Sermons
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Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 23: 1-6
The Gospel: Luke 1: 68-79 ****Note that John the Baptist’s Father Zechariah speaks this prophecy of both his son and Jesus at the time of baby John’s circumcision when his mouth has finally been opened. He had been mute since the Angel Gabriel told him that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son in her old age and he had questioned that. Sermon: Hope in the Amazing Human Intellect How many times throughout history have people struggled: being hungry, thirsty, attacked or persecuted, losing land and homes, family members and friends? This has not happened once, but too many times to count. It understandably brings feelings of despair, yet scriptures and history continually remind us that “this too shall pass”. As God told the Israelites in the Jeremiah scripture “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they will be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them and they shall not fear any longer…” The scripture goes on to speak of a righteous Branch of the line of David who will be a wise and fair King executing justice. Some think that this was a future king in the land who was much better than their present ruler, others see that the name “the Lord is righteousness” foreshadows the coming of Jesus, God’s son. Either way, in this scripture and so many, there is hope even and especially in troubled times. Zechariah was old and so was his wife Elizabeth when the angel Gabriel told him they would have a son. I think most of us in our older years would be surprised at such an announcement, just as Zechariah was. When he got his voice back, he shared a prophecy of the amazing role his son John would have, “you child, will be called the prophet of the most high; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of his salvation to the people by the forgiveness of their sins.” John’s job was to lay the foundation of hope, Christ built on that foundation, and it is our job, as Christians, to continue building. That is the way to prepare for the advent season: the celebration of the birth of Jesus - to have hope, regardless of your circumstances. Having hope in difficult times is an act of faith. Renowned naturalist Dr. Jane Goodall shared much about hope and faith in The Book of Hope, published in 2021. About faith she said, “Faith is when you actually believe there is an intellectual power behind the universe, which can be translated into God or Allah or something like that.” About hope she said, “Hope is more humble than faith, since no one can know the future…hope requires us to work hard to make what we want to happen to actually happen…you need hope to get you going, but then by taking action, you generate more hope. It’s a circular thing.” In other words, we can use faith to fuel our actions of hope and that becomes a catalyst to spread hope and keep it moving. It does not mean there will not be challenges or struggles in life, it means that we deal with those struggles by refilling our tanks with hope so that we keep moving towards solutions, towards better days. Goodall said, “we hope, which involves envisioning the future while recognizing the inevitability of challenges. Interestingly, more hopeful people actually anticipate setbacks along the way and work to remove them.” Goodall listed the amazing human intellect as her first category of hope for the future. She defines human intellect as “the part of our brain that reasons and solves problems”. She cites art and architecture, science and music as examples of intellect, noting the curiosity and creativity that leads to those creations and discoveries. And while there have been times in history when human intellect is used in ways that cause problems, even evil, she also notes “Humans are incredibly adaptive and will do whatever is required to survive in their environment.The environment we create will determine what prevails. In other words, what we nurture and encourage wins.” Unlike animals, humans are capable of true evil but also true altruism. Religion and our faith helps us to lean away from evil and towards the altruistic. Christ taught us to love our neighbor and our enemy - there is no room for hate, let alone evil in that. Goodall saw religion as bringing a new universal moral code. “Every single major religion gives lip service to the Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So it’s easy–there’s our universal moral code. We just have to find a way to persuade people to honor it!” Despite all the challenges in the world today, Goodall believed that the majority of people are becoming more caring. She notes that enslavement has ended in most of the world, Apartheid is over in South Africa, colonialism has primarily ended, women have attained positions of power around the world and people all over the world speak out and fight against all kinds of injustice. While not perfect, she sees all of these things as signs of hope created by the human intellect. “I think it takes a lot of time in our evolution for us to realize that we can never attain our full human potential unless our head and our heart work together,” Goodall emphasized. Once the head and heart come together, we can also work together as fellow humans. Goodall noted the four great inter-related challenges that we humans need to use our intellect to solve.
Goodall clearly shows the inter-relatedness of our challenges and our solutions. Sharing wealth and resources helps reduce poverty, which also helps the environment as we do not need to take every resource from it to sustain all life on the planet. Good governments work together to promote peace and cooperation for their mutual benefit rather than just thinking of themselves and, working together, we can look at our impact on the planet and find ways to reduce it living more in harmony with our environment rather than dominating it. We cannot escape times of struggle, but we can meet them with hope using our God-given human intellect to guide us. Our God emphasized the need and ability to do this by becoming one of us. Jesus was and is the ultimate role model for belief in the goodness in and hope for humanity, “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Amen. Pastor Michelle Fountain
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11/16/2025 0 Comments November 16, 2025: Peace-able KindomOld Testament Reading: Isaiah 65: 17-25
The Gospel: Luke 21: 5-19 In some ways our scriptures today seem to be opposites. Isaiah talks of a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no more weeping, no deaths of infants, no invaders taking land and homes, where the span of life is over 100 years and even the wolf and lamb will feed together while the lion eats straw, rather than other animals. Whereas in the Luke scripture Jesus warns of wars, insurrection and destruction where nation rises against nation, and earthquakes, famine and plagues occur. He even tells his disciples that BEFORE that happens, they will be arrested and persecuted because of their connection to him. And yet, Jesus tells them, “This will give you an opportunity to testify” to your faith and assures them that they do not have to think of what to say ahead of time because “I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” Even though Jesus is telling them that their very families will turn on them because of him, he assures them that “Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance, you will gain your souls.” Although from a very different perspective, that last line harkens back to the final line of the Isaiah text, “They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” The faithful from Isaiah’s time and those from Jesus’ are just in different stages of the life cycle. Isaiah is writing in the 8th Century BCE at a time when Israel and Judah had been attacked by the Assyrians, the portion of the text we read today gives them hope for restoration, a return to a time of peace and prosperity. Jesus is speaking at a time when they are living under Roman rule knowing that this new religion that he is starting and they will spread, will bring his followers persecution from the Romans and, sometimes, fellow Jews. Yet in each case, the faithful are assured that they are on the right path and that they do not walk alone. God will be there to keep them from being destroyed, to give them the very words they need to fight against injustice and to show them that there is a future path where enemies will coexist in peace. It is this idea that Painter and Quaker Minister Edward Hicks tried to capture in his many Peaceable Kingdom paintings. Hicks began his career as a coach painter in an apprenticeship at the age of 13 in 1793. He became a Quaker in 1803 and by 1812 he is listed as a Quaker Minister. With a growing family, he still paid the bills through painting, branching out on his own and adding more decorative painting, household objects and tavern signs. However, the Quakers, advocating simple lives, did not like this, so he stepped away from this painting for a while, returning later as it best supported his large family. Ultimately, Hicks’ folk paintings became expressive of his faith. Wikipedia reminds us that “Hicks' work was influenced by a specific Quaker belief referred to as the 'Inner Light'. George Fox and other founding Quakers had established and preached the Inner Light doctrine. Fox explained that along with scriptural knowledge, many individuals achieve salvation by yielding one's self-will to the divine power of Christ and the "Christ within". This "Christ in You" concept was derived from the Bible's Colossians 1:27. ‘27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ Hicks depicted humans and animals to represent the Inner Light's idea of breaking physical barriers (of difference…) to working and living together in peace.” He painted somewhere between 50-100 versions of Peaceable Kingdom, 25 of which remain. Although not exactly alike, they all share images of Isaiah’s text of predator and prey lying peacefully together. Hicks added a contemporary twist by relating the idea of a peaceable kingdom to his beloved Pennsylvania - sometimes including William Penn making a treaty with Native Americans. He saw Penn as a peacemaker and reformer. Let’s imagine what Hicks would paint today if he was contemporizing his Peaceable Kingdom paintings for our times. Instead of the Native Americans signing a treaty with William Penn, maybe it would be the Ukranians and Russians or the Palestinians and Israelis or even Democrats and Republicans. Maybe they would show immigrants living and working together in harmony with citizens in different countries, maybe they would show people who have extra sharing food, clean water and other resources with those in need. Maybe there would be an image of solar and wind farms balanced with clean rivers, forests, cities, and crop land. The idea of what a peaceable kindom is (we call it kindom to show our democratic human connection) has changed but the need for it is still here and Jesus reminds us that we have an opportunity to testify to what is needed to lead with love and live in peace with our neighbors, our enemies, and all on our planet. Remember, Jesus said, “So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you the words and a wisdom that none of our opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” God is still creating within each of us, creating the words and the actions that will help bring that peaceable kindom where we remember that we are all a part of this interconnected, interdependent web of life that God created. We need to be patient and listen. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, peaceable means disposed to peace, not contentious or quarrelsome. And while I acknowledge that some people are more inclined to practice peace rather than arguments, I am guessing that none of us are peaceable all of the time. However, I would argue, ironically, that we are all Peace-able - meaning we are capable of leading with peace, if we just work at it. Think about it, no one runs a marathon or skis a double black diamond trail without some level of training. We are all peace-able but we can’t be peaceable unless we train as peacemakers. So how do we train? First we acknowledge that peace is possible. Like Hicks, we look at these scriptures as inspiration and we imagine the world at peace: where former enemies can share peaceful borders and can trade for their mutual benefit, where all people are safe with a roof over their heads, food, clean water and life supporting work, where humanity lives in harmony with the environment sowing only what is needed and respecting the land, creatures, and waters that support it. This may sound like a fantasy, but those things should actually be easier to attain, in theory, than the wolf and the lamb, the calf and the lion, the cow and the bear living peaceably together. We humans have the capacity to compromise, the intellect to understand why we need to work together, the compassion to help others, and a God who will support us in the process. Once we know that peace is possible, we change to a growth mindset. We don’t say, “this will never happen” we say, “this hasn’t happened yet” and consider what we can do to make a difference. Think of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. and others who fought peacefully to bring a new earth for their people - one where they could be seen as equally human and worthy of the same respect and opportunities. We may not be peacemakers on that scale, but we can still lead by example, reaching out to those in need, even if they are different from us. We can reach out to others with power to try to work together to bring about positive change. It might start with smiling towards people more, making donations, writing letters to the editor, or volunteering. Each of us is peace-able. We have the capacity to be peacemakers and are supported by a God who will give us the words and the means to do so. We just need to start training; let’s make a workout schedule. Amen Pastor Michelle Fountain |
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