Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
October 11, 2026
 
“Only One Understood”
 
Matthew 26: 1-5 – Common English Bible
When Jesus finished speaking all these words, he said to his disciples, 2 “You know that the Passover is two days from now. And the Human One[a] will be handed over to be crucified.”
3 Then the chief priests and elders of the people gathered in the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest. 4 They were plotting to arrest Jesus by cunning tricks and to kill him. 5 But they agreed that it shouldn’t happen during the feast so there wouldn’t be an uproar among the people.
 
 It had been an exhausting few days for Jesus.  He went toe to toe with some of the most powerful religious leaders in Jerusalem, accusing them of hypocrisy and lawlessness.  Then he left the Temple and took his disciples to the Mount of Olives and, as we heard last week, he told them some very terrifying things, like the sun going dark and stars falling from the sky. 
 
We’re now in chapter 26.  Passover is two days away.  Jerusalem is filling with people coming to remember the story of their liberation, how God had heard the cries of their ancestors in slavery and brought them out of Egypt.
 
Every year, Passover made the Roman Empire nervous.  As thousands of pilgrims poured into Jerusalem, Rome brought in extra soldiers just in case anybody got ideas about making that ancient story happen again.
 
And this year there was this man Jesus of Galilee.  Galilee is an area that had once before fomented rebellion against the Empire.  And here he was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey surrounded by cheering crowds.  The one who caused chaos in the Temple and had spent the last few days exasperating some of Jerusalem's religious elite.
 
Those leaders were now meeting at the home of Caiaphas, the high priest.  They had already decided they were going to arrest Jesus and kill him, but Passover was a problem.  Arresting him during the festival could cause a riot.
 
Meanwhile, just outside Jerusalem in a little village called Bethany, Jesus was having supper with his disciples.  A woman came into the room carrying a jar of extraordinarily expensive perfume.  She walked up to Jesus and poured it over his head.  Not a few drops.  She poured it out.
 
The disciples were furious.  What a waste!  “Don’t you know what that’s worth?”  It sounded like a righteous objection.  Yes, it could have been sold for a lot of money and given to the poor.  But Jesus didn't agree. 
 
“Why are you bothering her?  You must always care for the people who are poor among you, that will never change, but you won't always have me.”
 
He told them, “She has prepared my body for burial.”  Jesus has been telling them this over and over.  Suffering.  Death. Crucifixion.  The twelve had heard every word of it but could never seem to understand.  So instead, they argued with him.  
 
But this woman had been listening too.  The difference?  She believed him.  And sensing there might not be another opportunity, before it’s too late, she did something about it.  She brought this perfume to prepare Jesus for what he said would come.
 
What the disciples saw as waste, Jesus saw as love.  He said, “I assure you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what this woman has done will be told in memory of her.”  And so, we must do that.
 
Meanwhile, as the scent of perfume was still fading in the room, one of the twelve slipped out.  Judas Iscariot went straight to the chief priests.
 
Well, imagine their surprise.  One of Jesus' own disciples had just come to them asking, “What will you give me to hand him over?”  They counted out 30 pieces of silver. 
 
The people plotting wouldn't have to seize him in daylight and risk a riot.  From then on, Judas watched for the right moment.
 
Later, the disciples asked Jesus about where they should prepare for the Passover meal that night.  That evening, Jesus sat down at the table with all twelve to remember the night their enslaved ancestors quickly ate while waiting for their freedom. 
 
Judas was back at the table. 
 
While they were eating the food of liberation, Jesus said:  “One of you is going to betray me.”  And he told them it wouldn't be an enemy waiting outside but someone close enough to share his food. 
 
They were all deeply troubled and, one after another, began asking the same question.  They didn’t ask, “Who is it?”  Every one of them asks, “Is it me?” 
 
Finally, Judas spoke.  “Surely you don't mean me, Rabbi?”  Jesus answered, “You have said so.”
 
Then Jesus picked up a loaf of bread and blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them.  He said, “Take this and eat it.  This is my body.” 
 
Then he lifted a cup, gave thanks, and passed it around the table.  He told them, “Drink from this, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant poured out for the forgiveness of sins.”
 
They must have been confused.  That’s not part of the ancient liberation story.  That’s not what they retell in memory of God freeing the slaves.  What is he talking about?
 
When they finished, they walked out into the night toward the Mount of Olives.  They hadn't gone far before Jesus told them something else they didn't want to hear.  “Tonight, every one of you will abandon me.”
 
But, he also told them where they would find him afterward.  “I’ll go ahead of you to Galilee and meet you there.”  He wasn’t going to abandon them.
 
But Peter, ever the competitor, wasn't ready to talk about the afterward.  “Even if everybody else abandons you, I never will.”  But Jesus told him exactly how badly he misjudged himself.  “Before the cock crows tonight, you will deny three times that you even know me.”
 
Peter still wouldn't believe him.  “Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you.”  The others all join in, making the same promise – before they all abandoned him about an hour later.
 
They reached a place on the Mount of Olives called Gethsemane.  Jesus left most of the disciples behind and took Peter, James, and John with him. 
 
But something changed.  Jesus had been telling them all along what was going to happen. But now that the moment was here, even he was overwhelmed.  He told the three of them he was crushed with grief, almost to the point of death.
 
All he asked of them was this:  “Stay here and stay awake.”
 
Jesus wasn't asking Peter to die for him.  He was just asking his friends not to leave.  And then he went into the garden to pray.  He fell face-down on the ground.  “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”
 
Then he went back to his friends and found them asleep.  Jesus woke them and said again, “Stay awake with me and pray.  The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak.” 
Then he went away and prayed again.  “If this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, let your will be done.”
 
When he came back, again they were asleep but he didn't wake them this time.  He went back to pray alone.  The same prayer.  A third time.
 
At the same time as he was praying, Judas was leading an armed crowd toward Jesus, sent by the chief priests and elders.  They were carrying swords and clubs.  They approached just as Jesus returned to his friends – and found them sleeping again.  “Get up,” he said.  “My betrayer is here.”
 
Judas had arranged a signal.  “Arrest the one I kiss.  That’s Jesus.”  He walked straight up and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!”  He answered, “Friend, do what you came to do.”
 
They grabbed Jesus.  One of his disciples pulled a sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.
 
Jesus stopped his own defender.  “Put that away.  Don't you understand? Those who take up the sword will die by the sword.” 
 
He refused the weapon that might have saved him.  But he wasn't being overpowered because he had no other choice.  He made his choice.  Then he turned to them, “Why have you come for me as though I'm some kind of violent rebel?  You knew I've been teaching every day in the Temple.”  No answer.
 
That’s when every one of the disciples who insisted they would never abandon him ran.  Jesus was left standing all alone with the ones who arrested him. 
 
They led him to the home of Caiaphas and a long night of false testimony began.  By morning, the religious authorities handed him over to the Roman governor.  And soon everybody would be arguing about who was responsible for the blood that was about to be spilled.  That's where we pick up next week.
 
Vine Deloria Jr. was a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.  He was Lakota, born in 1933 in a small town in South Dakota near the Pine Ridge Reservation.  His great-grandfather was a medicine man.  His grandfather and father were both Episcopal priests.  He grew up with a rich blend of spiritual traditions.
 
For example, as a child, he remembers riding in the car as they drove from chapel to chapel conducting worship services.  His father would roll down the car window, beat his hand against the door like a drum, and sing old Dakota songs all the way to church.
 
After serving in the Marines and graduating from Iowa State, Vine Jr. went to seminary too.  He earned a master's degree in theology.  But he didn't become a priest like his father and grandfather.  Instead, he became one of Christianity's most challenging critics.  And one of the most influential Indigenous thinkers of the twentieth century.  The Smithsonian even named a research library after him.
 
In 1969 he wrote the book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto.  Among other things, he noted the absurdity of Native people being required by missionaries to cut their long hair, only to walk into church and see pictures of Jesus and the apostles with long hair. 
 
It was a funny, sarcastic, and angry challenge to white anthropologists, missionaries, and academics who presumed they knew what was best for Native people.  
 
Four years later, he wrote the groundbreaking book God Is Red.  Deloria had studied and knew well the Christian stories of liberation and salvation, of Jesus and suffering and resurrection.  Yet he also knew what his people had suffered from the people carrying those stories.
 
That's the contradiction he couldn't leave alone.  The story of Jesus refusing the sword, and yet Christians taking up a sword in his name.  The story of liberation, and yet Christians participating in the conquest of other people.  The story of Jesus confronting the power of empire, and yet Christians building empires in his name.
 
But Deloria doesn't just expose the contradictions.  He points to something Western Christianity often forgot.  You cannot separate religion from place.  From the land beneath your feet.  
 
Because if a place is sacred, you cannot simply use it up and move on.  You have obligations to it.  To the people who were there before you and who will come after you.  To the other living beings that share it with you.  This isn’t about believing the right things but living in right relationship with the world around us.
 
Jesus doesn't ask for belief alone either.  The Passover meal he shared with his disciples wasn’t just about remembering what God had done a long time ago.  To remember that you were strangers in Egypt means that today you cannot treat the stranger the way you were once treated.
 
It’s story we need to keep telling because we keep needing to change how we live.
 
Ironically, the people closest to Jesus had heard everything he taught and watched how he lived.  But when the moment came, almost every one of them failed.
 
With one exception.  The woman they dismissed as wasteful.  While everyone else was arguing, making promises they couldn't keep, betraying him, falling asleep, reaching for a sword, and running away, she did something else.  She was the only one who understood. 
 
Never forget:  She poured out everything she had to love Jesus before there was no more time to act.
 
What are you waiting for?  Whatever it is, how long before the chance is gone and all you have left is regret?

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
October 4, 2026
 
“When Love Grows Cold”
 
Matthew 24: 1-8 – Common English Bible
Now Jesus left the temple and was going away. His disciples came to point out to him the temple buildings. 2 He responded, “Do you see all these things? I assure that no stone will be left on another. Everything will be demolished.”
3 Now while Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately and said, “Tell us, when will these things happen? What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?”
4 Jesus replied, “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I’m the Christ.’ They will deceive many people. 6 You will hear about wars and reports of wars. Don’t be alarmed. These things must happen, but this isn’t the end yet. 7 Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other, and there will be famines and earthquakes in all sorts of places. 8 But all these things are just the beginning of the sufferings associated with the end. 
 
 
World Communion Sunday began during the Depression days of 1933.  As the storm clouds of Nazism and totalitarianism were rising over Europe, and on the other side of the world, Japan was invading one country after another, Rev. Hugh Thomson Kerr had the brilliant idea of a day to name the geographic unity of Christ’s table.  
 
By 1940, most mainline denominations adopted the first Sunday in October to witness that a world dividing into enemies and allies will not have the last word.  
 
In February 1942 in Southeast Asia, Japanese forces invaded East Timor, a colony of the Portuguese dictatorship.  At war’s end, Portugal reigned again until the entire regime finally fell in 1974.  Soon after, East Timor declared itself a free nation.  It lasted only nine days.  Indonesia invaded.
 
What followed for this tiny island nation was brutal.  For the next 24 years, occupation by the authoritarian Suharto government brought killings, torture, displacement, and hunger.  Tens of thousands of people died.  
 
In 1999, with enough external pressure from the international community and, notably, from churches, the Timorese people were finally given the chance to vote and nearly 80 percent chose independence. 
 
The response was horrifying.  Pro-Indonesian militias went on a campaign of murder and destruction.  More than half of their population – 500,000 people – were driven from their homes.
 
Churches became places of refuge.  In Dili, the capital, Catholic sisters in one convent sheltered more than a hundred women and children while gunfire tore through the walls.
 
Later, Sister Marlene Bautista told a story about a young woman who came to one of their Bible studies.  The subject that day was forgiveness.  The sister leading the study noticed that the young woman looked agitated and angry.  She spoke with her afterward.
 
Five years earlier, militia members had come to her family's home and taken away her oldest brother.  Two weeks later, they came back with his severed head.
 
The young woman said, “It is hard for me to forgive, but” she added, “I will try.”
 
In Matthew chapter 23, after a long series of confrontations with the religious leaders, Jesus left them and the crowds behind and went with his disciples to the Mount of Olives.  
 
As they were leaving the Temple, they pointed to its magnificent buildings.  “I assure you,” Jesus said, “no stone will be left on another.”  They crossed the valley and sat down on the mountain and looked over at the Temple.  They asked, “When will this happen?”
 
Chapter 24 is his very long response – using what sounds like the words of an absolute madman conspiracy theorist.  It’s all the stuff you hear from street preachers and end-times prophets.  Out of context, of course.
 
Ironically, he warns about false prophets offering great signs and wonders in order to deceive people.  He talks about wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes, betrayal and hatred.  
 
Jesus describes how the sun will become dark, the moon will stop shining, the stars will fall from the sky.  “There will be great suffering such as the world has never seen before and will never see again.”
 
Honestly, it’s easy to get so distracted by all the terrifying images and warnings that we just give up on chapter 24 and move on to the next one.  Which, we soon learn, has its own set of horrifying imagery.
 
The gospel of Matthew can be chilling at times.  Of the four gospels, it has some of the harshest language about judgment with images such as trees thrown into the fire.  Weeds burned.  People thrown into a furnace or thrown into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  If you think about it, even Matthew’s Christmas story has a massacre of infants in it.
 
But there’s some context we need to know.  Matthew was written somewhere between the years 80 and 90, which means this is only a decade or two after something totally catastrophic and traumatic happened.  In the year 70, the Roman army besieged and destroyed Jerusalem.  Utterly and completely.
 
Thousands of people were killed and others were enslaved or displaced.  And the Temple itself that had stood at the center of Jewish religious life for nearly 600 years stood in rubble, burned and destroyed. 
 
Matthew isn’t a prophet writing about some imagined catastrophe thousands of years in the future.  He is writing in the aftermath of one still fresh on their minds – like it was yesterday.
 
And so, chapter 24 isn’t some bizarre interruption in the gospel where Jesus suddenly becomes obsessed with predicting the end of the world.  
 
Matthew is writing to an audience that knew exactly what it felt like to wonder whether the world was coming to an end.  And Jesus said, some people will deceive you.
Some people will hate you and become violent.
And some people will give up.
 
But more frightening than all the earthquakes and wars and falling stars is this.  “Because lawlessness will increase, the love of many will grow cold.”  (from the New Revised Standard Version, not Common English Bible)
 
In a chapter filled with warnings about wars and deception and fear, that particular line sticks out.  “The love of many will grow cold.”  Because of lawlessness.  But what is that?
 
Don't imagine this as criminals running through the streets or society collapsing into chaos.  In the previous chapter, he has just used the same word anomia, translated “lawlessness” or “disobedience,” in a very specific way. 
 
Remember those dark parables back at the Temple and the litany last week of “how terrible it will be for you?”  Jesus told those religious leaders that they looked righteous on the outside but inside were full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
 
He is continuing a theme.  Beware.  Lawlessness can wear religious clothes.  Lawlessness can quote scripture and invoke God.  Lawlessness can stand in pulpits and look respectable.  And perhaps most dangerously, try to convince you that cruelty is righteous.  That cruelty is necessary for some greater good.
 
Be careful, Jesus warns. 
 
Because when violence becomes an ordinary Tuesday, when lies are repeated so often nobody knows what to believe anymore, and when people watch cruelty go unanswered long enough, something begins to happen inside us:
 
We become suspicious.
We become cynical.
We become afraid.
 
Jesus warns, there will always be people willing to use that fear and begin sorting us into those who are with us and those who are against us.  And tell us exactly who we should blame.
 
But be careful.  We only become more suspicious of one another.
We grow only more cynical and despairing. 
 
And what happens then?  Your love can grow cold.
 
In the midst of chapter 24’s cascade of terrifying images, Jesus brings it back to love.  A love he has told them must extend to your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you.  But of course, that's a lot easier when your enemies are only hypothetical.
 
That young unnamed woman in East Timor – her enemies weren't hypothetical.  She fits right in with all of Matthew 24’s violence and hatred.  Nobody has to explain to her why her love might grow cold.
 
She said, “It’s hard for me to forgive.”  Of course it is.  I don’t know if I could.
 
But I don’t want to turn her into some sentimental story about how victims of terrible violence are supposed to forgive the people who hurt them.  What I appreciate about her response is its honesty.  She doesn’t promise to forgive.  She says, “I will try.”  And that demonstrates enormous courage. 
 
And in the very next sentence, Jesus says, “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”  In other words – keep trying.
 
Chapter 24 finally ends with a story about two servants whose master has gone away.  While they wait, one keeps doing what he was entrusted to do.  He keeps feeding the household.  The other decides the master isn’t coming back anytime soon and so he begins beating the people he is supposed to care for.  He becomes cruel to them instead of caring for them.  It’s an odd and quite violent story but the lesson is pretty obvious:  While we wait, how do we treat people?
 
So all that material end-times prophets and street preachers use to terrify people – what comes next?  Chapter 25 ends with what it looks like when our love does not grow cold.  Now you’ll know the context for these familiar words: 
I was hungry and you fed me.
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.
I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
I was naked and you clothed me.
I was sick and you cared for me.
I was a prisoner and you visited me.
 
And those who did not?  “I assure you that when you haven’t done it for one of the least of these, you haven’t done it for me.  And they will go away into eternal punishment.  But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.”  Keep trying.
 
Which brings us all the way back to this table.  World Communion Sunday begins while the world is being divided into allies and enemies.  Christians came to the table to insist that those divisions are not the final word.  Nearly a century later, we still need to remember that.
 
When our world has become the kind of five-alarm fire Jesus describes, who are we going to be?  This table does not pretend the world isn’t frightening.
 
Let us pray to be people whose love does not grow cold.  With a little help.
 
Because with all the lawlessness in our land today, I know I can’t do it alone. 
 
Not without Jesus.  Not, certainly, without you. 
 
That’s why we’re here.  To keep trying.  Together.
 

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
September 27, 2026
 
“And Then He Walked Away”
 

Matthew 23: 1-12 – Common English Bible
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and his disciples, 2 “The legal experts and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. 3 Therefore, you must take care to do everything they say. But don’t do what they do. 4 For they tie together heavy packs that are impossible to carry. They put them on the shoulders of others, but are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 Everything they do, they do to be noticed by others. They make extra-wide prayer bands for their arms and long tassels for their clothes. 6 They love to sit in places of honor at banquets and in the synagogues. 7 They love to be greeted with honor in the markets and to be addressed as ‘Rabbi.’
8 “But you shouldn’t be called Rabbi, because you have one teacher, and all of you are brothers and sisters. 9 Don’t call anybody on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is heavenly. 10 Don’t be called teacher, because Christ is your one teacher. 11 But the one who is greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who lift themselves up will be brought low. But all who make themselves low will be lifted up.
 
 
In my sermon two weeks ago, Jesus had just entered Jerusalem on a donkey while people along the road waved palm branches and children ran alongside shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” 
 
If you recall, he went straight to the Temple and overturned the tables of the money changers.  The chief priests and elders were furious and demanded to know who gave him the authority to do this and he responded with a parable that ended:  prostitutes will enter God’s kingdom ahead of you. 
 
Then last week, Jesus told religious leaders two more parables – dark, violent parables.  He then dodged several attempts to trap him in his own words and ultimately deflected their questions by reminding everyone that the greatest commandment of all is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. 
 
After that, the Pharisees came back one more time, but Jesus turned the tables on them and asked a question.  It didn’t go well for them.  And so, chapter 22 ends: “And from that day forward, nobody dared to ask him anything.”
 
Today, chapter 23 begins by saying, “then Jesus turned and spoke to the crowds and his disciples.”  He pointed to the religious leaders and said:  Beware of these people.  Do what they say, not what they do.  They put heavy burdens on people's shoulders.  They love places of honor and important titles.  Don't be like that because “the greatest among you will be your servant.”
 
But Jesus was only getting started.  He turns and then speaks directly to the religious authorities:  He repeats over and over “How terrible it will be for you.” 
 
You block the door for people trying to find their way to God but you won't go in yourselves.  “How terrible it will be for you.”
 
“How terrible it will be for you.”  You’ve turned religion into technicalities and elaborate arguments about which words you can wiggle in and out of and which ones God will hold you to.
 
“How terrible it will be for you.”  You carefully and meticulously measure out exactly a tenth of the mint and dill and cumin growing in your gardens, but you neglect the much weightier matters of the Law:  Mercy.  Justice.  And faithfulness.
 
“How terrible it will be for you.”  You filter out a tiny little gnat but swallow a whole camel.
 
“How terrible it will be for you.”  You scrub the outside of a cup until it shines bright, but the inside is filled with greed and self-indulgence.
 
“How terrible it will be for you.”  You are like whitewashed tombs.  You’re beautiful to look at.  And dead inside.
 
And yet, Jesus still isn't finished.  You build monuments and decorate the graves of the prophets and tell yourselves that if you had been alive in their day, you would’ve never participated in killing them.  Of course not.  Prophets are much easier to honor once they're dead.  “How terrible it will be for you.” 
 
Again and again.  A liturgical refrain of righteous indignation.  Or is it a liturgical refrain of bewildered exhaustion?  What is wrong with you people!?  He can hardly comprehend why they keep missing what actually matters.
 
Or, more likely, Jesus is both angry and exhausted. 
 
Wearied by the burdens they have placed on people.  Exasperated at all their religious games and their obsession with appearances.  Anguished by the pain of the doors they have shut in people's faces.  Angry at their greed, hypocrisy, and violence.
 
Exhausted because he has tried.
Mad because they still don't see.
And grieving because he still loves them.
 
Jesus stops and cries out, “oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.  How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”  How often I have wanted.
 
How often I thought things could change.
How often I hoped.
How often I tried.


But, he said, “you didn’t want it.”  You just didn’t want it.
 
My heart breaks for Jesus.  It still breaks today.
 
Beth Moore grew up in a home that was not always safe.  But, she said, “my local church, growing up, saved my life.”  It’s where she felt protected. 
 
In return, she loved church.  Not some abstract idea of church but the people who taught her the Bible.  The people who prayed with her.  The people who gave a little girl a place where she knew she belonged.  And she loved the church because it’s where she met Jesus.
 
She was a deeply rooted Southern Baptist. As a child, she sat in the pews at First Baptist Arkadelphia with her grandmother and other family members. She married a Southern Baptist. Raised her children to be Southern Baptist.
 
She taught Sunday school.  Then she began teaching women’s Bible studies.  And she was really good at it.  So good that men started showing up too.  A ministry intended for women was drawing Baptist men who sat in the back of the room because they wanted to hear her teach the Bible.
 
The classes grew.  Soon she was writing Bible studies used in churches across the country.  Then she was filling arenas with thousands of people who came to hear her teach.  Beth Moore had become one of the most influential evangelical women in America.  Millions of people have used her Bible studies.
 
And that’s why what happened next is so painful.  Over the years, Beth began speaking about things she could no longer ignore.  The treatment of women. The way churches responded to survivors of sexual abuse. 
 
In return she found herself attacked by people within the religious world she loved.  But no treatment was worse than when she called out the growing entanglement of evangelical Christianity with political power.
 
She wanted things to change because she loved her church. 
She prayed.  She hoped.  She tried.
 
But in 2021, Beth stopped trying to change it.  She left instead.  Not Christianity.  Not Jesus.  But the church tradition that had once made her feel safe.
 
She said it felt like falling off a cliff and remembers walking in the woods and praying to Jesus, “I hope you know where we're going, because I sure don't.”
 
There was no triumphant liberation in that moment.  She didn't walk away saying, “Thank God I'm finally free of those people.”  She grieved because those were her people. 
 
Jesus hoped.  He tried.  Jesus wanted.  “Oh, how often I wanted.”
 
But Jesus didn't get what he wanted.  And so he grieved because Jerusalem was his beloved city.  These were his people.  This was his faith.
 
To hear him say, “How terrible it will be for you,” isn't to hear an angry outsider shouting obscenities at strangers.  This is a faithful Jew in an anguished argument with his own family.  He isn't standing outside Judaism condemning it.  All along he has been standing inside a tradition he loves, crying out against what he sees happening within it.
 
And then he leaves the Temple.  Not Judaism.  Not his people. 
 
He leaves the Temple and the crowds and the leaders behind and goes with just his disciples to the Mount of Olives.  That’s where the story will pick up next week.
 
Leaving is rarely as simple as walking away.  We often tell stories as though leaving settles everything.  We left because it was bad or we finally saw the truth. 
 
Sometimes the hardest things to leave are the things that were once genuinely good to us.  A relationship that once brought us joy.  A friendship that sustained us.  A community where we belonged.  Leaving doesn't make any of that untrue.
 
Beth Moore didn't have to deny what the church had once given her in order to leave it.  And Jesus still loved Jerusalem when he walked out of the Temple.  But those four words tell us how much it hurt:  “How often I wanted.”
 
And then the words that may hurt even more:  “But you didn't want that.”  And there it is.
 
We can still want the church to change.  And still want the friendship back.  We can still want the marriage to work and yet a day may come when you realize:  I cannot stay here anymore.  And that leaving can hurt every bit as much as staying. 
 
And there’s a strange paradox here.  This is Jesus.  If anyone should be able to make people do what he wants, surely it's Jesus.
 
But he doesn't compel anyone.  He doesn't force Jerusalem beneath his wings.  Instead, Jesus gives us this remarkably vulnerable image of himself.  Not a king issuing commands.  Not a warrior overpowering his enemies.  A mother hen opening her wings.
 
Because the moment love coerces, it becomes something else.  And Jesus will not make Jerusalem want what Jerusalem does not want.
 
Jesus walking out of the Temple in that moment isn't him finally giving up.  And when we resolve to leave a relationship or a community, that isn't automatically giving up either.
 
There’s a difference between giving up and letting go: 

• perhaps letting go of the belief that if I just try hard enough, I can make another person change.
• perhaps letting go of the belief that if I love enough, I can save every relationship.

But I am not the savior.
 
Beth Moore couldn't save the Southern Baptist Convention.  She worried that by leaving she had betrayed people she loved but has since found the Anglican Church – quite a liturgical contrast.  The little girl who once found church to be a safe place has found a safe place in church again. 
 
She gave up trying to change the institution because it has only doubled down.  But she did not let go of telling the truth.  She’s not finished teaching and writing.  And speaking out.
 
When Jesus left the Temple, he wasn't finished.  He hadn’t washed his hands of responsibility.  He just accepted that he cannot make Jerusalem become what Jerusalem does not want to become.
 
And we may have to leave what we cannot save.  Otherwise, it may consume all the love we have left to give.  Walk away when you must.  But you’re not finished either.  There are still more people Jesus calls you to love wherever you are.  

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
September 20, 2026
 
“When We See What Happens”
 

Matthew 22: 1-9 – Common English Bible
Jesus responded by speaking again in parables: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding party for his son. 3 He sent his servants to call those invited to the wedding party. But they didn’t want to come. 4 Again he sent other servants and said to them, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Look, the meal is all prepared. I’ve butchered the oxen and the fattened cattle. Now everything’s ready. Come to the wedding party!”’ 5 But they paid no attention and went away—some to their fields, others to their businesses. 6 The rest of them grabbed his servants, abused them, and killed them.
7 “The king was angry. He sent his soldiers to destroy those murderers and set their city on fire. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding party is prepared, but those who were invited weren’t worthy. 9 Therefore, go to the roads on the edge of town and invite everyone you find to the wedding party.’
 
 
A king throws an elaborate wedding banquet.  Picture a big open courtyard with tables arranged in a huge square, set with beautiful plates and big goblets ready to hold only the finest wine.
 
When everything is ready, the king says, “go get the invited guests.”  But one by one, everyone has something else to do. Seriously?  Who would want to miss out on the party of the year?
 
And then, inexplicably, some of those invited not only turn down the invitation, but get this, they kill the messengers sent to bring them to the party!  In return, the angry king murders the murderers and escalates his fury by setting the whole city on fire.
 
Even so, the party’s all prepared and ready to go, so he tells the servants to go out and invite anyone they can find.  They spread out in every direction, looking for people who would have never been invited to a royal wedding.
 
The parable is a little gory in the middle, but at least it has a happy ending. 
 
Wrong!  That’s not where the story ends.
 
The servants do indeed fan out inviting everyone, “both evil and good.”  Nobody’s checking credentials.  Nobody’s asking whether you deserve to be there.  They just keep bringing people in until the place is full and the party is ready to begin.
 
But then, just in case we weren’t disturbed enough already by the murders and the fires and the so forth, the king enters and notices one of the guests isn’t wearing the right thing.  “Friend,” the king says, “how did you get in here without wedding clothes?” 
 
He just came in off the street.  He hadn’t been planning to attend a wedding that day.  What could he say?  So he said nothing.
 
Matthew doesn’t tell us why he wasn’t dressed properly or whether he was the only of the surprised guests not to be wearing appropriate attire.  
 
But for whatever reason, the king turns to his servants and orders them to “Bind his hands and feet and throw him into the farthest darkness.”  They take this man who had been invited in off the road and drag him away.
 
Imagine being there, in that lavishly decorated courtyard, sitting at that beautiful, crowded table watching it all unfold.  All of a sudden, the joyous, raucous party is silent.  People staring down at their plates, praying the king wouldn’t look over and see them sitting there too.  Wondering what they should do next.  Maybe some of them wondering if they’ll be next.
 
Quite a different picture, isn’t it?  And yet, it’s completely in character with what’s been happening the last day or two.
 
You may recall from my sermon last week, Jesus enters Jerusalem, goes straight to the Temple and overturns the tables of the money changers.  The religious leaders demand to know who gave him the authority to do these things, and Jesus’ response is to tell the chief priests and elders that prostitutes will enter God’s kingdom before you.
 
Then Jesus tells them another story.  This one is about tenant farmers who turn violent.  Here’s what happens:  The landowner sent three servants to collect what was owed by his tenants.  But they beat one servant, killed another, and stoned yet another.  So, the owner sent more servants, and they did the same thing again.  Finally, he sent his son.  He thought, surely, they won’t treat him this way too.  But they killed him as well.
 
Matthew reports that the religious leaders knew Jesus was talking about them, and that they wanted to arrest him, but were afraid of the crowds.
 
So, that’s when Jesus told them today’s parable with more servants.  More killing.  More violence.  
 
And then what follows is the Pharisees attempting to trap Jesus in his own words.  They ask whether it’s lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.  “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”  It’s brilliant.  Their trap fails.
 
So next the Sadducees come and they take a turn, with a bizarre question about a woman who marries a succession of seven brothers, each of whom dies.  When they’re all resurrected, whose wife will she be?  The crowd is astonished by Jesus’ brilliant answer.  The Sadducees fail.
 
One group after another.  Question after question, the conflict keeps escalating until we know that only a few days later, Jesus will be the one arrested.  Then bound.  Then taken away.  Falsely accused.  The one beaten and mocked and eventually executed by the state.
 
Matthew’s stories are about a world saturated with violence.  And you know what, sometimes that’s exactly how our world feels too.
 
Halimo Elmi lives in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, the heart of a Somali community that began taking shape more than 30 years ago as refugees fled civil war.
 
Why there?  If you know anything about Minnesota, you know that Lutherans there have two notable passions:  hosting potlucks and hosting refugees.
 
For decades, Lutherans, and other groups, in Minnesota have welcomed and resettled refugees, including thousands of Somalis, helping families find apartments and jobs, enroll their children in school, and begin building new lives.  Over time, Cedar-Riverside became home to a thriving Somali community.  
 
Halimo has lived in the United States for 25 years.  Her four children were born and raised here, and her oldest daughter is the first in their family to attend college.
 
This past winter, Halimo had two separate encounters with immigration agents who approached her children to question them.  And they weren’t the only ones questioned.  Suddenly, a community who had fled violence once again felt under siege.
 
Halimo joined five other Somali mothers – known collectively as the Mamas of Cedar – and they started taking five-hour shifts keeping watch in the lobbies of their apartment buildings.  Others joined in, walking the neighborhood and checking on neighbors who were increasingly afraid to leave their apartments.
 
Every morning they met, asking one another:  Who is missing?
Who haven’t we heard from?
 
At the same time, members of churches were meeting to talk about how they could respond too – meetings we have since learned in federal court documents that Homeland Security undercover agents attended too.
 
University Baptist, First Universalist Church, and St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church were among those and more who were targeted.  At Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, agents recorded the license plates of people who were there, gathering information about them and their families.
 
People were surveilled while meeting in church basements as well as libraries, restaurants, and parks, as they tried to figure out what they could do to help their frightened neighbors.
 
Like one of those Mamas of Cedar, Nasro Hassen.  She decided her contribution would be to make Somali tea and sambusas from scratch.  Every morning at 9 o’clock in the lobby of her building, she sought to soothe the nerves of people exchanging information and discussing their fears. 
 
Another mother, Idil Ahmed, gave her phone number to people afraid to leave their homes.  Soon she was getting calls from people she’d never met.  From someone who needed food delivered. Someone who needed a ride to a medical appointment.
 
Jennifer Arnold lives in the neighborhood too.  She began noticing fewer immigrant children at the bus stop.  So Jennifer organized other parents to give rides to school.  The first week, they drove 12 children.  The next week, 18.
 
Ordinary Minneapolitans showed up with whistles and iPhone cameras and their physical presence in the incredibly bitter cold.  And by the time it was over, 70,000 Minnesotans had been trained to serve as observers.  One church alone had more than 4,000 volunteers signed up to deliver groceries.  Across the city, thousands more drove children to school, gave people rides, stood outside schools and daycares, or simply kept watch over their neighbors.
 
They were not going to just keep their heads down and stare at their plates while their neighbors were literally dragged from their seats.  
 
Of course, not just Minneapolis.  This week here in North Park, a Haitian father was detained by ICE just as he was dropping his 2-year-old daughter off at daycare.  As he was being arrested, he managed to toss his car key and ID to a school employee.  The mother was too afraid to come pick up their daughter, so an advocate brought the child home.  Until Temporary Protected Status was canceled, they were in the country legally.  It’s a larger pattern in San Diego.  In just two weeks, there have been at least four immigration seizures near schools. 
 
And San Diego has its own response.  Unión del Barrio and the City Heights Defense Committee patrol neighborhoods and schools, watching and documenting what happens.  Faith volunteers accompany people to immigration hearings and ICE check-ins.  And this week, Fairmount Haitian Community Church began collecting food, diapers, hygiene supplies for families who are afraid to leave their homes.
 
So, go back with me to that crowded table.  Imagine being there with all those people invited in from alongside the roads.  I see every race and nationality.  Every language and religion.  Rich and poor.  Citizens and immigrants.  People dressed for a banquet and people wearing whatever they happened to have on when the invitation came.
 
Then imagine the king walking in and noticing that one man.  You hear the questions.  You watch the servants bind him.  You watch him being dragged away.  Around the table, you dare look up at the expressions on your neighbors’ face:
 
One has the knowing look of someone who’s already lived through violence and recognizes what is happening.
Someone else maybe thinking, that could be me next.
Someone else relieved it probably won’t be them.
Someone frightened and someone furious.
 
And yet among you, someone is thinking:
I know how to cook.
I have a car.
I have a phone.
I have a voice.
I can make tea.
Nobody at that table has nothing they can do because everyone has something they can do. 
 
In our world where violence keeps escalating, where people are literally bound and taken away, what are we going to do when we see it happening?  To me, that’s the question hanging over this whole dark series of stories in Matthew.
 
And Jesus answers it.  Right after this series of violent stories, after the attempts to trap him in his own words, the Pharisees try with one more question.  One of them, a legal expert, “tests” him:  “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
 
Jesus replies, “You must love the Lord your God with all heart, mind, soul, and strength.  And you must love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
 
You know, I hadn’t really paid attention before to where those most important words of Jesus appear.  And I was really shocked to realize just this week that this is exactly where Matthew puts those words.  Among the servants have been beaten and killed.  A city that has been burned.  A man who has been bound and thrown out of a banquet.  
 
Not while Jesus and the disciples are walking peacefully through the countryside.  But right in the middle of everything that is real and frightening in the world because that’s when loving our neighbors matters most.  
 
In response to escalating violence, the question isn’t whether we can stop all of it.  The question is what happens when we see what happens. 
 
Do we look down at our plates?  Or do we look across the crowded table and each of us figure out what can do to love all of our neighbors?
 

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
  
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
September 13, 2026
 
“He Kept Going Back”
 
Matthew 21: 28-32 – Common English Bible
“What do you think? A man had two sons. Now he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’
29 “‘No, I don’t want to,’ he replied. But later he changed his mind and went.
30 “The father said the same thing to the other son, who replied, ‘Yes, sir.’ But he didn’t go.
31 “Which one of these two did his father’s will?”
They said, “The first one.”
Jesus said to them, “I assure you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you. 32 For John came to you on the righteous road, and you didn’t believe him. But tax collectors and prostitutes believed him. Yet even after you saw this, you didn’t change your hearts and lives and you didn’t believe him.
 
  
Last week Jesus and his followers were on the road heading to Jerusalem when he stopped to tell a strange story about workers in a vineyard.  His message – the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. 
 
Today they’ve arrived.  Think triumphal entry into Jerusalem – the Palm Sunday ride on a donkey while crowds spread branches.
 
But Jesus doesn’t bask in the glow.  He heads straight to the Temple and famously overturns the tables of the money changers.  And in the middle of all that commotion, children are running around shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
 
The chief priests and elders are furious, so they demand to know:   “By what authority are you doing these things?  Who gave you this authority?”
 
Jesus tries to tell them.  He asks a question they refuse to answer.  So Jesus said, “Fine.  I’m not going to tell you either.  But I will tell you this.  A man had two sons.  He told the first one, ‘go work in the vineyard.’  The son said, ‘No, I don’t want to’ but later changed his mind and went.  The second son said, ‘Yes, sir!’  But he didn’t go.”
 
Then Jesus asked, “Which one did the will of his father?”  They all agreed, “the first one.”
 
Actions speak louder than words.  A perfect pairing for our reading from the Book of James.  “God-talk without God-walk is outrageous nonsense.”  Finally, an easy parable.  The end.
 
But wait.  If that’s the point of the story and they got the answer right, why doesn’t Jesus finish and move on?
 
No, Jesus keeps talking, and we quickly discover this is far from a simple morality tale.  He tells them bluntly, “Tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you.”
 
He explained, “Tax collectors and prostitutes believed John the Baptist.  But you didn’t.  Even after you saw this happening with your own eyes, you didn’t change your hearts and lives.”
 
Even after you saw what?  What exactly were they supposed to have seen?
 
Lo Sai Wu, known as Rose, grew up in Hong Kong in a devout Christian family.  They were Anglicans.  She took an early interest too. She was particularly taken by one priest who emphasized that if you follow Jesus, you have to pay attention to what is happening in the world around you and to your neighbors.
 
As an adult, she first put this into practice as a teacher and then a kindergarten principal.  But Rose wanted to explore her faith more deeply, so in 1983 she enrolled in a Hong Kong seminary. Her traditional upbringing was rocked when she encountered women theologians asking questions she had never thought to ask.  Like, what do women see in scripture that men miss, or don’t want to see?
 
She pursued further education in the UK and US and eventually began teaching at the seminary where she started, where she developed a reputation for starting trouble.
 
In fact, one young woman raised in the same kind of traditional home as Rose was determined that, whatever else happened, she would never take a class from Dr. Wu.
 
Rose taught courses in feminist theology and ethics. But notably, she didn’t want her students just reading textbooks. She wanted them to hear the stories of people they might never listen to otherwise.
 
She began with women in the church.  Imagine classes really listening to women speak honestly of their experiences in the church.  But she soon realized she needed to add other voices, like gay men and lesbians.  And soon after, transgender people too.  She kept expanding boundaries.
 
One year, Rose decided she should push the boundaries even further and have her students go where the people were, not expect them to come to the school.  So she took a class on an outing to an organization called Midnight Blue, where the seminarians could listen and learn from sex workers.
 
Rose acknowledged this was difficult for her too.  As a feminist, she had strong ideas about sex work.  The exploitation and trafficking.  But she had come to realize that even feminism could make assumptions about people without actually listening to them, which is why she knew she needed to listen even more.
And it was there that she first met Leo, who years later would introduce themself as Little White Fox.
 
Back to Jesus and the chief priests and elders.  He told them that “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you.”  We could hear that and imagine Jesus implying that they’re the worst of the worst.  OMG.  Even them!  In fact, Eugene Peterson in The Message calls them “crooks and whores.”  It may be clever, but it’s not in the text.
 
Jesus simply says, “tax collectors and prostitutes.”  But the temptation to add a judgment is so powerful.  Even the respected Common English Bible adds a disappointing footnote:  “Together, they represent disreputable sinners in contrast to the upstanding chief priests and elders.”
 
Except Jesus never calls them disreputable sinners.  And he certainly doesn’t call the chief priests and elders upstanding.  Why read something into Jesus’ statement that isn’t there?
 
You may not recall that prostitution is part of Jesus’ own family tree.  Tamar and Rahab are both right there in Matthew chapter 1 in that long genealogy we usually just skip over.
 
Tamar:  The one, of whom the patriarch Judah, caught with his proverbial pants down, said, “She’s more righteous than I am.”
 
Rahab:  Two Israelite spies sneak into the city of Jericho to scout it out.  They aren’t very good at it and are almost immediately discovered by the king.  Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, hides them on her roof, sends the authorities in the wrong direction, and then figures out how to get them safely out of the city.
 
Feminist biblical scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky sees something easily overlooked:  Rahab is a prostitute and is the only one in the story who understands what God is doing.  She tells the spies, “I know that the LORD has given you the land.”  They have come to Jericho looking for information, and she’s the one who tells them what they need to know and makes their mission possible.
 
In the Book of James, Rahab’s name comes up again.  Just eight
verses past where we stopped reading this morning, she is offered as an exemplar of faith.
 
After the famous line where James says that faith without works is dead, he highlights two people, two examples of genuine faith:  Abraham the patriarch.  And Rahab the prostitute.
 
He doesn’t downplay or ignore the label.  James says that Rahab the prostitute was shown to be righteous by what she did.  And just think, of all the people in biblical history, to choose her is quite a statement.
 
Jesus isn’t telling the religious authorities, “Even the worst of the worst sinners are getting into the kingdom ahead of you.”   No.  Look closely at the text.  Jesus is telling the chief priests and elders:  “Pay attention to them.  You could learn something from the lives of these prostitutes.”
 
Imagine their smug indignation, their stuttering attempt to respond to an idea so repellent to them.  How dare you!  But Jesus means it.  “Yes.  Absolutely.” 
 
“Tax collector” and “prostitute” simply tell us something about these people.  “Disreputable sinner,” or even worse, “crooks and whores,” is the judgment others put on top of it.  But not Jesus.
 
Yet once a label becomes a judgment, we’ve already decided there’s nothing “those people” could possibly teach us.  Little White Fox taught Rose Wu just how wrong that judgment could be.  Fox wasn’t simply selling sex.
 
Fox listened to people, touched people others might recoil from, including a man with a severe skin disease who was ashamed of his body.  Fox treated him with genuine respect and, as Rose described it, sacrificial love.
 
Rose was the professor, the theologian, the expert who had spent decades challenging people to question their assumptions.  But to her surprise, Fox challenged her assumptions too.  She later declared that she saw Christ in Little White Fox and that the encounter “transformed” her.
 
Back at the Temple, Jesus is standing in front of people who have spent their whole lives studying scripture.  They are the religious authorities who know their theology and yet completely miss the point. 
 
Jesus asks, “Which son did the will of his father?”  Without hesitation they answer, “The first.”  But when John appeared right in front of them “in the way of righteousness,” they didn’t believe him.  They are professional “Yes, sir” people, but when it mattered, their answer was no.
 
They were sure they knew who had said yes to God and who had said no.  But they got it backwards.  And once again, Jesus teaches:  Those who are first will be last.  Those who are last will be first.
 
Yet the scandal remains.  The chief priests and elders would rather be right about “those people” than recognize what God is doing through them.  They would rather defend the boundaries they have drawn than admit that God has already crossed them.  They would rather miss God than be taught by a prostitute.
 
So what does this text say to us?  Maybe it starts here: What am I not seeing because I don’t want to change my mind?  And one more simple question:  Who have I already decided has nothing to teach me?
 
We all have someone or some group.  Someone whose politics make us stop listening.  Someone whose religion makes us suspicious.  Someone whose education, class, or way of seeing the world makes it easy to assume that whatever wisdom they have, we already know better.
 
But pay attention:  Anyone who acts justly, who loves mercy, and who walks humbly with God has something to teach us.  
 
In fact, the people you’re most certain couldn’t teach you anything about God may be exactly the ones we need to teach us all a thing or two.
 

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
September 6, 2026
 
“He Kept Going Back”
 
Matthew 20: 1-16 – Common English Bible
“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 After he agreed with the workers to pay them a denarion,[a] he sent them into his vineyard.
3 “Then he went out around nine in the morning and saw others standing around the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I’ll pay you whatever is right.’ 5 And they went.
“Again around noon and then at three in the afternoon, he did the same thing. 6 Around five in the afternoon he went and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you just standing around here doing nothing all day long?’
7 “‘Because nobody has hired us,’ they replied.
“He responded, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the workers and give them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and moving on finally to the first.’ 9 When those who were hired at five in the afternoon came, each one received a denarion. 10 Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarion. 11 When they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 ‘These who were hired last worked one hour, and they received the same pay as we did even though we had to work the whole day in the hot sun.’
13 “But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I did you no wrong. Didn’t I agree to pay you a denarion? 14 Take what belongs to you and go. I want to give to this one who was hired last the same as I give to you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?’ 16 So those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last.”
 
 
In my last sermon, a man came to Jesus wanting to know what good thing he must do to have eternal life.  Jesus told him to keep the commandments.  “I’m already doing that.  What am I still missing?”
 
“Then go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor and come follow me.”  But the man walked away sad. 
 
Peter watched this unfold, “Look, Jesus, we’ve left behind everything to follow you.  What will we have?”  He replied, “Many who are first will be last.  And many who are last will be first.” 
 
Peter left unsaid what most of us would have probably thought: “but if I gave more, shouldn't I get more?”  Jesus then told this parable:  “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who hired workers for his vineyard.”
 
Here’s the story:  The landowner goes to the marketplace early in the morning.  Then he goes back at 9 o'clock and hires some more.  He goes back at Noon.  Then again, at 3 o'clock.  And at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, with hardly any working day left, he goes back to the marketplace one more time. 
 
Each time there are still people waiting to be hired.  He asks them, “Why are you standing around all day doing nothing?”  
 
Preachers have offered all kinds of explanations for why nobody hired them.  Maybe they were known as the lazy, shiftless type. Maybe they were older or disabled.  Maybe it’s like being chosen last in gym class – something I was quite familiar with growing up.
 
But Jesus never says the others were better, younger, more efficient workers.  He lets them answer for themselves:  “Because nobody has hired us.”  That's all we know.  But as we all know, it’s often not that simple.
 
Elizabeth Cotten was born in rural North Carolina sometime around 1893 – no one really knows.  Everyone called her Libba.  She started working for a nearby family at 9, cooking, cleaning, caring for their children. By 12 she was a live-in domestic worker in Chapel Hill.  But in the midst of all that hard work, Libba had a passion.
 
When she was about 7 years old, she snuck her older brother’s banjo down from the wall.  She was left-handed, so teaching herself as she went, she turned it upside down, playing the bass strings with her fingers and the melody with her thumb.  She took her earnings of 75 cents a month to buy her own guitar. 
 
She liked playing ragtime, folk songs, and the blues.  But the Baptist deacons in the church considered her music “worldly.”  Because Libba took her faith seriously, she put her guitar aside and rarely touched another for decades. 
 
When she was in her sixties, Libba took a job at a department store selling dolls.  One day she helped reunite a little girl who had become separated from her mother.  The mother was so taken with Libba’s kindness that she offered her a job.  And so Libba went back to the work she had done for much of her life: cooking, cleaning, and caring for children.
 
But this was no ordinary household.  Call it extraordinary good fortune.  Call it providence.  Somehow Libba found herself working in this house of Ruth and Charles Seeger.  Their home was filled with joy and music.  There were instruments everywhere, and their children grew up surrounded by some of the best folk musicians of the day.
 
One day by herself she picked up a guitar, just for a minute, and began to play a song she had written when she was only 12 years old called “Freight Train.” The Seegers heard music coming from another room and went to investigate.  They found Libba playing a guitar upside down and marveled at her talent.  Eventually Mike Seeger began recording her, calling her distinctive method “Cotten-picking.”

I thought you’d like to hear it.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DCWfBkMSI&list=RDR2DCWfBkMSI&start_radio=1 
 
In the meantime, while touring in England, Peggy Seeger taught it to some musicians.  They recorded it and it became a hit.  Soon it was being performed by all kinds of people – even by John Lennon before he was a Beatle.  
 
A lot of people were making money, except Libba.  Others had claimed authorship of her song.  Pete Seeger helped challenge that, and eventually the dispute was settled out of court.  Libba finally received some credit for the song she had written as a child.  But only one-third of the songwriting royalties.
 
So, back to Jesus’ story.  Evening comes, the workday is over, and it's time to get paid.  In Deuteronomy, a poor laborer is required to be paid before sundown because the family depends on those wages to eat.
 
But the landowner adds an unusual instruction.  “Begin with the last ones hired.”  So, the 5 o’clock people step forward.  They had worked for maybe an hour and each of them receives a denarion.  A full day’s wage.  More than they would have ever expected.
 
Now imagine that you’ve been working since early morning and you’re standing at the back of the line watching.  What are you thinking?  Jesus tells us: “They expected to receive more.”  Of course they did.  And they were furious when they didn’t.  But perhaps there's more to their complaint than we first realize.
 
The Common English Bible says, the early morning people complained that those who worked only one hour “received the same pay as we did, even though we had to work the whole day in the hot sun.”  That’s a fair point.
 
But the original Greek says something that our translation doesn't quite capture.  They say to the landowner, literally:  “You have made them equal to us.”
 
Equal.  And suddenly Jesus’ story is more than worker pay.  The question becomes, “Why does it bother you that they have been made equal to you?”
 
Heather Cox Richardson is a brilliant historian who traces a struggle that runs through the whole of American history:  two fundamentally different visions of what this country is meant to be. 

One begins with the conviction that all people are created equal and have a right to determine their own lives.  The other, as Richardson puts it, says that “some people are better than others and [believe they] have a right to rule.”
 
From slavery through Jim Crow, that hierarchy was written into our laws and institutions.  But when laws began to change, the old assumptions didn’t disappear.  Today, when a Black woman with a PhD and twenty more years of experience gets the job instead of a white man, some insist it must be DEI.  
 
The language is “merit” and “fairness,” but the claim underneath is much older: white Christian men belong on top.  And if you believe that is your rightful place, equality feels like persecution.
 
We hear language that if immigrants succeed, we’re being “replaced.”  Well, once equality threatens the status someone believes they deserve, then keeping others beneath you can feel righteous and the means become increasingly dangerous and even violent.
 
“You have made them equal to us” is the scandal Jesus exposes because the kingdom of heaven refuses the logic that some insist is deserved, perhaps even natural.
 
And the landowner replies:  “Friend, I did you no wrong.  Didn’t I agree to pay you a denarion?”
 
He hasn't broken his promise.  Their wages haven't been reduced.  Nothing has been taken away from them.  What they no longer have is more than the people who came after them.
 
Just like today:

• If someone else gains the right to vote, I haven't lost my vote.
• If someone else gains the right to marry the person they love, my marriage hasn't been diminished.
• If a woman has the same power and authority I have, mine hasn't been taken away.

 
What I've “lost” is the guarantee that I will always have an advantage.  And that it was meant to be that way.
 
This week we remember the icon Gloria Steinem.  She put it this way:  “Our society needs to be linked, not ranked.”
 
“You have made them equal to us.”  Jesus says this is what the kingdom of heaven is like.  Now this is not some heavenly afterlife, but what we pray for every day:  “on earth as it is in heaven.”  Where being hired first doesn't put you above anyone else.  And where being left standing until 5 o'clock doesn't put you beneath them.
 
For most of Libba Cotton’s life, people were perfectly willing to hire her – to clean their houses and care for their children.
 
No one was going to hire a woman like her to play the guitar until the Seegers discovered a gift that had been there all along.  And even then, someone thought they had a right to take it.   
 
But at 90 years old, she won a Grammy.  Not because she had suddenly become talented.  She just wasn’t hired until 5 o’clock.  
 
But there’s still something bizarre about this story that isn’t yet explained.  Why does the landowner keep going back? 
 
At 6 in the morning, he needs workers for his vineyard.  At 9 and maybe even at Noon it makes sense that he goes back again.  
 
But by 3 and certainly by 5 o'clock, the question has changed.  It’s no longer simply, “Does my vineyard need another worker?”  It’s become, “Does another worker need a denarion?”
 
When we first wrestle with this passage, it doesn’t feel quite fair.  It doesn’t feel quite right.  Until you see the motivation.  “I want to give the same to the one who was hired last as I give to you.”  And then he asks, “Are you resentful because I’m generous?”  
 
Think about it.  Has his generosity to somebody else really changed what he gave you?  Did it become insufficient because you saw that person receive one too?  No.  What changed was your place in relation to somebody else.
 
And this is how it is in the Kingdom of Heaven.  “Those who are last will be first.  And those who are first will be last.”
 
With that line on a recruiting poster it’s hard to believe anyone would sign up to follow Jesus.  Except when we know deep down, he’s right. 
 
Because the question of fairness isn't, “Did everybody get exactly what they earned?” 
 
The question he asks of his followers is:  “Did everybody go home that night with enough to feed their family?”

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
August 23, 2026
 
“Something Has to Move”
 

Matthew 19: 16-22 – Common English Bible
A man approached him and said, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to have eternal life?”
17 Jesus said, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There’s only one who is good. If you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments.”
18 The man said, “Which ones?”
Then Jesus said, “Don’t commit murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. 19 Honor your father and mother,[a] and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”[b]
20 The young man replied, “I’ve kept all these. What am I still missing?”
21 Jesus said, “If you want to be complete, go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come follow me.”
22 But when the young man heard this, he went away saddened, because he had many possessions.
 
 
A few weeks ago, we heard Jesus say to his disciples, “All who want to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”
 
Earlier we heard Jesus say, “Those who find their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives because of me will find them.” 
 
And before today’s passage is over, Jesus will say, “Many who are first will be last.  And many who are last will be first.”  These can all feel a little… ethereal, like, really hard to actually wrap our heads around.
 
Perhaps that’s why last week in chapter 18, Jesus gave a very plain visual to answer the disciples’ question “who is the greatest.”  He put a child right in the middle of them.  “Unless you humble yourself like this child, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  
 
But his object lesson failed.  Because here in chapter 19, people are bringing children to Jesus and the disciples scold them!  It’s just 30 verses later and Jesus has to tell them again!  “Bring the children to come to me.  Don't forbid them, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”
 
And so it was just then that an inquiring man approaches wanting to know, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to have eternal life?” 
 
Jesus asks him about keeping the commandments – the ones about how you treat people.  The man replies, “I’ve obeyed all these.”  And asks, “What am I still missing?”  Let that sit there a moment.
 
Jesus replies:  “If you want to be complete, go, sell what you have and give your possessions to the poor.”  I love that in the Common English Bible, the word is complete, not perfect.  If you want to be complete… 
 
He offers this particular man a very concrete answer:  “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.  Then you will have treasure in heaven.  And come follow me.” 
 
Would anyone prefer instead something a little more ethereal?
 
We often treat today’s text as an isolated, particularly difficult saying of Jesus about wealth.  And it is difficult.  But it isn’t isolated at all.  Jesus has been turning all kinds of things upside down all along.  That’s what he’s still doing.
 
So what does this look like in a real life?  Meet John M. Perkins.
 
John was born at the height of Jim Crow into a sharecropping family in Mississippi, in 1930.  His mother died of malnutrition when he was just an infant.  He dropped out of school in the third grade.  Needless to say, he had a hard life.
 
His older brother Clyde left home to fight in World War II.  He was one of nearly 900,000 Black Americans who served during the war.  But afterward, returning home as a veteran was especially dangerous.
 
The Equal Justice Initiative says that in the years following the war, “no one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than Black veterans.”  They were beaten, attacked, lynched, and killed because they represented a challenge to the racial order they had come home to.
 
Clyde survived the war, but soon after he returned home, he was shot and killed by a white police officer.  At the time, John was 16 years old.
 
He had enough.  At 17, John left home for California and began to build a life that Mississippi told him he could never have.
 
He found good work here, married Vera Mae, started a family, and built a measure of security and success he had rarely seen and never known for himself.
 
By his own account, they had nearly achieved the American dream.  John had built the life he came to California looking for.  Then one day he heard his three-year-old son walk through the door singing.
 
Spencer had begun attending Sunday School and a Good News Club.  Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world...
 
John grew up never hearing that Jesus loved Black children like him.  And now he was hearing his three-year-old son singing, “You are precious in his sight.”
 
He wanted to know more, so he got a Bible and began going to Sunday school.  He discovered a Jesus very different from the Christianity he had seen around him growing up.  At age 27, he became a Christian.
 
The more he studied the Bible, the more he wanted to practice it. He began by teaching children.  Then he worked with teenagers, including young people who had come out to California to escape the poverty and racism of the South.  They could identify with the same lack of opportunity John had known.
 
A few years later, John became convinced that following Jesus meant leaving behind the comfort and success he had built.  He felt called to go back to Mississippi.
 
With Vera Mae and their children, John went home.  It was 1960, just as Mississippi began to burn.  But he returned home because he had changed, not because Mississippi had changed.
 
Initially he went back to tell people about Jesus.  But something was still missing.  It didn't take long to discover that telling a child she was precious in Jesus' sight wasn't enough if she was hungry and living in inadequate housing.  If she was poorly educated and growing up with little hope of escaping poverty.
 
So John became involved in voter registration and economic boycotts, challenging white businesses that depended upon Black customers while refusing to hire Black workers.
 
He and Vera Mae also started a daycare center and organized youth programs.  They helped create a cooperative farm and a thrift store.  They opened a health center and an adult education program.  Vera Mae helped establish the first Head Start program in their county.
 
He was trying to build a community that looked like those words were true:  Jesus loves the little children. 
 
Years later, John would describe his way of following Jesus with three words:  Relocation. Redistribution. Reconciliation.
 
Redistribution.  That’s today's gospel.  Not just “Sell what you have.”  Jesus doesn't tell the man simply to let it go.  But also, very concretely, “give it to the poor.”  He tells him where what he has should go.  Something is supposed to move.
 
To the inquiring man he says, everything.  Not “Give something” or “Give generously” or “Give ten percent.”  And the man walks away sad.  Maybe not forever, but in that moment, he just can’t.
 
Throughout Matthew we have encountered Jesus turning our ordinary calculations upside down.  Except now Jesus has brought the reversal into a place that feels awfully personal.  Our money.  
 
The question is:  Does Jesus tell every person who follows him to sell everything they own?  Not to diminish the challenge of this passage, but does Matthew present Jesus’ words to this man as a universal command that every disciple must sell everything?
 
In Matthew, Peter still has a house.  Women disciples use their resources to provide for Jesus.  And near the end of the gospel, we meet Joseph of Arimathea whom Matthew describes with two words: disciple and rich.  And with his resources, Joseph provides his own new tomb after the crucifixion.
 
But that doesn’t make what Jesus says about wealth any less disconcerting.  Because after the man walks away, Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “It will be very hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.”  As hard as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
 
The disciples are stunned.  “Then who can be saved?”  Jesus looks at them and says, “For human beings this is impossible.  But all things are possible for God.” 
 
Now that is remarkable grace.  But it isn't an escape.  The love of God does not leave us unchanged.  Jesus has already told us that to follow him is to deny ourselves and take up our cross.  To follow Jesus is to relinquish our entitlement to put ourselves first.  Thankfully, God makes possible what we cannot seem to do on our own.
 
One way to look at this passage is to ask what might possess us?  Our money, yes, but what about also the ladders we climb, security, reputation.  And there’s truth in that to explore.
 
But Liberation theologians have long warned Christians about turning concrete biblical language about poverty into metaphors.
 
Gustavo Gutiérrez taught that when poverty becomes simply an inward attitude of detachment from possessions, it “leads to comforting and tranquilizing conclusions.”  
 
Jesus isn’t simply interested in whether this man can detach himself from his wealth.  Jesus puts the poor in the sentence for a reason.  Something among us is supposed to move.
 
He makes all of us ask:  What am I actually doing with my money?  What does my neighbor need, my community?  What does love require me to relinquish so that someone else has enough? 
 
And maybe it actually is literally everything.  That’s for you and Jesus to discuss.
 
John Perkins believed that if those children really were precious in Jesus' sight, something had to move.  John literally relocated and spent the rest of his life working to redistribute opportunity, power, and possessions.  And he worked for reconciliation across the racial divisions that had shaped his life.
 
For him, this was what the kingdom of heaven looked like here and now.  John died just a few months ago in March at the age of 95 – still actively living out that commitment.
 
Perhaps the question the man asked Jesus is the question we can carry with us today:  What am I still missing?
 
Is it about what I have?
Is it about who doesn't have enough?
Is it about what love calls us to relinquish?
 
Ultimately, who are you willing to follow.
 

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
August 16, 2026
 
“You Already Are Somebody”
 
Matthew 18: 1-5 – Common English Bible
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 Then he called a little child over to sit among the disciples, 3 and said, “I assure you that if you don’t turn your lives around and become like this little child, you will definitely not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

 
Two weeks ago, a Canaanite woman refused to be dismissed. Jesus told her, “Great is your faith.”  Last week, Jesus called the disciples, “You of little faith.”
 
Peter correctly answered a question about who Jesus is:  “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” But a few verses later, Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.”
 
Great faith.  Little faith.  The disciple who gets it right and then immediately gets it wrong.  It’s all more than a little bit disorienting.  So, as they try to understand what all of this means, this week the disciples ask Jesus:  “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 
 
We’ve heard that question before in Mark and Luke.  But in those gospels, the question came after the disciples were caught arguing with one another about who is the greatest.  Not in Matthew.  Here they simply ask the question.  And by now, perhaps they knew enough to expect that Jesus' answer might surprise them.  And it did.
 
He said, “Those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”  To our ears, it sounds quintessentially Jesus.  Of course, that’s something he would say.  To the disciples, they were still figuring this all out.
 
But let me first be clear that this isn’t about some heavenly afterlife.  The kingdom of heaven is about the kind of world we live in now. 
 
Here’s a line I’ve used before to help understand:  “not pie in the sky by and by when we die but something sound on the ground while we’re still around.”   
 
So when they ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” we’re talking now.  Not someday. 
 
Jesus calls the little child over:  “You must turn your lives around and become like this little child.”
 
Jesus knows we must turn around because we so often look in the wrong direction.  And he then gestures and answers their question:  “those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest.” 
 
Who are we accustomed to looking at as the greatest?  The ones with the most trophies or awards or degrees.  The ones at the top of their fields of study.  We measure by money.  The ones whose names everybody knows.  They are really somebody.
 
But turn around, look over here.  Jesus may have a surprise for you.
 
One of Henri Nouwen’s jobs at the monastery was washing raisins.  He wasn’t a monk.  He was a successful author and professor at Yale University.  He was also a psychologist and Catholic priest.  But in 1974 he stepped away for seven months to live in a monastery in upstate New York – Genesee.  He entered the monastic rhythm of work and prayer because he wanted to learn how to simply be with God. 
 
But even while washing raisins and kneading dough in the monastery’s bakery, he couldn’t help wanting the abbot to approve of him.  His attention kept being drawn away by his nagging need for the monks to like him.  He yearned for his work to be more useful.  He was gifted at teaching and writing and counseling.  But manual labor, not so much. 
 
He found the repetitive rhythm of prayer and work more tedious than spiritually profound.  Ultimately, he discovered how badly he needed to know that people liked him, valued what he offered, and needed what he could give – to be recognized as somebody.
 
And he realized that silence doesn’t remove all that insecurity.  In fact, it makes it harder to avoid.  And so, he often found himself lonely, disappointed, and frustrated with himself. 
 
And yet he also spoke of those months as truly transformative.  There were deep friendships.  Moments of grace.  A growing awareness that his worth might have nothing to do with how useful he was.
 
After seven months, he returned to Yale and continued to write and teach but found himself still wrestling with those questions.  Eventually he left Yale and after a period of searching about what might come next, Harvard invited him to teach there.  The man who was trying to learn that he didn't need accomplishments to tell him who he was kept becoming more accomplished.  And yet, still unhappy.
 
He could so beautifully tell other people about prayer, community, and the love of God, but he remained less certain how to receive it himself.  
 
After only a couple of years, Nouwen left Harvard.  He moved to France and lived for a time with the L'Arche community.  Eventually he became pastor of the L'Arche Daybreak community outside of Toronto – a place where people with intellectual disabilities live together with those who assist them.  
 
At Daybreak, Henri was asked to help care for a young man named Adam Arnett.  Adam couldn't speak and needed assistance with nearly every part of his daily routine.  Every morning, Henri would wake Adam and carry him to the bath.  Wash him.  Shave him.  Brush his teeth.  Comb his hair.  Dress him.  Walk him slowly to the kitchen and feed him breakfast.  The whole routine could take an hour and a half. 
 
At first, Henri worried the whole time.  That Adam couldn't tell him if the bath water was too hot or too cold.  He worried he might cut him while shaving.  Eventually, he stopped being afraid of getting everything wrong.  And when Adam had a seizure, Henri accepted that he simply had to stop doing everything else that needed to be done and stay with him until it passed.
 
Henri had arrived thinking he was the one with something to give Adam.  But in Adam's presence, Henri discovered what it was like simply to be received, not for what he could do, but for who he was.
 
Years later, Henri would call Adam his teacher, his friend, and his guide.  The professor had become the student, learning what he had struggled his whole life to believe:  You don't become somebody.  You already are somebody.  You are beloved.
 
Nouwen had actually written bestselling books about this for years.  But it was Adam who finally took what Henri knew how to say and helped him actually experience it.
 
Jesus said, turn around.  Maybe the problem isn't simply that we've been off the mark about who we call great.  Maybe we've confused greatness with worth.
 
Children were certainly loved in Jesus' world, but childhood wasn’t idealized in the same way as today.  Jesus isn't pointing to an adorable little face, full of curiosity and wonder, and telling the disciples to recover their inner child.
 
When Jesus puts the child in the middle, he points to their place in the world.  They had no status of their own.  No authority.  A child stood near the bottom of the ladder of social status.
 
And Jesus reverses it.  The one near the bottom becomes his picture of the greatest.  That kind of reversal runs all through Jesus' teaching.  The last will be first.  The first will be last.  The one who wants to be great must become servant of all.
 
In the kingdom of heaven, people who have been pushed down are lifted up.  People whose voices have been ignored are heard.   Reversal is justice.  But is the kingdom simply a world in which the people at the bottom finally get moved to the top?  Maybe.
 
But if that's all that happens, we still have the same ladder. We've just changed who gets to stand on the highest rung.
 
What if the kingdom goes even deeper than reversing places?  What if Jesus is freeing human worth from the ladder altogether?
 
There are differences among us.  Some hold positions of great power.  Some carry enormous responsibility.  Some achieve things most of us never will.  Some are honored and remembered for what they've given to the world.  But none of those things makes a life more valuable.
 
So maybe humility isn’t, “I need to move myself lower on the ladder” but discovering that my place on it cannot tell me what I am worth.
 
And the reverse of that is true too:  Failures, weaknesses, dependency, or mistakes don't make my life less valuable.  You are already somebody.
 
There is one more thing I learned about Henri just this week.  Having read many of his books and admired his teaching for years, I only now discovered that years before Genesee, before Harvard, before Adam, Henri Nouwen was watching television and saw civil rights demonstrators in Alabama being attacked.
 
He later told the story of lying awake that night, unable to get those images out of his mind, wondering, “Why doesn't somebody do something?” And then it occurred to him: he was somebody.
 
In the morning he got into his Volkswagen and drove south.  He joined the march from Selma to Montgomery just in time to walk the last day and was transformed by hearing Dr. King speak.
 
Henri didn’t lead the march.  He wasn't remembered for being there.  He simply went and stood with them.
 
The disciples asked Jesus who is the greatest.  He said, “You must turn your lives around.”  And maybe the turn is to stop worrying about where we stand and simply become willing to stand with one another.

​
Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
  
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
August 9, 2026
 
“The Cost and Joy of Mercy”
 
Matthew 16: 24-26 – Common English Bible
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. 25 All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me will find them. 26 Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives?”

 
Last week a Canaanite woman came to Jesus, pleading for mercy for her daughter.  Completely out of character, Jesus didn’t respond.  Until he made it worse.  She pleaded again and he insulted her – talking about not taking food out of the mouths of children to give to dogs.  But she refused to be dismissed and argued back.  Jesus praised her and said, “Woman, you have great faith.”
 
On the other hand, today he will tell his own disciples they have “little faith.”  And then he will call one of them Satan.
 
But before we get there, for weeks now, we've been following Jesus through Galilee.  He has been touching people others wouldn't touch.  Sitting at tables with people that respectable religion had rejected.  Repeatedly teaching and showing by his actions, “I’m after mercy, not religion.”
 
But in the midst of all these acts of mercy, Jesus has also been dropping easily overlooked clues about what is to come.  When someone asked why his disciples don't fast, Jesus says there will come a day when the “bridegroom is taken away from them.”  It’s just odd enough of a reference to simply ignore.
 
But there have been other warnings.  Like when he sends the disciples out on their own, he warns them that following him may get them dragged before councils and governors, betrayed even by their own families.  We may think he’s just being a little more dramatic than necessary, so we just say… thank you?
 
You may remember that after Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, some of the religious leaders walk away and begin conspiring about how to destroy him.
 
You see, there have been clues all along that something is coming.  But with all the crowds and miracles, the disciples seem not to have put the pieces together.
 
Here we are now in chapter 16 and Jesus takes the disciples aside.  He asks them, “Who do people say that I am?”  They tell him Elijah or one of the prophets.  Then Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?”
 
Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  “You got it, Peter!”  And then he tells Peter that he will build his church on this rock and will give Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
 
But then, for the first time Jesus tells them plainly what to expect, in case they’ve missed the clues.  He is going to Jerusalem. He will suffer and be rejected.  He will be killed.  And on the third day he will be raised.
 
But immediately Peter rebukes him.  “No, Lord. This must never happen to you.”  And Jesus responds: “Get behind me, Satan.”  Peter believes Jesus is the Messiah. He just doesn't believe a Messiah should end up dead.
 
Jesus then laid it out plainly, “All who want to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.  All who want to save their lives will lose them.  But all who lose their lives because of me will find them.”
 
The story jumps to six days later.  Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a mountain.  In an extraordinary moment, Jesus transfigures in front of them.  His face shines like the sun.  His clothes become dazzling white.  Moses and Elijah appear.
 
Peter said let's build three shrines here!  But instead, Jesus leads them back down the mountain.  And waiting for them at the bottom is yet another desperate parent.  A father whose child is suffering terribly.  The man had already asked the disciples for help but they were unable to help him.  So, the father comes to Jesus, pleading “Lord, have mercy on my son.”  And Jesus heals the boy.
 
Later the disciples ask him:  “Why couldn't we do it?”  Jesus tells them:  “Because of your little faith.”  This is just two chapters after the Canaanite woman.  The outsider the disciples wanted Jesus to send away.  Jesus told her, “Woman, great is your faith.”
 
Great faith.  Little faith.  The outsider and the disciples.  Then, almost immediately, Jesus tells the disciples a second time:  “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands. They will kill him. And on the third day he will be raised.”
 
The first time Peter rebuked him for saying that.  This time nobody argues.  Matthew simply says: “They were heartbroken.”
 
I want to go back to “Take up your cross.”  Too many Christians have misused these words.  How many times have you heard, “This must simply be your cross to bear”?  Telling people they should endure suffering they never should have to endure.
 
Like Bridget, who endured years of abuse from her husband and eventually found the courage to leave.  But her pastor urged her to go back.  Her husband was, after all, a “good man,” active in the church.  Bridget later said, “I was told that this was my cross to bear, and to get on with my marriage.”
 
No.  Abuse is not a cross God gives somebody to carry.
 
You may know someone who lives with chronic pain or has been diagnosed with cancer or ALS and somebody along the way has tried to be helpful and said, “I guess this is just the cross God has given you to carry.”
 
No.  Pain, illness and disease are not crosses God gives anyone to bear.
 
Because Jesus doesn't tell suffering people that their suffering is good for them.  “Take up your cross” isn't an invitation to accept suffering.  It's an invitation to follow Jesus. 
 
The cross isn't the point.  Mercy is.  But Peter wants Jesus to be the Messiah without any of those consequences.
 
Óscar Romero learned just how costly mercy could be when he was named the Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977.  He was chosen because, unlike many of the more liberation-minded priests, he was known as generally cautious, conservative, unlikely to cause much trouble.
 
Then, just weeks after Romero became archbishop, his dear friend Father Rutilio Grande was murdered along a road in the Salvadoran countryside.  Land and wealth were concentrated among a small elite, while huge numbers of rural Salvadorans worked for little pay or had no land of their own.  Father Grande had been reading the Bible with them and helping them see that their poverty wasn't God's will.
 
Grande and other priests began asking questions about land and power, and why so many people went hungry.  The powerful expected the new archbishop to put a stop to priests like Grande.  Charity to poor people was acceptable.  Helping poor people ask why they were poor was dangerous.
 
But then Romero went to see his body.  And something changed. He began listening more closely to poor farmers and to families whose loved ones had been “disappeared.”  He listened as priests and church workers were threatened and increasingly killed.  And he used his pulpit to tell the truth about what was happening.
 
I've been to El Salvador and stood along the country road where Father Grande was murdered.  I've stood at the altar where, three years later, Romero was shot and killed by a right-wing assassin while celebrating Mass.  I've visited the place where four American churchwomen were raped and murdered later that same year.
 
And I remember meeting a nun and asking her if she had ever personally met Archbishop Romero.  She replied, “No, but I look forward to meeting him in the resurrection.”  I've never forgotten that.
 
And suddenly the words Jesus has been saying to his disciples don't sound quite so distant.  “Those who want to save their lives will lose them.  But those who lose their lives because of me will find them.”

Romero didn't go looking for a cross to bear.  He chose to keep listening.  To keep speaking.  Not to abandon people who were suffering because standing with them had become dangerous.  He kept choosing mercy.  And mercy had consequences.  It cost him his life.  
 
It's easy to leave that story in El Salvador 45 years ago. But just yesterday, one of you told me about an interview with the Rev. Michael Woolf, an American Baptist pastor outside Chicago who has been protesting the actions of ICE. 
 
Ordinary people who have criticized ICE have found themselves facing federal investigations and subpoenas.  Civil liberties advocates are warning about the chilling effect: if people become afraid of what might happen to them for speaking out, maybe they'll stop speaking out.
 
And the person who emailed me put the question of faith this way: “Not everybody needs to be on the front lines, but I think everybody needs to do something – as much as possible – so that we don't feel like we've betrayed our values.”
 
Most of us will never face the consequences Óscar Romero faced.
 
But here's the point: following Jesus is more than becoming a somewhat nicer version of the person I already am while leaving everything else untouched.
 
Jesus says, “Follow me.”  And following means that mercy gets to interrupt our lives.  Rearrange our priorities.  Challenge what we thought we always knew.  Ask us to give something we'd rather keep.
 
Still, these are hard words.  “Deny yourself.”  “Lose your life.”  It sounds like Jesus is saying that the more I deny myself, the more faithful I am.
 
But the Canaanite woman certainly doesn't become smaller or quieter.  She does exactly the opposite.  She speaks.  She argues.  She refuses to disappear.  And Jesus calls that great faith.
 
So “deny yourself” cannot mean that God wants less of you.  It cannot mean your needs don't matter, your voice doesn't matter, your life doesn't matter.  
 
Maybe what Jesus is asking us to give up isn't ourselves. Maybe it's the assumption that protecting my comfort, my security, my plans is where I'll find my joy.
 
And that's where following Jesus becomes more than something I believe. That's what Peter discovered. Knowing the right answer isn't the same as following Jesus.
 
We in the United Church of Christ have never been very interested in telling people exactly what they have to believe.  But we can still mistake believing the right things for following Jesus.
 
We can believe deeply in justice.  But what happens when speaking up for justice might actually cost us something?  
 
We can proclaim an extravagant welcome.  But what happens when welcoming someone means changing something so they can actually belong?
 
That's the difference between believing in mercy and practicing mercy. At some point, what we believe has to become something we do.
 
And I'm glad it does.
 
Because I don't want a faith that simply says what I believe.
 
Jesus says, “All who lose their lives because of me will find them.”  Following Jesus has a cost.  Mercy has a cost.  But it is in giving ourselves to mercy that we discover joy.
 
A life larger than the one we try so hard to protect.
 
And that's what I want.  I want a faith that asks something more of me.
 
A faith that is more than just going through the motions.
 
​

Note:  Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of the "cost and joy of discipleship," which is in our UCC Statement of Faith
​

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
 
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
[email protected]
 
August 2, 2026
 
“Refuse to Be Dismissed”
 

Matthew 15: 1-2, 10-11 – Common English Bible
After that, Pharisees and religion scholars came to Jesus all the way from Jerusalem, criticizing, “Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?”
 
10-11 He then called the crowd together and said, “Listen, and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.”

 
Last week, Matthew ended chapter 14 with crowds bringing the sick to Jesus, and everyone who touched even the hem of his garment was healed.
 
Then chapter 15 begins: "After that, a group of Pharisees and religion scholars came all the way from Jerusalem to ask:  'Why do your disciples play so fast and loose with the rules?'"
 
Think about that for a moment.  While ordinary people had been bringing Jesus those who needed healing, religious authorities were walking more than a hundred dusty miles from Jerusalem to bring him... a complaint.  What was so important?
 
His disciples weren't washing their hands before they ate. 
 
Now, this wasn't about hygiene or good manners.  It was about a religious practice intended to honor God's holiness but it had become a way of deciding who was doing religion correctly.  A way to dismiss people who weren’t being observant enough.  Who weren’t “clean” enough.
 
While Jesus keeps asking, "Who needs mercy?" 
They keep asking, and judging, "Who's doing religion right?" 
 
Of course, what is right if it doesn’t involve mercy?  That’s what Jesus has been saying over and over.
 
They then have a long, extended discussion about eating and what happens after eating – involving a little too much information, seriously TMI.  After that, Jesus and his disciples leave those religious leaders behind.
 
They leave Jewish territory and head about 50 miles toward the Mediterranean coast.  They enter into Gentile country. 
 
Matthew tells us the story of a Canaanite woman who came down from the hills to meet Jesus.  Curiously, he didn’t call her a Gentile woman – a typical term for the time.  Matthew reaches all the way back to a name associated with Israel’s ancient enemies.  Listeners ears would have perked up. 
 
She pleaded, “Master, Son of David!  Have mercy!  My daughter is afflicted by a cruel, evil spirit.” 
 
Notice that this Gentile slash Canaanite woman called him "Son of David."  That's Israel's title for the Messiah.  Why would she say that? 
 
But honorific title or not, the disciples didn’t care.  They complained, “She’s bothering us.  Tell her to go away.”  They see an interruption.  Not a desperate mother. 
 
Jesus doesn't even answer her.  Not a word.  Finally, he says... “I’m here for the lost sheep of Israel.”  Basically, it sounds like, “I’m not here for the likes of you.”
 
If we're honest, Jesus comes across like something of a jerk.  It feels completely at odds with everything we've watched Jesus do for fourteen chapters.  But it only gets worse.
 
The woman drops to her knees, and begs, “Master, help me.”
 
Jesus was always talking about mercy, right.  But he didn’t relent.  He said, “It’s not right to take bread out of children’s mouths and throw it to dogs.”
 
But she didn’t flinch at the insult.  Instead...she refused to be dismissed.
 
She came back quickly:  “You’re right, Master, but at least dogs get scraps from the master’s table.”
 
Jesus stopped.  He looked at her and said, “Woman, you have great faith!  What you ask for you will get!”  And right then, her daughter became well.
 
Now, if those religious leaders from Jerusalem had been there to witness this encounter, you can almost picture them nodding their heads vigorously and elbowing one another.  "Finally.  He's come to his senses."  Right up until that last sentence. 
 
But, Matthew has turned everything upside down.  Jesus makes a point of praising this particular, unexpected, woman for her faith.  A woman who refused to be dismissed or dissuaded or deterred for the sake of her child.
 
She makes me think of Mamie Till-Mobley.  Emmett Till’s mother.  
 
In the summer of 1955, Mamie allowed her fourteen-year-old son to take the train from Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives.  He’d never been in the South before.  She tried to warn him, but he had too cheerful a spirit to think anyone would want to harm him.
 
It didn't take long for the deadly realities of Jim Crow to find him.
He was accused of offending a white woman in a country store.  Some said he whistled.  Others said he spoke out of turn.  In the end, the details didn’t matter.  False or exaggerated accusations like these had been used for generations to justify racial terror.
 
And so, Emmett was kidnapped in the middle of the night, he was tortured beyond recognition, murdered, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River, where his body remained under water for days.
 
After he was discovered, Mississippi authorities wanted him buried right then and there, quietly and quickly.  Mamie refused.
 
She brought her son home to Chicago.  Then she made a decision that would help change the course of American history.  She insisted on an open casket.  Many begged her not to do it.  He was too disfigured.  No mother should have to look at her child that way.  No one else should have to see it either.
 
But Mamie understood something.  Black Americans had lived with racial terror for generations.  They did not need photographs of his body in a coffin to know what false accusations become.
 
But white America needed to see it.  Mamie’s determination was clear: “Let the people see what I have seen.”
 
More than 100,000 people walked past Emmett's coffin.  Millions more across the country saw the photographs.  She refused to let what people had done to him and countless others go unseen.  She refused to let her son's life be explained away as just another tragedy.  
 
History often remembers Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat.  We should also remember that, just three months earlier, Mamie Till-Mobley refused to close her son’s casket.  She would not be dismissed.
 
The Gospels are full of parents like that.  Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, who throws himself at Jesus' feet because his little girl is dying.  The official from King Herod's own court who walks 20 miles to beg for his son.
 
There's another father who brings his son to Jesus.  Years of heartbreak have taught him how dangerous hope can be.  He comes anyway on behalf of his son and tells Jesus, "I believe.  Help my unbelief."
 
Different circumstances.  Different children.  But with the same resolve.  And each time, whether they are peasants or government officials or religious figures, Jesus responds.  Which only deepens the mystery of the Canaanite woman.  Why does this encounter unfold so differently?
 
It’s one of the great mysteries of the gospels.  But whatever was happening in that moment, Matthew is unmistakably clear about how it ends.  A Canaanite woman who refused to be dismissed is praised:  "Great is your faith."
 
To this day, we can recognize her in every parent who won't stop fighting for their child.  Or foster parents, and grandparents, and anyone who steps in to parent when others can’t.
 
Making it work as they wonder how they will pay for this week's groceries.
Fighting for the services their child needs.
Waiting as long as needed outside juvenile detention.
Crossing a border to give their children a better life.
Spending years advocating, appealing, explaining, hoping, praying.
 
And not just for children.  Sometimes it’s for your husband, your wife – years of advocating, appealing, explaining, hoping, praying... or for your parents... a dear friend. 
 
Because that's what love does.
Discouraged or not.  Love fills out another form anyway. 
Disappointed or not.  Love makes another phone call anyway. 
Exhausted or not.  Love sits through another appointment anyway. 
It’s the cost of great love.  
 
That’s the "I believe. Help my unbelief" kind of faith.  A love that refuses to be dismissed.  I’ve always appreciated the trust of that father.  Not dramatic.  Not certain.  Just faith that refuses to quit on someone.
 
I wonder if any of you are carrying that kind of faith right now.  Overwhelmed by grief or fear or exhaustion and wondering what to do.
 
Maybe all you need today is to recognize that this, too, is faith. 
 
The courage to keep loving.  The courage to keep going.  The courage to persist through disappointment.  The courage to say, "I refuse to be dismissed."
 
You know, Jesus has a name for that.  He calls it:  "Great faith."