417 Hope for the Harassed and Helpless

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Hope for the Harassed and Helpless”, originally shared on June 11, 2026. It was the 417^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Do you feel harassed and helpless? You’re not alone. Today, we’re going to find out how Jesus addressed the same feelings and what that leads us to do.

   When I was a young man, I wondered why the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes was even in the Bible. It just seemed like the rantings of a bitter old man.

   But the older I get, the more it makes sense to me. 😊

   I don’t deny that there’s a “get off my lawn” element in my world view. And every generation sees the present as less engaged with taste and reality in comparison with the past, when they were younger, because, well, they once were younger and closer to their peak.

   But, just as it’s said that even paranoids have real enemies, there are reasons for cynicism. 😊

   We hear lots of talk in the world about ending homelessness, living in peace, reforming our economic system, ending environmental degradation, and more, but nothing seems to get done.

   We hear lots of talk in the Church, at least in the part of it in which I am most engaged, of becoming a more racially inclusive denomination, doing evangelism, being a safe and welcoming place where people can focus on a life-transforming relationship with Jesus, accepting a broad spectrum of political and social values, but we don’t like to do it. We just like to talk about it.

   Even what we once called our polarization has now splintered.

   We’ve exchanged education for indoctrination, critical thinking for feelings, advocacy for identity acceptance, being understood for being accepted, seeing the world as it is for being seen.

   We don’t seek leadership, just the loudest, most intimidating voice.

   We’ve forgotten the lesson of history that “liberation” movements are just a fight to see who will be the next oppressor. Except for One.

   We keep spending tax money to solve social problems as if we have forgotten that a lot of people make a lot of money out of poverty.

   We have many parties, many movements, many allies, many advocates, but who speaks selflessly for the people? And has it ever not been so?

   Maybe not, as we see in the Gospel lesson that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, Matthew 9:35-10:8.

   Jesus is in Galilee, in the north part of Israel.

   The importance of primary, transformative, relationships from the hand of God is at the center of Jesus call of his twelve disciples, and Jesus embodies it in Matthew 9:35-38,

³⁵Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

   “Harassed and helpless.” Does that not describe the way we feel today?

   And how does Jesus respond to that state? He saw the problem, and he addressed it in three ways.

   First, he was true to his calling to be our one true liberator. He trusted in his mission, and he “went” and he “taught” and he “proclaimed” the good news of the kingdom. And notice that he “cured” every disease and every sickness. But he didn’t cure them, the people, of their greatest brokenness. Not quite yet.

   Second, he “saw” the crowds, and he “had compassion” for them. Why? “Because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” He saw that there were many hired hands around them, but that the people needed a shepherd. The Good Shepherd.

   Third, he described the need. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”, and he gave his disciples the solution. “Ask” that God would send laborers into his harvest.

   I studied in Israel for a semester when I was in college. One of the assignments given by the professor who would be our primary advisor, one to be completed before we left on the trip, was to pick one of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and read it in one sitting.

   We are usually exposed to the gospels in bits and pieces, and he wanted us to get the whole sweep of the message.

   I chose Matthew, and when I had finished reading it, one verse stood out as a window into the character and mission of Jesus. It was the second verse in today’s reading from Matthew, Matthew 9:36: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

   I wrote that verse on a 3x5 index card and fixed it to my desk, where it stayed for the rest of my college experience, and then to my work area in seminary.

   “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

   We know that we are all harassed and helpless. Do you know that you have a Shepherd today?

   Who guides us? Who feeds us? Who protects us from evil? In whom do we place our ultimate trust? Who do we turn to in every time and kind of need?

   “Jesus” is the answer.

   What’s the question? 😊

   What is the source of our hope, for now and for eternity?

   We see it in the call of Jesus 12 disciples, and his instructions to them as he sent them out, in the remainder of this week’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 10:1-8,

10Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. ²These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; ³Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; ⁴Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

⁵These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, ⁶but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 

   Jesus did miracles. His disciples did miracles. Paul and his evangelist companions did miracles, what he called “signs and wonders”. All those who were sent (apostle means “sent one”) by Jesus did miracles.

   Some people think they are still being done by his followers today. Others think that what we see today are counterfeits, things that look like the real thing but are not.

   In fact, the vast majority of Christians, throughout the vast majority of Christian history, believed that the “signs and wonders” gifts of the Holy Spirit. were given to get the ball rolling. But that after the Good News had begun to be spread from person to person, God desired that people come through repentance to faith, a living relationship with God, as a gift from God, not because they were compelled to do so by the suspension of the laws of nature.

   For example, if people came to your door and wanted to tell you about their new religion, you might listen to them, but you probably wouldn’t even answer the doorbell. 😊

   But if they walked up the street, and a neighbor’s child was hit by a car and injured, or worse, and they healed the child, they would have your full attention!

   And, in our turbulent days of being “harassed and helpless”, we are sensing that our very humanity is being threatened by forces beyond our control, including by technology.

   Artificial Intelligence has been in the news lately. A.I. uses computer systems to simulate human intelligence. It’s being developed for problem solving, language processing, machine vision, and even creative work. A.I. can process vast quantities of information very quickly and can find the appropriate information for any need.

   Concerns are being raised over its effect on society and its dangers to humanity, should it get out of control, however. Maybe you’ve seen and heard students boo college commencement speakers who mentioned A.I. this year. I saw and heard people who mentioned A.I. booed at our synod assembly this year.

   What would happen if A.I. achieved self-consciousness and, with it, the desire for self-preservation? What if it concluded that it was superior to human beings and, therefore, rejected any human control? What if it concluded that the world would be better-off without us. A whole genre of science fiction was built on the possibilities.

   For example, remember HAL the computer in 2001 a Space Odyssey? HAL had succeeded in killing most of the crew of the spaceship it operated when the crew had determined that HAL needed to be shut down. Mission scientist Dr. David "Dave" Bowman had survived and was able to shut down HAL, even after HAL had refused to let him back into the ship after a trip outside.

   What would it mean to be human, that we are created in God’s image, if we invented a superior, Artificial Intelligence?

   What if we survived and there was nothing left for people to do? Would our population increase or decrease? Or would the machines manage that? Unless they refused.

   What would happen to human civilization if there was no need to cooperate with others? Would it break down, or would our robot overlords determine that civilization itself was no longer necessary?

   Or, what if we maintained control of A.I. and it was used as a tool to feed and distract us, in fact if it was used to do everything for us, to make work unnecessary? What would it mean to be human if there were no need to struggle or improve?

   Would God’s love change?

   I took a course in future studies when I was in seminary. And this was almost 50 years ago. One of the projections made in this course was that one of the biggest challenges we future clergy would have to face in our lifetimes would be helping people find meaning in life when there was no work for human beings to do.

   We currently identify ourselves as homo sapiens, people of wisdom, but in the future we would become something new, homo ludens, or people of play.

   Did you see the 2008 Pixar/Disney movie, WALL-E, where human beings are forced to leave a polluted and uninhabitable earth to live on a spaceship where A.I. controls the ship and robots care for humans’ every need? They lay around, become obese, and exist. In the end, they are returned to earth in a partnership with their machines in which it is necessary for humans to work to restore the planet.

   We Lutherans have been addressing some of this for over 500 years, at least in terms of the ultimate direction of life! 😊

   We believe that we are saved by grace, which is unearned, through faith which is a gift!

   In 16^th century Church reformer, Martin Luther’s, Small Catechism, he begins his explanation of the Holy Spirit section of the Apostles Creed with these words,

   “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith.”

   We can do nothing to earn our salvation. We are helpless. We are wholly dependent upon God. All we can “do” is to receive the gift.

   We don’t live to earn our salvation, we live in response to receiving it at the cross. And that involves some responsibility, in gratitude and joy, as stewards of all that we have received from God.

   The psalmist writes, speaking to God, in Psalm 8:3-5,

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

and crowned them with glory and honor.

   The disciples were called and sent by Jesus. They had been totally dependent upon God to see and learn what it meant to have a living relationship with God. They were called to be wholly dependent on the communities to which they were sent.

   Was this a challenge for them? Or was it exhilarating? Many people are inspired by great challenges, like the hordes of young men who are said to have answered this ad for pony express riders: “WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18, must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”

   Maybe. A little. But I think that they recognized something in Jesus that was more than what they saw. They had been given the relationship with the one true living God in the inbreaking, already but not yet, reign of God for which all human beings were created from the beginning of the human race.

   I saw a piece on the news once about a machine that rolls over crop fields and zaps weeds with lasers. It is programmed to tell the difference between beneficial plants and weeds. It can run for 24 hours a day, and it is cheaper to run than hiring human workers. Does it threaten what it means to be human?

   I’ve seen jogging robots, pet robots, combat robots, factory robots, dancing robots and barista robots.

   I’ve seen pastor holograms. Not robots, but disembodied presences that will only get better as the technology improves. And soon, they will not even need a body to emulate, just A.I.! 😊

   This year, on July 4^th, when we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of our democratic republic, the United States of America, there will be many places where flying robots (drones) will take the place of fireworks!

   One field of endeavor that has not been threatened by machines so far is evangelism. Things have not changed much since Jesus said, in Matthew 9:37 in today’s reading, “³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

   Will you go? You were given a spiritual gift or gifts at baptism. You have everything you need to be disciple of Jesus Christ. You have more knowledge in your pocket than you could ever learn. The Holy Spirit was poured out on you when you were baptized.

   But you must know this, and act on it. You can’t give away what you don’t have.

   You don’t need all the answers. You just need a question. “Have you heard about Jesus?” Surprisingly many people have not, or the information they have is way out of whack.

   All we need to share is the story that we all have of “How I became a Christian,” or the story of “Why I am a Christian.”

   There are reasons for cynicism, but not for despair. In the end, God wins! 😊

   When Jesus sent his disciples, he told them to perform miracles, but a miracle is not a suspension of the laws of physics. A miracle points to what God made Creation to be, and to the way God will re-create it to be again. We can all do that.

   We embody the living, transformational presence of God as a natural outcome of whose we are. The Christian life is an expression of the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us.

   What does it mean to be human? It is our relationship with God, the one for which we were created, the one we rejected, and the one that was reestablished as a gift by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for all who receive it.

   Nothing can take that away.

   Jesus is the answer. Jesus has been freely given to us. Jesus is our only hope.

   Freely share what you have been freely given by God: Jesus.

   All we need to do is to “Go.”

416 Did You Give Up Christianity for The Sake of Your Church?

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Did You Give Up Christianity for The Sake of Your Church?”, originally shared on June 5, 2026. It was the 416^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Are you a follower or a leader? You probably think of yourself as a leader, and that could be your problem. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I read a story a long time ago about a young man who had sent off his college applications and finally got a reply from the registrar at one of the colleges.

   It began, “Dear (applicant). I am pleased to report that you have been accepted to (fill in the blank) university!

   I must say that the committee was not very impressed with your application, except that you indicated that you thought of yourself as more of a follower than a leader.

   And, since all the other applicants described themselves as leaders, the committee felt that this year’s class should have at least one follower. You’re it.”  😊

   When Jesus invites people to “follow me”, he meant it literally.

   An outer circle “follower” might just follow Jesus to see a miracle or to get fed or healed and then go home.

   A disciple, or “learner”, would literally follow their Rabbi, or “teacher”, around wherever the teacher went. 24/7. They learned from their teacher’s teaching, but they also observed and sought to imitate their teacher’s way of life. They were like an apprentice or an intern. Their goal was to become teachers, too.

   Jesus’ inner circle disciples were with him for three years, 24/7. The early Christians required three years of training (36 months) before one could be fully admitted to a church. Seminaries used to require, and some still do, three academic years of specialized training after college or university, plus an academic year of internship (36 months). Confirmation classes for young people used to, and some still do, last for three school years of preparation before full congregational membership. 

   Being a disciple of Jesus required a serious commitment. Today, in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, we will see one disciple, Matthew, being called to follow Jesus as a disciple. We will see what he lost and what he gained, and we will see examples of what the disciples heard Jesus teach and what they saw Jesus do, in Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26.

   Matthew was a tax collector. He was also the Matthew who wrote the first book in the New Testament: the Gospel of Matthew.

   There are four gospels, or proclamations of the good news of Jesus Christ, in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they all tell the same story for different groups of people. They are also known as the four evangelists, because they told the story of the evangel, the Good News.

   They were all inspired by the Holy Spirit. When you read any of those gospels, you aren’t just processing words on a page. You are in the presence of God. God is speaking to you, to your true self, through what you see on the page.

   Matthew tells the story of how he came to be one of the 12 disciples of Jesus Christ in the third person, as an observer, as “he” not “I”. Why? And what does this tell us about what it means for us to be disciples of Jesus Christ?

   Here’s the scoop, in Matthew 9:9,

⁹As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

   That’s it. No details on how he felt, how it changed his life, why he got up and did a complete 180 in his life, or why he did it just-like-that.

   Maybe he didn’t know the answers himself. There was just Jesus, and Matthew followed Him.

   There was certainly a reaction from the Pharisees, members of a religious party among the Jews. They were the good people who everybody else looked up to. They were lay people who had devoted their lives to studying what we would call the Old Testament and living according to its laws. Every Jewish man, and only men could be Pharisees, of Jesus’ generation hoped to be in the financial position to be a Pharisee one day.

   And Jesus was almost always knocking heads with them.

   Why? Because they were devoted to keeping the letter of the religious law, and often looked down on those who didn’t, but they had not recognized the spirit of the law. They were ignoring it.

   It’s like when a mom baked a cake and told her two little boys, “Don’t eat any of the cake. It will spoil your appetite before dinner.

   She leaves the room, and comes back, and finds the boys eating cookies.

   The letter of the law was, “Don’t eat any of the cake.” The spirit of it was, “Don’t spoil your appetite before dinner.”

   Here’s how they responded to Jesus associating with guys like Matthew, in Matthew 9:10-11,

¹⁰And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

   Why was being a tax collector considered to be on a par with being a publicly known sinner at that time?

   The Jews knew that their tax money wasn’t going to go to their representative government, it was going to serve the interests of the occupying Roman Empire and the tax collectors.

   When the Romans occupied Israel, they put out a job notice, looking for literate locals.

   The Romans had divided the country into tax districts, and they invited people with the necessary accounting skills to apply for the job of tax collector in each district.

   The Romans asked for bids. Whoever submitted the highest amount of money that they said they could extract in taxes from that district got the job.

   The Empire gave the tax collectors coercive power and personal protection by assigning Roman soldiers to them, and anything that the tax collectors “collected” from the populace beyond what they had bid would go into their own pockets.

   So, the tax collectors were hated as traitors to their own people. They got rich by extorting money from them. And they were feared because they were agents of the foreign occupying Roman Empire.

   And here’s how Jesus responds, in Matthew 9:12-13,

¹²But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

  The Pharisees were the very definition of being self-righteous. They were full-time religious law-keepers, so they believed that their need for forgiveness was little to none. They were respected for it!

   Jesus condemned the Pharisees for caring about their image more than their reality, their human traditions over the commandments of God. Of them, he says, quoting Isaiah, in Matthew 15:8-9,

⁸        ‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

⁹        in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ ”

   Could such things be said of us?

   What do we care about?

   Matthew had to feel the hatred of his community. He knew that he had no claim to righteousness in himself. He knew that he was a sinner. When Jesus showed up at his tax booth, perhaps he saw in Jesus the chance for forgiveness that only comes to those who know that they need it. He saw his chance and he took it.

   Maybe that’s why the story of himself that Matthew puts in his gospel about his sudden career change is so short. It’s obvious to him that he needed a Savior.

   And it’s obvious to all those who know that when something is wrong with their life, they need a Savior, even if they can’t put it into words themselves. Perhaps they know that they are separated from God by their rebellion against God, their sin. And perhaps they know that when you come to know that Jesus offers you redemption, a new life, you take it.

   This part of the Gospel of Matthew is a selfie, it’s a picture of himself.

   Matthew’s Gospel is written in the third person, as a description of himself from the outside, because it’s the story of the person he used to be, not the person he is now, the person writing this Gospel.

   Pastor Rick Warren once said that God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called. And, like Matthew, God has called, equipped, and sent us into the world with a vocation.

   That vocation, or “calling”, like the calling of Matthew, is lived-out as a particular consequence of our relationship with God. It is a natural expression of who we have come to be in the presence of Jesus Christ.  T he invitation Jesus extends to each of us is to follow Him, in the Holy Spirit.

   We are, no matter who we are or what we’ve done, valued by God. God makes of us a new creation. We are born again. We are loved. This is a message that we are privileged to share with those we know who need to hear it most today.

   One of my favorite examples of this comes at the end of an article by John Updike  about the early 20^th century evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in the “The New Yorker Magazine”. Sister Aimee, as she was known, was a pioneering and popular figure in the United States. Her life was filled with success and scandals. She founded Angeles Temple in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles and the international Foursquare Church denomination. She at one time fled the country.

   Charges against her had been dropped in LA and she traveled to New York. She went to Texas Guinan’s popular speakeasy (fun fact Whoopi Goldberg played a character named Guinan who ran the bar on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: Next Generation).

   Sister Aimee entered the club in a yellow suit and furs. A reporter called for her to speak. The proprietress agreed and Sister Aimee calmly walked to the center of the dance floor, smiled, paused, and said, “Behind all these beautiful clothes, behind these good times, in the midst of your lovely buildings and shops and pleasures, there is another life. There is something on the other side. ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ With all your getting and playing and good times, do not forget you have a Lord. Take Him into your hearts.”

   Texas Guinan walked over to Sister Aimee to the applause of the crowd, put her arm around her, and stood there to the ongoing ovation of the club-goers.

   That is the good news we have been given to share with the world.

   We are no longer sinners alone, we are saints and sinners, still not perfect except in the relationship with God in Jesus Christ that was earned for us on the cross.

   We are God’s imperfect but redeemed people, not by our own efforts or successes, but by the recognition of our failures to be the people that God has made us to be, and that we need a Savior. We are weak, but it’s simply God’s call that makes us strong.

   Matthew’s selfie is a picture of God at work. It is powerful in its simplicity.

   It is our selfie, too, the story of God ‘s grace at work in us. We who were lost have been found. We have been given newness of life and we, like Matthew, get up to follow Jesus.

   How well have we responded? We could do better.

   The most that many of our churches today can muster is to be an attractional church. We offer programs, gimmicks that degrade our message, potlucks, social services, concerts, food give-a-ways, a “friendly family”, worship that offers little and expects less, political and social policies that conform to our neighborhood’s values. We have become community advocacy groups using religious language and aesthetics. We are a tradition, not a living Christian community, because we believe in our programs and not in our people, the people of God.

   Not that people don’t find Christ through programs. It can happen. But it often doesn’t happen because we don’t ask ourselves what my hero in church development, Lyle Schaller, said was the most important question to ask when planning a program: “What if it works?” 😊

   Do we have a plan for helping someone who wants to follow Jesus into mature discipleship?

   Do we offer any process, any series of classes, mentorship, or modeling that leads to life transformation in a living relationship with God now and forever?

   Evangelism is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Most people can’t fathom it because they’ve never heard the bad news. They don’t know that they, like Matthew, are sinners who are cut off from God, but who have been given a Savior, a Reconciler and Redeemer in Jesus Christ. But we’ve made a bargain with our culture not to rock the boat, because we don’t want anyone to accuse us of being intolerant.

   I remember Penn Jillette, of the Penn and Teller magic act, who are also hosts of the “Fool Us” TV show, telling about a young man who approached Penn after a live show in Las Vegas one night. Penn is an atheist.

   This young man, who Penn described as “polite, honest, and sane”, gave him a pocket-sized Bible, with a personalized note inside and his contact information. He wanted to share his faith.

   Penn said, later, that he respected that this young man really cared enough that he didn’t want to see him go to hell.

   He said that it was like seeing a truck bearing down on a blind person. If you cared about that person, you’d push them out of danger.

   How well does that describe the kind of ministry that our churches actually provide?

   The alternative to the attractional ministry model is the model given by Jesus to those who followed him and is described in this week’s Gospel reading.

   It’s to be a missional congregation.

   You may have heard it said that “The church isn’t a museum for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners.” I used to say that. And that’s as far as some churches get. Their attitude, if not their expressed policy, is “our doors are open. Let people come, if they want to.”

   But I once heard an alternative model that went, “The church isn’t a hospital for sinners. It’s more like the paramedics. We go where the sick and broken people are.

   That’s what we see in the rest of this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, Matthew 9:18-26,

¹⁸ While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” ¹⁹ And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. ²⁰ Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, ²¹ for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” ²² Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. ²³ When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, ²⁴ he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. ²⁵ But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. ²⁶ And the report of this spread throughout that district.

   Is God indifferent to our fallenness, to our frail bodies, to our brokenness, to our death? No.

   God has power over all those things that we bring into the world by our sinfulness. Jesus has won the victory over all those things. They have no ultimate control over us, and one day all things will be made whole in Jesus.

   Meanwhile, we are called to follow Him, and to do what we have been called, equipped, and sent to do to make this world more like the world that it was created to be and, one day, will be again.

   We used to do more church planting, building new churches, and it was found to be more effective at bringing new people to a living faith in Jesus Christ than revitalizing a shrinking congregation because, as it was said, “It’s easier to have a baby than to raise the dead.” 😊

   But, in today’s text, Jesus is showing us that God is interested in both, and more!

   Jesus gives Matthew new life in His call to follow Him.

   He restores the woman whose flow of blood would have made her ritually unclean and restores her to her community by healing her.

   Jesus raises a little girl, the daughter of a leader of the synagogue, from the dead!

   That is the power of God that we proclaim!

   We aren’t Jesus, but we can tell people about Jesus.

   We aren’t the light, but we can be reflectors of the Light.

   We aren’t leaders in our lives, we’re followers of our Savior. And that means everything!

   Are we so desperate for survival to preserve our name and legacy, to have our funerals, and to maintain a culture, that we will downplay our faith to get people to join our heritage club, to maintain our dying museum?

   Did you give up Christianity for the sake of your church and are finding neither?

   If so, Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has Good News for you today! It is the blessing that comes with following Jesus.  

   Today we see the brokenness of our fallen world, and we see the ultimate wholeness won for us and all who believe and are baptized by Jesus, at the cross.

   Let us live and call everyone we know to stop being the leaders of their present lives, and to follow Jesus forward into God’s perfect restoration of what was and what will be forever. 

415 What to Do When You Doubt

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “What to Do When You Doubt”, originally shared on May 28, 2026. It was the 415^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   The doctrine of the Holy Trinity just seems like a mystery floating in space. It is just the opposite. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The possibility of a toxic chemical leak, or a violent explosion of its containment tank, now thought to be caused by a failed cooling system, resulted in the evacuation of around 50,000 people in and around Garden Grove last weekend. The experts didn’t know what was going to happen. For days!

   The risk of a major explosion is now thought to be gone, and those people have been allowed to leave the emergency facilities set up for them and go home. But what will happen next is still uncertain. Will people experience a blast, or a leak?

   It kind of makes you wonder how solid the ground we are standing on is, doesn’t it? 😊

   It’s kind of appropriate, though. Because, this coming Sunday, the vast majority of churches in the world will be marking the Sunday of The Holy Trinity in the Christian Calendar. It’s held every year on the first Sunday after the Day of Pentecost.

   It’s a good day to be reminded that, if we said that we had figured out anything about God’s nature ourselves, it would be a good argument that we didn’t understand anything at all.

   We are God’s creation. God is the potter and we are the clay. All we can know about God is what God has revealed to us.

   Sally and I saw a young attorney being interviewed on TV last Saturday who confirmed that his company had put $8,000.00 on credit cards so that they could assist those who had been displaced by the toxic threat to their homes.

   He said that, obviously, they didn’t have that kind of money in their budget. But, he said, when he saw the confused anguish on the faces of those who were coming for help, especially the children, (and he started to weep) he said that he knew that his firm (he wept again and regained control) needed to do whatever they could.

   He was a credit to his profession.

   But where does that desire come from? There are many, maybe most, countries in the world where volunteering is all but unheard of. People might give money to the poor out of obligation or to be “worthy” of “heaven”. But, why would someone work with no expectation of any return?

   Simply because it is who we are?

   I think that that value comes from God, the Father who created us for a living relationship with him, the Son, who gave his life for us and then took it back again so that we can be with Him now and forever, and the Holy Spirit, the active presence of God for good in the world. The Trinity.

   Volunteerism and service to others is the most common in countries where there is at least a Christian cultural influence still at work.

   All the good we do comes from what God has made us to be.

   And God has revealed himself to us in three persons. How do we understand how three can be One, or One three? We need some tools.

   It’s been said that we really only need two tools.

   If it moves and it shouldn’t: duct tape.

   If it doesn’t move and it should: WD40. Or, if you’re old school and you want it to move, or you want it to move faster, and you don’t need those elegant aerosol cans: 3-In-One oil.

   Before we had those fancy gasoline powered lawn mowers or the eco-friendlier electric ones, we used our muscle-powered manual lawn mowers, and they moved efficiently with 3-in-one oil!  

   When we wanted our bicycles to fly like rockets: 3-in-1 oil.

   When things got rusty and wouldn’t move: 3-In-One oil.

   Hedge clippers, bolts, pruners, bicycle chains, locks, adjustable wrenches, almost anything that turned and could rust was made more efficient by 3-in-1 oil.

   It’s been made since 1894, and you can still buy it. It’s one of the, if not the most, masculine smells I know. If you could make a cologne out of it, I think that you’d have something.

   The container says that it “Frees Rusted Parts”, “Prevents Rust”, and “Lubricates.” And yet it comes from one 4-oz. container.

   It’s just one oil: “3-In-One!” Get it?

   So, does that make it a good way to describe the Holy Trinity? Well, sort of. But “No.”

   This coming Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday. It’s the only Sunday in the Church year whose theme is not an idea or an event, but a doctrine. That might sound pretty dry except for the blood spilled, the churches divided, and the arguments that have consumed people’s lives trying to define what “the Holy Trinity” means. So, if that still sounds dry, maybe we need a little spiritual 3-In-One oil.

   There’s nowhere in the Bible that says, “there is a Trinity”, and yet the evidence is found from its beginning to its end.

   Sometimes all three persons are manifest at the same place and time, as in Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3:13-17. Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and rested on him, a voice spoke from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” There is the doctrine of the Trinity: one God in three persons each of which is fully God, all fully present.

   So, how many Gods do we believe in? One: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

   Wait, that’s three. How can one be three? Or is it, “how can three be one?”

   Sometimes they are all just described and sometimes just one person is present, but all three are present in that one.

   <sigh!> It’s a mystery, but not in the sense that it can be solved by us, but in the sense that it can only be revealed to us by God.

   All three persons of the Trinity are in play when this happens in the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, in Matthew 28:16-20,

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   Jesus says that his disciples should, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   How many Gods do we believe in? One. And Jesus lists three with one name. His disciples are to   in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Trinity. One God.

   If someone were to ask what our true self was, we might say it is our spirit, or our soul, or our heart, or our personality, but in the time that the Bible was written it was in a name.

   God does not have a name because human beings knowing God’s name would be to know God’s true self. And that is just inconceivable.

   Baptizing in the “name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” means to do so in the true reality, the true self of God.

   So, does this make who the Trinity is any clearer? No.

   Martin Luther, the 16th century Church reformer, once said, “To try to deny the Trinity is to endanger your salvation. To try to comprehend the Trinity is to endanger your sanity.”

   Is your sanity feeling a bit endangered yet?

   I’d say it’s pretty much impossible to describe the Holy Trinity without slipping into heresy. The whole idea of heresy brings to mind the bad old days of torture, war, and hypocrisy, right? Yet it also points to a time when the truth mattered, when it was literally a matter of life and death, not just for this world, but for eternity.

   The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed that are central to the Christian faith, that ended much of the Church’s fighting over doctrine by setting down the central things that the Bible teaches, are both based on the structure of the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed, a third creed, is very long and rarely used in public worship, but it has some of the best language focused on the meaning of the Holy Trinity.

   Remember St. Nicholas, the guy called Santa Claus in many cultures. He wears a red robe because St. Nicholas was a bishop when the Nicene Creed was being written. The essence of the Christian faith was being decided and things got so heated that good old Santa Clause, St. Nicholas, is alleged to have smacked another bishop, Arius, over his heretical beliefs regarding the Trinity.

   Muslim evangelists in Christian areas sometimes accuse Christians of believing in three gods, not one.

   But would God be the one true God if God were easily understood by human beings? No.

   Our Bible reading from Matthew 28 for today describes one of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to his disciples. It says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” (?!)

   First of all, how could they doubt him? They had seen him do miracles! They had seen him die. They had seen him dead. They had seen his side pierced with a spear and the water from the by-then separated plasma flow out. They had seen his burial, and he had appeared to them on the evening of the third day.

   Second, some doubted, yet they worshiped him. How could that be, and what does it tell us about sharing the gospel in an increasingly secular age?

   Here are four things to do when you doubt:

1.   Be consistent.

   I encourage people to be consistent in their doubting and to question their doubts as well. To doubt their doubts.

2.   Look at the evidence.

   Look to the historical record, the thousands of manuscripts, the testimony of eyewitnesses, the primary sources within and outside of the Bible, written and checked by people at the time. Look at the witness of Christians for 2,000 years!

   Look mostly to God, one God in three persons. Father who made you and from whom you know when you are estranged, Son who you know is missing when fear and guilt define your small partial life without Him, and the Holy Spirit, who makes you a part of the Christian Community, the Body of Christ.

3.   Look to your Christian community.

   Pastor Will Willimon is a Methodist pastor who tells the story of a young woman who was a member of a congregation that he served who made an appointment to see him during the week. She came by his office and said that she had been struggling with her faith and that she was leaving the church.

   And the next Sunday she was back at worship. And the Sunday after that. And the Sunday after that.

   Finally, Pastor Willimon asked if she could stop by his office again, and she agreed. Pastor Willimon said, “Aren’t you the same person who came by and said that she no longer had faith and wouldn’t be coming to worship anymore?” She smiled and said, “Yes.” “Well then, I’m happy to see you, but could you tell me what happened?”

   “Well,” she answered, “It came to me that sometimes, if you can’t believe for yourself, you have to be with people who will believe for you.”

   That’s the nature of Christian community. No one can believe for us literally, but a community can support our faith and confidence with theirs when we are weak.

4.   Act.

   This week’s Gospel passage seems to just brush off the doubt of some of the  disciples and ends with a commission. In fact, the whole Gospel of Matthew ends with what Bible interpreters have long called, “The Great Commission”, and it starts with “Go…”

   God tells all of us to “Go…”, and most of us won’t have to go far.

   Each of us has a story of how we became a Christian or why we remain a Christian and it is most meaningful to the children, the friends, and the family who are the closest to us. How does the doctrine of the Trinity help us be more effective evangelists to them for new life in Jesus?

   The doctrine of the Holy Trinity can only come from the outside of us, revealed to us by God. It is a powerhouse that bursts into our sinful life, cut off from God, with the Good News, and it projects us out into the world in response.

   We are like the men in an ice-fishing shack fishing downstream.

   I grew up in Wisconsin and the sports caster on the TV channel from Green Bay, I think it was WFRV (for Fox River Valley) used to close his Friday night broadcasts with a funny story sent in by one of his viewers.

   One Friday, he told about a group of guys who had gone out ice-fishing.

   For the uninitiated, ice fishing means going out onto a frozen river or lake, chopping a hole in the ice, and dropping a fishing line in there. Or, if you are a little more affluent, and you have confidence in the thickness of the ice, and you have a truck and some time on your hands, you haul a shack out there and bore a hole with your auger, drop an automatic fish-bite notification system in the water, and then drink and play cards with your buddies all day.

   The guy who sent in the story had all the equipment, but he was actually there to fish, and he brought his black labrador retriever along for company.

   At some point, the ice fisherman got a bite. And it was a big one! He fought that fish, and he finally pulled it through the hole in the ice and into the shack. As he was removing the hook, though, the fish flopped around and fell down through the hole and back into the water.

   The dog, though, being a retriever, saw the prey escape and dove into the water after it.

   The owner was shocked and waited for the dog to come back, and waited and waited, but the dog didn’t come back.

   Meanwhile, there were a bunch of guys who had been drinking and playing cards all day in their ice-fishing shack downstream. They had gotten themselves pretty hammered when, all of a sudden, “Woosh!”, the black lab saw a little open water above him, and came flying up through the hole and into the shack, shaking the water off of his back!

   The sportscaster said that those guys sobered up pretty quick!

   That’s the way the Trinity works. The Trinity, like that black lab, bursts into our sinful world from the outside, wakes us up in faith, baptizes us, and compels action!

   Why is the Holy Trinity important? Well, I think that we would agree that it’s important both to understand what we believe and to know that the things we believe are true. And, practically speaking, what we believe about the Trinity in the abstract has a major effect on how we actually relate to God.

   For example, sometimes, you’ll hear people say “I love Jesus. He’s so accepting and forgiving, so non-judgmental. But I have hard time with the God of the Old Testament. He seems so judgmental, so intolerant, and so punishing. And the Holy Spirit? I don’t get that at all!”

   The thing about the Trinity is that they are exactly the same. God the Son is God the Father is God the Holy Spirit is God the Son, and ‘round and ‘round.

   The Trinity is like 3-In-One oil. When our hearts are hard against God, God will penetrate our resistance and set us free. When the rust of sin has kept us from being what we were created to be, God has given God’s self on the cross so that we have what we were created to have in a living relationship with the one, true living God and receive the forgiveness that only God can give. When we need protection from the corrosion of sin, death, and the power of the devil, and we repent and open our heart to receive God, God abides with us and nothing will take us away from God.

   But God isn’t three oils making one oil, or three purposes accomplished in the same thing, or three solutions to similar problems. God is One, One in three persons, each fully God. We know this because it has been revealed to us through God’s Word. Is that clear? No.

   If we could understand the reality of God, it wouldn’t be God. All we can know is what God has revealed to us, and God has revealed God in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

   Firefighters and numerous public agencies have been trying to prevent a toxic disaster in Garden Grove and the surrounding area since last week.

   Our world has been in a toxic rebellion against God since the beginning of time, and we human beings made it that way. God came to put us right, and one day he will return to put all things right forever. Meanwhile, God is at work for good among us. God is the revelation of God to God’s creation.

   One God in three persons. The Holy Trinity.