Luke 12, a guy interrupts Jesus mid teaching to settle a family inheritance dispute, and Jesus responds with a parable about a farmer who has such a good harvest that he runs out of storage. This, historically speaking, is the best problem a farmer in the ancient world could have. And the guy's solution is to demolish his barns and build bigger ones. Jesus calls him a fool for this. Which is a hint that this story is not really about barns.

Here's the thing about reading the Bible. You can't just drop into one story. You have to ask where it sits inside the larger story, because the biblical authors are constantly in conversation with everything that came before them. So, let's rewind the tape for a second.
Go back to Genesis, and you find humans in a garden with everything they need, plus one tree they don't need, and somehow that one tree becomes the only thing they can think of. That's chapter three of the Bible. The pattern is set early. Enough is never actually a problem. Our perception of enough is the problem.

Fast forward to the wilderness, and God is literally raining bread from the sky every morning. Manna. The instructions are wonderfully specific. Take only what you need for today. A few people try to hoard extra overnight anyway, and by morning it's full of maggots and stinks up the whole camp (Exodus 16:20). I did not make this up… That is in your Bible.

So, when a Jewish audience hears Jesus tell a story about a guy who can't stop building storage, they've got centuries of memory in the background. Manna that spoiled overnight. Prophets warning that fat flocks and full barns make people forget the God who filled them (Deuteronomy 8:11 to 14). The book of Ecclesiastes basically shrugging and saying, you build all this and then hand it to someone who didn't even work for it (Ecclesiastes 2:18 to 19). This rich fool isn't a new character.

Now here's where it gets good. Jesus doesn't leave us with a warning and walk away. He follows this story up a few verses later by pointing at birds. Ravens, to be exact. No barns, no storage units, no retirement plan, and God still feeds them (Luke 12:24). It's almost like Jesus is saying, hey, remember manna? Same God. Still providing. You can have faith.

And this whole theme doesn't stop with Jesus either, it becomes the shape of His whole life. Paul will later describe Jesus as the one who had all the wealth of heaven and emptied Himself for us. The barns of glory, torn down on purpose, so that we could be filled. The rich fool hoarded and still died with nothing. Jesus gave everything away and rose with everything. Same category, opposite direction, and only one of them is good news.

Then you've got Paul writing to a young pastor named Timothy, and Paul does this wonderful thing in the Greek that basically gets flattened in English translation. In verse five he's describing false teachers who think godliness is a path to gain, using the Greek word porismos, a means of profit. Then one verse later he grabs that exact same word and flips it on its head. Godliness with contentment, he says, IS great gain, using the very same word. It's like Paul is saying, oh you want porismos? Fine. Here's real porismos, and it has nothing to do with your wealth.

That word for contentment, by the way, is autarkeia in Greek, which literally means something closer to self-sufficient, or enough in yourself. Which sounds like a stoic slogan until you remember Paul isn't talking about self-reliance. He's talking about being so full in God that your soul stops thinking about what you're missing.

The wisdom writers, the exodus generation, the prophets, Jesus, and Paul are all circling the same question centuries apart. Where is your enough coming from? The whole Bible is stubbornly convinced that the answer to that question is a person...

This Sunday we get to Wesley's second rule for handling our wealth…

A few words from this week's passages, in case you want to sound smart at coffee hour.

Covetousness. This is the word Jesus uses right before the parable, guard against all covetousness (Luke 12:15). In Greek it's pleonexia, which literally means more having, a hunger that always wants one more thing regardless of what already in hand.

Inheritance. In the ancient world this wasn't sentimental, it was your entire economic future tied up in land and family, which is exactly why it could hijack someone's whole identity.

Godliness. Paul's word in 1 Timothy 6:6, eusebeia in Greek, meaning a life oriented toward reverence for God that shapes daily behavior, not just private belief.

Contentment. A settled sufficiency that doesn't come from circumstances lining up, but from being full in God regardless of you living standard.

Gain. Porismos in Greek. Paul uses this word twice in two verses, once as an insult and once as fact, which is either brilliant writing or the best troll in the New Testament.

This Sunday we are kicking off a brand-new three-week series, and I will be honest with you. It is a stewardship series.

I know. Some of you just checked the calendar to see if you have plans. You do not. I checked.

Here is the good news. We are building the whole series around three short rules from John Wesley, the founder of our Methodist movement: Gain all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. One rule per week, and we wrap it all up on Consecration Sunday. That first rule alone should tell you this is not your typical stewardship series. When was the last time you heard a sermon telling you to gain?

To get ready, here is a little background on our two scriptures for Sunday.
The first is Deuteronomy 8:11-18. The book of Deuteronomy is essentially a series of farewell speeches from Moses. He is an old man now, and he knows he will not be crossing into the promised land with the people he has led for forty years. So, these chapters read like the last words of a father to his children, full of reminders, warnings, and love. Chapter 8 sits right in the heart of that farewell. As you read our passage, notice the one-word Moses keeps coming back again and again. It shows up in some form throughout the whole chapter, and it is the key to everything.

The second is Colossians 3:23-24. Colossae was a small town in what is now Turkey, and Paul wrote this letter to a young church he had never actually visited. Near the end of the letter, Paul gets very practical, giving instructions for everyday household life. Our two verses come from that section. They are short, just two sentences, but people have been chewing on them for two thousand years. Read them slowly, maybe twice.

Here is something simple to do before Sunday: at some point this week, take thirty seconds and think back on how you spent your day. Nothing fancy. Just take inventory. Bring that with you Sunday morning.

Words Worth Knowing:

Stewardship: Caring for and managing something that belongs to someone else. In the church, it means recognizing that everything we have comes from God and asking how we will use it.

Consecration: The act of setting something apart and dedicating it to God. Consecration Sunday is the day we offer our commitments for the year ahead.

Epistle: A formal letter. Many books in the New Testament, including Colossians, are epistles written by early church leaders to congregations.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Mark

Have you ever had someone ruin a movie for you? Let me tell you about my brother Rich. It was 1999, and The Sixth Sense was the movie of the summer. My brother Rich went and saw it on opening night. The very next night, it was my turn. Somehow… the ending had not been spoiled yet. I made it. I was in the clear. My hand was literally on the doorknob. And all of a sudden from across the house, Rich yells out, "He is dead the whole time!"

Now here is the thing. At that moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Dead the whole time? Who? What does that even mean? So, I shrugged and didn’t think much about it, and went to the theater, feeling pretty good about myself. Fifteen minutes into the movie, it hit me. Oh no! I know exactly who is dead the whole time. I sat there for an hour and a half watching a mystery movie I had already solved, all because my brother could not keep a secret for even twenty-four hours. There should be serious legal consequences for this. Rich, if you are reading this, I have not forgotten.

But here is a funny thing about spoilers. Occasionally knowing the ending does not ruin the story at all. Sometimes, it adds to the story. Think about how many people rewatch their favorite movies just because they know what is coming. The second time through, you catch things you missed. The hints the storyteller placed in plain sight. You start to realize the ending was there all along, whispering to you from the very first scene, and you just could not see it yet.

The Bible often works like that. This is important to know, the Bible is not a collection of disconnected stories. It is one unified story that leads us to the understanding of God's relationship with humanity. From the opening pages of Genesis, God is telling a single sweeping tale, and like every great storyteller, God puts in all these clues... A promise made under desert stars. A lamb provided on a mountain. A people rescued through water. Prophets who keep pointing toward something, or Someone, still coming.

And here is what I love. God's story is absolutely full of twists. Nobody in scripture ever seems to see what God is doing, until after it has been done. Everyone expects the older brother to carry the blessing. God picks the younger. Everyone expects the tall, impressive son of Jesse to be anointed king. God picks the shepherd nobody bothered to call in from the field. Everyone expects God's deliverance to come through power and armies. God sends a baby to a feeding trough in a small town. Over and over, generation after generation, God's people build their expectations, and God lovingly, patiently, sometimes almost teasingly turns those expectations on their head. You would think humanity would catch on eventually. We do not. That is sort of our whole issue as Image Bearers.

Which brings me to Sunday… We have been walking through the Gospel of Matthew together, and last week we stood with the disciples at Caesarea Philippi as Peter said out loud what had been simmering under the surface of this story. This week, we come to what happens next after Peter says who Jesus is. And I will just tell you, it is one of the most surprising exchanges in the entire book. A conversation nobody saw coming. A moment where the greatest plot twist in the history of the world starts coming into focus, and one of Jesus' closest friends discovers he has badly misread the story he is standing in.

I am not going to spoil it. I like you all very much, and unlike my brother, I have self-control. But I will say this. If you have ever been absolutely certain you knew how your story was supposed to go, and then watched God take the plot in a different direction than you would have written, this Sunday is for you. If you have ever felt like life turned you upside down, this Sunday is for you. Because it turns out the Author of this story knows exactly where it is going. He has known since page one. And the twist, when it comes, is better than anything we would have written for ourselves.

Read Matthew 16:21–28 before Sunday (August 30) if you want to peek ahead. Just do not yell the ending across the house at anybody. We already have one “Rich” in the family.

Grace and Gratitude,

Pastor Mark

Canaanite: A people who lived in the land of Canaan before and alongside the
Israelites, the region roughly covering modern day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and parts
of Syria and Jordan. In the Old Testament they represent the nations Israel encountered
when entering the promised land, often associated with different religious practices than
those given to Israel.

Son of God: A title used in Scripture for one who has a unique relationship with God. It
is applied to Israel as a nation, to kings, to angels, and supremely to Jesus, where it
points to his divine sonship and unique identity as God's Son.

Son of Man: A title Jesus uses of himself throughout the Gospels. It draws on Daniel 7,
where "one like a son of man" comes with the clouds of heaven and receives authority
and an everlasting kingdom. It carries both humility, identifying with humanity, and
exaltation, since it points to the coming judge and ruler.

Prophet: One called by God to speak God's word to people, often calling them back to
covenant faithfulness. A prophet may foretell what is to come, but the primary role is
forth telling, declaring God's truth into the present moment, often confronting sin and
injustice.

Caesarea Philippi: A city at the base of Mount Hermon, near a major spring that feeds
the Jordan River. In the ancient world it was a center of pagan worship, associated with
the god Pan and with a shrine to Caesar Augustus built by Herod's son Philip, who
renamed the city after himself and the emperor. It sat at the edge of Gentile territory, far
from Jerusalem religiously and culturally. This is the setting where Jesus asks the
disciples "who do people say that I am" and Peter confesses him as the Christ, the Son
of the living God, in Matthew 16.

See you Sunday,
Pastor Mark

A Note from Pastor Mark

Church family,
If you have ever sat up through the night with someone who was sick or waited by the
phone for news that was slow in coming, you know there is a particular kind of tiredness
that comes with it. You are not doing much. You are just there, awake in the dark, while
the rest of the world sleeps. Watching. Waiting.

The ancient world had a name for this. They divided the night into watches, and
someone was always assigned to stay awake through each one. A city needed
watchmen on the wall. A ship needed eyes on the horizon. The household needed
someone to listen for trouble… The night was never left unattended.

I have been thinking about that this week, because I believe the church is meant to be a
community that keeps watch. Somewhere in our congregation right now, someone is
wide awake at three in the morning. Maybe with worry. Maybe with grief. Maybe with a
decision that will not let them sleep. And one of the quiet callings we have to each other
is simply to stay near, to notice, to be awake alongside the people God has given us.

So here is my invitation this week. Before Sunday, read Matthew 14:22-33 slowly out
loud... Then ask God to bring one person to mind who might be in a long night of their
own. Pray for them. Maybe even reach out. You do not need the right words. Presence
has a language of its own.

Then comes Sunday, and we will step out of the boat and into this story together... Gods
hand will be holding on to us…

Grace & Gratitude,
Pastor Mark

What is worth everything?


That sounds like a strange question, but Jesus spends an entire afternoon in Matthew 13 asking a version of it... By the end of the day, he has told seven. That is not an accident. That is a teacher who knows one image is never enough.
The first two parables are about size and speed. The kingdom is like a mustard seed, the smallest seed a Galilean farmer regularly planted, which grows into a shrub large enough for birds to nest... The kingdom is like yeast a woman hides in three measures of flour, close to fifty pounds, enough bread to feed more than a hundred people. In both cases the beginning looks like almost nothing. You cannot watch yeast. But you can taste the results.
That should mean something to our church. We do not always feel large. We do not always feel powerful. In a denomination that has walked through real change these past few years, it is tempting to measure the kingdom by visible strength. But God's kingdom has never needed to start great in order to end up being everything. Paul describes the Christian life the same way, being transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Not all at once. One degree at a time. For most of us, faith is not a lightning bolt. It is bread rising slowly. It is grace working through us until one day we notice we are more patient than we used to be, more generous, quicker to forgive.
Then Jesus shifts from small beginnings to enormous worth. A man finds treasure hidden in a field and, in his joy, sells everything he has to buy that field. A merchant who has spent his whole career searching for fine pearls finally finds the one, and he does the same thing. He sells it all, gladly.
Notice the word Matthew uses. Joy. Not obligation, not duty, not sacrifice. Joy. The same word shows up in Hebrews 12:2, where we read that Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross. The farmer and the merchant are living out a small version of the same pattern.
Here is the uncomfortable truth these parables press on us. Everyone worships something. Everyone builds their life around whatever they believe is most valuable, whether that is money, approval, success, or family. Jesus said it plainly: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21). So the question is never whether you will give everything for something. You already do. The question is what you have decided is worth everything.
Our problem is not that our desires are too strong. It is that they are too weak. We settle for lesser things, warming our hands around a candle while God is offering us the sun. We settle because we have not yet found something we believe is worth everything. Paul found it: "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8).
Look at the farmer. Look at the merchant. Neither one is standing around after with buyer's remorse. They are full of joy, because they know exactly the worth of what they received. That is what following Jesus is supposed to feel like. Not a loss. A great discovery. So maybe the invitation this week is simply this. Do not despise the small, quiet work God is doing in you now.
Despite our brokenness, God's grace restores the divine image within us, one degree of glory at a time. And when you finally see what the kingdom is worth, do not hold back.
Sell the field. Buy the pearl. Let the yeast keep working.

Because the kingdom of heaven is worth everything.

Pastor Mark

This Sunday, we turn to one of Jesus' most striking parables, the Wheat and the
Weeds (Matthew 13:24 30, 36 43). A farmer plants good seeds, but in the night an
enemy scatters weeds into the same field. When the workers want to rip the weeds out
immediately, the farmer stops them: wait for the harvest, or you'll destroy the wheat
along with it.

One of the things I find most helpful in reading this parable is remembering what it's
describing. Jesus isn't just telling a tidy morality tale. He's describing the whole world,
right now, as a field where good and evil grow tangled together, sometimes so tangled
we can't cleanly tell which is which. This is what it means to live between the arrival of
God's kingdom and its final completion. The kingdom is truly here, but it hasn't fully
arrived yet, and that tension shows up everywhere, in our neighborhoods, our news
feeds, even our own hearts.

That's part of why the farmer's patience matters so much. It's not passivity or
indifference. It's trust that God alone sees clearly enough to judge rightly, and that our
job in the meantime is to keep growing good fruit rather than pulling up everything that
looks suspicious.

I'm looking forward to sitting with this parable together this week, and to talking honestly
about what it looks like to live faithfully in a world where the wheat and the weeds are
still growing side by side.

See you Sunday,
Pastor Mark

We Get To…
This week, we turn to one of Jesus’ most generous parables—the Sower who scatters seed everywhere, on every kind of ground. Some falls on the path, some on rocks, some among weeds, and some in good soil. What makes the story so striking is the farmer himself: he throws seed with no hesitation, no calculation, no fear of running out.

Jesus isn’t just telling an agricultural story. He’s describing the heart of God—grace flung wide, grace that lands on the ready and the not‑ready, the soft‑hearted and the stubborn, the steady and the barely‑hanging‑on. This is Prevenient Grace, the grace that was reaching for us long before we knew how to reach back. And that grace is the spark that ignited the Methodist movement.

John Wesley knew every right answer and still felt empty—until one night on Aldersgate Street when his heart was “strangely warmed.” He didn’t just believe God loved the world; he finally felt that God loved him. That warmth sent the early Methodists into muddy fields, coal mines, and crowded streets, throwing seeds of good news at everyone. Their faith didn’t stay indoors. It changed the world.

That’s part of why this parable matters so much right now. The last few years have been heavy. Churches have felt it. Communities have felt it. But hard seasons don’t get the last word. We are people with warmed hearts. We are people who scatter grace.

And that leads to the turn at the center of our life together:
We don’t have to. We get to.

We get to gather on Sunday.
We get to open our doors wide.
We get to come to a table that turns no one away.
We get to bring our questions, our hopes, our messiness.
We get to trust that God is not finished with us yet.

Jesus is honest about the soils—the hard path, the rocks, the weeds, the good soil. But this isn’t a test. All four live inside each of us. Some parts of our hearts are soft and ready. Some are packed down. Some are tangled with weeds we keep meaning to pull. The real question isn’t whether we’re “good soil.” It’s whether we’ll let God keep working the ground of our souls.

And here’s the promise:
Nothing done in love is ever wasted.

A quiet prayer.
A welcome to a stranger.
A cup of coffee for someone grieving.
A ride offered without fanfare.

God gathers every seed and grows it into something larger than we can see.

As we begin this season together, my prayer is simple:
Let us be soft, open soil.
And let us be a church that throws seeds like crazy—not because we must, but because we get to.

Warm hearts.
Both hands full of grace.
Seeds for everyone we meet.

I’m looking forward to walking this parable together, and to rediscovering the joy of being Methodist—out loud, open‑armed, and overflowing with grace.

See you Sunday,
Pastor Mark