sermons
Air - Lent: A Spring Season
Beautiful Vision and Fears into Action
Steve Watson
Mar 02, 2025
This winter Grace and I have been re-watching an old favorite TV show, Friday Night Lights. This time with our twenty-year old son. Which is fun because a lot of this show is about people that age.
One of them is Tyra. She’s got a hundred things stacked against her, comes from generations of poverty and addiction, and against all odds, she’s trying to go to college. But she’s written this horrible, cliche-ridden yawner of an essay which she’s reading to her friend for feedback when he hints at how awful it is.
So she blows up. She says:
What should I write about? My trashy family, about the fact that my sister’s a stripper, or my mom is a high school dropout who drinks boxes of wine like it’s water, the fact that my papa wasn’t around? Oh, I know. I could write about how up until two years ago I had enough hate in my heart to start a freaking car.
And after a long pause, her friend’s like –
that’s it. Tell me about what changed two years ago when you had all that hate in your heart.
And after they talk, Tyra ends her new essay like this:
“Two years ago, I was afraid of wanting anything. I figured wanting would lead to trying and trying would lead to failure. But now I find I can’t stop wanting. I want to fly somewhere first class. I want to travel to Europe on a business trip. I want to get invited to the White House. I want to learn about the world. I want to surprise myself. I want to be important. I want to be the best person I can be. I want to define myself instead of having others define me. I want to win and have people be happy for me. I want to lose and get over it. I want to not be afraid of the unknown. I want to grow up and be generous and big hearted, the way people have been with me. I want an interesting and surprising life. It’s not that I think I’m going to get all these things, I just want the possibility of getting them. College represents possibility. The possibility that things are going to change. I can’t wait.”
In many ways, the good news of Jesus to people who’ve been given permission to want everything is that God is here, and so it’s not all about us. And the good news of Jesus to people who’ve not had permission to want much of anything is that God is here, and their time can come. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Jesus’ beautiful vision of the future.
And Tyra is finding it. Wherever fictional characters go when they grow up, I’m rooting for her still.
One good news resilience story.
What about ours?
When things go wrong and you feel stuck, how do we find resilience?
I was talking to some other clergy about this recently, and the wisdom of one of our younger colleagues, the Rev. Katie Cole, was shining. She shared that this winter, she’s been working a couple of the tools she’s learned from community organizing in her own life and in the life of the church she pastors.
The first thing she said is that when things are hard, we need a beautiful vision of the future. In organizing, we call this the world as it could be. Jesus calls it the Kingdom of God.
This is what Tyra is finding – a beautiful vision of what her life could be.
And Katie said that the second thing we need is a way to turn our fears into actions. Because when we’re scared, we feel more and more powerless. Tyrants, bullies, anyone who’s ever out to do harm to others wants people to feel powerless because then they get their way.
But when we don’t hole up alone in our fears but keep connecting instead, we feel more powerful. And when we realize that for at least some of our fears, we can do some things about them, that helps us get more powerful too.
When she’s paralyzed, Tyra finds a way to turn her fears into actions too. You’ll have to watch Friday Night Lights if you want to find out how.
Friends, this idea of recovering and maintaining a beautiful vision of the future, and this turning our fears into action, this is the spirit in which I want to invite you to participate in the season of Lent this year. And this is what I want us to explore today.
Last month I read a chapter of the gospel of Matthew every day – 28 chapters of good news for the 28 days of February. And there was a chapter that spoke to me about these things. It’s chapter 14 Here’s the beginning:
Matthew 14:1-12 (Common English Bible)
At that time Herod the ruler heard the news about Jesus.
2 He said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He’s been raised from the dead. This is why these miraculous powers are at work through him.”
3 Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison because of Herodias, the wife of Herod’s brother Philip.
4 That’s because John told Herod, “It’s against the law for you to marry her.”
5 Although Herod wanted to kill him, he feared the crowd because they thought John was a prophet.
6 But at Herod’s birthday party Herodias’ daughter danced in front of the guests and thrilled Herod.
7 Then he swore to give her anything she asked.
8 At her mother’s urging, the girl said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a plate.”
9 Although the king was upset, because of his solemn pledge and his guests he commanded that they give it to her.
10 Then he had John beheaded in prison.
11 They brought his head on a plate and gave it to the young woman, and she brought it to her mother.
12 But John’s disciples came and took his body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus what had happened.
This is just horrible. John the Baptist was a humble, courageous person of integrity. He’s inspiring moral and spiritual renewal. He’s speaking truth to power, in this case criticizing Herod for his sketchy sexual conquests, and that power kills him for it.
And the Herods, this little dynasty who was ruling over these lands, I don’t have the words for them. They are suck ups to the few people in the world who have more wealth and influence than he does. They work for the first century equivalent of the tyrant and billionaire class. They do all these building projects to try to curry favor with ordinary people, like they’re on some kind of Make Jerusalem Great Again Campaign. But people were smarter back then, it didn’t work.
The people hated them. They had secret police that spied on the people. They shut down protests. They were violent and corrupt, killing some relatives, marrying others. We are not the first country to have fools with no moral compass running the show, serving their own interests.
For Jesus, though, this wasn’t only nationally enraging, it was personal. John was Jesus’ relative. He had been a spiritual inspiration to him too, he baptized Jesus. And Jesus is kind of in John’s line of work. Herod gets the two guys confused, which doesn’t bode well for Jesus’ future.
Some of us have lost livelihoods due to politics. We have heard it in this space. John faced the same, and on top of that, he was jailed and killed. Jesus wonders if he’s going to be next.
What do you do in this kind of situation? How do you find resilience?
Let’s keep reading.
Matthew 14:13-20 (Common English Bible)
When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities.
14 When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick.
15 That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
16 But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”
17 They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”
18 He said, “Bring them here to me.”
19 He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds.
20 Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers.
21 About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten.
Jesus and his disciples first plan was to get away. Head off to the countryside, just take a break, a retreat there for a while.
But the problem is a lot of people follow them there.
I relate to the disciples. They’re like Jesus, remember the whole deserted place, retreat plan. Here we are, send everybody else away.
I felt like this a lot this past month. February was so cold, so cold, I’d go out in the morning with my dog, and I’d still be freezing inside at lunchtime. The news was depressing, sometimes scary. I would have loved to join Jesus and his disciples in a boat going somewhere else.
But Jesus has a different idea than escape. This deserted place, these thousands of people who show up, their hunger. He’s like:
What if we had a feast! Let’s feed them.
Jesus catches a beautiful vision of the future.
Every bit of their economy was taxed and controlled by the Herodians and the Romans behind them. The fishing industry of Galilee was a local cash cow for the government. And large gatherings were suspect, mostly forbidden.
The average person spent a lot of time hungry too.
And Jesus wonders:
What if we can pull off a feast that the government can’t touch, a little taste of freedom, a taste of the good life. Wouldn’t that be a great day!
It was like last year, when in this very space, we supported one of our members Derrick Duplessy in throwing a feast and a party and a resource fair for Haitian migrants who are new to this city.
Like what if seeing these folks as burdens, we could welcome them and celebrate their presence. What if there’s enough space, enough food, enough clothing to go around for us all?
And it happened.
It happened for Jesus too.
There are, by the way, two interpretations of what happened with this feeding of the 5,000, if you believe it really did happen.
One interpretation is that it was a supernatural miracle. Pow, pow. and those five loaves and two fish become hundreds.
The other interpretation is that it was a miracle of mobilizing and of an abundance mindset. Jesus blessed this meal for twelve, told his disciples to start passing it out, and everyone else there who had food started sharing as well.
Which was it? I don’t know. The passage doesn’t say. It says the disciples started passing out food and then everyone ate until they were full. It doesn’t say now. And honestly, I don’t really care very much. Either way this is an awesome story, either way it is beautiful. I actually like the naturalistic interpretation more because it involves the disciples and it involves the crowd in faith and hope and love, not just Jesus.
Friends, what’s our vision of a beautiful future?
Some of this is personalized. We all could use a reminder now and then that no matter what is happening in our nation, no matter what is happening in our jobs or lack thereof, in our families, and all the rest of our circumstances, there is still good that is possible. Even if we need the help of God and friends to see what that is.
But what about together, as a church or even as a society?
Last month, for Black History month, I started reading the collected writings of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There’s a lot there. The editors didn’t even include all the speeches and essays and stuff that other people mostly wrote. They just collected the word that mostly represents King’s voice, and it’s fat. That man spoke more and wrote more in his 20s and 30s than I can fathom.
And you read his voice, and it’s still so fresh and so full of beautiful visions of the future. I’m not just talking about famous stuff like the dream and being judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin. Although that would still be nice.
Nah, King was killed just five years before I was born, so not that long ago. But today in America, he’s mostly got a holiday with his name on it, and most people remember like two things he ever said and did and they’ve twisted at that, acting like King was some kind of enemy of diversity, equity, and inclusion work, or like all King did was sit around and dream and give one speech about it.
Nah, the real Rev. Dr. King was harassed his entire adult life. He and his family were subjected to innumerable death threats. He was imprisoned 29 times. Our government surveilled him. While we had a president with known ties to organized crime, the government instead surveilled him, labelled him a communist, acted like he was an enemy of the state. And he was widely hated. In a large American poll in 1968, the year he was killed, 75% of American adults disapproved of him. 3 out of 4 people, saying I don’t like that man. The best known leader of the Black Freedom movement.
And yet King kept turning to a beautiful vision of the future, for himself, for his people, and for our nation.
After his first assassination attempt, which he barely survived, instead of just spending a year hiding out at home, he’s like: oh, I finally have time to go to India. And off he and his wife a few others go to study the legacy of Gandhi’s non-violence resistance in that country. Turning crisis into opportunity, turning tragedy into hope, wrenching good out of evil. That is just how he lived.
And for all of us too. King told the truth about America. He called this country colonizers – thieves of the lives and land of indigenous Americans, thieves of the lives and prosperity of Africans and their descendants, chronic discriminators addicted to fantasies of white supremacy. But he dared imagine that we could become true to the best parts of our founding documents – all people created equal.
And King called our capitalism sick, he called our militarism death-dealing. He said this country was built on the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. And yet, and yet while America went to war in Vietnam, he dared imagine that this country could commit to a religiously inclusive version of Jesus’ beautiful vision of the Kingdom of God, a vision Dr. King called the beloved community. A vision of a society absent of poverty, hunger, and hate, a society full of opportunity. A vision as our friend Dr. Drew Hart puts it, everyone belongs, everyone matters, and everyone can thrive.
Listen, we don’t need to be heroes like Dr. King, but we do need to recover and sustain beautiful visions of the future. In our season of Lent, I’d ask you to be here on Sundays and to read our guide along with others, and to pray that through this season, God can give us beautiful visions for our future again.
And friends, at the same time we seek faith and hope for the future, let’s be encouraged in the faith and love we need to turn our fears into actions.
Jesus must have been terrified by cousin John’s execution. And he made a short-term plan – flee for a while. Fair enough.
But while away, he mobilizes his students, and crowds beyond them toward the faith and love they need to have a great big feast together. After this point, Jesus starts to travel more outside of his adopted hometown area of Galilee. He expands his ministry not just to Jews but to Gentiles. And he gets clearer, more focused on his purpose. Like King, he turns crisis into opportunity, tragedy into hope, wrenching good out of evil.
It’s a great activity, to name the 1 or 2 or 3 things you’re most afraid of right now – not for others, but things that impact you. And then to ask, with the help of God and friends, or with a little bit of faith, hope, or love, what power do I still have? What can I do?
We’ve tried to think and pray this way for our church in this season.
- I’m afraid of a country where people are increasingly turned against one another.
- I’m afraid of a country that scapegoats some of its residents to distract people from other things it’s doing.
- I’m afraid of a country who has hostility toward diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I’m afraid of a country who is hostile to immigrants and the lands they come from.
Maybe you are too.
Radical hospitality doesn’t make these things go away. But it’s an antidote to not get infected by them. To stay as open as possible to relationship with others keeps you more open to difference, to seeing the image of God where you hadn’t seen it before. And to welcome people into your prayers, your heart, your home is to learn to see the world as first a place of beauty and blessing and possibility and not a source of threats and disgust.
I’m so proud of how our church has responded to this series. We have a number of households exploring welcoming others into their spare rooms or spare apartments and more of us who are eager to support and help them. Thus Rev. Tina’s presence today and our interest meeting.
And I’m proud of us for being as welcoming a church as we can in other ways, doing that three minute rule after service where you talk with someone new for a while. Doing these prayers for your 6 that we talk about now and then, where you pray blessing for a few people every day. I’m proud of ways you are so generous, Reservoir with your time and your money and your gifts – seeing all that not just as a private possession but as gifts from God for us and for the common good.
Because when we’re afraid, and maybe for good reason, the best protective factor for ourselves and others is community. Let me say that again – the best protective factor when we are afraid is not saving up money, adding locks and bars, avoiding strangers, the best protective factor for our well-being is being part of strong community, having other people in our lives who will help us in our time of need and who we’ll want to help as well.
And when we’re afraid, we’re also more resilient when we don’t magnify the power of what causes our fear. Our economy matters – real impacts on our lives. Our government, our politics matter – real impact on our lives. But they don’t touch everything. Within the range of our powers, we can still be the people we are called to be. And this is an important time to lean into our values, and to do what we can to grow in faith, hope, and love.
This is what Lent is for friends. This season before Easter is like the dedicated time of the year for increase in faith, hope, and love. We’ll formally start this journey next Sunday and talk more about it then. Some people fast in this season – you can if you like. But we are focused this year on a season of growing our resilience, of cultivating community, faith, hope, and love together in this season.
Friends, I encourage you to be part of it.
To rediscover a beautiful vision for your future. To turn fears into action. To lean into this community. And to see just how powerful faith, hope, and love can be among us.