Upon Your Descendants

Isaiah 44:1-8
Pentecost / Confirmation
May 24, 2026
William G. Carter

But now hear, O Jacob, my servant, Israel whom I have chosen!

Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you:

Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.

For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground;

I will pour my spirit upon your descendants and my blessing on your offspring.

They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams.

This one will say, “I am the Lord’s,”

And another will write on the hand, “The Lord’s,” and adopt the name of Israel.

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:

I am the first, and the last; Besides me there is no god.

Who is like me? Let them proclaim it; Let them declare and set it forth before me.

Who has announced from of old the things to come? Let them tell us what it yet to be.

Do not fear or be afraid; Have I not told you from of old and declared it?

You are my witnesses! Is there any god besides me? There is no other rock; I know not one. 

Across the hall, in a desk drawer, is an old church photo directory. It’s from 1969. Not all of you are in it. Those who appear look faintly familiar. Some of you never age.

Thumbing through the pages, you realize so many people have come and gone. It’s a continuing reminder that a lot of folks pass through a town like this. The highways lead elsewhere. People keep moving. The church keeps changing.

About ten pages in, there’s a picture of Little Timmy. That’s what I will call him. Short hair, freckles, clip-on tie, his head tipped slightly to the right. His eyes were full of wonder as his family gazed at the Olan Mills photographer. So full of promise. On the cusp of his future.

Little Timmy was one who moved away. Recently he came home, sat in the old family pew. He wasn’t wearing a clip-on necktie this time, but I could still pick him out. During the sermon, he tipped his head the same way he always did. I don’t know if he kept his eyes open during the prayers. I wasn’t peeking. But he worshiped with us. Sang the hymns. Stayed to the end. At the door, he shook my hand. Then he said, “You know, it’s still here. I was glad to be in church.”

This is my way into that old poem from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was writing to people who belonged to God, a people whose lives stretched across many years. When the prophet wrote down his words, a lot of those questioned if their faith had a future. They didn’t know if the harshness of life would thin out the crowd. They feared their religious community would age out and disappear. These are, of course, recurring worries.

And Isaiah says three things to them, three things I pass along to all of you.

The first is essentially a question: “What kind of God do you think you have?” What kind of God has claimed you? And before anybody responds, the prophet reports on what God had revealed to him. God is the first and last, the A and the Z, our beginning and our destination. Like it or not, God will outlast us. God will outlive us. And God stands outside of the passing of our time.

That means God is separate from the rise and fall of our fortunes, our whims, our movements, our situations. All of us will come and go. Before we ever appeared, God turned on the lights. When we are done, God will stick even longer and will turn out the lights even further. This was Isaiah’s modest way of saying to time-bound people, “Get over yourselves.” It’s a good reminder of the limits we know - or will come to know. Point number one: we live our brief lives within the span of God’s eternity.

Here is his second point, this God who is independent of us, who is more than our projection, and greater than our dreams, still steps into our circumstances, into our conflicts, and into our broken dreams.

You see, Isaiah – at least, this Isaiah - was writing to people whose country had fallen apart. The world as they knew it had come unraveled. The tough news is that they had largely brought on that collapse by themselves. It happened in all kinds of ways. They had bowed down to riches. They were intoxicated by their own arrogance. They were distracted by their independent pursuits. Most of all, they conveniently forgot they lived in a world full of needs right outside their doors.

So, God interrupts to say, “Hey, who gives you life? Who fills you with faith? Who can be trusted, outside of yourselves?” Again, not waiting for an answer, God provides a promise: refreshment. Renewal. It will come like rain on a burned-out lawn. It will surprise you like streams in the wilderness. The prophet preaches the promise in poetry. The message was inspiring, but a little ambiguous. 

And then, to make point number three, the prophet specifies the future. Isaiah points to the horizon to say, “There will be children. They will have faith.” And how will this faith come? God says, “I will pour my spirit on your descendants.”

Sound familiar? It’s the same promise as Pentecost! As we heard the apostle Peter preach to the curious crowd fifty days after Easter, “God declares, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall preach. Your youngsters will see visions; your old duffers will have fresh dreams. The Spirit will come on them and they will speak.” (Acts 2:17-18)

One more way of saying we are not bound by our fears. We are not silenced by our circumstances. We are not restricted by your diminishments. We are not held back by all those who came and went, or who still come and go. The promise is that God will come. God will breathe. The church of the Risen Christ will speak. For the people of God live, not by bread alone, but by every word God speaks.

I like how Little Timmy said it, “It’s still here.” What’s still here? The creaking old building? Yes. The aging congregation? There’s nothing wrong with aging. It means you’re still alive. But he sensed something else: the Spirit, the Spirit of God. The Spirit is here. And it animates everything we speak, everything we do, everything we sing, everything we pray. It’s still here. And it’s a gift.

The people come and go. In Little Timmy’s day, this congregation reported 300 children in Sunday School. That might have been an inflated number. Or maybe not. And these days, how many of those 300 still go to church? Not as many as we could hope.

His generation was my generation, so I did a quick survey of my own confirmation class. We had about twenty seventh graders when I went to confirmation. Two of us went into the ministry, and then one quit. Another went Catholic (we thought she should have become a nun). Another classmate told me he is thinking about returning; we will wait and see. And the rest of them, where did they go? Scattered to the four winds. We can obsess about that demise. We bark about how it used to be. But that is missing the point. 

The point is this: the Holy Spirit is still here. God’s promise continues to be fulfilled. God will come to the next generation, too, and the generation after that. This is what we celebrate. Not what we are missing, but what we are given. Like Little Timmy said, “It’s still here.”

I took another look through that 1969 photo directory. All the people that I never met, the few that I’ve gotten to know. If they had their say, I think they would declare Christ is still among us. This congregation continues to evolve. New visions are given to us. Old dreams are shaken until the fantasies fade and the real possibilities take root. In all those years since Little Timmy’s mother clipped on his necktie, new elementary schools were built to handle the Baby Boom; in time, they consolidated. New homes sprang up like Monopoly houses, as this whistle-stop railroad town became a suburb. Route 6 added stop lights, Penn DOT widened the lanes, thousands of people passed through. And all those kids about my age - where did they go? God knows! They were scattered like old Isaiah’s tribe, blown like dandelion seeds into the world.

And yet, we still have believers. Doers. Singers. Prophets. Servants. Children of God. And it was obvious enough to Little Timmy for him to come back and say, “It’s still here.” The Spirit of God is still here. And that’s the Good News. People still hear God speak. Some of them do what God invites them to do. Today, three smart young men will profess their faith in Jesus Christ – and there will be plenty more to come.

Didn’t we hear what the prophet says? “I will pour my spirit upon your descendants. I will bless your offspring.” And those who receive the Spirit’s blessing will say, “I am the Lord’s.” Because the Eternal God who is still with us will always be ahead of us. That’s why faith has a future. And we are a part of it.

So, let’s stand to affirm our faith together with the words of a great old hymn – and God will continue to be praised!

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

Out of Sight, Yet Under His Feet

Acts 1:1-11
Ascension
May 17, 2026

William G. Carter  

In the English city of York, the Anglican cathedral reaches toward the heavens. For a thousand years, the spires of York Minster church have soared above the city. Pilgrims and tourists visit to admire the high arches and the flying buttresses. The sanctuary walls are filled with enormous windows of stained glass, including a stunning scene of the Last Judgment. It’s a remarkable building, the largest cathedral in Britain..  

And I’ve been told that if you sit in the nave and look straight up, there is a small sculpture built into the highest point of the ceiling. It is circular, portraying the heads of the apostles along with Mary. And in the center of it all, you see the bottoms of two feet. Those are Jesus’ feet, dangling from the sky. From down below, all anybody can see of Jesus ascending are the bottoms of his feet. When people recognize the reference, the scene stirs up a chuckle. Jesus was lifted from the earth. We live our lives under his feet.

We do not talk much about this biblical event, even though it rates two lines in the historic creeds of the church. As the Apostles Creed proclaims, "He ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God." The second half of the phrase is the only part of the creed in the present tense. And it sounds unusual to present-tense people. 

We want to take the Ascension seriously, but Jesus rising into the sky is a most unusual event. It seems unreal to the modern mind, left over from the days when people believed the universe was stacked in three stories: heaven above us, earth around us, hell below. Galileo and his children dared to challenge that vision of the universe. The first astronauts confirmed what many suspected, that spatially speaking, heaven is not up there. So, it is hard to picture Jesus physically floating into the sky. 

That explains why most New Testament writers do not draw the picture for us. Only Luke dares to describe the scene and does so twice. The Gospel of Luke stretches out the Easter story for an additional forty days, ending with Jesus being lifted into glory. Then Luke begins his second volume, the book of Acts, with the same scene. The ascension is the conclusion of the story of Jesus and the beginning of the story of the church. According to Luke, the single, pivotal event upon which the ages turn is the ascension of Jesus Christ.

Even so, it is a most curious event. It does not translate into anything the world down here can easily understand. So, the question remains: what does it mean to live beneath his feet?   

Well, some people are impressed when they hear the story. They suspend any discrepancies with modern physics and take the story literally. It is not every day that anybody shoots into the air without a rocket pack. Luke ended his Gospel by saying the disciples continued to worship with great joy. They were enthusiastic. They were impressed.

If this story is trying to fill us with excitement, God knows we need it. Here we are, forty days after Easter. The summer slump is coming. The church goes on vacation. Ushers may cancel if their tee times are changed. As the days lag on toward June, enthusiasm begins to wane. Something needs to spark the imagination of the church. Maybe we need an impressive event like the ascension to fire us up.

When the world was languishing during the covid-19 pandemic, the magician David Blaine planned an ascension of his own. He strapped himself to a huge array of hot air balloons in Page, Arizona, and began to float into the sky. Ascending over twenty-thousand feet off the ground, he filmed the event and put it on YouTube, where it has received over twenty-six million views.[1] People were astounded as they watched the spectacle from the ground or on their computers. They applauded, too, when he landed safely.

Alas, it was merely a spectacle. Blaine gained a lot of attention for his feat. Many subscribed to his YouTube channel to follow what he might do next. Yet the stunt was pointless. It did not enliven any enthusiasm or provide any fresh energy. In fact, he himself described the event as a distraction from the constrictions of the pandemic. A distraction!         

By contrast, remember how the ascension of Jesus proceeds. No sooner does Jesus go up to the heavens when two heavenly beings appear on the ground to ask, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” It is a sharp rejoinder to those who gaze into the sky. It is a shaking awake of the church that waits only for miracles while there is work to do.

Jesus had already given the disciples his commission. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,” the city where he was crucified and raised. “In all Judea,” the region where his ministry had flourished. “And Samaria,” that is, in the land of Jerusalem’s enemies, among those of questionable beliefs and backgrounds. “And to the ends of the earth,” the broad expanse of the world God had made. That commission has been a nudge for the church to get busy, to get organized, to get moving, and to serve. The faithful church of Jesus Christ cannot stand still with its nose in the air. We are sent here, there, and everywhere to declare that Jesus is risen from the dead and raised up – quite literally – as the Lord of all.      

This is the point of the biblical account. When Jesus ascends, he is not going to a location. Rather, he is assuming a function. He rose in order to rule. Forty days after rising from the dead, he goes up to take his royal seat at the side of God. This is the Bible’s left-handed way of declaring his authority to a right-handed world. The risen Christ has prominence over all things, which is considered good news by the church. In fact, his very last words to his church were, “You shall receive power…”

 

Maybe that is what the church needs -- a good dose of power, the promise of authority. This would offer confidence. It would give us certainty that the right man is on our side. In a time when influence is declining, pews are emptying, and congregations are strained for resources, there is no question who is in charge. Jesus Christ is Lord!

 

The temptation, however, is to start thinking if he is in charge, then we will be in charge. Imagine the recurring conversations whenever there is a political election, “We need to put the right people in power, so they can put all the crazies in their place.” That is the voice of power, at least in the way the world perceives power: as a force of exerting influence and control, to compel others to get what we want.

 

Now that is the voice of power, for sure. At least, that is how the world perceives power -- as a way to push others around to get what we want. Yet if the church comes looking for power in the ascension of Jesus, it will see power unlike any kind of power the world has ever seen.

           

Remember that plaster sculpture on the ceiling of York Minster cathedral? It is set in the ceiling of a massive cathedral – yet that cathedral is shaped in the form of a cross. The One who is lifted into heaven is the Christ who gave his life for the world. As Jesus is raised up to rule over heaven and earth, he rules with sacrificial love.

As we heard in our scripture, the disciples wanted to know if it was time for the Lord to restore Israel's kingdom. They hoped he would drive the Roman Empire from their land. Even after a brutal crucifixion by that Empire, they want him to restore their standing among the world’s kingdoms. And what does he say to them? Stay in the city and pray. Don’t scatter or run away or pretend that you are in charge. No, you live and serve beneath those feet. And we wait on him, and we keep living as if he is present - yet out of sight. This is a Lord who reveals power totally unlike the power of the world.

This is a most appropriate text as we set apart some of our own people as elders and deacons. Ordination is a calling to serve Jesus by serving others. It is not an anointing to greater power, but an invitation to get on your knees – in prayer and in service. We don’t lift these people up – we keep them on the ground, tending to the needs of the church that lives under the authority of Jesus. It is his authority that counts, not ours. It is his love that we make tangible, not merely own.

And we do his work together. That is the genius of Presbyterian government. Our structure is side by side, not top down. Elders and deacons are the first among equals, called and commissioned to stand among the congregation. They are ordained to ask, “What is Jesus calling us to do?” How is he commanding us to behave? How does he call us to act? What are his values that he wishes to embody in his church?

And if we are not certain, we take another look at him and see him giving himself away to the world. That’s the model. The only Christ-like model. We are not called to hoard the resources he provides, but to give them away. We are not called to smile at ourselves in a mirror and say, “Look how wonderful we are” – but look out the door, to work the neighborhood, and to serve all the people that he loves --- which would include all the people.

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

What we see is that Jesus Christ is Lord. Lifted out of sight, yet reigning with sovereign and self-giving love. Nothing in heaven or earth can separate us from that love. Now that he has been lifted up, we know his love is for all.

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[1] See the video recording on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwzvNAAqH3g.

If You Love Me...

John 14:15-21
Easter 6
May 12, 2026
William G. Carter

Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

 

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” 

It seemed like such a pleasant little text for Mother’s Day. Jesus speaks of love. Five times in eight sentences. Love, love, love… Fresh from telling us, “I am the Way,” he’s making that way clear to us. His way is the way of love. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals love, even love for a world that doesn’t love him in return. He exemplifies a life of laying ourselves down for one another. “There is no greater love than this,” he teaches.

Yet then if we actually read the text without flinching. Just listen to how it begins. “If you love me…” Anybody ever say those words to you? We hear them. We wait for the shoe to drop. There’s a yellow flag signaling future conditions and iron-clad expectations. “If you love me…” (fill in the blank).

 

If you love me, you will take out the garbage.

If you love me, you will clean up your mess.

If you love me, you will remember me at Christmas time.

If you love me, you will buy me something on my wish list.

If you love me, you will make a favorite meal for my birthday.

If you love me, you will phone me once a week.

If you love me, you will come and visit.

If you love me, really love me, you will come to church with me on Mother’s Day.

If you love me… Hear those words enough times and affection is hardened into obligation. Freedom is chained to responsibility. Joy is demoted to drudgery.

And then comes the full sentence, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Most of us pause to consider that. If we are present today, we see those words circling two stone tablets on the front of the worship bulletin. Keeping the commandments is the fundament moral requirement of faith: worship no other gods, keep Sabbath, don’t murder, covet, or steal – and all the rest. We are commanded to keep them. But to quote Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do with it?”

Let’s face it. Sometimes the Bible teaches conditional love – like most of the book of Deuteronomy. “If you do this, then…” For instance, Deuteronomy 5:16 – “Honor your mother (and father, too), so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you…” That is, honor your mother, followed by an implicit “or else.”

This is one of the venerable ways for scripture to keep people in line. “Do this and live.”

The difficulty is that sometimes we can do what is commanded and life may not turn out as we’ve been told. There are people who never smoked, but contracted lung cancer. There are some who kept to the straight and narrow, yet their lives came to ruin. In fact, some cared for their parents even when the road was difficult; and it did not go well with them. It seems that old Deuteronomic “do this and live” formula is not as airtight as it promises.

But remember this: our text does not come from Deuteronomy, but from the Gospel of John. This is the book where faithful Jews ask Jesus, “Who sinned, in order that a man was born without his sight?” They assume causality. They believe in consequence, but Jesus doesn’t go there. He knows what you and I know. Sometimes tough things just happen.

So, I went back for a second look at what John is telling us about Jesus. And I had a little help from a Bible scholar named Dale Bruner, who had two things to add.^[1]

Here is the first: our text has been translated poorly into English. We think it says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” What it should say is “When all of you love me, you will be keeping these commands of mine.” The grammar in Greek is not “if” but “when.” So, cancel all those notions of condition and consequence. Jesus speaks to those who will be loving him. Rather than an obligation, he offers an invitation: “When you love me…” That’s a gentler way to say, “If you love me.”

Next, if we follow up on that invitation to love him, we are not keeping the Ten Commandments. Nor are we keeping the 613 commandments of the Jewish Bible. We are keeping his commandments. Or as the original text put it, “these commandments of mine.”

So, pause for a minute to ask which commandments are his? You can probably think of one. He says, “This is my new commandment, to love one another.” (13:34) Of course – when we love him, we will love one another.

But are there other commands, especially in the Gospel of John? Dale Bruner says, “Yes, there’s one more. And it’s Christ’s first command. We skipped over it in the chapter before this one.” That’s the foot-washing chapter, chapter 13. Jesus says to Simon Peter, and then to us, “Unless I wash you, you won’t have a part of me.” Bruner says this is the Gospel in a short sentence, namely this: “Let me wash you. Let me forgive you. Let me love you.” Christ offers a cleansing that is pure grace. It’s his gift, and he commands Simon and the rest of us to receive it.

Dr. Bruner says it this way: “Forgiveness of sins will be the foundation of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ – constantly – or there will never be a firm foundation or good relation with Jesus Christ or with his Father… This is hard on our pride, but it is medicine for your soul.”^[2]

So, Jesus says, “When you love me, you will keep these commands of mine.” Commandment One: we let him love us with the soapsuds of forgiveness and grace. Commandment Two: we love one another as he loves us – presumably, with forgiveness and grace. Love flows from him through us. That’s the Christ life. That’s the way to walk.

Just as soon as he says it, more promises swirl as a spiral around us:

 

They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me;

and those who love me will be loved by my Father,

and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them,

and we will come to them and make our home with them. 

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words;

and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

It’s a lot to take in, a verbal tornado, yet the key to it all is this: the love of God is a gift for us all. God sent Jesus to show love, to be love, to offer love, and to command love. According to the Gospel of John, if you love, you are part of Christ’s life, his risen, abiding life.

He demands no further obligation from us, does not require us to do something we are unable to do, and he never asks us to be religious, pious, or reputable. Neither does he expect us to figure out the mysteries of heaven nor the deep questions of earth. He doesn’t tell us how many candles to light, nor does he shake us upside down until all the quarters fall out of our pockets.

All Jesus commands of us is to let him love us, and then to stay with that love until we love one another. For Jesus, it is a matter of presence. “Stick with me,” he says. “Stay with me.” Dwell with me. Abide with me. One verb after another, all pointing to the same life-giving reality. We welcome Christ within us, among us. We welcome his presence, in the power of his ever-present Spirit. That’s the gift. That’s the promise.

To illustrate, I draw on an old family story. It’s a lesson from, of all places, my mother. I grew up as the first-born child in my family. Naturally, I was certain that came with certain privileges. When my sister came along, I was taller. I was stronger. I was sure I was far better looking. And so on and so forth.

Sister Debbie, eighteen months younger, resembled the Biblical character of Jacob. Remember him? He was the twin brother of Esau, born just a few minutes later. When he came out of the womb, he was grabbing the heel of his big brother. Years ago, sister Debbie was no twin, but she was always grabbing my heel.

I was good at math. She had to be better. I took piano lessons. She worked harder, a much better musician than me. I was an exemplary student. She got better grades. She bugged me. And she hated the fact that she’d start a new year in school and the teachers would say, “Oh, we know your older brother. Are you going to be great student like him?” She would grind her teeth, then do everything she could to surpass me.

So, you can expect that there were occasions when we would bump heads. Good, old fashioned sibling rivalry. If you were an only child, you don’t know what you were missing. Many times, our mother would have to separate us. She would have to pull us off one another, sending one to a chair over there, another to a chair over here. Then came the maternal wisdom. “Are you angry with one another?” Yes! “Really angry?” Yes!

“OK, here is your punishment,” she said. “You are going to sit in those two chairs until I say so. You are required to look at one another. You are not allowed to say a word. You are not allowed to smile. You are not allowed to laugh. You are not allowed to make a peep. Got it? Now, start staring at one another.” She walked out of the room.

The punishment was so ridiculous. It was ridiculous. We both knew it. But there we were, glowering, scowling, grimacing, frowning, scrunching up our faces, sticking out our tongues. I would snicker. Mom’s voice came in from the next room. “I said, not a word!” Deb would grin. Mom, again, “No smiling.” And pretty soon, we were both laughing.

And here she came. “If the two of you are going to laugh, hug one another and make up.” The magic was this: she wanted us to be present with one another, completely present. And if we are truly connected, love takes over. That’s the promise. It’s a sign of how it is when Christ is present with us. Love takes over. Thanks, Mom!

It’s the promise of Jesus. “When you love me, you will love one another.” As the Gospel of John, suggests, if we wish we could believe, we are already believing. If we want to love, we have begun to love.^[3] So, we stay with Christ, we dwell in the love of Christ, and he stays with us, deepening our love until we discover we are lovable.

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

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[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2012) 835-6.

[2] Ibid., 766.

[3] Bruner, 836.

When Suffering is Unfair

1 Peter 2:19-25
Easter 4
April 26, 2026
William G. Carter

 

For it is a commendable thing if, being aware of God, a person endures pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do good and suffer for it, this is a commendable thing before God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

 

 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

 

When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.  For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

  

We didn’t choose this Bible passage. It was chosen for us. There is an ecumenical committee that selects a schedule of scripture texts for weekly worship. I don’t know who they are, but they chose this one. And it is a curious text, indeed.

For one thing, the committee left off the first verse. Verse 18 begins the paragraph, and they left it out of the reading. We can’t blame them for that. It’s one of the most embarrassing verses in the New Testament. It says, in effect, “Slaves, obey your masters. Take whatever they throw at you. Show them proper deference.” Ouch!

In earlier times in our nation’s life, that verse was plucked from the first century and hurled at African people who had been stolen from their homes and sold as forced laborers. It’s ugly. And it will not help to say that Peter’s word for “slaves” was a technical term for house servants, a good bit different than the American enslavement now regarded as America’s original sin.

We can be happy that human enslavement is outlawed in this country, even as the aftershocks of that violent oppression continue to damage our social and economic fabric. We still have a lot of people in this country who think they are better than others. According to historian Heather Cox Richardson of Boston University, people like that are still scrambling to get themselves elected, if only to perpetuate their presumptions of superiority.[1]

Our text was addressed to slaves, who were told to stay in line. I think it’s OK to skip that verse. But it does raise the question: why read the rest of it?

Some might point out that Peter speaks of the death of Jesus. The cross is central to the faith we share. We hoist it high and remember that Jesus took our sins upon himself. This has always been one of the central mysteries of our faith. And it took Christian people a good long time to figure out how to talk about it.

When Jesus appeared on the scene, he told enchanting stories. He kneeled beside the sick and made them well. He taught people how to pray simply and directly. And he called out the hypocrisies of religion and government. The people cheered him. And for all these good and honest deeds, he was nailed to a cross. He was punished but did nothing wrong.  He was verbally abused but did not talk back. He was beaten and whipped, yet never reacted in kind. He came to us in love; and that provoked the worst in us. And he took it. He carried it.

Maybe this is the point of our text. It’s three weeks after Easter, Resurrection Season, but don’t let the empty tomb entice you to forget about the cross. Easter was more than a happy ending to a painful weekend. It was – and continues to be - a call to righteousness, a summons to give up hatred, an invitation to turn away from violence and abuse and turn back to God.

That’s why the writer of this letter draws on the ancient words of the prophet Isaiah. He needs to find words to understand what Jesus went through. From chapter 53, he reads, 

He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity,
and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases,
yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. (53:3-6)

Does that sound familiar? Of course it does. Peter is quoting Isaiah’s old text as a way of making sense of the cross of Jesus. Those ancient words were embodied by the Christ. This is who Jesus was, who he still is. And we need that reminder, even after Easter.

But there is an even better reason why we are hearing this passage today. It’s because it is the Fourth Sunday of the Easter season. The fourth Sunday is always Good Shepherd Sunday. We hear our old friend, the 23^rd Psalm. We speak and sing about the Shepherd, even if we have never actually met a real shepherd. And that hooks the last line of 1 Peter’s text, “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” Ah, there it is.

For that, too, is also a quotation from the prophet Isaiah (53:6). It’s a Shepherd text, a Good Shepherd text. The promise that no matter what we are going through, the Shepherd gathers and guards us. We are never guaranteed that life will be easy. We are never promised that everything will work out to our preferences or prop up our privileges.

Yet the Shepherd Christ stands with us. “He suffered for you,” says the preacher Peter. He healed you. He gave you an example for when the world beats up on you.

It is striking that Peter addresses this to slaves, not slave owners. There is no Gospel word for slave owners, or for the masters, or for the oppressors. Only for the slaves, and for anybody who suffers unfairly. Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that just like Jesus? It sounds like the Sermon on the Mount. As somebody notes,

His instruction was to those who were forced to go a mile, but he had no word for those who did the forcing. He advised those taken to court but not those who brought them there. He spoke to those struck on the cheek, but we know of no saying from him to those who strike others. Apparently Jesus’ followers were the abused, not the abusers. Perhaps that is true in the case of slaves and not slave owners in the churches addressed by 1 Peter… It was not written to them or for them. It was written to those who were slaves, had become Christians, but were still slaves.[2]

And the word is to endure. To push through without striking back. To claim the full stature of your humanity. It is possible to be a victim – yet not be a victim. Do you know what I mean by that? Simply this: if we experience pain, we do not inflict pain on others as our response. If we experience disappointment, we do not ruin somebody else’s day. If the world beats us up, we choose not to strike anybody else up. This is the path of forgiveness, just as Jesus forgave and continues to forgive. More than that, it is the path to claim the fullness of our God-given humanity. “We follow in his steps,” says Peter. We pursue his example. We become Christ-like by living like Christ.

So, he said, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, you take control of the situation. Give them the other cheek.” They may lose interest if they run out of cheeks. Is this unrealistic? Or merely untried?

And if anyone says, “Hey you, carry my pack a mile,” take control of the moment and carry that pack a second mile. Go beyond the basic requirement.

Is Peter telling us to become somebody else’s punching bags? No, no, no. For there is a human dignity to be claimed. Our calling is to become like Jesus, never striking back, never holding the grudge, never demeaning another person who has just demeaned us. This is hard. It’s very hard. It takes practice.

Try to recall the last time somebody hurt you. How did you respond? Did you plan their slow, painful demise? Or did you plan a more creative approach, like putting a strong laxative in their hot chocolate? There is no future in revenge, even if it would feel so good.

 Did you ever hear what the late Frederick Buechner said about anger? 

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”[3]

There is another way to live, another road to walk. It is not the road of retaliation or the way of MAD (that is, mutually assured destruction). As Mahatma Gandhi supposedly said, “If you live by an eye for an eye, pretty soon the whole world will be blind.”

No, if you have an enemy, fix them a meal. If you’re really strong, invite them to eat it with you. Or you send them a gift, preferably one that is not ticking. That will keep them guessing.

I remember an old college friend. He loved his girlfriend. She treated him cruelly. He invited her out, she was late, he still waited for her. He wrote her a love note. She ripped it up in front of him. He bought her It was terrible. We thought he was crazy to stick with her. So did she. At one moment, she yelled at him, “Why do you keep being so nice to me?” He said, “I thought that was how we are supposed to treat one another.” She didn’t know what to say. She ran out of words. She lost interest in being cruel. Then she started taking an interest in him. Curious, isn’t it?

The lesson is so simple, yet so difficult. When someone mistreats you, what would Jesus do? How would he respond? What could we learn from him? Class is in session. There’s going to be a lot of homework. Keep in touch.

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

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[1] See, for instance, her book, How the South Won the Civil War, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022)

[2] Fred B. Craddock, First and Second Peter and Jude: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995) 49.

[3] Frederick Buecher, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

And God Gave Them ...

1 Samuel 5:1-12
Holy Humor Sunday
April 12, 2026

William G. Carter  

     When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod; then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and placed it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose early on the next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off upon the threshold; only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not step on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

The hand of the LORD was heavy upon the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and struck them with tumors, both in Ashdod and in its territory. And when the inhabitants of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us; for his hand is heavy on us and on our god Dagon.” So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?”

The inhabitants of Gath replied, “Let the ark of God be moved on to us.” So they moved the ark of the God of Israel to Gath. But after they had brought it to Gath, the hand of the LORD was against the city, causing a very great panic; he struck the inhabitants of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them.

So they sent the ark of the God of Israel to Ekron. But when the ark of God came to Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, “Why have they brought around to us the ark of the God of Israel to kill us and our people?” They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.” For there was a deathly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there; those who did not die were stricken with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

 

Susan Sparks is a Baptist preacher and one of the funniest people I know. She tells of discovering our scripture text for the first time. It was a hot August Sunday in the Baptist church of her youth. Susan was just seven years old. Like the other overheated people around her, she was fanning herself as the preacher stood up to read the Bible passage for the day. He announced it was a text that tells us what God does to his enemies. And he read from the King James Bible,

It was so that after the Philistines had carried the Ark of the Covenant about, the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had ‘emerods’ in their secret parts. (1 Sam. 5:9, KJV)

Susan said the fans stopped. People looked around. Even though the King James language was somewhat obscure, everybody knew what that meant. ‘Emerods’ was an old word for “hemorrhoids.” God smote them with hemorrhoids. Even though she was only seven years old, even though she had never actually encountered the affliction, she burst out laughing.

Her mother whispered, “Susan Grace! We don’t laugh in church. Jesus doesn’t like it!”[1]

That was the day she discovered that Christian people are just a little too uptight to enjoy what’s in their Bibles, and that they worshiped a God who punished people by giving them hemorrhoids. It was enough to push her to find out what kind of God we really have.

I mean, there is some Jewish humor here. The Rabbis recount the terrible judgment of God. Those blasted Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant. That was the big chest that carried the original Ten Commandments. It was carried on long poles so nobody could actually touch it. The Hebrew people believed it was super-charged with spiritual energy, for it contained the very words of God. It was as if God was present wherever his Commandments were located.

Those nasty Philistines stole the Ark! They stole it. Like the Nazis in an Indiana Jones movie, they took it as a spoil of war. And how did God respond? Not by melting their faces or blasting them with a holy laser beam. The Lord God smote them . . . and gave them hemorrhoids.

It is OK to laugh. That’s what the Jews would do. In Jewish practice, sarcasm is a prophetic trait. If you want to strike out against God’s enemies, make fun of them. You trust God will humiliate them in the most degrading way. In a day before Preparation H, that’s exactly what God did.

Oh, I know: our cultured versions of the Bible have tidied up the language. Three times in 1 Samuel 5, we hear the word “tumors,” not the word “hemorrhoids.” That is an unfortunate translation. The actual Hebrew word refers to small tumors of the tuchas. They are benign yet painful. And they were clearly sufficient to get the Philistines’ attention.

Now, this is a graphic story to make a simple point: the Philistines should not have stolen the Ark. It contained the Covenant between Yahweh and the Jews, the two stone tablets as they were first given to Moses. The Covenant was not intended for the Philistines. It was not a prize from battle or the bottle that holds a good-luck Genie. The covenant was a special pact between redeemed slaves and the God who brought them out of Egypt. Yahweh is the Liberator of Israel, the God who has no equal. You’re not supposed to mess with such a God.

This is what the Philistines discover. They steal the Ark and take it into one of their temples. It was the Temple of Dagon, who was one of their Philistine gods. In the early days, Dagon was the god of fertility, so he had a lot of worshipers. By the time of our account, however, he had been demoted in popular imagination and was regarded as the god of good fishing.

The Philistines had built a house for Dagon and placed a statue of him inside it. That’s where they took Israel’s ark. They put it in the temple of Dagon and stood guard at the door. The next morning, when they opened the door, the statue of Dagon was tipped over on its face. So there! Told you not to mess with Yahweh!

The Philistines tipped their statue back up and shut the door. Next morning, Dagon’s statue was tipped over again – and the hands and the head of the statue were knocked off. See, you nasty Philistines! We told you not to mess with the Lord our God.

Well, that’s about the time that the Philistines started having their posterior problems. The storyteller says, “The hand of the Lord was heavy upon them.” They were terrified and, shall we say, “tumorized.” So, they moved the Ark to another place. They moved it from the town of Ashdod to the city of Gath. A few years later, Gath would become the hometown of Goliath, the giant warrior. The people of Gath said, “Bring the Ark here. We’ll take care of it.” No sooner did it arrive, and they were similarly afflicted. They said, “Get this thing out of here!”

So the Philistines moved the Ark of God from the city of Gath to the city of Ekron. But as they neared that city, the people of Ekron said, “Oh no, you don’t! We don’t want that poisonous artifact around us! Get that thing out of here. Take it back to the people of Israel.” They felt the heavy, heavy hand of God when the Ark was near. In the Philistine city of Ekron, as in Gath and Ashdod, the Ark caused all kinds of painful itching – along with many other indignities. For seven months, the Philistines had the Ark, shuffling it around from place to place. And they came to believe the thing was such a pain in the . . .  well, you know.

So eventually they put it on a cart pulled by two strong cows, put a bit of gold on the cart next to it, and then returned it to the Israelites. With that, their affliction disappeared.

Now, this is a really strange story. Nobody knows quite what to do with it. By the fourth century AD, when the Bible was translated to Latin, St. Jerome added a clarifying note. He said there were rats – that God released rats on the Philistines. That, he explains, was the reason for the so-called tumors and any corresponding illness.

The notion continued, and no less than Martin Luther preached a few sermons on the text. He thundered that the church leaders of Rome were the Bubonic Plague of humanity, and that God was perfectly within his right to afflict all enemies with illness.

The question, of course, is the same question that my friend Susan asked as a seven-year-old: is this the kind of God that we have? Does God send disease and discomfort upon people?

Maybe you remember that Far Side cartoon from many years ago. It’s entitled “God at His Computer.” The white-bearded Deity sits at his desk, computer screen before him. On the screen, a hapless slouch walks down the street. An upright piano dangles over his head. God reaches toward the keyboard to hit the SMITE button.

Is that how God is? Just waiting to hit the button? There are days when it seems so. As guitarist Mark Knopfler famously sang, “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”

There are seasons in our lives when it feels like the hand of God is fiercely against us – when things are not going well, where joy seems depleted, where the bad diagnoses pile up (so to speak), when all our luck is bad luck. Such moments come to us all, and it is worthy to wonder if we are bringing difficulty upon ourselves. Perhaps we are traveling in the wrong direction and God is trying to get our attention.

Yet it’s never as easy as that. In the Gospel text from the 9^th chapter of John, Jesus sees a blind man in Jerusalem. Everybody knows him. He has become a fixture on the street corner, begging for a hand-out from all the passersby. The friends of Jesus ask, “Rabbi, who sinned to make this man blind? Did he do something wrong? Or did his parents grieve the Lord?”

Jesus says, “None of the above. Neither he nor his parents sinned. He was born blind, that’s all. If anything, he is an example of how God works in human lives.” With that, he made a salve, rubbed it on the man’s eyes in the manner of all the healers of that time, and told him to go and wash it away. The blind man came back seeing.

Now, that seems to be the work of God – the work of the kind of God that I want to believe in. Jesus goes to a man blind from birth, doesn’t bother to ask if he wants to be healed, and then heals him anyway. That’s the kind of goodness and mercy that doesn’t wait to be asked. It is aggressive grace. Jesus heals the man almost randomly because that is who he is – the healer – and that is how he works – out of the goodness of God’s heart.

The only way that I can make any sense out of that story where three cities of Philistines get hemorrhoids is that it is a satire – a caustic, sarcastic judgment on anybody who tries to steal God for their own purposes. The Philistines plundered the Ark to get what Israel had, yet they would not live with a covenant that was not intended for them in the first place. They believe if they can grab a hold of Yahweh, then he will be forced to bless them and give them success. It’s the same insistence of many counterfeit pilgrims have, that if they keep repeating the old religious words, it will actually make them religious.

Ah, either we live as if God loves us or we do not. Either we live by the Torah’s instruction to be a blessing to others or we do not. Either we honor God with everything we do, or we end up grabbing for what it not ours.

What the Philistines painfully discovered is that the one true God, the God of Israel, is strangely indifferent to all of our striving. It is possible to grab for a big piece of holiness and miss it entirely. People still do that.

Meanwhile, the deeper purpose of Yahweh is revealed. God shows steadfast love to all who honor him. God remembers those who do the commandments and not merely cart them around. God comes to us in Jesus to forgive all iniquity, to heal every disease, to lift life right out of the Pit. God is the One who crowns people with love and mercy. God alone can satisfy every hungry heart with overwhelming goodness, provided, of course, that the heart is willing to be satisfied with what God provides.

So that’s it. I’ve been trying to figure out how to end a sermon like this, but I don’t know how. I’m just going to stop. Some of the Philistines have been sitting for entirely too long. Now it’s time for all of us to stand and sing.

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

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[1] Susan Sparks, Laugh Your Way to Grace (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2009) 32.