How Jesus Treats People

Preached at Wayside Friends Church

May 3, 2026

 Jesus Christ is alive and present to teach his people himself.  This was a central teaching from the founder of Quakerism, George Fox. It came out of his own personal shattering experience of meeting Jesus for himself without the help of preacher or priest. (His experience was not the first of its kind in the world, to be sure, and it followed the pattern of mystical experience around the world.) He was convinced that God is present for each person, not just special people, and that God is speaking to individuals and to communities of believers.  The central requirements are being open to hear and being willing to obey. Some branches of Quakerism have no pastors, only elders, and the pattern of worship is to sit in silence until someone is moved in the spirit to speak to the gathered congregation.  Others, like the one we come out of, have pastors and the expectation that someone will deliver a sermon, preferably short, and that there will be a time we call open worship in which anyone moved in the spirit may speak to the congregation.

But sometimes people ask, “How do you know if it’s God speaking to you?” (I don’t plan to differentiate between the members of the Trinity in this sermon, and I plan to talk mostly about how Jesus spoke to people when he lived in Israel.) This is a legitimate question because the minds of humans are subject to physical and psychological pressures and indignities, and we cannot claim to control everything we think and feel. I, for instance, am accompanied through life by migraine, and sometimes when I’m working into one, I am weepy, irritable, chatty, and/or even funny, but eventually I am migraining. I sometimes see stars or pixels, I sometimes lose words out of my vocabulary, I sometimes fall asleep.  So those things are not under my control.

Another problem we have is having sick consciences.  We either feel shame and guilt where there is no fault of ours, or we feel no shame and guilt where we are at fault. In 1 John 3:18-20, the apostle advises us that we cannot just talk about loving our neighbor, but our love has to show up in what we do, how we work, in our real lives. (IRL) And our active love is how we know we are from the truth, and it gives us confidence in God’s presence. Then, if our conscience finds fault with us, blames and accuses us, we know that God is bigger and stronger than our conscience and understands everyone and the whole of everyone.  If our conscience is clear as regards active love, then we have cheerful courage and can speak freely before God.  How I understand this is that the nagging inner voice that shames and finds fault cannot be in control of our lives. John tells us in ch. 1 of 1 John not to hide our faults but every time to bring them right to God, tell God the truth, and God will wash us clean.  And no voice can bully us after that, whether inside us or outside us. 

Before we look at specific examples of how Jesus spoke to his contemporaries, we need to recognize that 1) not everything Jesus said or did is written down; 2) not every aspect of any one encounter is written down; 3) what was written down was from memory, not diaries, so events which left a trace of emotion or mystery, or events/stories that occurred more than once are likely to be included; and 4) almost nowhere is tone or facial expression specified. I do believe that the Spirit helped the writers remember, in addition to the way writing memories drags up more specifics and further memories. And I will not limit how the Spirit can illuminate any one passage to the individual, even if I don’t see it that way.

So here are the few encounters I want us to think together about.

The Rich Young Ruler

This one shows up in three gospels, from which I infer that it was surprising to the disciples. When this young man speaks respectfully to Jesus, and asks him what he can do to have eternal life, Jesus is confrontational rather than welcoming. Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God.” I think that young man must have been taken aback.  Then Jesus says, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 

Intriguingly, the young man says, “Which ones?” What might be behind this question? Perhaps his own self-awareness that he is not keeping all of them, and he hopes he’s keeping the right ones.  

Jesus says, “These:  no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no lying about another person; yes honoring parents, yes loving your neighbor as yourself.”

The young man says, “I have done these since I was a child. What do I still lack?”

And here is the heart of the confrontation. Jesus says to a person who believes he has been loving his neighbor, “Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.” 

What I want us to observe here is that 1) Jesus won’t be flattered, and 2) Jesus lets him make his case, and 3) Jesus doesn’t shame, and 4) Jesus is direct in pointing out the next step he needs to take.

The Woman at the Well

This is only in the gospel of John, who says that he is trying to cover things the others did not and also that it would be impossible to write everything Jesus said and did.

Jesus strikes up this conversation, as he sits alone by the well.

He says, “Give me a drink.”

She says, “You, a Jew, want a drink from me, a Samaritan?!”

He says, “If you knew the gift of God and who I am, you would have said, ‘Give me a drink.’ and I would have given you living water.”

Let’s pause here to see what might be going on. I don’t think she’s going to start any conversation with a Jewish man, so Jesus begins, very directly. 

But she’s a bit spiky, or at least shocked, that he would speak and take water from a Samaritan woman, and she says so.

Jesus says, “You have no idea what’s going on here or who I am or what I’m here to do for you.” This seems to me to be a confrontational response to her spikiness.

She changes tactics. “Sir, you have nothing to draw up water with.  Where will you get living water.” At least now she’s polite, but she’s certainly skeptical. “Are you greater than the patriarch Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, along with children and livestock?”

Jesus replies, “Whoever drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water I give will have within them a fountain of water springing to everlasting life.”

I still hear a hint of skepticism in her reply.  “Sir, give me this water, so I don’t thirst anymore and have to come to this well to draw water.”

Jesus says, “First, bring your husband here.” And she says, “I have no husband.” Now Jesus is getting personal, as he did with the rich young ruler. 

“You speak truth, you have no husband, because you’ve had 5 and now the one you have is not your husband.” 

Jesus is direct again.  Jesus does not shame, but I suspect he uncovers some shame for her, shame that may explain her spikiness, her defensiveness, her evasiveness in their conversation. 

So she tries to deflect one more time. “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet. What is your opinion about where we should worship, here on this mountain or in Jerusalem?” 

Jesus says, “Woman” (which is how he also addressed his mother), “believe me, not long from now people will not be limited to worshipping the Father here or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship a vague idea of God, whereas we Jews at least know whom we worship. But soon true worshipers will worship anywhere and everywhere, in spirit and in truth. These are the kind of people the Father is seeking. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth.”

She says, perhaps defending her lack of knowledge), “I do know that when God’s chosen one comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus says, “I who speak to you am God’s chosen one.”

And she runs to town and brings the whole town back to see if this man is indeed the Christ, this man who told her everything she’d ever done.

I hope you can see how Jesus moves this conversation closer and closer to the bone, not so as to make her miserable, but so as to make her honest. She flatters, spars and parries, as one does when one is ashamed.  But when she caves in, she isn’t shamed.  Instead, she is set free. Her feet have wings to spread the gospel that the Chosen One is right outside of town by Jacob’s well.  

When Jesus promised his disciples that he would send the Spirit of Truth, who would guide them into all truth, I think it was more about two kinds of truth: the truth about ourselves, learning to be honest and open with God and with others; and the truth about God, learning that God welcomes our honesty with forgiveness and instruction, and meets our openness with God’s own open-hearted love.  

I used to think that God spoke to me through my fear and shame, that I could never be good enough, and that I would easily slip through God’s hands because of my ignorance and my errors. As God taught me to trust in God’s character and love, I came to hear God speaking differently. 

After about a decade of semi-forgiveness of a deep wrong done me, I heard God say, “You can do better now.” And I said, appropriately, “You are right, I can. Please forgive him. I let him off the hook.” I found a new freedom in that moment that persists to this day, even though occasionally the pain resurfaces. There was no shaming in that voice, and I wasn’t required to weep and wail for my previous insufficient efforts.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I heard God say, “You don’t need to swear so much. I notice that it makes you more rather than less angry.” And I said, appropriately, “You’re right.  I’ll work on that.” Again, direct, not shaming, no threats, just a truthful observation. (BTW, I will tell you honestly that it was just a couple of the swears, not all of them, that I’m working on.)

I conclude that we can recognize that God is speaking to us when the voice is neither shaming nor condemning but instead is direct and on point. We can choose to reject it or to open ourselves to it, admitting in honesty that God is right, and taking the steps God prescribes.

Someone asked me to describe how I sensed God asking me to share something in open worship, and I replied that it was how I imagine feeling if a lion was getting near me—I feel alert, maybe in awe, a little apprehensive, and appreciative. That any of us can sense God approaching us personally and can share out of our honest relationship and understanding at God’s request is such an honor, such a grace. 

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Lifting the Weight

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

April 26, 2026

Maybe the most memorable religious phrase from my early life was “born again.” I went forward at every altar call, knowing for a fact I had not been completely good since the last one, and usually felt renewed, what I thought of as “born again.” Unbeknownst to me, I was more correct than mistaken about that phrase, as I understand it today.  I want to explore the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3, wherein Jesus says to a mature man, “You must be born again,” and he says, “What?” As I sat with this passage, several thoughts opened up to me that spoke to my heart and chimed with other things I’ve been thinking about since Easter.

First, to review the story, retold in my own style. Here’s Nicodemus, a man of status and holiness, a Pharisee and a “ruler of the Jews.” He will show up again after the crucifixion with about 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes for Jesus’s burial, so he respects Jesus. This respect shows up right away when he says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God.  No one could do the things you do unless God is with them.” Jesus sees that Nicodemus has come after dark. It is costly for him to be seen conversing with the man who had driven the animals out of the temple and overturned the moneychangers’ tables. (When asked who said he could do such things, Jesus retorted, without clearing anything up, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”) 

Jesus says to him, “No two ways about it, unless a person is born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God.” “How can an old person reenter the womb and be reborn?” Nicodemus asks.

“Don’t be surprised that I said you must be born again,” says Jesus. “I’m speaking the simple truth that unless a person is born of water (natural) and the Spirit (supernatural), they cannot enter the Kingdom of God. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it but cannot explain where it comes from or where it is going. That’s what it’s like to be born of the Spirit.”

“How can these things be?” asks a puzzled and perhaps skeptical Nicodemus.

Jesus replies, “Are you a teacher of Israel and you do not know these things?” This pulls Nicodemus up short and challenges his security in his identity as a man, a ruler, a Pharisee, a scholar of the law, an elder.  He can be glad Jesus didn’t go on to say that children understand this better than Nicodemus does, which he said to God about the disciples at least once in their hearing.

As an aside, Jesus explained to his disciples during his ministry and after the resurrection how someone like Nicodemus should have known these things from the Jewish scriptures. I’m going to take a guess that some of the passages are those referring to God writing God’s law in their hearts and minds (Jer. 31:33); creating a clean heart and renewing a right spirit in the contrite (Ps. 51:10); giving them a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek.36:26). But what this suggests is that Nicodemus kept the law and considered that he was righteous, which is why Jesus spoke to him like this. 

The long speech which follows is full of things to think about.  Jesus asserts that he came down from heaven, he takes on the prophetic title given Ezekiel, the Son of Man, and he foretells that he will be lifted up like the serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness. That story all by itself deserves a sermon.  And then Jesus tells why it is important to recognize who he is and start over anew:  whoever looks to Jesus on the cross and trusts him will not be annihilated, but will have everlasting life.  Jesus asserts that God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world but to save the world, and that this is God’s gift of love to us.  What condemns any one is that Jesus has brought God’s light into the world and some have loved to stay in the shadows because they do not want their evil deeds exposed.  But those who love and do the truth run towards the light, where their deeds are clearly seen to have been done in God.  

This is so dense with hope for humanity. God loves us and the world. God wants to save us and the world.  Jesus came to make that obvious and to do the necessary work.

The song that has been going through my mind this Eastertide is “Big Bad John.” I won’t read all the lyrics to you, and they don’t all apply well, but this is the main story.  An outsider, a loner, and a somewhat terrifying figure, John came into town, no one knew from where, and took up working at the mine.  

Then came the day at the bottom of the mine

When a timber cracked and men started cryin'

Miners were prayin' and hearts beat fast

And everybody thought that they'd breathed their last, 'cept John

Through the dust and the smoke of this man-made hell

Walked a giant of a man that the miners knew well

Grabbed a saggin' timber, gave out with a groan

And like a giant Oak tree, he just stood there alone, Big John

…

And with all of his strength he gave a mighty shove

Then a miner yelled out, "There's a light up above"

And 20 men scrambled from a would-be grave

Now there's only one left down there to save, Big John

With jacks and timbers they started back down

Then came that rumble way down in the ground

And then smoke and gas belched out of that mine

Everybody knew it was the end of the line for Big John

…

Now they never reopened that worthless pit

They just placed a marble stand in front of it

These few words are written on that stand

"At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man, Big John.” (written and sung by Jimmy Dean)

What Big Bad John did for the miners reminds me of what Jesus does for us every one of our days.

What’s been on my mind is that Jesus came into our dark, dusty, dangerous mine with us. This mine represents the way we often see our world. We’re like the servant who fell into a ditch on his way to run an errand for his boss, and who cannot get himself out of the muddy disgusting ditch.(See Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 51,https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52958/52958-h/52958-h.htm#THE_THIRTEENTH_REVELATION).  When the timber cracks, and it is always cracked and cracking, we start crying and praying. And then Jesus strides under the timber, or onto the cross, and lifts the rubble off of us, and we can see the light and escape. Jesus lifts this weight up for everyone all the time. It is an eternal job, an event in eternity. Jesus is always and forever lifting our shame, our guilt, our fear, our selfishness up so that we can escape into the light of day, the love of neighbor and the love of God.

Jeremiah wrote in his Lamentations, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, O God.”

We also need to be born again every morning, born again into our confidence in the steadfast love of God. We lay it all down, every single morning, and invite the Spirit to tell us what to do in the moment.  

What do we lay down every morning, what do we let the Spirit blow through or away?

Nicodemus brought a lifetime of doing the right thing, of studying the scriptures, of being careful in his judgments, of caution—and of being male, a religious leader, well-off, spiritually comfortable.

Start over. Jesus says. We might feel a bit smug about Jesus setting Nicodemus straight, but we are Nicodemus in this encounter; we’re not Jesus.  We need every day to hear Jesus say, “Be born again.” Not words of comfort, but challenge.

In the first letter by John, he tells us what a being-born-again person does. When we do harm by our actions or by our inertia, we must not deny it or hide it, but instead admit it to God. When we tell the truth, running into the light of God, God is faithful and just and forgives us, and washes us clean from all of it.  Every time, not just once. Every day, be born again, start anew. Let Jesus lift the timber and rubble, and live the windswept life of the Spirit.

Prayer against the Machine

Preached at Wayside Friends Church

January 25, 2026

The question I want us to think about is this:  Is prayer the most important act of resistance to evil that we can take? I think it is. 

Prayer is a gift to us from God, a means of grace, a grace. It is a gift we need to open and to use for our own sakes but also for the sake of our world—both the world of humanity and the wild world. We need to pray, and everything else needs for us to pray. God tells us to pray, God helps us when we pray, and God can speak into us when we pray.

There is so much praying going on in the Bible.  I invite you to look through the Old and New Testaments to see just how often people talked with God—and heard from God.  Prayers make up the longest book in the Bible, the Psalms, and remind us that hymns too are prayers. Some of the prayers are raw with anger and sorrow, and others dance with joy. 

We can see from the Biblical examples that no subject is off limits and no emotion is out of bounds.  In fact, the best thing to do with our joy, our contentment, our sorrow, our rage, and our despair is to tell God about it.  But just telling is not enough.

There is also listening to God. This is hard work since God rarely speaks aloud, but if we have the faith to pray, we can have the patience to sit with God until God speaks into us in one way or another.  

Jesus had a lot to say about prayer.  He counseled privacy, simplicity, persistence, and trust in God’s character. He also had some things to avoid: vain repetitions, showing off, hypocrisy, calling down fire on other people. 

When his followers asked him to teach them to pray, the prayer we know as the Lord’s Prayer was his answer.It recognizes our close relationship to God with the word “father,” and also signals respect with the idea of God’s kingdom arriving and the need for our obedience with “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” 

This prayer recognizes that God forgiving us for our errors and trespasses is intertwined with our forgiving others for their errors and trespasses. 

It includes a request that God care for our daily needs. It asks God to guide us away from temptation and to rescue us from evil. 

As with all other fixed prayers, this prayer can be said mindlessly, without noticing how far-reaching it will be when God answers it.  But it has worldwide implications.

Though Jesus prayed much in private, he had several prayers that were public enough to be written down.  I won’t include John 17, though it is well worth reading and taking to heart. But here are 5 short examples of public prayer, 3 of them from the cross itself.

When Jesus came to the home of Mary and Martha after Lazarus had died, they bemoaned his tardiness in getting there. “If you had only been here, my brother need not have died,” they reproached him. “ When Jesus arrived at the tomb, he looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you hear me. I know that you always hear me, but I’m saying this for the benefit of the people standing here so they  may believe you have sent me.” And then he called Lazarus out of the tomb (John 11).

It just may be that sometimes God asks us to pray our prayer out loud, taking the risk of public humiliation if the answer is not immediate or not what we hoped for. Whatever follows our prayer may be spectacular in the moment or ignite a slow burning fuse for later illumination. 

Jesus also invited three disciples to watch with him in the garden on the eve of his crucifixion, telling them to pray that they not fall into temptation. Then he prayed aloud, perhaps essentially for the same thing: “Father, if it be possible, if You are willing, let this cup pass from me; yet not my will but Yours be done.” He prayed this earnestly, sweating blood. God sent him angels to strengthen him, but the cup did not pass away from him. And the disciples slept through it, exhausted from sorrow (Luke 22:42). 

Three other public prayers were from the cross.  I don’t know the exact order but intuitively, this is how I see them.  “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46). “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). These three prayers out of extreme suffering from which God has not delivered him illustrate that for Jesus, and for us, the priorities are generosity of spirit issuing in forgiveness, despair honestly expressed, and the choice to trust through it all.

Prayer cracks our hearts open to God, and as we make ourselves present with God, as we present ourselves as living sacrifices to God, God enters through that crack and changes everything.  

We learn we can trust God. We become more open to hearing God and more willing to do what God tells us to do. We invite God to fulfill God’s will on earth—praying against the injustice and greed and selfishness and violence, praying against the worship of power and money, praying against our own tendencies to repay evil for evil, an eye for an eye or worse, and praying in combat with the systems by which humans oppress and depress each other.

We do not know how far these prayers reach, only that we must pray them.  And we don’t have to fear getting them wrong, because, as St. Paul tells us, God’s Spirit prays through our prayers, even though we don’t know for sure how to pray.  St. Paul also tells us to pray without ceasing, carrying our hearts throughout the day open to God as much as we can, listening as well as telling.  

I’ll tell you a couple of stories about prayers and pray-ers in the Bible.

The first is the story of Jonah. I think it’s fair to imagine that Jonah prayed to God to aid Israel against their enemies, as anyone might do. Instead, Jonah heard from God that he should go preach to Israel’s worst enemy, Assyria. Jonah ran the opposite direction. Famously, his ship nearly went down in a storm, and he confessed that they would have to throw him overboard to stop the storm. When they did, a fish swallowed him, at which time Jonah prayed, from inside the fish. His prayer, summarized, went something like this, “In despair, from the depths of the grave, I called for help; you hurled me into the sea and your waves swept over me.  Worse than that, I feared I had been banished from your sight. But you saved me from the grave. Even as I was drowning, I prayed to you, and I will do what you say when you save me from this mess I’m in.” 

After the fish vomited him up, Jonah went to Nineveh in Assyria and preached that the judgment of God would fall on them in 40 days.  To his shock and horror, they all repented and changed their ways. So God changed course and didn’t destroy them.  

Jonah was very displeased and angry and said to God: “This is exactly what I expected, and that’s why I ran away. I knew you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending disaster. Now kill me, for I’d rather die than live.”  And because of the character of God, a lesson about compassion comes to Jonah rather than punishment.

And there are lessons here for us, too, about prayer and action. When we pray, we open ourselves to God, and what God will say in that opening may surprise and shock us. Our action comes out of what God tells us to do. We may not love it. We may run from doing it. But it will still be waiting on the other side of whatever ordeal we put ourselves through to avoid it. When we pray for God’s will to be done, we are opening ourselves to being the ones to do that will.

The second is the story of Saul, later to be known as Paul (Acts 9). A devout Pharisee, Saul prayed several times daily for the redemption of Israel. Saul was therefore full of anger at those who exchanged their loyalty to Israel for their loyalty to the risen Christ. They preached sermons accusing their own community of faithlessness and murder, and Saul made it his job to punish them. He began to destroy the church, dragging men and women to prison. 

It doesn’t take much imagination to think that the church prayed mightily to God as they scattered from Jerusalem. They likely prayed along the lines of Acts 4: 24-31, something like this: “Sovereign God, you made the heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through David, saying, why do the nations of the earth rage, and plot, and take their stand, and gather together against the Lord and the Christ? They conspired against Jesus, whom you anointed, and carried out their will against him, with violence you allowed and even wove into your plan.  Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your words with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus." And this prayer shook the room where they met, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

So the believers in Damascus waited for Saul, bringing with him his authorization to arrest them and haul them off to prison. Do you think they prayed to the sovereign God, calling God’s attention to the rage and violence of those opposing the Way of Christ, and opening themselves to be agents of God’s Spirit, speaking God’s words with boldness? I’m sure they did.  

And what happened? The risen Christ confronted Saul directly, called him to account, explained to him just who and what he was doing, and told him what to do next.  The light of Jesus blinded him for three days, making him helpless, rather than powerful. 

And one of those praying in Damascus, Ananias, heard also from God, heard something he didn’t want to hear.  “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying.  He has seen a vision that you will come and restore his sight.” 

Like Jonah, Ananias was reluctant.  “You know, Lord, that this is the man responsible for violence against your church and that he has come here to continue to oppress your followers.”  

But God insisted:  “This is my chosen instrument to carry my name to the Gentiles and their kings, and even also to the Jews."  

So Ananias obeyed, Saul received his sight, both physical and spiritual, and he was baptized into the Way and set about right away preaching to the Israelites to prove that Jesus is the Christ.  In a nice reversal, they conspire to kill him.  He fled Damascus, and the rest of his world-changing life is in the book of Acts.  

But you know, what Saul, now Paul, was called to do was alien to his natural yearnings.  In Romans 9-11, he expresses his heartbreak over his nation. He says he would be willing to be accursed if they would only see the light and welcome the Christ.  He says, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God is for the Israelites to be saved. Their zeal for God is misguided, based on their own rules for right living, not on God’s, and they refused to submit to God’s righteousness. They did not recognize that Christ is the end of the law.” In other words, they refused to present their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, true worship, and to be transformed by God’s spirit by the renewing of their minds.  Instead, they remained conformed to the world’s systems of power and violence. 

Against those systems, prayer is our most radical resistance.

Here’s my hope. This sermon will have challenged you to pray, to pray humbly, authentically, vigorously, asking God, who is just as well as merciful, to intervene on behalf of humankind. Pray as specifically as you want for the results you believe to be on God’s agenda for nations, for neighbors, for yourself. Let there be space in your praying for God to move in and on you. When God moves you to act, do what you’re told. 

Prayer affirms our hope in God; obedience affirms our faith in God; and love affirms our kinship with God.