” are spoken over all people. What changes when we begin from that truth?

5. Applying the Sermon
   o This week, how can you make room for someone else’s story, especially someone whose voice is often dismissed or minimized?
   o As a church pursuing justice, practicing hospitality, and engaging curious faith, how can RPPC better notice, honor, and protect those who are too often pushed to the margins?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: What Is Her Story? appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions

1. Experiencing the Wilderness

• The sermon compared our modern lives to the Israelites’ time in the wilderness. What does “wilderness” look like for you today?
• Pastor Mark shared Barbara Brown Taylor’s idea that we don’t choose the wilderness—it happens to us. Have you ever felt thrown into a wilderness season? What was that like?

2. Hangry Faith

• The Israelites’ physical hunger made them forget God’s faithfulness. Pastor Mark joked about being “hangry” and reminded us we’re not ourselves when we’re hungry. How do your spiritual or emotional needs impact your faith and relationships?
• When have you, like the Israelites, forgotten past blessings during present stress? What helped you remember again?

3. Daily Bread vs. Long-Term Security

• God offers daily bread—not monthly or yearly—and invites us to trust. Why do you think it’s difficult to live with “just enough”?
• How does this challenge or reshape your understanding of God’s provision in your own life?

4. Recognizing God’s Gifts

• The Israelites received manna and asked, “What is it?” Have you ever missed or misjudged an answered prayer because it didn’t look how you expected?
• How can we become more aware of the “manna” God places in our lives today?

5. Serving One Another

• Pastor Mark invited us to serve one another communion in a “holy exchange.” How can we better serve and recognize God’s presence in our neighbors?
• In your life this week, who might be hungry—spiritually or emotionally—and how can you offer “bread”?

6. Applying the Sermon

• What is one tangible way you can trust God’s provision this week?
• How can RPPC—as a community—create space for others to receive “daily bread,” both spiritually and materially?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: You’re Not You When You’re Hungry appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.