Looking for What God is Doing

Looking for What God is Doing

John 9:1-7, 13-41[1]

We turn to faith for comfort. That’s one of the main roles faith plays in our lives. It offers us comfort when the realities of life can feel like they’re too much to bear. That’s why we love Scripture passages like Psalm 23. It’s a beautiful expression of the comfort our faith offers us. But when we only look to faith for comfort, it’s too easy to focus only our ourselves, and lose sight of those around us. That’s why our faith also challenges us. Faith that’s worth its salt not only offers us comfort, it also challenges us to see the suffering of our sisters and brothers in the human family. Especially those who suffer the most in this world, the very ones we may prefer not to see. When we let our faith turn in on itself, it becomes too easy to convince ourselves that their suffering is somehow their own fault. Instead of seeing them as beloved children of God who are suffering in the same way we all can suffer, which can be a scary thought, we convince ourselves that they must have done something to bring it on themselves. The idea that they must have done something to deserve their suffering somehow assures us that it won’t happen to us. But in the process, we let our desire for comfort and safety blind us to the compassion God wants us to give to the people who suffer the most in this world.

Our Gospel lesson for today addresses this issue. It’s the story about Jesus’ encounter with a man who had been born blind. But the irony is that it turns the tables on how we might expect the story to go. In this story, the “religious” people who claimed that they could see were in fact blind. They were blind to the compassion of God, they were blind to truth that Jesus restored this man’s sight. But it was a man who was despised as an ignorant vagrant was the one who was able to see what they couldn’t or wouldn’t see. The narrator emphasizes this irony by calling the one Jesus healed “the man who had formerly been blind.” But irony is that in this story, he was the one who was able to see the truth about Jesus. On the other hand, the “religious” people were blinded because of their assumptions.

The basic assumption in this story that blinded the “religious” people is that anyone who is suffering must have done something to deserve it. That’s an assumption that we still make. In the Gospel story, it was Jesus’ own disciples who voiced this assumption, asking, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). The very fact that he had been born blind meant that someone had to have done something wrong to cause his suffering. But Jesus exploded the centuries-old myth that suffering comes from sin. I like the way Gene Peterson translates Jesus’ response in The Message: “You’re asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG).

The hard truth is that we live in a world where any kind of suffering can affect anyone at any time. And we tend to use rationalizations like “they must have brought it on themselves” to assure ourselves that we won’t have to suffer the same pain! But Jesus turns all that on its head. He says that the suffering people experience in this world isn’t about blaming or shaming. Rather, it’s an opportunity for those of us who claim to follow him to demonstrate “the works of God” (John 9:4): kindness, compassion, and mercy! The suffering that people endure is an opportunity for us to “look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG), even and especially in the worst of the pain people can suffer!

Because Jesus healed “the man who had formerly been blind” on the Sabbath day, the religious people believed he had “broken” the Sabbath and therefore he must have been a “sinner” (John 9:16). They believed that following their “rules” about the Sabbath carefully and completely would act as a kind of magical protection from the suffering in the world. Because Jesus didn’t follow their rules about how to observe the Sabbath, he called into question their assumptions about God and the world. To keep their assurances intact they concluded that he must have been a sinner! Only if Jesus was a sinner could they keep their assumptions intact, assumptions that gave them false and shallow assurances that they would never have to deal with that kind of suffering. We still do that: we tell ourselves that if we follow all the rules, we’ll be spared from the worst hardships of life. And we reinforce that line of thinking by assuming those who suffer the worst must have “broken the rules,” and therefore they must be “sinners.” I would think that most of us have had enough experience with life to know that’s not the way life works. We can follow all the rules and still be hit with some of the worst kinds of suffering.

Again, in the Gospel story it was “the man who had formerly been blind” who exposed all these false assumptions. The religious leaders kept pressing him, trying to find a way to avoid the obvious conclusion that Jesus restored his sight. Finally, in exasperation they said, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner” (John 9:24). And an unlearned, marginalized, ragged, and dirty man, who just that morning had been living on the street, showed a depth of insight beyond all that they possessed. He said simply, “I do not know whether he is a sinner” (Jn 9:25). There’s probably a lot of wisdom in that when it comes to using the word “sinner” about someone else. But he said, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (Jn 9:25).

This man who had been blind was able to see the truth about Jesus. Those who claimed to see and know God’s truth were blinded by their false assumptions. That’s what the story is about. We see it in the end when Jesus makes an ironic and somewhat confusing statement about enabling those who are blind to see and making those who can see blind. The Message translation puts it this way, “I came into the world … , so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind” (John 9:39, MSG). I don’t think Jesus ever meant to keep anyone from seeing the truth about God, the truth about themselves, or the truth about life. I think what he was trying to do was to expose those who “make a great pretense of seeing” as people who can actually be blind. The story is about bringing to light something that happens all too often: those of us who think we see the truth about God and therefore view ourselves as “holier” than others are the ones who can at times be the most blind to God’s grace and mercy and compassion!

The hard truth about life is that we never know what we may have to go through. There are times when suffering just happens, not because of what we have done, but in spite of all we may have done. It’s natural in those times for us to look to our faith for comfort. But when we take that to an extreme and try to use our faith as an assurance that it won’t happen to us, we’ve missed something. Jesus made it clear that we’ve missed something when we use our “faith” to brand those who are suffering as “sinners” as a way of reassuring ourselves that we won’t have to suffer like them. What that really boils down to is an elaborate means of making ourselves feeling better at the expense of others. But Jesus framed the suffering people experience in this world entirely differently. He framed it as an opportunity for us to “look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG).

The Bible says that “nothing will be impossible for God.” We oftentimes think that some people may be beyond hope. And we tend to point the finger at them and assume that they must have done something to deserve it. It’s their fault somehow. But we really don’t know what life experiences have brought people to where they are. We really don’t know the burdens that people are carrying. I think that’s why Jesus taught his disciples and us to look at the suffering people experience not as a reason to point the finger and blame but as an opportunity to “look instead for what God can do.” Instead of shaming people, he challenged us to look for the good that God can do even and especially in the worst of human pain. After all, God raise Jesus from the dead after his suffering on the cross. If that’s true, what experience in this life is there that God can’t bring good from? And when look for what God can do when someone is suffering, not only does it change our whole perspective, but it also helps us to see that we have the opportunity to share God’s mercy and compassion with them. Maybe that’s what God “wants” to do. Maybe God wants to open our hearts to show kindness, compassion, and care, especially toward those whose suffering challenges us. I think Jesus challenges us to find the faith to look at the sufferings of this life and trust God enough to look for what God can do in any situation, come what may, and then try to join him in doing that.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/15/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Windblown!

Windblown!

John 3:1-17[1]

We live in a place where the wind blows. It always has. Maybe in former days, before trees were planted more widely, it “blew” even more. Or at least it may have seemed like it. So much so that there are stories of early pioneers who were driven to madness by the constant blowing of the wind on the open prairie. These days, the wind can still be dangerous. Most of us remember the historic “derecho” storm that destroyed an almost 800-mile swath of crops in Iowa in 2020. More recently, and more locally, on a weekend when the weather was supposed to be calm, a storm brought down a lot of trees, some of them fairly large. We live in a place where the wind blows!

Like other aspects of the weather, we really can’t know the way the wind is going to blow on a given day until we see it. I learned that living on the Texas Gulf Coast, where we dealt with Hurricanes. The weather service had a five-day “cone of probability” for where the Hurricane would make landfall that was just about worthless because usually covered the whole Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida. Basically about 24 to 48 hours ahead of time we could get an idea of where the storm was going. That’s true here. Maybe the day before, we can see what seems to be happening. But really, we have to wait until the day to know what the weather is going to do. Is it going to snow this afternoon? We’ll have to wait and see.

Unfortunately, that unpredictability that exposes our trees and crops, not to mention our homes and gardens, to the risk of damage from a storm. That’s not something most of us relish. Unlike the people who originally settled here, we tend not to be great risk-takers. We want our lives to be safe and predictable. And we turn to our faith to provide us with that safe and predictable life. We want our faith to be something we can count on. So we take faith and turn it into a kind of certainty that I’m not sure it was ever meant to be.

At least that’s been the way some people approach faith. It’s “the Truth,” the one and only truth with a capital “T” that has been delivered “once for all” to the faithful (Cf. Jude 3!) and has been preserved intact throughout the centuries in an infallible Bible by an infallible church. Before we point the finger at other Christian traditions for this kind of thinking, we should look to our own roots. The Reformed confessions from the Sixteenth Century speak a similar language. It seems that the uncertainty and upheaval of the Protestant Reformation when people wanted certainty about their faith. They debated whether the Catholic tradition or the Protestant tradition had the “true” faith. They attacked each other back and forth about who had the true faith or who didn’t. One our Reformed confessions talks of faith as “a most certain apprehension of the truth of God.”[2] That doesn’t leave much room for doubt. And the Westminster Confession, which was the confession of faith of the Presbyterian Church for a long time, hardly even speaks the language of faith. It makes our faith all about knowledge and absolute truth and certainty.

It’s easy to understand why we look for this kind of certainty in our faith.  It’s comforting and reassuring to have something firm and unchangeable to hang onto with all that’s changing in our world. But I’m not sure that our faith was meant to be like that. I would say that the Bible speaks very differently about faith. Yes, there are times when the prophets and apostles spoke of faith as something firm that provides us with a sense of being grounded. But they also speak of faith as something we can’t always pin down into nice, neat packages.

Our gospel lesson for today is a great example. Jesus speaks about faith in a way that was so confusing to Nicodemus, who was one of the “teachers of Israel,” that he completely misunderstood. Jesus said, “you must be born from above,” but the way he said it could also be understood, “you must be born again.” And Nicodemus thought Jesus was talking about somehow physically climbing back into the womb. But Jesus was talking about a different kind of birth. In John’s Gospel it’s called being “born from God,” or “born from above,” or “born of the Spirit.” It’s talking about a birth that brings us a whole new kind of life from the Spirit of God.

That’s something that may be hard for us to grasp, because this life can so often feel “old” and familiar rather than new and unexpected. But that’s the way Jesus described the “life” he came to give all people. And Jesus said this new life works the way the wind blows. He said, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8). Now, Jesus wasn’t speaking about weather forecasting. Even with all the modern technology we have at our fingertips, sometimes a wind comes up suddenly, and you’re just as surprised and baffled as if you were living in the First Century. The new life that Jesus points us to, and the faith that opens the door to that new life, is just as much a mystery today as the wind still can be.

Because it is beyond our ability to understand, there is something inherently uncertain about what God is doing in our world to bring new life to us all. Like a sudden wind that takes us by surprise, the new life that God brings to us is something that can surprise us. Sometimes it can leave us feeling overwhelmed or even scared. When God’s Spirit blows into our lives, it’s not something we get to control. When we feel “out of control” we may find ourselves feeling vulnerable or even threatened. In those times, to be sure, our faith is like a lifeline that we hold onto. And there is much about our faith provides us with assurance, like the promise that God’s love for us never fails. But because our faith sometimes takes us to places we never expected to go, we may find ourselves in a situation where all we can do is fall on our knees and pray with all our hearts, “Lord, help me!”

If it’s true that God’s ways are as much higher than ours as “the heavens” are above the earth, then I think that means we will likely wonder, or question, or even doubt at times. I don’t think any of those responses to the unexpected nature of our lives is the opposite of faith. Rather, I would say that for me, those paths have led me to deeper faith! It’s natural for us to turn to our faith when life feels out of control. We all have favorite hymns, or Scripture verses, or prayers that give us the courage to face uncertain days. But we must not confuse assurance with absolute certainty. One of the main reasons for that is when our faith is something we view as absolutely certain, it becomes safe and predictable. And when our faith is safe and predictable, we can become complacent. I don’t think Jesus envisioned the new life he spoke about with Nicodemus on that night as something safe or predictable, or something about which we could ever become complacent!

Rather, our faith, and the new life it leads us to live, is always going to lead us out from the comfort of our safety and complacency. Jesus’ faith led him to the cross, and he said that it would be the same for all those who would follow him. If we’re going to take that risk of faith, if we’re going to let the wind of God’s Spirit blow new life into our lives, we’re going to have to expect that it’s not going to be safe and predictable. And rather than seeking safety or comfort, faith means opening up our hearts to the new life God brings by allowing ourselves to be changed. That’s how we experience faith, and that’s how we experience the new life Jesus promised to us all. It’s like being blown by the wind!

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/1/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] “Second Helvetic Confession,” The Book of Confessions 5.112. 

What Joy!

 What Joy!

Psalm 32[1]

Christian worship can seem strange to people who aren’t used to it. Especially a traditional service like ours. Everything we do in worship has a reason for it. But because the way we worship was shaped literally centuries ago, it can reflect a mindset that some people just don’t connect with. I think that’s especially the case with our unison “Confession of Sins.” Even if we’re actually praying the prayer as a way of confessing our sins to God, and not just “saying” the words because that’s what comes next in the service, it might seem strange that we all “pray” the same confession. As I said, the way we worship can seem strange to people who may not be used to it.

Some of us these days may be uncomfortable simply admitting that we have sinned. Some of us are even more uncomfortable admitting that we are sinners. But from the biblical perspective, both are true: we have sinned—that relates to our actions. And we are sinners—that relates to who we are. But it’s not something that’s easy for us to admit. Especially out loud. The pride that can lie at the heart of our personal insecurities can also lead us to make our own selves the most important thing in our world. We name that choice “sin” because it means turning away from the love that shapes our true humanity and therefore it means turning away from God.[2]  

I think this can be a problem even and especially for those of us in the church all the time. In the evangelical world, people can tend toward the thinking that “I’m saved, I asked Jesus into my heart and confessed my sin on such-and-such a date.” They may feel the need to confess “really bad” actions here and there, but they tend to think that they’ve already confessed to being a sinner. They’ve got that part covered. In our branch of the Christian world, we can tend toward the thinking that “I’m a good person, I go to church, I try to help people and be kind to them, I volunteer my time.” Given all of that, some of us may feel like the demand to confess that we “are” sinners is offensive and even harmful. Rather than confessing our sin, some think we should be affirming that we are good enough just as we are.

In the midst of all this incredibly complicated approach that we have toward the simple fact that we all can do and say things that we regret, the Psalmist in our Scripture lesson for today insists that confessing our sin is something that’s important for our spiritual health and well-being. Despite the fact that this lesson was written before Christ was even born, it still remains a truth of our human existence that when we refuse to acknowledge our wayward behavior, it tends to fester inside us and comes out in all kinds of ways that aren’t pleasant. Pride, anger, and bitterness are just some of the ways that we can behave when we try to repress a feeling of guilt for what we have done.[3]  

From the Psalmist’s perspective, refusing to clear his conscience by admitting his wrongdoing made him feel like God’s hand was “heavy” upon him (Ps. 32:4). I think most of us can relate to that “heavy” feeling. And it’s one more clue that we all need the relief and release the Psalmist says comes as a “blessing” when we confess our sin (Ps. 32:1-2). And that is precisely what the Psalmist promises in response to the heartfelt, genuine confession that “I have sinned, and I am a sinner”: relief from the burden of guilt. That’s why the confession of sin is so important. As long as we hold back, as long as we refuse to acknowledge who we really are and what we’ve really done, we will always have lingering doubts about whether God really accepts us as we are. But when we admit our wrongdoing, we find God’s love embracing us, God’s grace abounding, and God’s mercy healing us.  More than that, when we come to God with the confession, “I have sinned, and I am a sinner,” and we experience not condemnation or rejection but acceptance and love and forgiveness, we walk away from that experience with a stronger sense of trust in the God whose love for us never fails. 

Unfortunately, for too many of us, “confession” is only something we do at the beginning of a worship service. And even then, because we do it every Sunday, in the same way, and at the same time, it can begin to feel like something routine. But for confession to be genuine, it has to be more than a routine. It has to be something that is heartfelt. It cannot be relegated to a few words we mumble on Sunday morning. Ongoing confession is an integral part of the life of faith. If we need to be reminded why it is so important to confess our sin, all we have to do is remember that, as we say in one of our Presbyterian Confessions of faith, it is God’s love poured out for us in Jesus’ death on the cross that exposes our sin.[4] Jesus’ death on the cross shows us that there is something about sin so damaging to us that God felt it necessary to die for us in order to do something about it. If our sin is that serious to God, maybe we should take it more seriously.

The way the New Living Translation of Psalm 32 words our lesson is with the exclamation, “what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven” (Ps 32:1, NLT). It might seem like a strange thing to some of us. We have a difficult and complicated relationship with aspect of ourselves at times. And admitting, even to ourselves, that we have fallen short in some way, can be deeply disturbing. It can challenge our sense of self-worth. But when we take that approach, we let our own pride get in the way of the acceptance that God offers us freely. We’re only harming ourselveds. The very words, “I am a sinner” get caught in our throats as we say them. Yet, they are so important for us to say. Only when we confess—to ourselves, to one another, and to God—that we have done what we regret do we fully experience the joy of God’s unconditional and unfailing love for us.[5] But as the ancient words of Scripture promise, if we’re willing to take that step, we find what people of faith have experienced for millennia. When we confess our sins, we know the joy of being embraced by God’s acceptance and love. A love that claimed us “before the foundation of the world” as Paul says, and a love that will never let us go, world without end! And what joy it is to know that our God loves us in that way. What joy indeed!

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[1] © 2026 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/22/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, II:50, where he defines sin essentially as “hubris” or pride.

[3] Cf. Karl Menninger, What Ever Became of Sin?, 178: “I believe that all the evildoing in which we become involved to any degree tends to evoke guilt feelings and depression. These may or may not be clearly perceived, but they affect us. They may be reacted to and covered up by all kinds of escapism, rationalization, and reaction or symptom formation.”

[4] Cf. The Confession of 1967, 9.12: “The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes our sin in the sight of God.”

[5] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 146: “God’s way is to forgive sinners, and we do not acknowledge his grace unless we present ourselves to him as sinners.”

Listening

 Listening

Matthew 17:1-13; 2 Peter 1:12-21[1]

I had an experience growing up that I think some of you might be familiar with. I would be engaged in something, completely immersed in what I was doing. My mother would be talking to me about finishing my homework or doing chores, and she would ask me, “Are you listening?” I would answer yes, but the truth of the matter was that while I may have been “hearing” her speak, I wasn’t “listening” to what she was saying at all. I wasn’t trying to be rude; I was just so immersed in what I was doing that I simply couldn’t hear her. As a parent, like many of you, I’ve had the joy of experiencing the other side of that conversation. With my children I learned that it worked best for me to actually touch them on the shoulder to get their attention before trying to communicate something important. That seemed to work for them. I would imagine a lot of us have been on both sides of that conversation.

When you read the stories from the Gospels about Jesus teaching his disciples, it can feel like something similar was going on. While they were paying attention to him, they really didn’t understand what he was telling them. They were distracted by their own concerns, their own expectations, and their own preconceived ideas. One of the classic examples of this is when he told them (not once but several times) that his path of obeying God was going to lead to his dying on a cross. That just didn’t make any sense to them. They heard the words he was saying, but they didn’t have the ability to actually “listen.”

We see something like this in the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. In Matthew’s version of the story, Peter is overwhelmed by what he’s witnessing and wants to stay there on the mountain. He even offers to build three tents for them. That might seem like a strange request. But it might not have been that strange to Peter. One of the great festivals in Judaism still today is called Sukkot, or the “festival of booths.” In Scripture it was related to the idea that the people lived in tents when they came out of Egypt (Lev 23:42-43). It’s not much of a stretch to think that when Peter and the others saw Jesus transformed, and when they saw Moses and Elijah him, they believed that God was fulfilling their hopes and dreams for a new Exodus to liberate the people from the Roman Empire. It’s not surprising that Peter wanted to set up tents and stay on that mountain!

But in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter’s request was answered by the voice of God himself: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Mt 17:5). I would say that this voice responds to Peter with a (gentle) rebuke. He wanted to stay on the mountain, where he believed he was witnessing the beginning of his hopes and dreams coming true. But the voice from the cloud instructed Peter and the others to direct their attention to Jesus. More than that they were to “listen to him.” And the implication here is that they were not only to listen to him but also follow his instructions. Afterwards, Jesus took them down the mountain where they were to engage with people he called a “faithless generation” (Mt 17:17). It’s no wonder they had difficulty hearing and understanding what he was trying to teach them about how they were to live and serve in that setting.

When I think of that situation of hearing but not really listening, it reminds me also of our reading from 2 Peter for today. Apparently, 2 Peter was written long enough after Jesus’ resurrection that many were beginning to deny that there would be a “second coming” at all (2 Pet 3:4). In response, our reading for today reminded them that Jesus’ transfiguration on that mountain was a kind of a foreshadowing of his “second coming.” What those who were there saw and heard left them with no doubt that Jesus would indeed return in the full majesty of his glory as Savior and Lord.

Unfortunately, some have approached this passage as if it advocates that Scripture is to be accepted at face value, simply embracing the “literal meaning” of the words. The truth is any written document has to be interpreted. That’s especially true for a document written as long ago and in such a different setting from ours as the Bible. More than that, the Bible itself raises some questions that we cannot readily answer. That makes it difficult if not impossible to simply embrace the “literal meaning.” I think what all this means is if we’re going follow the advice to “pay close attention” to Scripture we’re going to have to put forth some effort (2 Pet. 1:19, NLT). We’re going to have to be intentional about it. I think that means more than a casual reading of select verses. It means serious and sustained study of the Bible!

Listening closely to Scripture has never been easy. There have always been those who raised objections that seem to call into question the validity of the Bible as a source for faith. And there will always be a wide range of voices claiming to speak on behalf of the Bible. It takes some effort to sort through the tangle of conflicting messages out there. But it seems to me that our lesson for today points us in the right direction. As those who have gone before us have framed it, “the clear teaching of Scripture” has always been there to guide us. There are some things that are clear. There are some things we can say confidently that “the Bible teaches this.” Those who have gone before us have called that “the clear teaching of Scripture.” That doesn’t mean we’re going to automatically find the answer to our questions simply by flipping through our Bible. It’s going to take intentional study of the Bible if we’re going to do a better job of “paying attention” to Scripture.

I guess the place to start is making time to listen to the Scriptures. Most people would just try to “read through” the Bible. But if you start with Genesis chapter 1, the likelihood that you’ll make it all the way through to Revelation chapter 22 is fairly small. Most people don’t succeed at reading through the Bible in that way. That’s where Bible reading plans can help us. We do hear the Scripture in worship on Sunday morning, but I dare say that we may not always be “listening,” even in this place. Sacred music, whether traditional or contemporary, can contain scripture. But musicians aren’t always the best Bible teachers. Let’s face it, sometimes Pastors aren’t always the best Bible teachers! I’ve found the Bible itself to be the best teacher. And the way we “let” the Bible teach us is by reading it. Over and over again. And preferably in different versions. We do that until what is the “clear teaching” in the Scriptures begins to stand out in contrast to some things that aren’t so clear. Our faith can focus on those clear, foundational teachings, and we don’t get so bothered by what may be not so clear. That’s how the Bible teaches us to read the Bible. Paying close attention to the voice of the Bible is a bit like actually listening to someone who’s talking to us. We have to “tune in” rather than “tuning out.” As it turns out, really listening always takes effort on our part. If we believe the Bible is the basis for our faith, then we’d better get with it when it comes to “paying closer attention.” Our lessons for today challenge us to start being much more intentional about listening for the “word of the Lord” through Scripture!

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[1] © 2026 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/15/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.