No Kings But the King

Psalm 93
July 5, 2026
Series: Dwelling with the Psalms
William G. Carter

The Lord is king; he is robed in majesty;
The Lord is robed; he is girded with strength.
He has established the world; it shall never be moved;
your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting.
The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters,
more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord!
Your decrees are very sure;
holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore.

We are spending a season by dwelling with the Psalms. We will listen to them, pray them, study them. And the first thing we discover is a central theme of those ancient prayers: God alone is king.

This is Israel’s profession of faith. There is only one God. Any other contender is a counterfeit. A fake. A pale imitation of the real thing. Only God is God; God rules over all.

Israel swore by this declaration as truth. Yet biblically speaking, it did not come quickly. In the days when the prophet Samuel was God’s appointed press agent, the people looked around the global neighborhood and said, “Hey, we want a king.” Samuel answered, “You don’t want a king.”

• The people said, “Everybody else has a king. Why can’t we have a king?” The prophet said, “God is your king!”
• The people said, “But give us a king that we can see and hear.” Samuel said, “Let me tell you about kings. They take your children and conscript them as soldiers.”
• The people said, “Every king needs an army. That’s why we want a king.” “Then the king will put some of them in forced labor while he rides around in a golden chariot.” A small price to pay, if you have a king.
• Samuel added, “The king will make some of your kids work as royal beauticians and cooks, then hand them off to be exploited.” Yes, but what an honor if they are working for the king!
• “But you don’t want a king. Kings steal your best farmland. They steal your best vineyards. They tax you to support their own vanity projects.” So, what? If we had a king, we would be great, just like everybody else.

To quote the eighth chapter of 1 Samuel, “A king will lead you into battle. And if you don’t have a battle, a king will invent a new battle. And you will cry in desperation. You have God; you don’t need a king.” But the people argued, “No! We want a king. Then we will be just like all the other nations.”

Samuel looked to God. God shrugged. So then, not for the first time, not for the last time, God gave the people room to make their own mistakes. Their first king was Saul. He was tall, good looking, and emotionally unstable. The pressure of the job can make you crazy, you know.

Saul was replaced by David, a young shepherd boy who took the job before Saul was done with it. Everybody loved David. David did a lot of good things. Not so tall, but exceedingly good looking. The women loved David. He played the guitar. But you know those musicians. He fooled around and fell in love.

That was before one of his own sons wanted to kill him. It went downhill from there. Samuel was right. You don’t want a king. The government of God’s people came unraveled with one bad king after another. Is it any wonder that if you put one imperfect person after another in high leadership, they will stumble and fall? Every single one. Some are worse than others.

And yet, behind them, above them, is the One Real King, the Lord of All. This is Israel’s statement of faith. The Lord is King, the Lord Alone. God’s way gives life to all. There is no other way. So, how do we live under the dominion of God when every nation has imperfect leadership at the top? This has been the long-standing human struggle as long as there have been nations.

Yesterday, we celebrated the birthday of our national experiment in democracy. The rainstorms did not wash away all the celebrations. I kept the day as I have often done so in the past: revisited a few speeches by well-spoken patriots, watched a couple of hours of Ken Burns’ film on the American Revolution, and then to top it off, listened to my two-volume recording of forty-one marches by John Philip Sousa. (It’s a British recording, which gives me a certain perverse pleasure.)  

Then I sat with a cup of coffee and remembered a moment from 1988. Muhlenberg College sponsored a visit by Dr. Martin Marty, the eminent church historian of the University of Chicago. The event was the bicentennial, not of the nation, but of the ratification of the United States Constitution. Dr. Marty, a serious Lutheran, pointed out how the Presbyterians affected the formation of that founding document.

It seems, long before James Madison drafted the Constitution, he had fallen under the spell of one of his college professors. A native of Virginia, Madison did not attend the College of William and Mary like many of his peers. He graduated in 1771 from the College of New Jersey, now called Princeton. His professor was the Rev. James Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, who would become the only clergy to sign the Declaration of Independence.   

Witherspoon taught him two lessons. First, if the Lord alone is the King, the rest of us are fallible. And second, any truthful government will build in a series of checks and balances to keep us accountable to one another. In his Federalist Paper #51, Madison believed checks and balances are the essential mechanism for preserving liberty. They ensure three essential practices: the prevention of tyranny, the harness of human nature, and the protection of the minority.[1] Power flows up from the people below, not down from a single individual above.

And where did Witherspoon gain this wisdom? From the honesty of the scriptures and an observation of what people are really like – two complimentary documents, by the way. One year later, in 1789, the Rev. John Witherspoon served as the convening moderator of the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.[2] The government he inspired for the nation resembles the government he helped to establish for the Presbyterian Church: a representative democracy where power is shared, every voice is respected, and nobody gets their way all the time. Built within church and nation are the mechanics for continuing improvement, should they be pursued.

And above it all, the Lord is King. Psalm 93 amplifies the truth of it. The forceful rainstorms of the past few days – did any of you make it rain? Of course not. As we walk through our lawns to pick up the fallen branches, is there anyone stronger than the thunderstorms? Yes, there is, and that is the One we worship today. Is there true beauty, even holiness, breaking into our world? Indeed, and we honor the Source of it. Is there anyone who is permanent, anyone who will outlive all the monkey business of the earthly leaders? Yes, the Lord God is eternal. God came before us; God will outlive us. This knowledge is enough to teach us to live with honesty, restraint, and a pursuit of what is best for the largest group of God’s people and creatures.  

250 years is but a blink of God’s Eternal Eye. It’s a long time for us, but just a small snapshot of God’s ongoing story. So, it’s enough for us to pause, reflect, and give thanks. We baptize a little boy named after Israel’s very first prophet. We break Christ’s bread for all and drink the wine of forgiveness. We begin again, and we pray that the Sovereign and Holy God would work among us to heal this land – and every land.

More on that next week, as we pray Psalm 94. For now, let us affirm that God rules over all.  

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/federalist-no-51/

[2] https://www.douglasdouma.com/2021/08/09/john-witherspoon-and-the-connecting-of-american-presbyterians/

Remembering What We Forgot

Psalm 78:1-31, 67-72
June 28, 2026
Series: Dwelling with the Psalms

William G. Carter  

In case you’ve forgotten the first verse from the psalm, here it is: “Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us.” (Psalm 78) 

Some people call this “the Christian Education” psalm, and for good reason. It speaks of teaching. It speaks of the faithful tradition of religious education. A wise teacher speaks to the covenant community and says, “Listen up!” Class is in session. It’s time to learn. The teacher says, “I’m going to reach back and grab the truth from our past, and I’m going to bring it right here and give it to our future.” The word for today is “remember.”

What do you remember? Can you remember Egypt? The Passover? The wandering in the desert? The entry into Promised Land? Can you remember Bethlehem? Jerusalem? Antioch and Rome? And just for a moment, can we remember who taught us about these things? 

There was that Sunday when I preached in the church where I grew up. Just like old times. The stained-glass windows gave the room an underwater glow. The sanctuary rug still smelled the same. There was the balcony where the preacher’s son and I folded paper airplanes out of worship bulletins, then accidentally dropped them while his old man was preaching. I was confirmed in that room. I was ordained there, first as a deacon, then as a pastor. The memories flooded my imagination.

Suddenly, there was Bonnie Ballard, one of my early Bible teachers. Years ago, Miss Ballard made me memorize three psalms, nine Beatitudes, and the Lord’s Prayer. She taught me that Presbyterians don’t “trespass,” they fall into debt. She selected me to play Joseph in the Christmas pageant because I was prematurely tall and I didn’t have a lot of speaking lines. She was probably bewildered when God grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “You’re going to be a preacher.”

My experience might be a little specialized, but all of us are here today because somebody like us taught people like us. They reached into the past to grab the riches of our heritage, and they offered them as gifts to fund our hearts and minds. Can you remember?

And then, just a year ago, I went to the 40th reunion of my seminary class. The grounds crew has pulled the ivy off the buildings, but the place still looks like a country club. We gathered in the lecture hall where I remember thinking, “I had no idea what they are talking about.” We worshiped in the chapel where I preached early sermons to classmates who sat with clipboards, ready to evaluate what I said and how I said it. And there was the portrait of my professor, Dr. Bruce Metzger. His name is literally printed in the front of our pew Bibles; the dude was old.

That old schoolhouse tried to teach me and succeeded somewhat. They set me on a trajectory to keep learning for the rest of my life, which is the greatest gift of a good education. When it comes to faith, we do not download facts. Rather, our minds must be formed. Our hearts must be shaped. It takes a while.

One consolation is making friends to join you on the journey. When I walked over for dinner one night, I saw a familiar dormitory window on the fourth-floor dormitory window. That’s where a friend we nicknamed “Rocket” resided. He had a bad habit of dropping water balloons on visiting theologians he didn’t like. I admired his courage.

All of this, I tell you, is a parable. What can you remember?

There is much that today’s Psalm remembers, more than we can bear. Psalm 78 is not all pleasant and joyful. Oh no. If we reach back into the past, we must deal with the things we have done, or the things we have left undone. We have to face all those devices and desires in our twisted hearts.

Psalm 78 tells a lot of honest stories. It does not withhold the truth. The poet who composed this psalm pushes to remember where we’ve come from. Then says, “Do you remember the fine mess that we fell into?” The Psalmist offers one story after another of how God did something good, and people of faith goofed it up.

For instance, “Can you remember when we were slaves in a foreign land? We were down in Egypt, forced to produce for Old Pharoah. Pharoah was a nasty taskmaster. He demanded bricks from us until God stepped in. God poured blood in the river, sent frogs and flies, struck the first-born down, until Pharoah said, “Yes, you can go.” And the very minute we became free, we began acting like we were the center of the universe, and it made God angry.

And then, “Do you remember when we were in the desert? The sun was pounding down, we were walking around without water, we were complaining about the heat, we were wondering how we would survive. God said, ‘Whack that rock with a stick, and I will give you living water.” That’s what Moses did – but we complained about it.

There is no use in whitewashing history. In every season, somebody will try to smooth over the past. Nobody likes to hear that human slaves built much of the White House. Or that President Andrew Johnson was impeached for attempting to undo the Civil War. Or that we have many painful moments in our history that we would like to forget – yet as the Psalmist says, “We will not hide these things from our children.”

Are there things you’ve discovered about our past that you did not previously know? Have you ever smoothed over the pain of those who lived before us? It’s convenient. It’s smoother. Yet that’s where the lessons, the real lessons, can be found.

Another school story: One September day in 1978, I walked onto the enormous campus of my university. I didn’t know a lot of people. It was overwhelming. There were four hundred classmates in my first-level biology class. Whew, I needed a coffee! So, I stumbled over to the cafeteria. There was a huge demonstration at the campus center, and a big sign, “We must never forget.” And then, large prints of atrocities that had once happened in the death camps of Germany.

Maybe I knew there has been a Holocaust, but I tell you the truth: it was never mentioned in my high school history class. I was appalled. Immobilized. It was a lot to process. And either I had never been told or had not been paying attention.

Maria Harris, the Roman Catholic educator, speaks of the “null curriculum.” That’s the material you don’t teach. Somebody omits, ignores, or leaves unsaid an important lesson. As she points out, “ignorance is never neutral, omission is intentional.”[1] We cannot grow as believers, we cannot grow as human souls, unless we face the best and the worst of what it means to be human.

So, we look back and remember. We confront the truth, the whole truth, and not merely the convenient half-truth. And we learn something about ourselves.

A friend suggested David McCullough’s book on the Johnstown Flood. If you’ve never heard the story, two thousand Pennsylvanians drowned in 1889. The Johnstown Flood was one of the greatest natural disasters in this country. And did you know? The flood was caused by God and the Presbyterians.

For God’s part, God sent a lot of rain. As for the Presbyterians, they were people like Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and Henry Clay Frick – wealthy industrialists who made millions on steel and railroads. They built a hunting camp about fourteen miles uphill from Johnstown. When summer came, it was a great place to escape from the stress of their mansions in Pittsburgh. Being people of privilege, they didn’t pay attention to the quality of the dam that created their fishing lake. They ignored every warning that the dam wasn’t safe.

And God sent the rain, the Presbyterians neglected their dam, and the flood roared down the hill. Those rich old Scots said, “Maybe we should start summering in the Adirondacks, or in Paris.” As David McCullough reminds us, “There is a danger in assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are necessarily behaving responsibly.” 

O people of faith, are we willing to remember? Can we look honestly at the human condition? Can we be transparent enough to confess where we’ve wandered? And what we have neglected? Only then can we also confess the hope that God has planted within our souls.

Scholars tell us Psalm 78 is a salvation history psalm. It is Israel’s honest recital of their own faults. It is also the narrative of God’s persistence. You and I hold a sacred story of how God has stuck with us – even though God could have chosen people far more faithful and better tempered. God chooses to work through the likes of us. That’s part of the lesson.

Like that moment in the movie theater. We watched as a young singer began her rise to fame – and her business manager began to get too big for his britches. The lady a few seats down exclaimed, “Now, don’t you forget where you come from.” That was the best part of the movie. It was the lesson that needed to be taught.

So where do the people of God come from? We come from the steadfast mercy of God. Don’t ever forget this. t God makes each one of us and calls us precious. Don’t forget that, in the language of the psalm, God “snorts with indignation” when we forget where we’re from. Don’t forget that God gives us this day our daily bread, even as we keep testing and pushing up against such generosity. And whatever else, don’t forget that God stays with us through every wrong turn on a bumpy road, and expects us to do better.

According to Psalm 78, God has had plenty of reasons to dump this unfaithful people, yet God will not do it. God stays faithful, because a promise is a promise, a covenant is a covenant. God stays with us - - and that is the great parable. That’s the hidden mystery of how a holy God keeps bending down toward people with bloody hands and dirty fingernails. It has less to do with our behavior, and more to do with God’s character. Infinitely more.

“Listen,” says the Teacher, “and I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter things we have heard and known which we will not hide from our children.”  Still, God stays with us. That is the parable.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Maria Harris, Fashion Me a People: Curriculum in the Church (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989).

The Company We Keep

Matthew 9:35-10:8
June 14, 2026
William G. Carter

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

 

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

 

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

 

For the last couple of weeks, we have considered the call of God. God summons us, just like the prophet Isaiah who responded, “Here I am, Lord; send me!” And last week, God called Abram and Sarai and said, “Leave your familiar surroundings and go; I will tell you when you get there.” At the end of last week’s sermon, I noted there are three essentials for answering the call. The first is courage, because the road ahead is always uncharted. The second could be summed as devotion, noting Abram built altars along his journey.

Today, let me tell you about the third essential. God calls us into a community. When God calls us, there are other people with us. We are never called to go it alone. Even those exceptional cases like the prophet Isaiah, who heard and saw the glory of God in a moment tailored just for him – he was called to speak to others. And a community of faith kept his words, wrote them down, and preserved them for the past 2700 years. 

No surprise, then, that when Jesus sets out to change the world, he creates a community. He will not do the work by himself. He calls twelve others to join him, to extend his reach, to spread the power and love of God into every direction. Did you catch their names?

Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John. Phillip, and Bartholomew. Thomas, Matthew, and the other James. Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanean, and Judas Iscariot. There are twelve of them, just like the twelve tribes of Israel. Most of us could not name those tribes without some help. We should be gentle on ourselves. Many of us past the age of forty can’t remember the three things that we wanted to pick up in the grocery store.

The Gospel of Matthew makes a list of the twelve apostles, those Jesus appointed to stay with him. That’s not to say they all stayed with him. They weren’t perfect. There is Judas, of course. But the other eleven also scattered after Jesus was arrested. Jesus chose them, and they weren’t perfect.

Of all the Gospels, Matthew says they’re pretty good. After a long day of tossing some parables into the air, Jesus turned to the twelve and said, “Do you understand what I’m saying?” They said, “Certainly! Of course we do.”[1] Other gospels aren’t as complimentary, but Matthew infers some authority to the twelve that Jesus called. Even so, there were moments. One day, Mrs. Zebedee showed up. (Remember, the mother of James and John?) She begged Jesus to give her boys some preferential treatment. “Make them a little bit better than the other ten rascals,” she said.[2] Jesus rolled his eyes and shook his head.

There were twelve of them. Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John. Phillip, and Bartholomew. Thomas, Matthew, and the other James. Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanean, and Judas Iscariot. Did you notice anything about that list?

It is not a complete list. These are the names of twelve men. Everybody knows there are more women in church than there are men. Just look around the room. Elsewhere, the New Testament reminds us that women followed Jesus. They funded the ministry of Jesus out of their own purses.[3] The Bible never says anything like that about the men. The Bible says they argued about money, but it never says they coughed up any. Matthew’s list is not complete. Women belong on the list. In many congregations, women actually run the place.

What’s more, this is not an accurate list. Forget what somebody told you about the Bible. The Bible does not agree who is on the list. Matthew copies Mark’s list, but Luke doesn’t mention Thaddaeus. Instead, he names a second man named Judas, son of James. When we get over to the Gospel of John, there’s somebody named Nathanael. We don’t have a clue who that is. Some pious scholars scramble to say Thaddaeus, Judas, and Nathanael must be the same person – yet the Bible never worries about straightening that out.

The only time we see all twelve disciples standing together is when Leonardo DaVinci said, “Hey guys! Stand on the same side of the table. I want to paint you into the picture!”

Matthew’s list is not complete list. We can’t even say if it’s accurate. But let me say this: this is a diverse list. Sure, Mark tells us about twelve men. In our imaginations, we can picture them at thirty years old with curly hair. Yet it’s hard to imagine a group like this holding together.

There are two sets of brothers, Simon and Andrew, James and John. They left behind their fishing boats and their fathers. Jesus knew them up in the hill country, a euphemism for “the sticks.” We don’t know anything about Thomas, Thaddaeus, or James 2.0. But we know something about Matthew – a tax collector, a despised collaborator who worked for the Empire. He swindled his own neighbors to fund the foreign soldiers who occupied their town.

Standing next to Matthew is Simon the Canaanean. He was a Zealot, a revolutionary with a dagger under his cloak, ever ready to take out the tax collectors like Matthew. Jesus called both of them to be part of his team. That would be like Russell Vought handing the matzoh to Jamie Raskin at the Passover Seder. Or J. D. Vance and Elizabeth Warren sharing a hymnal in the same pew. Diversity is Christ’s plan, not uniformity.

Not only that. Eleven of the disciples came from the northern territory of Galilee. The twelfth may have been the man from Kerioth – “ish-Kerioth” or “Iscariot” – Kerioth was a town way down south in Judah. So, there may have been eleven Yankees and Judas the Confederate. Jesus wants them all at his side. Diverse backgrounds, different political views, distinct geographies – none of that matters to Jesus, because he chooses them all.

Think of how remarkable this is, that the grace of Jesus Christ would transcend human opinions and divisions! Diverse, young, old, male as well as female, whoever, wherever, however. There is no unanimity in the group, but there is harmony as Christ calls us to sing together. That’s the point of it all. Standing at the center of this new community is Jesus. He is what they hold in common.

Look at the list. There are two sets of brothers: Peter and Andrew, and James and John. Ever have two brothers who agree on everything? I love my brother; we agree on a lot of things, but not everything.

And who knows how many of them were married? Earlier this Gospel says Simon Peter had a mother-in-law. That means he had a wife.[4] But we don’t know her name, or how she felt about him quitting the fish business and running after Jesus. Did they have kids? Did she have to watch them while he gallivanted around Galilee?

It’s almost as if Matthew says that family status is irrelevant when it comes to following Jesus. What matters is that you know that he is calling you into a community called “Church” – and that he is giving you work to do.

That brings us to the heart of the matter. Jesus calls the twelve and gives them two-fold work: to proclaim his Message and to heal the world.

The Message proclaimed is clear: that God is coming close, that God shall rule over earth as clearly as God rules heaven, and that we must make the necessary adjustments to welcome God’s ownership of our lives. “Preach the Message,” Jesus says. “The time is right here, God rules over us right now, change your lives to claim God’s love.

And then, he calls us to heal the world. This requires laboring in internal medicine (cure the sick), dermatology (cleanse skin diseases), and mental health (cast out the demons). And if that’s not enough, “raise the dead.” Breathe the new life of God where everything has withered away. Not too much to ask, is it?

The point of it all is that Jesus gives his power to ordinary people. He equips them to work together, to make a difference for God and humanity. This is what matters. Jesus calls together a bunch of diverse people, with different backgrounds and skills. And he says, “Proclaim the authority of God over all of human life!” This is our extraordinary calling, to be the baptized – for the benefit of the world.

Now, consider what this means. In the diverse community that Christ calls, you might not get your way all the time. You might not get your way at all. Our calling is greater than that. We are called to work together to pursue God’s way. The most important question before us is always this: What does it mean, in our place, in our time, that God rules over human lives? What would it look like for us to build the love of God? To welcome the justice of God? To do the work of God?

I’ve noticed that when churches stop asking these questions, they start to fizzle out. Perhaps they get tangled in personality disputes; the “Sons of Thunder” start mouthing off rather taking care of the neighborhood, or Matthew the tax-collector and Simon the revolutionary start plotting harm to one another. If a church, like any other organization, is merely a human organization, it can go off the rails in a hundred separate ways. And it will need a Book of Order to keep Christian disciples from beating up on one another.

But the true church of Jesus is always more than a human organization. It is called into existence as a holy fellowship, commissioned by Jesus to do the work of God. We are God’s tactical team in this neighborhood. We welcome God’s Breath to fill our lungs, we pray for God’s Power to push us into action, and we trust God’s Spirit will animate our spirits. Christ infuses his people with his own presence. When we put a bridle on our own whims, when we submit our willfulness to God’s greater will, the Gospel Message takes on skin and bones – and the world’s ills can be healed.

That is why we are here, my friends. That is why he chooses us. We are here to enflesh the life of Jesus Christ. We are here to love all the people that Jesus loves. We are here to do the work that Jesus inaugurated.

We don’t have to have faith figured out in advance. We don’t have to be right about everything. We don’t have to compel everybody else to agree with us. We don’t have to worry about who is on the list and who is not, because it is not our list. It is Christ’s list. And as we are fond of saying whenever we baptize a child, “Your family is a whole lot bigger than you think it is.” And here you are. Thanks be to God.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Matthew 13:51.

[2] Matthew 20:20.

[3] Luke 8:1-3.

[4] Matthew 8:14.

Where Does This Journey Lead?

Genesis 12:1-9
June 7, 2026
William G. Carter

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

 

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

 

It is one of the great moments of the Bible. God speaks up after a long silence and a few extended genealogies. The Lord approaches a single individual to announce a new plan of salvation. God says, “From you I will make a great nation. You will be a blessing to every family on the earth. So, leave your country, leave your relatives, leave your father’s house, and I will show you where to go.” 

As somebody described it, “Abram packed up a You Haul and moved across Mesopotamia.” Everything he owned went with him. His wife and all her servants went with him. Even his nephew Lot went with him, which would later be a questionable decision. And he went because God said so. It was a supreme act of faithfulness, especially for a man who was seventy-five years old. And as we would say these days, he relocated.

People do that, sometimes. They don’t always take everything with them. A friend is departing Knoxville for Tampa, so yesterday, she and her husband had an enormous garage sale. They were even ready to sell their garage. From the pictures she posted on Facebook, there were great deals on knickknacks, fancy dresses, pocketbooks, and at least fifteen pairs of shoes. Unlike Abram and Sarai, she wanted to travel light. But she’s making a move, like any of us makes a move. There is an enormous cost and the promise that it will be a blessing.

In so many ways, God continues to invite us to move from where we are to where he wants us to be. As we heard from the prophet Isaiah last week, we have a God who calls us, who summons us. Sometimes it’s an invitation, sometimes it’s a commandment. The good news is that God engages in our lives – and wishes for us to move in his direction.

I’ve always been interested, for instance, in those moments in the New Testament when Jesus calls somebody and they drop everything to follow him. Like today’s Gospel story, where he summons a tax collector. Just two words: “Follow me.” And that’s it. Now, you know there has to be more. If you’ve ever watched the cable show, “The Chosen,” there is always a back story. Matthew and Jesus knew one another. Everybody hated Matthew. Jesus summons him, in no small part, to protect him from the crowd that despises him. Maybe that’s how it happened. We don’t know.

What intrigues me about the story from Genesis is how unfinished it is. There will be more to follow. The call of God initiates the journey = and the journey will go on. God leads him to the land that his descendants will receive, but there are other people living there, so, not yet. Abram moves on, pitches a tent.

In the story right after this one, there will be a famine in that Promised Land. Abram and Sarai move down to Egypt for a while. The Pharoah develops a crush on Abram’s pretty wife and disturbed to discover Abram lied in calling her “his sister.” And on it goes. So, it always goes. As someone put it, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”[1] Forward means unfinished.

The book of Genesis understands this. In the last verse of our text, we hear “Abram journeyed by stages.” It’s a phrase used a few various times in the Bible. Israel traveled in stages.[2] We always travel by stages. We answer the call of God in stages. The life we have with God does not get finished in one quick decision. When God calls, sometimes we have to shake it down. Make sure it’s really God speaking, not ego, ambition, or more money.

I think of a public official, elected to office a few years ago. He’s tall, good-looking, and a former professional football player. The election was won; the oath of office was taken. He did it for a while. And then he felt the tug to do something else, to answer the invitation to become a high-profile sport coach. So, he resigned from the public job before his term was over. He announced the new position. Then his family said, “You’re going to do what?” Oh my, what a mess. Somehow it wasn’t God’s invitation to take the new job. But something else could open up. Keep listening for what God sets before us. That’s the trick.

Thirty-six years ago, feeling restless in the church that I was serving, I went home and said, “There’s this church in Scranton that looks interesting.” She said, “Scranton? We’re not moving to Scranton. People drive through Scranton. They don’t stay there.” I said, “Well, technically it’s not Scranton, but maybe it’s worth a look.” That was a lot of miles ago. A lot has changed, in me, in the church, in the wider community.

In fact, when somebody discovers how long I’ve been here, especially a minister friend, they blanche and recoil. One of them actually said to me, “How long are you going to stay in that town that nobody can find.” And I smiled. Then I often tell them, “I am serving the fifth congregation in the same building, within the same zip code.” Because the church itself continues to journey in stages. Everything that lives evolves. God calls us forward.

There is nothing glamorous about this. Every stage is demanding work. Every change requires adaptability and commitment. Given the rapid changes facing congregations like ours, churches that are thoughtful, artistic, and engaged in the community, we must stay nimble and open to changes. It’s not 1991 anymore. And it’s certainly not 1957. There is deep truth in that biblical phrase, “they journeyed by stages.”

This is true for all of us. Think about your own career tracks. How many jobs have you had? Ever make a list? Maybe you’ve had more jobs than I have, though I wouldn’t be so sure. Starting as a teenager, people paid me money to mow the lawn, flip hamburgers, bag groceries, and diddle around on a computer in a corporate cubicle. Along the way I sold men’s clothing, filled in potholes for a county highway department, and done a spot of college teaching.

There isn’t always a direct line through all the things we’ve done, but there are plenty of changes. At each moment, we have to stay on our toes. And we affirm: sometimes the job is the calling. Other times, the job makes the calling possible. Either way, the call of God is always inviting us forward. If we were certain where we were going, we might not take the trip.

So, three things are essential to answer the call of God. The first is courage. Well-informed courage, if we can muster it, but still courage. God said, “Abram, I will show you where to go.” There was no map. No GPS. No certainty. No assurances beyond the great big promise – namely, you have a future and you will be a blessing to others. That was enough to initiate the journey.

Abram didn’t know anybody at the next destination. He didn’t have the journey charted in advance. He was not in control of his own future, because none of us are ultimately in control of very much. He had to step forward with the little bit he knew, and it was enough. Call it faith, if you will, but his was faith with a You Haul and a whole lot of camels. I call it courage.

And there’s a second essential for answering the call of God. It’s mentioned twice in our story. In Shechem and in Bethel, Abram built an altar. He put together the stones, got the wood, ignited the sacrifice. It was his way of blessing the God who called him on the journey. He thanked the God who stayed with him in every stage. He answered the God who said, “Go… and I will show you where.”

This is essential, too. It affirms God is with us – but more, it declares that our journey is God’s journey through us. We choose to cooperate with his call. We step into God’s invitation. We thank God that we are on this journey, that we were not left to our own devices, that we are part of a greater purpose for the world. It doesn’t get any better than that.

We respond with courage. We bless the God who calls us. These are two essentials for answering the call upon our lives.

There is a third essential, but you will have to return next Sunday to learn what it is. See you then.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Attributed to Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).

[2] Exodus 17:1, Numbers 10:12, Numbers 33:1-2.

Who's Calling?

Isaiah 6:1-8
Trinity Sunday
May 31, 2026
William G. Carter

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

 

And I said, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. We sang those words last week at the end of our confirmation service. It’s a favorite hymn, to be sure. Whenever we sing it, it is certain to get a positive response. The tune is singable; the words are heart-felt. If you look around, somebody is probably wiping away a tear or two. Here I am, Lord.

When you heard the scripture text, you probably noticed the words of that song are lifted right out of our Bible. Isaiah of Jerusalem remembers the voice of God calling him to his life’s work. God is looking for the right person to speak up, the right person to speak out, the right person to address the people of Judah in troubling times. Who will it be? Who will speak up for God? And Isaiah declares, “Here I am, Lord.”  

That’s about all most of us know about the prophet Isaiah: he responds affirmatively to God’s Voice. That, of course, is the punchline of the story. It’s right up there with God speaking to Moses out of a burning bush, “Go to Pharoah, tell him to let my people go.” Or Jesus, walking along the shore of the sea of Galilee and calling out to some fishermen, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

The plot of each story goes the same way. God says, “I need to get something done.” The heroic Bible character says, “OK, I will do it.” The rest of us cheer, breathe a sigh of relief, and figure “mission accomplished.” Somebody out there is doing what God needs to get done. In other words, it’s not a story for the rest of us; it’s about some specialist who said “yes” to the Lord a long, long time ago.

Yet if you were listening to this story, you heard a lot more going on in this story. In the end, the ancient prophet says, “OK, God, sign me up.” But that’s merely the conclusion, and a provisional conclusion at that. The story becomes a lot more interesting the deeper we dig in.

So here are three details to notice: the seraphs, the unclean lips, the burning coal.

First, the seraph. One morning, one of our office volunteers was proofreading the worship bulletin before it was printed. I walked through to grab a donut, she looked up, and said, “What’s a seraph?” What? “A seraph – the Bible passage says there were seraphs. What are they?” I said, “I don’t know; I don’t think I’ve ever met one, but they are kind of a super angel.” She looked at me with a most curious gaze.

And then I said, “The bigger question is, what are they doing in the Temple?” And she looked really confused.

The seraphs, or as they are sometimes called “seraphim,” are only mentioned here as angelic beings. They have three pairs of wings: to fly, to cover themselves in modesty, and to cover their faces in reverence. There are texts outside the Bible that speak about different orders of angels, although the Bible itself doesn’t spend a lot of energy getting distracted by angels. Suffice it to say, the seraphim are the ones closest to God.

This satisfied our Thursday volunteer, but I pressed the other question: what are they doing in the Temple? And that’s a trick question. It has to do with King Uzziah, who is mentioned rather quickly and dismissed.

Here is the backstory. King Uzziah began as a wonderful king. Given the sorry list of Israel’s terrible kings, he showed a lot of promise. Uzziah ruled for 52 years. He chased out the Philistines, defended the borders, and built up the economy. In the words of the Bible’s greatest compliment, “he learned the fear of the Lord.”[1]

That is, until he got a little big for his britches. Uzziah believed that, since he was the king, and things were going well, that he would also act as if he was a priest. He grabbed the incense pot, started smoking up a little frankincense, and made his way to the high altar. It was a desecration, an abomination, a really bad move. Uzziah was stopped in his tracks by the real high priest and eighty other priests, all described as “men of valor.”

An argument broke out. Uzziah figured he was the king, and kings can do whatever they want. The priests said, “Oh no, no, no.” And just when Uzziah started getting huffy, leprosy broke out all over his face. They hustled him out of the temple, now doubly desecrated. He had to live alone in seclusion. He could still call himself the king, but nobody was going to go near him or pay any further attention to him. He had leprosy until the day he died, and all the moralists said, “That’s what you get when you get too big for your britches. Especially in the temple.”

Meanwhile, the Temple was still desecrated – and in the year Uzziah died, God showed up. It was big. Really big. Even the seraphim were there. Nobody had ever seen one, I figure, but Isaiah knew what a seraph was when he saw one. Their voices were thunderous: HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. The foundations are shaking; the house is filled with smoke.

And what are the seraphim doing there, in a desecrated Temple? They are announcing the holiness of God, even there, especially there. There is no distinction between sacred and secular because God is there – so it’s sacred.

Just let that sink in. Wherever God is present, it is HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. Whenever, wherever. The implications are staggering. Someone puts it this way.

One of the bad habits we pick up early in our lives is separating things and people into secular and sacred. We assume the secular is what we are more or less in charge of: our jobs, our entertainment, our government, our social relations. The sacred is what God is charge of: worship and the Bible, heaven and hell, church and prayers. We then contrive to set aside a sacred place of God, designed, we say, to honor God but really intended to keep God in his place, leaving us free to have the final say about everything else that goes on.

 

Prophets will have none of this. They contend that everything, absolutely everything, takes place on sacred ground. God has something to say about every aspect of our lives: the way we feel and act in the so-called privacy of our homes, the way we make our money and the way we spend it, the politics we embrace, the ways we fight, the catastrophes we endure, the people we hurt, and the people we help. Nothing is hidden from the scrutiny of God. Nothing is exempt from the rule of God. Nothing escapes the purposes of God. Holy, holy, holy.[2]

So, Isaiah says, “Woe is me! I have unclean lips. I live among people of unclean lips.” In the presence of a Holy God, the only God there is, we are toast. (That’s my translation.) What the prophet is missing is the same thing he sees - the seraphs are in the same room with him, the same filthy room. God is there, too, a pure Holy God in the midst of a desecrated Temple. His first, only, response is, “There isn’t room here for the likes of me, and the likes of us.” We are people of “unclean lips.”

Again, that’s an interesting Bible phrase. Even though it’s an ancient phrase, you can probably surmise what it means. It has something to do with lips, but it reveals something else.

Some years back, a retired high school English teacher wrote a letter to one of our presidents about gun violence in the schools. She received a form letter back from the White House. The grammar was atrocious. There were redundancies, incorrect capitalizations, and lack of clarity in the reasoning. So, she corrected the letter in purple ink and sent it back to Washington.

USA Today reported the story on a slow news day.[3] You might not think that a retired teacher correcting a letter written at a fourth-grade level would be a big deal, but you should have seen the online comments and the criticisms of what she did: they were a mile long. Critics pounced on her in print. They denounced her as  “stupid.” When battle lines formed, still in print, each side started calling the other “stupid” as well. Alas, we live among a people of “unclean lips.”

You see, “unclean lips” reveal a filthy heart. That’s the sense of the Biblical phrase. In one of the Psalms, there is a complaint lodged against a person with dirty heart and lips: “Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of treachery. You love evil more than good and lying more than speaking the truth. You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue!”[4]

Isaiah discovers he stands in the presence of a Holy God. What does this reveal? That he is surrounded by people of impure speech, destructive insults, lying impulses, and forked tongues. And he confesses that he is one of them, too. Unclean lips, indeed.

That brings us to the great “nevertheless,” something the Bible continues to off. God is announced in the Temple by the seraphim. Isaiah knows he and the people are broken and unworthy. So God bridges the gap. In a highly symbolic act, one of the seraphs flies to the altar of the Temple, picks up a burning coal with a pair of tongs, and touches the prophet’s unclean lips.

Then the pronouncement is given. Your guilt is chased away. Your sin is over and done. The God who is already present in the desecrated temple is able to reach all the desecrated people. There are mercy and forgiveness for all who can accept it. And for all who can accept it, there is work to do.

It’s a terrific text, a huge story. Ultimately it is a story that models how God calls each of us to participate in his purposes for the world. We discover God is here: maybe it’s a holy moment, a story, a sermon, or even somebody’s Voice calling us in the night.

Then, we realize we are not worthy. The task is too big. We don’t know enough. We don’t have the skills. And we are not pure enough, much less qualified. It’s going to take more than we have to offer.

Then, somehow God gets through. Or continues to stay after us. Or might even do something dramatic to get our attention – and we discover this is why we are here. This is our purpose. This is what we need to do.

Like that moment when a twenty-something child called her father one afternoon. The phone call was awkward, seemingly aimless. Then she blurted it out, “Dad, what’s a calling?” Not your everyday question! Somehow, he had the presence of mind to respond, “Honey, it’s when we discover why we are here, right now, in this moment, in this place. And the calling can come at every season of our lives.” Because we live out our lives on Holy Ground. There is good work for each of us to do.

The Bible says it this way: “Where can I flee your presence, O Lord?”[5] Wherever I go, you are already there. The conclusion is that all ground is Holy Ground. And God gives us something to do, because holiness is not something to be bottled like perfume so we can spritz a little bit of it here and there. Holiness is something to be lived – out in the world as well as in the Temple. Holiness is the clear and abiding sense that God is here, with us and among us, and that the daily work we do is part of God’s purposes for the world.

So, enjoy this moment in this small-town temple. Consider what God invites you to do, and who God invites you to be. Life is a precious gift. The glory of the seraphim is all around us. And whether the Voice comes in thunderous noise or deep silence, God is calling you.

What do you think he wants you to do?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] 2 Chronicles 26:5.

[2] Eugene Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook, 2017) p. 117

[3] USA Today, “Teacher corrects White House letter with ‘many silly mistakes,’ 26 May 2018 (online at https://usat.ly/2sakbA3)

[4] Psalm 52:2-4.

[5] Psalm 139:7-12.