E Pluribus Unum

Posted on 5 July 20268 July 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

You probably recognize the sermon title, even if only because you’ve looked at your change lately. The motto E pluribus unum—“Out of many, one”—comes from Pierre-Eugène du Simitière, a naturalist and painter who was an artistic consultant for the design of the Great Seal of the United States. His very first proposed design, submitted in 1776, included this motto, which was eventually included in the final design we know today—and on our money as well.

Now, I know very little about du Simitière, so I can’t say if he was a man of faith who knew the Scriptures or not; many among the Founders were, of course, and even those like Jefferson and Franklin who weren’t believers knew the Bible well. The degree to which the US was founded as a Christian nation has often been vastly overstated, distorting our understanding of our nation and its history; on the other hand, there are also many who vastly minimize the Christian character of this nation’s founding or deny it altogether, which is equally problematic.

I think Lincoln put it best, as he so often did, on February 21, 1861 when he told the New Jersey State Senate, “I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people.” As the historian William Lee Miller dryly observed, “God did not say to Israel, ‘You are almost my chosen people. I have nearly chosen you, from almost all the other peoples of the earth, to be unto me a somewhat special people.’” Lincoln neatly parses the reality that, on the one hand, the US is not God’s chosen nation in the way Israel was—with the coming of Jesus, God’s plan no longer subsists in a single nation or people group; that’s part of Paul’s point in this letter—but on the other, granted that God is at work in every tribe and nation and people and language, this nation does seem to have been a particular project of his across its history.

The Mystery of the Church

Posted on 28 June 20263 July 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Ephesians 3)

OK, Tychicus, are you ready to start? Listen, brother, I’m really sorry your hand cramped up so badly . . . I have to admit, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a pen fall out of someone’s hand like that. —But you’re better now? Good. Thank you.

Just let me put myself in the proper frame— Yes, I’m going to take a minute to think about—well, I know we’re planning to send this around all the churches in the province of Asia, but “Asians” sounds strange, and the only church I really know is Ephesus; I’m just going to call them “Ephesians.” If I can fix them in my mind’s eye, it will be like I’m talking directly to them. You know that’s how I work.

No, I don’t want to sit down, I think better standing up. —Something to lean against? You’re right, I’m not feeling well; that might be a good idea. —Though I think you’re just hoping if I walk less, I’ll talk less.

So . . . where did you put the copy you made? —Oh, right, I’m holding it. Thank you. Now, where were we? . . . Hmmmm . . . Tychicus, I never finished my prayer for the Ephesians—I must have forgotten I was writing a prayer, because I went off on a tangent. It was a good tangent, but still . . . I wonder why we didn’t catch that? —You caught it? Of course you did. Why didn’t you tell me? —Because it was a good tangent and you didn’t want to interrupt me? Well, that’s something, anyway.

Still, I need to finish that prayer. So, let’s see, where did I leave off—mutter mutter “no longer exiles and resident aliens, fellow citizens with the members of the house of God, built on the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus the cornerstone, being built by the Spirit into a temple for God.” OK. Ready? Good. Continuing:

Who We Are

Posted on 21 June 202627 June 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Ephesians 2:11-22)

In the first part of this chapter, Paul proclaims the saving work of Jesus Christ in epic terms, as an inconceivable transformation wrought on a cosmic scale. As we discussed a little bit last week, he pivots here—“Therefore,” he begins, because of this, for this reason—to declaring the equally epic, equally cosmic unifying work of Jesus Christ. If we were dead in our sin, then that death was separation, from God and from each other. If we are now alive together in Christ, then that life is, must be, unity, on the same terms and the same scale.

If we look around at the world, I feel safe in saying that former reality is blazingly obvious to everyone, at least in the flesh—in the physical reality of human life. We see all around us divisions based on outward distinctions, beginning with one Paul highlights: ethnicity and national identity. You, he tells his Gentile audience, were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. Along with that went the visible mark of circumcision which divided those who were “in” with God from everyone else. Economic class was another big one—Paul doesn’t discuss that here, but he does in the letters to the Corinthians, where those lines of division were a major issue. We can come up with others; political tribalism wasn’t an issue Paul deals with (though it had been a century or two before, in the dying days of the Roman Republic), but it is for us, where so many people identify as members of the Red Tribe or the Blue Tribe—and remember, any identity we find or make for ourselves outside of Christ is an idol.

All these divisions seem hugely important to us, in any and every generation going back to Cain murdering Abel; all the way along, they keep us from doing the work God has for us. Paul’s fellow Jews looked down on everyone else—“We’re circumcized, and they aren’t”—and so they weren’t the light to the nations they were supposed to be. Instead of inspiring the nations to worship God, they inspired the nations to hate them. The prophet Isaiah was clear: one reason God would send the Messiah was to be the new Israel and fulfill the mission they forswore.

Thing is, merely earthly divisions don’t really matter all that much. They just aren’t all that important; they don’t justify our alienation from one another the way we insist they do. Read more→

Before and After

Posted on 14 June 202619 June 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Ephesians 2:1-10)

The basic outline of this passage is simple: “You were dead,” verse 1, and “God . . . made us alive,” verses 4-5. As usual, the message is in the details, but the heart is that stark before-and-after picture—which is not as simple as using a neutral-density filter on your camera, as in the image I used for this week’s slide. We were dead, but God made us alive.

Whose Am I?

Posted on 7 June 202619 June 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Ephesians 1:15-23)

How many of you recognize the name Abraham Maslow? For those who don’t, he was an American psychologist of the last century who was one of the founders of the discipline of humanistic psychology. If you know his name, though, the first thing that comes to your mind probably isn’t “humanistic psychology,” it’s this:

Who Am I?

Posted on 31 May 202619 June 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Ephesians 1:1-14)

As we move into the letter of Paul which we know as the letter to the Ephesians, we should begin by saying it probably wasn’t a letter to the Ephesians—not specifically. For one thing, from the oldest manuscripts we have, there’s good reason to think the words “in Ephesus” in 1:1 aren’t original to the text. For another, Paul founded the church in Ephesus and then spent three years there, his longest documented stay with any one church. He’s imprisoned in Rome following his arrest in Jerusalem; consider that on his way to Jerusalem for that fateful visit, he had the ship sail past Ephesus to Miletus and then sent a message to the elders of the Ephesian church to meet him there. He couldn’t just sail past them without saying goodbye, but he knew if he stopped there, it would take him weeks to tear himself away again. Yet with all that affection and all those strong relationships, there are no personal comments in the letter and no references to specific situations in the Ephesian church.

I believe, as many have for centuries, that this was actually a circular letter which was sent to all the churches in the Roman province of Asia, which occupied the western part of the Anatolian Peninsula, what we now know as Turkey. It seems to have been inspired by the issues Paul was addressing in his letter to the church in Colossae, with which Ephesians shares a great deal of material, and one of the earliest lists of New Testament books references it as the letter coming from Laodicea which Paul mentions in Colossians 4:16. The subject and concern of this letter is the unity of the church as the body of Christ; Paul takes his language from 1 Corinthians, where he tried to help the Corinthian believers understand their unity in Christ, and broadens it out to apply it to the whole church in every place and culture and language. As the great New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce summarized it, Colossians lays out “the role of Christ as Lord over the cosmos”; this is how Paul counters the false teachers in Colossae. Ephesians takes it a step further, asking what this means for our understanding of the church as the body of Christ.

One Generation Will Call to the Next

Posted on 17 May 202617 June 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Psalm 145; Matthew 28:16-20, Acts 1:1-11)

As we’re concluding our series from the Psalms this morning, it seemed good to me to take a few minutes to look back at how we got here. We’ve considered a selection of psalms through the lens of the question that opens Psalm 137: how can we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land? Most of us, at least, have not endured the kind of savagery that community had, but as followers of Jesus, we are in a strange land even in our own nation. Remember the statement from Meister Eckhardt I quoted some weeks ago: “God is at home. We are in the far country.” From Jesus on through to Revelation, the New Testament is clear: this world is hostile territory for him and thus for all who follow him, whether it seems to be or not. If we are to sing the Lord’s song, then—both literally, in our songs of worship, and figuratively, in the way we live our lives—we have to understand what it means to do that in a strange land.

I’m not claiming to have offered a comprehensive answer to that question; even if I had one, which I don’t, it would take a lot longer than we’ve had so far. We’ve seen some pieces of the answer, though, which I think fall into three categories. First, singing the Lord’s song in a strange land requires honesty, toward God, ourselves, and other people, about our reality—ourselves, our situation, and our struggles. So, for instance, Psalm 88 shows us our need to be honest about the reality that life is hard, faith is hard, and doubt happens. We’re responsible for how we handle the hard times and what we do with our doubt, but if we judge others—or ourselves—as if those things shouldn’t happen at all, we aren’t operating in the truth.

God Is Bigger

Posted on 3 May 20267 May 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Psalm 139; John 20:30-31, 21:20-25)

The genesis of this sermon was in a social media post I saw briefly weeks ago and have never been able to find again. I think it was on Threads, since that app does this to people routinely, but it doesn’t really matter. Whoever the poster was, they told a story about a physicist who gave a presentation on Christianity and science and how their scientific work supported and enriched their faith in Jesus and the Bible as historically understood by the Christian church. In the question-and-answer session after the talk, someone in the audience went up to the mic and asked, “How can you believe a God who’s that big could possibly even notice individual people?” The scientist quietly answered, “My God is bigger than you think.”

I wish I could find the source, if only to give credit wherever it may be due, because that’s absolutely brilliant, and absolutely spot-on. If for some reason you needed to summarize Psalm 139 in a sentence, that would do. As Derek Kidner, whom I’ve referenced a few times in recent weeks, puts it, “Any small thoughts that we may have of God are magnificently transcended by this psalm; yet for all its height and depth it remains intensely personal from first to last.” In that spirit, though it would be easy to dive deep into this psalm—there’s a lot here—I want to take the 30,000-foot view and look at the ways Psalm 139 shows us that God is bigger, with some echoes from the end of the Gospel of John.

Only Mercy

Posted on 26 April 20267 May 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Psalm 51; John 21:1-19)

It has been asserted that Psalm 51 has been read or recited or sung, in whole or in part, more often in public and private worship and devotions than any other Scripture. I don’t know how you would prove that, but I suspect it’s either this one or Psalm 23. This is one of the seven penitential psalms, and the greatest of the seven. The superscription tells us it was written by David at one of the unhappiest hinge points in the history of God’s people.

To really understand this psalm, we need to understand that context; let’s begin with a quick recap. The story begins—I’m paraphrasing a little here—“In the spring of the year when kings go out to war, David stayed home.” In other words, it begins with David shirking his responsibility—to his troops and their leaders, to his nation, and to his calling and anointing from God. In the ancient world, one of the main responsibilities of a king was to be the warleader for his people; this was in part because they figured that’s what they had a king for, in part because success on the battlefield was how you showed you deserved to be king, and in part because, even now, successful generals who aren’t kings often try to change that situation.

So, David is home, and he shouldn’t be. As is often the case when you’re playing hooky, it leaves him in a spirit of restless self-indulgence. He takes an afternoon nap, then goes up on the roof, pacing and prowling around like a tiger in a zoo. It’s a position unbecoming to a king, and he uses it to do something even more unbecoming—since he’s standing on the highest point in the city, he can look down into the homes of his people. He’s a peeping Tom with a crown. And yes, I said into—the houses were rectangular structures with rooms around a central, unroofed courtyard which offered privacy . . . but not from the king on the roof of the palace.

In one home nearby, he sees a woman bathing. She’s just finished her period and is purifying herself as the Scriptures required. She’s in the courtyard of her own home, where it ought to be safe for her to be naked, but it isn’t. She’s beautiful, so he wants her, so he takes her. Let’s not call a spade a bloody shovel here: this is adulterous rape. David has a wife (more than one, in fact), and she, as he will learn, has a husband. He doesn’t care. He sends his minions to take her and bring her to him, and then he takes what he wants. The text doesn’t tell us what she wants because David doesn’t care what she wants. God does, but David doesn’t. The power differential here is extreme; the coercion is absolute. Whatever peace she may have made with it, she had no choice in the matter. Whether she cooperated or fought, what was going to happen was going to happen regardless.

When There Is No Horizon

Posted on 19 April 20267 May 2026 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Psalm 88; Luke 24:36-49, John 20:24-29)

Doubt is an odd thing. It’s a grey area between belief and unbelief—between two different kinds of certainty. It can be paralyzing, leaving us unable to act, or it can be liberating, freeing us to let go a false certainty to seek a true one. It can be unhealthy, and even obsessive; it can also be healthy for us, reminding us we don’t know quite as much as we think. It can be dishonest, a pretense disguising a determination not to believe something—sometimes, disguising it even from ourselves—but there is also such a thing as honest doubt. Doubt which is truly open to belief and truly seeking understanding can be an important prelude to true faith.

The problem is, true doubt is uncomfortable, like doing ballet on a waterbed. We want a solid place to stand. That’s why some churches treat doubt as a sin, as if believing in Jesus and following him are supposed to be easy—which they aren’t. I think that’s also why, when kids who grow up in the church have their faith challenged hard for the first time, they so often slide into disbelief like Jell-O off a steep metal roof. Doubt is uncomfortable, so our instinctive reaction is not to engage with it but to protect ourselves against it.

I suspect that’s why Thomas has gotten such a raw deal over the centuries. The Western church knows him not as an apostle of stubborn faith and the man who first preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to India, but as “Doubting Thomas.” Google told me once it found over 880,000 results for the phrase, including such definitions as “a habitually doubtful person.” You’d think he was the sort of guy who wouldn’t believe you if you told him the sky was blue. Thomas doesn’t deserve that, and when we read John’s account as if he does, it says more about us than about either Thomas or John. “Doubting Thomas” makes as much sense as “the patience of Job.” These are men who suffered agonizing loss and refused to sit down, shut up, and act churchy about it. They spoke the truth as they saw it, and their earthly reward for that has been to have their lives and characters misrepresented so others can avoid doing the same. If the church can externalize its issues with doubt by dumping them all on Thomas—which makes no sense logically, but tell that to the subconscious—it can excuse itself from facing them honestly.