Because of Christ’s Love for Us, We Share

 “Because of Christ’s Love for Us, We Share” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on Sunday, September 27, 2026.

You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 30:05. 
You can listen to a podcast version of the sermon here. 

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Scripture texts:
Exodus 17:1-7
Philippians 2:1-13

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On September 11, 2001; thirty-eight airplanes landed in Gander, Newfoundland, a Canadian town of about ten thousand people. This is because U.S. airspace had closed because of the terrorist attacks that happened that day. Nearly seven thousand travelers ended up stranded in Gander, almost doubling the size of their town. 

Immediately a local television ad went out to the townspeople, “lend a hand, do what you can.” 

Residents began giving food, bedding, clothing, and toiletries. Pharmacies filled prescriptions without charge. Free public phones allowed passengers to reach their families. The community center’s ice rink became a place to store donated food. School buses were arranged to carry travelers into the surrounding communities. Schools and churches became places to sleep. 

The people of Gander shared their space, supplies, expertise, and transportation; they lent a hand and they did what they could. 

Resources that normally served their own local community were made available to meet an unexpected need; a need of 7000 people instantly stranded.

The people of Gander could not change what had happened in our country that day, but they could decide what to do with what they had when they saw people in need. 

That is one of the simplest ways to understand stewardship. We receive things into our care: money, time, abilities, relationships, property, opportunities. And then we decide what those things can make possible, not just for us but for other people.

Today we begin our pledge campaign and a worship series around the theme “Because of Christ’s Love for Us.” Before we ever consider what we can give, we remember what we have received. We have been loved by God in Jesus Christ. We have been welcomed, forgiven, sustained, and drawn into a community we did not create for ourselves. Over the coming weeks, we will explore how that love – Christ’s love – shapes the way we share, include, love, proclaim, and dedicate ourselves to God’s work. Our generosity should grow from that love, especially when we consider others in need.

Our Exodus reading begins with a community in need. The Israelites have left Egypt and are traveling through the wilderness as the Lord commanded them. They camp at Rephidim, and there, there is no water to drink. So the people demand water from Moses. Moses responds and asks why they are quarreling with him and why are they testing the Lord. So they push back and ask Moses why he brought them out of Egypt to let them, their children, and their livestock die of thirst.

Moses, out of fear for himself worried that the people will stone him, cries out to God for help. God tells him to go ahead of the people with some of Israel’s elders to the rock of Horeb, where God will be. Moses is instructed strike the rock, and when he does, water will come out for the people to drink. 

Moses then names the place Massah (testing-place) and Meribah (quarreling) because the people quarreled and tested the Lord, asking, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

While this story takes conflict between God and God’s people seriously, there’s another important part of the story: the need for water, which sustains life, is real. The Israelites followed God’s direction and still arrived at a place where they needed help. And after a little quarreling, God responded by providing what they needed, even while they were questioning whether God was with them.

At our foundation, we know: people need things like water to sustain life, and when we see people in need, those people deserve our attention.

And while our Exodus reading begins with people in need, our Philippians reading begins with what the people have received. Paul names encouragement in Christ, consolation from love, sharing in the Spirit, compassion, and sympathy. Paul then asks the Philippians to look to the interests of others in the same generosity they received from Christ: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  And he asks them to remember the one who was in the form of God took the form of a servant, entering human life and becoming obedient even to death on a cross. And it is the risen Christ who gathered them into a life where they belong to him and therefore must become responsible for one another’s well-being.

This is true also for us. Having the mind of Christ involves other people’s lives guiding decisions we make about our own money, attention, time, and influence.

Now in our own Presbyterian understanding of ministry – this is found in our Book of Order – one of our asks of our members to participate in Christ’s ministry by “supporting the ministry of the church through the giving of money, time, and talents.” It’s important we understand those words in light of the gospel: we do not purchase God’s love. We don’t earn our place in God’s kin-dom. We don’t even purchase membership at a church. Christ has already welcomed us, and so our giving grows from that belonging.  Instead, we offer what we have in gratitude for the grace that has claimed us.

And I want to be clear as we head into our pledge campaign, it’s not just financial offerings. It’s also the giving of our time and talents. 

Sharing our time might mean setting aside an evening to serve a meal with someone in need. Or reaching out to a friend because God is telling you that person might need a conversation. Think of our leaders who give their Sunday mornings teaching our children. Or adults who take time off of work to attend youth retreats. We have elders and deacons elected by this congregation who give plenty of hours every month discerning the will of God. 

And when we offer our talents, we look to people singing in the band and our choir. I give thanks every week for our faith formation leaders. We have Stephen Ministers rooted in compassion and listening. We have teams upon teams serving organizations and people in need. I had a seminary professor who said every congregation has a person whose greatest gift will be to staple all of your papers and to never take that gift lightly. We have three women who come in every month to fold and mail our monthly newsletters to our homebound members; this ministry is invaluable. 

And is true that our financial gifts sustain the care that our time and talents also bring. Whether we give our time, talents, or financial offerings; we are entrusting something we have to the work of Christ because Christ’s love taught us to care about the people Christ’s ministry serves.

Each of us experience a particular part of this church but rarely ever the full ministry our congregation offers. That is because our gifts reach beyond the parts of church life we personally experience. 

I’m going to give a clear example. 

In two weeks, we will place Bibles in the hands of preschoolers, second-graders, and confirmation students. Our financial gifts help pay for those Bibles. But also around each one of those young people is a community of people giving something of themselves. Leaders prepare lessons and bring their gifts of teaching, music, and storytelling. Families make time to bring their children here, and to read with them at home and listen to their questions. Confirmation mentors and youth leaders offer their attention and experience as young people begin putting their faith into their own words.

And as we share our gifts, we begin to discover theirs. A child notices something in a familiar Bible story that the rest of us have passed over. A teenager asks a question that makes us think more carefully about what we believe. 

We teach them, and they help us learn; we encourage their faith, and their faith gives us something we need. This is part of the sharing in the Spirit that Paul describes. 

Over time, the children who received those Bibles become youth who help younger children at things like Vacation Bible School or they pack food bags for a local elementary school. They discover that they too have something to offer and give. And then adults give days of their time to accompany our on trips and retreats, and when the youth return to share what they have learned, the faith we helped nurture comes back to us through their voices.

And someday, some of those young people may bring children of their own to church. Another Bible will be placed in another small pair of hands, new leaders will give their time, and gifts we cannot yet imagine will begin to emerge. And they will carry what they have received into different congregations and communities, where they love they have received will continue to bear fruit with the people they meet. The giving and receiving keeps unfolding, reaching people far beyond us.

That is part of the reason we invest in our ministry. We have received a church through the work of God and shaped by people whose gifts are still sustaining us, including people who are no longer here to see what those gifts have made possible. 

Now we can offer that same care to those who come after us. Long after the Lord calls us to join the Church Triumphant along with the saints who have gone before us, we trust that God will continue the work we have been given a part in.

This is the shared life Paul is talking about when he tells the Philippians to work out their salvation and reminds them that God is at work in them. The same Spirit is at work in the child and the adult, forming us together in the life of Christ. 

God’s grace is already at work, shaping both desire to serve and our ability to act. Our giving belongs within that work of God: love received becomes love offered.

Having experienced God’s love, we want to help this community keep responding to people’s needs. We offer our resources in trust that the God who has been faithful to us will continue to work through the ministry we share.

As we consider our giving for the coming year, whether it be our time, talents, or treasures, I invite you begin that decision with prayer and gratitude. Remember the ways God’s love has reached you.  Think of the moments when you received joy, love, grace, forgiveness, encouragement, relationship. Then look honestly at yourself and what you have and what you can give. Because what you can give can bring those moments you received to new people, especially people in need. 

I think about our congregation, our life together, our ministry. I ask the same question as the Israelites. “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Just last Sunday, as part of our Vibrant Faith activity, we invited worshippers in our two English-language services to take pictures of where we noticed God’s presence in worship. We received more than one hundred pictures. You got to see them! From one Sunday alone, just two hours, our congregation offered more than one hundred glimpses of where we noticed God among us.

Each person was looking at a different thing and from a different place, but they captured something someone else might have missed. But bringing those pictures together helps us recognize more and more of God’s presence among us.

That happens when we share our gifts too. The person helping purchase a child’s Bible might never hear the conversation that happens at home. The volunteer knitting a hat might never see the warmth it brings. The Stephen Minister might never know the full impact their compassion has made. Yet their gifts become part of those lives, joining the gifts of others in a ministry that reaches beyond what any one of us can see.

Is the Lord among us?

Yes! Yes, the Lord is among us, and the love of Christ is still taking shape in the life we share. That is our hope as we look ahead, whether the next stretch of our journey takes us through wilderness or into a land flowing with milk and honey. But God will be in the next chapter of journey, forming us into people who can offer what we have and receive what we need.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

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Raising a Faithful Church

 “Raising a Faithful Church” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on Sunday, September 13, 2026.

You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 37:00.
You can listen to a podcast version of the sermon here.

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Scripture text:
Mark 9:30-37

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Churches and parents of faith often wonder how they will raise faithful children. Ours too. We ask what they need to learn, which stories they need to know, and what will help them carry faith into the rest of their lives. These are important questions. But in today’s passage, Jesus turns the idea of what it looks like to raise faithful children by placing children at the center of faith. What if raising faithful children and raising a faithful church are both part of the same work God is doing among us? Or even, what if raising a faithful church means letting the children be the ones who raise us?

Jesus and the disciples are traveling through Galilee when he tells them, for the second time in the Gospel of Mark, what lies ahead: the Son of Man will be handed over into human hands, killed, and raised again. But the disciples still don’t understand this. They believe Jesus is the Messiah, yet they still imagine power as rising to the top and defeating one’s enemies. They don’t imagine that God’s power might be revealed through humility and service.

When Jesus tells them about his upcoming death and the one who will betray him, the disciples are afraid to ask Jesus what he means, so instead, by the time they reach Capernaum, the disciples are arguing about which of them is the greatest. 

Because if the disciples won’t admit they’re confused, they at least can make themselves feel more secure by deciding that they are more important than someone else. And if they don’t understand where Jesus is leading them, they can distract themselves by arguing about who gets to stand closest to him.

And let’s be honest, this still happens. When we are uncertain about our own value, we begin measuring ourselves against other people. When we are afraid that we don’t belong, it might be easier to look for someone we can place below us or outside of us. And churches aren’t immune to this either. Not even ours. We can quietly decide that one style of worship is more faithful, one generation is more important, or that one community is better than the rest. 

But the church is God’s house, and it is Christ who meets us through those we didn’t think to place at its center. Everyone is good and faithful and loved.

So when Jesus asks the disciples what they were arguing about, they fall silent, maybe out of shame. And so Jesus sits down, calls them closer, and says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” 

In the world the disciples know and the world we know, greatness means having people beneath you. But in the community Jesus is raising, greatness means using whatever authority, experience, or strength you possess for the good of someone else.

Jesus then brings a child into the middle of the disciples. Now while children were loved in the ancient world, they didn’t possess the status of adults. A child could not advance the disciples’ reputations, offer them a better position, or repay their hospitality. In an argument about greatness, a child was exactly the kind of person that wasn’t considered great or wise or strong or faithful.

Yet this is the person Jesus places at the center. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” 

So in other words: welcome the child, and you welcome Jesus. Welcome Jesus, and you welcome God. The person who seemed to hold the least importance becomes the person through whom God’s presence is received.

Jesus told the disciples that he will be handed over and made vulnerable before the powers of the world. Then he takes a vulnerable person – a child – into his arms and identifies himself with the child. The disciples are searching for God at the top, but Jesus reveals God among those who are not considered great or wise or strong or faithful.

This is how Jesus raises a faithful church. He changes who stands at the center and teaches us to recognize God’s presence in people we assumed were only there to receive something from us.

We often say that children are the future of the church, but Jesus asks us to receive them now in the present. Their questions, experiences, and relationships with God matter now. And their questions and stories can fill us with faith.

One time, while we were exploring the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, we asked people in worship what they would ask Jesus if they had the opportunity. We received many serious theological questions, but one child wrote, “Jesus, what is your favorite color?”

They wanted to know the favorite color of their friend Jesus. They wanted to know Jesus as a friend, because friends know those kinds of things about one another. A faithful church needs good theology, but it also needs that longing to know and be known by Christ; to be friends with Christ; to trust we are loved by Christ.

Another time, during a children’s sermon on baptism, one of our children stood around the font holding her doll as we spoke about how God’s love claims us and remains with us throughout our lives. When we finished, she asked whether her doll could be baptized too.

She heard about a love that lasts for our whole lives, and her first response was to want that love for someone she held close. If God’s love was this good, why would she keep it to herself? She understood that when we trust that God loves us, we begin longing for everyone we love to know that they too are loved.

Then there was the time I shared my Epiphany star word with our middle schoolers. My word that year was “approve,” and I told them I did not yet know why that might be my word. One of them answered immediately, “That’s an easy one. You just need to be reminded that we approve of you as our pastor.”

First, that’s good to know! I got their approval. 

But that middle schooler also took a word I hadn’t yet understood and turned it into a word of grace. For a moment, the expected direction of ministry was reversed. I as the pastor was not the one offering the blessing. The middle schooler was. Sometimes the youngest person in the room speaks the word of grace the rest of us need to hear.

I see this in our youth all the time. One of my absolute favorite things about our youth is how kind and inclusive they are. They come from different schools, different parts of the Lehigh Valley, and different friend groups and interests. Yet whether they gather here on Sunday morning or spend a week together on a trip, they make room for one another. 

Our youth show us that belonging grows when we make room for another person and discover that their presence gives the community something it needs. 

And is that not the hope we have for the whole church?

A faithful church is not a place where one group stands securely at the center and invites everyone else to visit. It’s a community in which Christ keeps changing the center and drawing us toward people we might otherwise overlook. We need one another’s languages, memories, questions, traditions, and ways of seeing. We need adults who can tell the stories of faith and children who can help us hear those stories again with wonder.

Some of you know about our current partnership with Vibrant Faith. This partnership is a grant-funded initiative exploring how we are Raising Faithful Kids, which is also the name of this initiative. You can find more information about this initiative in our Faith Formation catalog. It’s important and really something special we are doing. 

For the next ten weeks, we will include a simple intergenerational faith practice in our worship services; something a child of any age and an adult of any age can do together. We will take pictures that help us notice where God is present, have short conversations with others from another generation, tell stories, pray for one another, and reflect together on scripture and images. These practices will take a few moments in our worship services, but each one will help us connect what happens here in worship with the lives we live throughout the week.

Raising Faithful Kids may be the name of the initiative, but this work belongs to the whole church, because faith is formed through relationships across generations. 

I have another story to share: There’s this activity we sometimes do with our children during our faith formation hour. We read a Bible story and invite them to finish the sentence, “I wonder...”

When we were exploring Jesus’ parable of the growing seed, they said things like, “I wonder what kind of seed it was” or “I wonder how long it took to become a plant.” And then one child said, “I wonder if the seed was happy while it was growing.”

I think about that question often. Was the seed happy while it was growing? Am I happy while I’m growing? Are we happy while we’re growing?

To be growing means to understand that we are unfinished. We say that we want the church to grow, but often we mean more people, more programs, or more ministries. 

But what about growth that changes us, even if that change is uncomfortable? What about growth that begins when we admit that we don’t always understand? Or growth that happens when we listen to someone younger or when we learn from someone whose experience is different from ours? How do we grow when receive wisdom from someone who worships in another language? And what does growth look like when we serve neighbors we do not know? 

Perhaps the seed can be happy while it grows because its joy does not depend upon being finished. It can be happy because it is surrounded by a community that waters it, protects it, makes room for it, and delights in every new sign of life. A seed can be happy while it grows because it knows it is cared for. We can be happy while we grow because we know we are loved. 

Remember our mission statement: We are imperfect people striving to live God’s love in the way of Jesus Christ. 

I want to be a part of a faithful church; not a finished church, a faithful church of imperfect people. I want us to grow and change and transform. I want us to ask questions and honor differences and make sure that no one is left standing alone. I want us to be a church where we help one another notice that God is present in every moment of our lives. I want us to be a church that strives every day to live God’s love in the way of Jesus Christ. 

The stories I shared with you are just the tiniest glimpse of how God is at work through our children and youth here at FPCA. And they are testimonies. Testimonies we need to be a faithful church because through them, God has reminded us things like that Jesus can be known as a friend, that God’s love should be shared, that words of grace should be spoken, that blessings can be offered in all directions, that there is holiness in a community that makes room, and that growth can contain joy.

Faithful children are not only being raised by a faithful church. Faithful children are helping to raise a faithful church.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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