Good News in the Fire

 “Good News in the Fire” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on November 16, 2025.

You can listen to the podcast of the sermon here.

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Scripture texts:
Psalm 98
Malachi 4:1-3

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Of course, there are some passages in Scripture that are pretty intense, sometimes so much so that it causes us to fidget a little or sit up a little straighter when we hear them. Malachi gives us one of those moments, which is why I think it’s worth reading the passage again. These three verses from Malachi:

1 See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.

I don’t think these words would be the ones stitched on a decorative pillow. I don’t think any of these verses are used in greeting cards. 

“Thinking of you… you shall tread down the wicked.” 

Somehow I don’t think Hallmark is rushing to create that one. Although now that I think about it, I can think of several people who would LOVE to buy that kind of card. 

This passage seems intense because it almost sounds like the kind of fire-and-brimstone message that are found in angry pulpits. The imagery is big and forceful. It feels like wrath. And most of us instinctively brace ourselves, myself included, when we hear scripture that sounds like this. 

But these words were written to give hope – hope – to a community that desperately needed it.

We are now in the very last book of the Older Testament.  Like the other minor prophets, Malachi is a short book spoken to a specific moment in the life of God’s people. If you remember our text from last week, Haggai was prophesying to the people after they returned from exile and gave them the command to rebuild the temple. Fast forward to the next generation in the same community. Roughly sixty to eighty years have passed, which is long enough for the people who rebuilt the second temple to have grown old, and most of the people never knew exile or even the rebuilding of the temple. And this new generation began struggling with corruption among leaders and a widening economic inequality.

Through this short book of 4 chapters, we hear a kind of dialogue between God and the people. God names the places their life together has become corrupt and the people respond with confusion or defensiveness because they do not understand how they drifted from the faithfulness they intended.

The book of Malachi opens with the people questioning God’s love, and in the second chapter, the people ask, “Where is the God of justice?”. Then in chapter 3, when speaking about the corrupt leaders in the community, Malachi describes God as a refiner’s fire like when purifying silver or gold. The fire never destroys the metal but instead heats the metal until the impurities rise to the surface and can be removed so the beauty beneath is revealed. 

By the time we reach the passage we heard today in the fourth chapter, the imagery widens. Instead of focusing on just the leaders, Malachi describes a fire that sweeps across the whole landscape of injustice. The refining flame of chapter 3 becomes the cleansing flame we just read a moment ago.  

For Malachi’s listeners, this carried the meaning of clearing away what harms the community, this time like a field that must be burned to make way for new growth. 

And then right after the image of burning, in the middle of our three verses, we are given an image of a sunrise: “The sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” 

And here’s a special fascinating connection that makes my nerdy Bible heart sing: Malachi, the last book of the Older Testament, Malachi which means “the messenger” ends with the promise of a messenger (Elijah). And then the Gospel of Mark, which most scholars believe was the first of the four Gospels written, opens with a messenger (John the Baptist) saying there is one coming after him who will baptize the people with the Holy Spirit, which is further expanded on in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew saying the one who is to come (Jesus) will baptize the people with the Holy Spirit and fire.  

This is a cleansing fire that will heal the people! 

Last Sunday after our worship services, I went to a lecture hosted at Muhlenberg College, where Dr. Damon Berry spoke about the social patterns that can draw people toward acts of extreme violence or terrorism. He described a “staircase,” five steps that lead a person from ordinary frustration all the way to violent extremism. 

But before he explained the steps, he asked a simple question: “How many of you believe there is injustice in the world right now?”

And by a show of hands right now, how many of you believe there in injustice in the world? 

The entire room like ours raised their hands. And he explained that most people remain at this level: aware that the world is not just. But after moving past steps one and two, the third step is when people begin aligning themselves with groups that share their anger or amplify their grievances. And then the fourth step is leaning into an us-versus-them mentality. That it is the job of the “us” to fix the “them”. The fifth step is the final step: committing the act of extreme violence against the “them”. 

While the staircase Dr. Berry was speaking on is specifically on the steps that lead people to violent extremism, I can see those same steps happening in the everyday life of society. 

Scroll through social media. Listen to political rhetoric. Watch how quickly people sort one another into camps: 

“Those people are the problem.”
“People like them are ruining the world.”
“We’re the righteous ones; they’re the wicked ones.”

People can begin with a longing for justice and slowly find their world narrowing until they come to believe that goodness only exists within their own group. And by doing so, we lose sight of the shared hope that binds communities together. 

But Malachi is prophesying to the entire community. He is inviting the entire community to trust that God’s refining work is directed toward the injustice that wounds people, rather than toward the people themselves. God’s judgment is aimed at removing the harm, not the person, so that what remains is the possibility of restored life for everyone. 

When God brings restoration, God brings it with a generosity that does not mirror our own divisions or our own us-versus-them. The sunrise falls on everyone, and the healing is meant for everyone.

Psalm 98 echoes that same vision. The psalmist describes creation responding to God’s justice with music, as though the rivers and hills can sense when things are finally beginning to be set right. When the psalm ends with saying God “judges the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity,” it is naming that God’s judgment is a promise that God’s justice will be great enough to heal what is broken.

God’s judgement in the world is a source of joy rather than anxiety, not because life is simple or pain is absent, but because God’s judgement is rooted in healing. 

When Malachi describes the joy of calves running free, he is a painting a picture of what healed life can feel like for people who have carried heaviness for a long time. It is joyful! And God says all of this “shall” come. Not might or can. “Shall”. This is God’s unwavering promise.

And the promise continues. The messenger prepares the way. John baptizes in the wilderness. Christ enters the world carrying the fullness of God’s healing. And then Christ baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and fire. 

Each step invites us to believe that God’s healing is part of our journey; our collective journey as the people of God. 

There is injustice in this world. And it is tempting to name a group of others as a “them”. But there is no ‘them.’ There is injustice but there is no ‘them,” not in God’s healing. 

So we pray: Burn away the injustice, O God, and let us – all of us – find healing in you.

In the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen. 

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Halloween Gets It Right

“Halloween Gets It Right” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on November 9, 2025.

You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 23:50.

You can listen to a podcast version of the sermon here.

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Scripture texts:

Psalm 145:1-5, 13b-21

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

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There’s usually a moment in big project when we stop and look around and wonder if it’s worth continuing. We begin with hope and excitement, with energy and vision, imagining the finished goal. But somewhere along the way, the excitement dulls or the frustration kicks in. And whatever we are working toward becomes harder to see. 

Maybe it’s a home renovation that’s half-done or a project at work that keeps stalling. Anyone here know what I’m talking about? Any of us currently in the middle of an unfinished project?

Or maybe it’s a whole church community, like ours, learning how to rebuild and reimagine ministry together after a global pandemic. It’s in those unfinished places we long for God to meet us with a reminder that the story isn’t over yet. Well that is if we haven’t given up already. 

It is too tempting to believe that unfinished work will never come to completion, that maybe we shouldn’t try because what’s even the point.

That’s exactly what the people of God are navigating in today’s passage from Haggai. Before this part of the story, 86 years before this part of this story, Babylon invaded Jerusalem, tore down its walls, burned homes, and destroyed the temple, which was the sacred center of their life with God and a symbol of God’s presence among the people. When Babylon conquered the city, everything that held their community together seemed to be destroyed and the people were exiled. 

For seventy years, they lived as strangers away from their city. Then under a new ruler, King Cyrus of Persia, they were finally set free and sent home. And they returned home to a land scarred by war with fields overgrown, homes in ruins, and a constant reminder of all that was lost. And so the people began rebuilding.

But each focused on their own survival. The people repaired their own homes, replanted their own crops, and built up their own families.  Rebuilding the temple communally almost seemed like a luxury they couldn’t afford. And I don’t blame them. Destruction was all around them When resources felt scarce, their instinct was to protect what little they had, turning inward rather than toward the shared work of rebuilding as a community. For sixteen years this went on. 

God sends the prophet Haggai to remind the people that that the temple’s restoration wasn’t just about the building itself; it was about restoring relationship and trust in God’s presence. Or really, in God’s abundance. And so God calls them to begin again as a community, not because they felt have enough, but because God is enough and God will provide. 

When the people finally began the work, the temple that rose from the dust was not what anyone expected. It was smaller, simpler, and humbler than Solomon’s grand temple of gold and cedar. 

In fact, the book of Ezra tells us that some of the older priests and leaders, who remembered the original temple, wept with grief when they saw the foundation of this new one being laid. 

Think about this. You mean there were people in the church who missed how things used to be? Who longed for the “good old days”? Who thought the new thing didn’t quite measure up to the old this? Hard to imagine, right? Surely that kind of thing never happens anymore!

But in all seriousness, that kind of longing isn’t a flaw; it’s part of being human. It’s what happens when we meet change. The people who wept did so because they remembered the beauty of what had been. And honestly, that’s something the people of God have always done. Across generations and across centuries, we grieve what’s been lost even as we try to build what’s next.

And yet, it was this new temple God called greater. This temple was a glimpse of the world God promised, a place where presence mattered more than grandeur. The people learned again how to live as if there would be enough because there was.

The people, people who had been broken and scattered, were now learning to trust again. It was in their courage to build when they still felt small. It was in their willingness to believe that God’s Spirit still dwelled among them.

The new temple was greater because it was born out of faith rather than fear. 

We know something of that fear too, though maybe not in the same way. These last few weeks have brought headlines and stories that have left so many of us uneasy: news of delayed or reduced SNAP benefits, families wondering how to stretch what’s left in the pantry, parents facing impossible choices about how to feed their children.

And while we might feel anxious when we read those stories about those families that we think we’ll never meet, we also know our fear doesn’t compare to the fear of a parent looking into the eyes of their hungry child. That fear is deeper and heavier.

Their fear is greater than ours. And our hearts ache because we recognize that no one should have to feel that kind of fear. That ache is just another way the Spirit is stirring us, reminding us that we are part of the better future that God has promised. 

And we experience that future in holy moments here and now. 

A couple of weeks ago, our neighborhoods looked a little different. Kids (and adults) dressed as superheroes and princesses and ghosts were running from door to door, laughing and shouting “trick or treat.” 

Now I know not everyone celebrates Halloween. and that’s okay. But I can’t help but notice that, for one night on Halloween, we live out something the church has been trying to get right for thousands of years. 

Children come to a door: they knock, they ask, and they receive.

No one is turned away. No one has to prove they deserve it. No one is asked whether they’re really from that neighborhood. No one has to qualify, show papers, or prove hardship. There are no tests or hoops to jump through. 

They ask and they receive.

And the people are prepared to give: happily and abundantly, without holding anything back.

For one evening, we act as if abundance is the norm… when for most of us, abundance is the norm. 

Friends, most days we live as though generosity might leave us empty. But on Halloween, we remember: giving feels good. Generosity builds community. Joy multiplies when it’s shared.

And when I watch children at those doors, asking and receiving, laughing and trusting that good things are coming, I can’t help but think of Jesus’ words from the Gospel of Matthew:

“Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

On Halloween, we catch a small glimpse of what those words look like in real life

It’s a glimpse of the better future God promised through Haggai. It the same promise born in the rebuilding of the temple made by the same God. This promise is a world where fear gives way to trust and where scarcity yields to abundance. 

When we move from fear of scarcity to trusting in abundance, the world begins to look different. Scarcity leads to isolation while abundance builds community.

And if we can catch even these small glimpses of God’s abundance in the rebuilding of a community, in a people who share what we has, in porch lights that stay on and doors that stay open; then what’s stopping us from building toward that better future now?

If we believe these glimpses are possible, then maybe the next faithful step is to look honestly at where our time, energy, and resources go. Are we helping build the kind of world God is building? Or are we individually rebuilding our own smaller temples of control and comfort?

These glimpses of abundance matter because they show us what God is still doing… and what God is still inviting us to join. The temple, the open door, the open hand; they’re all signs of a kin-dom already breaking in.

So take courage in the breaking in and keep building. Keep your hands and hearts open. Because God is already here, and the peace that God promises is coming. Maybe not all at once, but through us, together, as we live and work toward the future God has promised.

Amen.

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BOLD Proclamation

 “BOLD Proclamation” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on October 19, 2025.

Youcan hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 30:55.
You can listen to a podcast version of the sermon here.

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Scripture texts:
Genesis 32:22-31
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

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When Paul writes his second letter to Timothy, he’s nearing the end of his journey. He’s tired, imprisoned, and uncertain how much time he has left. This work has cost him everything, but his faith is still alive and his ministry is still not over, even if it is coming to an end.

So he writes one last message to his young protégé named Timothy, who is trying to lead a weary and divided church in Ephesus. Some have walked away from the gospel. Others are twisting it to fit their own desires. Timothy is doing his best to promote togetherness and unity, but it’s hard.

In his letter, Paul offers Timothy some encouragement: “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it.”

Remember, Paul says. Remember the people who taught you. Remember your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. Remember their voices, their love, and their faith. Remember that “all Scripture is God-breathed.” Remember.

Paul is reminding Timothy that the Word of God is still alive and is still speaking. The same Spirit that breathed creation into being still moves through these words, shaping and guiding the Church. It’s a living voice that equips us to keep proclaiming the good news: past, present, and future.

That’s stewardship too. Not just of resources but of memory. Of faith. Of this living Word that has been entrusted to us.

We are stewards of a story that began long before us… and, by God’s grace, will continue long after us.

And that’s what our stewardship theme, BOLD Generosity, is really about. Each week we’ve been exploring: how do we live boldly with the gifts God has given us? This week’s focus is BOLD Proclamation: letting our lives speak the good news of the Gospel through what we do, what we say, and who we are.

Every act of generosity, every word of truth, every note of a hymn, every moment of prayer: it all becomes proclamation. The living Word of God breathing through us, proclaiming grace to a world that still needs to hear it.

This is how the story continues. It’s how God’s breath keeps moving through this community: teaching, blessing, shaping, and calling. It’s a remembrance of the past and it’s also a call to move forward.

Because after reminding Timothy of where he came from, Paul points him forward.

“I solemnly urge you,” Paul writes, “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.”

Ironic enough, Paul is writing these words in a Roman cell, facing execution. And he knows that proclamation – the faithful, persistent telling of God’s truth – will meet resistance.

Proclamation, in Paul’s sense, isn’t just preaching. It’s living as if the gospel is true. It’s letting our words, priorities, and love tell the story of Christ.

That’s bold proclamation: the decision to live and speak love even when it’s not popular, even when it’s costly.

And yes, sometimes proclamation upsets us. Sometimes it challenges what we’ve grown comfortable with. A pastor preaches a sermon that pushes us a little too far. Or the session makes a decision we don’t agree with. Or we try to live out our faith publicly and speak for justice; and some of the people we love pull away. Sometimes, even in the church, we wound one another. Sometimes, we get it wrong.

And yet, still with great urgency, we are called to proclaim the message. We proclaim compassion when the world feels divided. We proclaim hope when others give up. We proclaim grace when the last thing we want to do is forgive.

And when in doubt, we proclaim God’s love. Because that’s what it means to be the Church: to hold on, even when it’s hard, and to trust that love will still have the last word; that the story we are stewards of still continues. When we boldly proclaim this message, we do so because we believe this story and our faith is changing lives and this world for the better.

I think we can all name a time where the church and its message changed our life for the better.

Fifteen years ago, I was a senior in college studying finance. I didn’t know much about what I wanted in life, but I did know one thing for sure; that wasn’t it. I was on a path that didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t shake the sense that something inside me was searching for something else.

So feeling discouraged about the present and anxious about the future, I went home for the weekend to visit my parents. And like any parents of a college student, they were thrilled when I said I’d go to church with them on Sunday morning. (For any youth or young adults in the room: if you ever want to make your parents really happy, go to church with them when you’re visiting. It works every time.)

That Sunday, the sermon was about the wounds we carry as disciples. It began by naming the struggles we all face and the ways we wrestle with ourselves, with others, and sometimes with God. And then it turned to the struggles that come from faith itself: the moments when being a Christian doesn’t protect us from pain but sometimes opens us up to it.

The preacher said that following Jesus doesn’t mean we won’t be wounded. Sometimes it means we’ll carry those wounds as reminders of where grace has met us. And maybe, she said, those wounds can still become blessings; maybe they can teach us something or even become the way God brings healing into someone else’s life.

That sermon has stayed with me for years: not because it answered all my questions but because it gave me permission to wrestle.

That’s the story of Jacob.  And that’s where we find Jacob today.

By the time we reach this moment in Genesis, Jacob has been running for most of his life.

He was born grasping his brother’s heel, already trying to get ahead before he even took his first breath. His name, Jacob, means “the one who grabs.” And that’s how he’s lived: always scheming to secure what he wants, no matter who gets hurt.

He tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright, deceived his father into giving him a blessing meant for someone else, and then fled to escape the consequences.

Now years later Jacob has built a new life with wives, children, wealth, and reputation; but he knows he’s standing on borrowed peace. Word comes that Esau is approaching with four hundred men. So Jacob does what he’s always done: he plans. He divides his camp, sends gifts ahead, prays a little prayer, and then finally sends his family and possessions across the river. And suddenly, for the first time in his life, he’s alone.

And that’s when it happens: a mysterious figure wrestles with him all night long.

We never find out who this opponent is. Jacob believes it is God, but the point isn’t who Jacob wrestles; it’s that he doesn’t let go.

All night long, he struggles. Exhausted. Hurting. Clinging with everything he has. “I will not let you go,” he says, “unless you bless me.”

Oh what a stubborn, holy persistence that refuses to let go of the God who refuses to let go of us.

But because of it, Jacob walks away limping, wounded from the struggle. Bold proclamation is holding on through the night, through the shadows and the valleys, trusting that God’s blessing will come. Through our living and our giving, we are proclaiming the good news is still worth holding onto.

And that’s what bold generosity looks like too.

We give and serve and love because we trust that God is still at work. That God is still blessing whatever we offer, even if it’s small or when the night is long.

Yesterday I attended the ordination and installation of the Rev. Ruth Amadio, who is now serving as pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Catasauqua. During the sermon, the preacher reminded us that the call of every disciple is to practice love in everything we say and everything we do.

She continued by saying despite all our flaws and imperfections, the Church actually does this quite well. Only in the Church do you have more people promising to love a child than in baptism. Only in the Church are more hands held in seasons of grief.

That, she said, is what proclamation looks like. From the beginning to the end, from birth to death, the Church proclaims love. We proclaim love to a child in baptism, and in time, that child grows and proclaims love to our children and our children’s children. We proclaim love to a person in death, and in time, when God calls us home to the Church Triumphant, that same love will be proclaimed to us.

Those words felt especially true this week. We celebrate the sacrament of baptism today, and earlier in the week, I held the hand of a church member as she said goodbye to this life and joined the saints in glory.

In both moments, at the font and at the bedside, I felt the same thing: the bold, unbroken proclamation of love. Love that begins in the promises of baptism and continues through every joy and sorrow of this life until God finally welcomes us home.

Friends, this is what your giving, your presence, your service, and your prayers make possible: the proclamation of love from one generation to the next.

In the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

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Moyers, Mike. Israel, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57141 [retrieved October 20, 2025]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/