John Templeton was from the small town of Winchester, Tennessee, the son of a poor cotton farmer. He went to Yale, graduated near the top of his class in 1934, became a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and eventually the founder of the Templeton Growth Fund. He was a brilliant man, extremely successful and a generous philanthropist. Despite becoming a billionaire, he lived frugally and lived quietly in a fairly modest home in the Bahamas.

He also had a keen interest in reconciling science and faith in the pursuit of ultimate truth, and collected books on the subject. He wanted that work to continue, so he built a library outside of Sewanee, Tennessee, where his books would go after he died, with apartments where scholars could come and study. It was completed in 2000, the year that our family arrived at Sewanee, where I went to seminary.

This week’s parable is, without question, the scariest. It includes dogs licking sores, death, and eternal punishment in a place filled with eternal flames and endless thirst. The indictment for not having a truly godly heart is clear. People know better, but apparently choose to ignore or at least minimize passages like this from Deuteronomy that are consistently in the law and the prophets.

It is so good to see you! You could be just about anywhere else right now. You could be curled up with your jammies enjoying your second cup of coffee. You could be golfing or fishing or hunting whatever is in season. You could be out to brunch or at the beach. You could be catching up on a few loose ends at work that really need to get resolved. But you are here. It is so good to see you!

Those watching online could be watching anything else right now. Some of them will be watching later, but even so they could be watching anything or nothing at all. They could be on a hike or bike ride. They could be reading a book, which I gather is where a lot of movies come from. Or you could be doing nothing. It is so much easier to do nothing than something. But here you are!

It’s kind of fun when you look at someone and can tap into their absolute joy. I looked at this young dad, Alex, holding his brand new baby girl and a flood of empathy hit me.

I remember very well holding my newborn son for the first time. I had just one blaring thought in my mind, “Don’t drop him!” Every fiber of my being was intensely focus on protecting and preserving that precious little boy who had just shown up.

I remember very well seeing my daughter for the first time, equal in love as with my three boys, but also a white flag of surrender going up over my head and heart.

I’d like to take you down a culinary path this morning. Think about beans, specifically red kidney beans. If you eat them, when and how do you eat them? Many of us might first think of chili. Others a cold bean salad. Then there are refried beans, commonly served with Mexican food. In New Orleans, red beans and rice are the traditional meal on Mondays.

In our culture, we tend to think of beans as an ingredient in a recipe or a side dish. But for much of the world, beans are the main dish. They are inexpensive and nutritious. They are the primary source of protein and high in dietary fiber, as well as rich in essential minerals like iron and folate.

This passage from Hebrews says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” What does that actually mean?

Let’s take a moment to think about how much has changed since the time Abraham settled in the Land of Canaan. In Abraham’s time, about 1900 BC, the bronze age, the region had large families or tribes that were mostly herdsmen and semi-nomadic, moving their flocks around in the region. There was some agriculture and there were a few cities, but they were small. Damascus, Syria for example, was around 1,000 to 2,000 people. They had no written language, no written law, and only basic tools and weapons. The chariot was the technological edge.

There is a lot to consider in today’s Gospel, particularly Jesus’s healing touch and his teaching about what honors God on the sabbath. But let’s not rush past the opening sentences.

“Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then, there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.”

Here she is, crippled and unable to stand up straight, and going to church. We must not rush past her effort, which is an expression of great faith. Even now, we are among people who make a similar effort, people for whom it takes a great deal of time and struggle to get ready for and get to church.

When we went to Israel a few years ago, I asked our guide if we could go to Jericho. It was not on our itinerary, but I really wanted to go. It is one of the oldest cities in the world. It is the lowest city in the world. And I love the story of Jesus calling Zaccheus out of the sycamore tree.

We visited a store that is adjacent to the archaeological site of the original city. It has an observation deck where you can go up three or four floors and see the site from above. One of the interesting facts is that the walls fell outwards. If an invading army were to storm the walls and break through them, they would have fallen inward.

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid.” That little phrase touches many hearts immediately. We all know fear, we all would rather not have it. His teaching has shaped our culture for centuries. Nevertheless, we have a severe and growing anxiety problem in this country, and it is hitting our children, teens and young adults hardest of all.

Last fall, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” He documents what he calls a “surge of suffering” among young teens that began to take off in 2011. Rates of mental illness, particularly anxiety and depression, have more than doubled, up to almost 30% of girls by 2020, as we got to the pandemic.

We rejoin Jesus this morning just after he told Martha that her sister, Mary, had “chosen the better part” in listening to him. The very next line in Luke’s Gospel tells us that Jesus went to a certain place to pray, choosing “the better part” of time with his Father for himself.

His disciples then ask him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” On one level, that seems unnecessary. Prayer is simply talking to God, aiming our spoken or unspoken prayers to him. So, do that.

When people hear that I was a CPA for 12.5 years and changed careers soon after making partner in our firm, they tend to have one of two reactions. Either they think it sounds very noble, or they think I was crazy. I’m not sure about that, but it was very painful and became a critical time of prayer.