Firm Foundation

Firm Foundation

It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 7
June 15, 2025
Matthew 7:24-27

Everybody who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise builder who built a house on bedrock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It didn’t fall because it was firmly set on bedrock. But everybody who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice will be like a fool who built a house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It fell and was completely destroyed.

 Matthew 7:24-27

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A couple of years ago, our daughter was building a sand castle at the beach — correction - a sand kingdom… or as she called it: Sand-topia.

It was evening and the tide was coming in.  Eventually she stopped adding to her kingdom and focused instead on building sand walls and moats to hold back the water.  Needless to say, her defenses didn’t stand a chance.  The tide came.  The walls crumbled.  The moats overflowed.  Sand-topia was lost.

I have never seen anyone work harder to save a sand castle.  She spent more time trying to protect her kingdom than she did building it. 

The next morning, we walked past the former site of Sand-topia, and something struck me.  The waves didn’t “destroy” Sand-topia in the way a flood might destroy buildings and roads in real life.  There was no rubble, there were no mold ridden building frames to muck out, there was no crumbled asphalt.  There was nothing. 

In fact, there was absolutely no evidence that anything had ever been built there.  The sand was pristine, smooth, natural, as it had always been.

What if the tide is a sign of grace?

I don’t want to diminish the real destruction floods can cause.  I’ve lived through Florida hurricanes.  But sometimes, when natural forces move through uninhabited places, they can leave beauty in their wake.  Fire can bring new life to a forest.  Sinkholes in the Florida panhandle have been turned into a state park with breathtaking landscapes and even a waterfall where a river drops into one of those seemingly bottomless pits.  The same sinkhole or fire or flood that would be tragic in a neighborhood can be transformative in another place.

Sometimes it feels like life is collapsing under a flood.  Sometimes it actually is.  

But what if, at times, the flood is actually God’s grace? What if, like the tide, God is simply trying to restore our souls the way the waves restore the beach to it’s original, pristine condition? 

Spiritual growth, or sanctification, isn’t about building something new, or adding more to our lives.  It’s a stripping away of everything in us that’s not of God.  The Spirit’s work in us is not to sculpt a masterpiece out of a human shaped pile of garbage and sin.  Instead, the Spirt gently restores us to the image of God that we were always made to reflect.

The firm foundation isn’t something we build.  At best, our efforts create temporary barriers to protect our fragile lives and hearts.  What if, without realizing it, we are resisting grace?  What if the Spirit is simply trying to uncover the firm foundation God has already laid for us?

What might God be gently washing away in your life — not to destroy, but to restore?

One in the Spirit

One in the Spirit

It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 6
June 8, 2025
Joel 2:28, Acts 2:38-47

After that I will pour out my spirit upon everyone;
     your sons and your daughters will prophesy,
     your old men will dream dreams,
     and your young men will see visions.

Joel 2:28

Peter replied, “Change your hearts and lives. Each of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you, your children, and for all who are far away — as many as the Lord our God invites.”

Acts 2:38-39

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“I will pour out my Spirit upon everyone… This promise is for you, your children, and for all who are far away — as many as the Lord invites.”

It has been said that the greatest scandal of Christianity is not who it excludes, but who it includes.  If God is at the center of the circle, there are no boundaries.  If Christ is at the head of the table, there is always an extra seat.  If the Holy Spirit is poured out upon everyone, then who are we to say who is in or out, who belongs or doesn’t, who is welcome or who is not?

As the Spirit moves through Acts, we discover that everyone includes than even the prophets or disciples imagined: Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free, young and old, rich and poor.  The Spirit pours out on Saul, a persecutor of the church.  The Spirit reaches out across the nations and welcomes Roman centurions, wealthy businesswomen, slave girls, prison guards, merchants, tentmakers, and the list goes on. 

Empires thrive on conformity, loyalty, and fear.  As the Wizard says in Wicked, “nothing brings people together like a good enemy.”  Tragically, Christian history has often embraced this philosophy — us vs. them — with devastating results.  From the Crusades the Holocaust to  present-day attacks by Christian leaders against people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, people with mental health struggles, other religions, and even certain branches of the church that they don’t consider Christian — the list of those we try to exclude is long.

These are people God so loved, whom Christ came to save and not condemn.  Even when they are in our churches and communities, seeking to live with love and integrity, we are quick to judge, to marginalize, or to ignore them entirely as if they are not really present.

Some claim that history is being “re-written” because it doesn’t match what they learned in school.  In truth, what’s new is  the inclusion of the countless voices long silenced by power.  These people have always been present, in the world and in the church, but they have not always been seen or heard.

That is why we confess the ways we have rejected God’s promise for ALL people.  We ask for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit, to open our eyes and hearts to those we have not seen and to help us hear God’s voice in the voices we have silenced.

Lord have mercy.  Christ have mercy.  Lord have mercy.

Hear the good news! We are one in the Spirit of God, who is poured out on all people, without exception, and who binds us together not by sameness, but by grace.

Generation to Generation

Generation to Generation

It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 5
June 1, 2025
Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength. These words that I am commanding you today must always be on your minds. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up.

Deuteronomy 6:5-7

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At first glance, I’d say I didn’t inherit much from my family when it comes to faith.  We went to church, but never talked about it at home.  Yet, looking back, I realize that without my grandmother’s quiet and steady faith, I probably would not be a Christian at all. 

Like my parents, she rarely spoke about faith out loud.  But she was a devout Catholic, raising five children in the church even though her husband never attended.  She prayed faithfully every day — perhaps more than anyone I’ve ever known.  I didn’t learn about her prayer corner until after our daughter was born.  She sat there daily, praying for every member of her family by name, all the way down to the great grandchildren whose names I don’t even know. 

I’m sad to admit that early in my overzealous Baptist years, I was convinced by the church that Catholics couldn’t be “saved,” and I worried about Gram’s salvation.  She always dreamed of one of her grandsons becoming a priest, and I was her last hope.  I shattered that when, in 6th grade, I convinced my parents to join the Baptist church.

Years later, after I became a pastor and she met my wife, she was deeply grateful.  Not only was her lifelong prayer answered by having a minister in the family, but she also cherished gaining a new granddaughter-in-law and great-granddaughter.  She saw God’s faithfulness in my life even if it didn’t look the way she expected.

Faith doesn’t always get passed down through perfect teaching or clear conversations. Sometimes it comes through presence — through someone showing up, holding space, or quietly living a life centered on God. That kind of faith may not look impressive, but it plants deep roots.

As Moses shaped a new people out of those freed from Egypt, God gave them a commandment that Jeus would later call the greatest: to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.  He said, “Talk about these things when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up.”

My family didn’t exactly do that, at least not out loud.  But in her own way, my grandmother did.  She spoke about it through her prayers, long before I even understood or appreciated what she was doing.  She modeled it every time she took me to the church to light a candle for someone who was sick and every time she went to the nursing home to take communion to someone. 

And most of all, she spoke about it through her unconditional love.  She was deeply hurt when I left the Catholic church.  Yet even when I foolishly tried to convert her to a faith she already understood more deeply than I did, she never stopped loving me.

It’s not always obvious, but God’s love does reach down to us from generation to generation. 

Where can you see it in your family line?

The Gift of Submission

Submit to One Another

It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 4
May 25, 2025
Ephesians 5:20-6:4

Always give thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; and submit to each other out of respect for Christ. 

Ephesians 5:20-21

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Paul’s instructions for Christian households can be a hornet’s nest for bad interpretation and abuse.

In the evangelical church where I spent my teenage years, I often heard Ephesians 5:22 and 6:1 quoted — “Wives submit to your husbands” and “Children, obey your parents.” What’s ironic is how rarely we heard verses like 5:25 or 6:4 — “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church” and “Parents, don’t provoke your children to anger.” And even less proclaimed were the verses that introduce the entire section: “Submit to each other out of respect for Christ.”

That mutual submission sets the tone for everything that follows. Yet historically, many faith communities have twisted these verses to uphold hierarchies of control — where men dominate, women disappear into the background, and children are to be seen but not heard.

In Jesus and John Wayne, historian Kristin Kobes DuMez describes the cultural fascination with domineering, militant masculinity.  Like John Wayne, they are men who “sit tall in the saddle, who are not afraid to resort to violence to bring order, and who won’t let political correctness get in the way of saying what has to be said or the norms of democratic society keep them from doing what needs to be done.” 

Such “alpha-males” don’t show weakness, they “protect” with power, and they rarely make room for those who don’t fit the mold. One man with a physical disability said he felt there was no place for him in  evangelicalism because he wasn’t a “sports or hunting fanatic.” I’ve felt that too. At one church I served, the men told me they couldn’t respect me because I didn’t own a gun. Apparently, not owning one meant I wasn’t a “biblical man” because in their words, I “was refusing to protect my family.”

The sad irony is that many churches preach these roles as biblical while ignoring the harm they can cause. I've seen men praised for “leading” while acting more like bullies. I've watched women, outwardly submissive, quietly manipulate and control everything behind the scenes in a dynamic that only pretends to honor Scripture. And far too often, these façades have hidden emotional manipulation, spiritual neglect, and even abuse.

Children grow up believing they are either invisible or inherently flawed, because their needs and voices are rarely valued.  When I was a youth pastor, I had two 6th grade girls ask me, “If you had kids, would you talk to them?”  Their pain was deeply felt as most of the adults in their lives completely ignored their existence.

When our family systems are built on control instead of Christlike love, everyone loses.

So what if we stopped asking who’s in charge and started asking who needs to be seen, heard, and loved?

To follow Christ is to dismantle power plays and choose the harder way: honoring one another as beloved members of God’s family. This is the kind of household is bound together by grace, where mutual love and surrendering our will and desires to the needs of one another builds something truly holy.

It's Complicated

It's Complicated

It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 3
May 18, 2025
John 14:1-4, Romans 12:9-18

My Father’s house has room to spare. If that weren’t the case, would I have told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you?      

John 14:1-7

Love should be shown without pretending. Hate evil, and hold on to what is good.  Love each other like the members of your family. Be the best at showing honor to each other.

Romans 12:9-10

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In our Father’s house, there are many rooms — and together, we are learning how to live as one.

I grew up with a very different understanding of this passage. I was taught the King James Version, which says there are many “mansions.” I never thought to ask how multiple mansions could exist inside one house, but the image I held was highly individualistic and luxurious. Then I went to seminary and studied under Old Testament scholar and archaeologist Dr. Sandra Richter, who introduced us to the ancient 4-room pillared houses of ancient Israel known as the bet’ab — the “Father’s house.” This, it turns out, is the term Jesus uses when describing the place he is preparing.

The bet’ab was not a mansion, nor was it a space of private luxury. It included shared family living spaces, a combined reception room and kitchen, and small  sleeping areas often located on the upper level. In Israel’s patriarchal culture, the oldest living male was the head of the household, which included his sons, their wives, extended relatives, and sometimes servants. Much of the living and cooking took place outdoors, with rooms arranged around a central courtyard. Resources were shared, and everyone contributed to the needs of the household and wider community.

So what does this have to do with Jesus and his promise of heaven?

I’m glad you asked.

For Jesus, salvation is not some escapist dream of heavenly mansions and golden streets. It’s about a communal sense of belonging. In Christ, we are adopted into God's family, and we are given a place in the bet’ab — God’s household. 

But belonging to a household carries responsibilities. Children — biological or adopted — are expected to participate fully in the life of the family. Yes, they receive the blessings and love that come with being part of the family, knowing all their needs will be met. But they are also expected to contribute, to discover and use their gifts for the good of the entire household.

Family life, of course, is complicated. We don’t always get along, and sometimes those closest to us bear the brunt of our worst days. Siblings, in particular, can be highly competitive.

Life teaches us what it means to be part of a family — the human family, God’s family. As Paul writes to the Romans: “Love should be shown without pretending. Hate evil, and hold on to what is good. Love each other like the members of your family. Be the best at showing honor to each other.”

May this be our greatest competition in life: to outdo one another in showing honor and love. In a world that often rewards pride, power, or personal gain, what if we became known for something else entirely — a radical, joyful commitment to building each other up? That’s the kind of family Christ invites us to be.

Nurturing Faith

Nurturing Faith

It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 2
May 11, 2025
2 Timothy 1:3-7

I’m reminded of your authentic faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. I’m sure that this faith is also inside you. Because of this, I’m reminding you to revive God’s gift that is in you… God didn’t give us a spirit that is timid but one that is powerful, loving, and self-controlled.                         

2 Timothy 1:5-7

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Let’s be honest — families can be complicated. While many experience love and support at home, others carry deep wounds from strained, broken, or absent relationships. Even strong families often have dynamics that are difficult or painful. Some, like my own, find deeper connection with adopted or chosen families who walk with us more closely than blood relatives.

Yet phrases like “blood is thicker than water” can still haunt us, often used to shame or guilt those whose biological ties fall short. But the original version of that phrase — dating back to 12th-century Germany —  actually reads: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” It referred to bonds formed between soldiers in battle, calling for a loyalty  deeper than even that of a brother. Jesus suggests  a similar idea when he asked, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” and answered his own question by pointing to those who do God’s will (Mark 3:33–35).

For Timothy, we see a beautiful legacy of faith passed down through his mother and grandmother. We give thanks for families like these who nurture faith and encourage the next generation. But for those who did not inherit such a legacy — or whose families have been a source of pain — the church must be a refuge, not a source of guilt or shame.

We also recognize that mothering is not limited to biology. Scripture is full of women who nurtured faith in others — Deborah, Ruth, Hannah, Mary, Priscilla — and countless unnamed women who formed and sustained the early church. Many in our own communities offer that same care: Sunday school teachers, youth mentors, spiritual directors, neighbors, and friends. To mother someone is to invest, to guide, to love sacrificially and that calling belongs to many.

In Christ, the Spirit forms a new family — a covenant community where belonging is not based on DNA but on grace. Biological families can be a beautiful part of that, but so can those formed by friendship, faith, or shared struggle. The so-called “ideal family” of mid-20th-century America was always more myth than reality. Today’s families are as diverse as the people who form them: single parents, co-parents, blended households, chosen families, and those who are single by choice or circumstance. All of them matter.

The church is called to be a the kind of family people may have missed elsewhere — a place of welcome, healing, and hope. When we show up for each other in times of loss and celebration, when we speak truth in love, when we pass on wisdom or offer a listening ear, we become spiritual kin. In a world that often isolates, the family of God is meant to embrace.

On this Mother’s Day, we honor the women who lead and love — mothers, grandmothers, mentors, spiritual mothers, and faithful friends. And we reaffirm our calling as the household of God, where every family has a place, and no one walks alone. In our Father’s house, there are many rooms—and together, we are learning how to live as one.

Thank you for following my sermon blog here at “Echo”. For deeper reflections on God and faith in everyday life, be sure to subscribe to my new Substack - “Reflections of Something”. Hope to see you there!