October 25, 2026
One year ago, could any of us have imagined we would be here today?
I have always been one of those people who believes we should talk about the elephant in the room, even when I am the elephant. I can do an elephant sound, but that might be a little loud coming through the microphone. One year ago, we had no idea. We had no idea what might be coming in the next year. None of us did. For many of us, we had no idea what was coming for Unity. For me, I had no idea I might be coming to Unity. Some of us did not even know what Unity was yet.
We as humans have short vision. It is just a fact. We cannot see as big a picture as we think we can. Honestly, it is hard to even imagine that it was only a year ago. There is so much that we do not know. I would say I might know a thousandth of a percent of what I could know.
We had no idea what was coming. But looking back on the last year, I can say from my perspective, and I hope you all can say from yours, that God has been at work. God has been moving. God has been up to something here at Unity. We do not even know yet what that might be. But let us testify. Let us testify to the fact that God is indeed at work, and let our roots be planted in that soil.
A year ago, I thought I knew exactly where my life might be going. None of the possibilities I had in mind at the time have come to pass. And I thank God. I thank God that for the last nine months I have been able to be the interim minister here at Unity. I cannot express to you all the deep and profound blessing that each and every one of you has been to me and to my family. I did not know what God was doing, but boy oh boy, was God at work.
We can look back on our lives and remember, because that is one of the key acts of being faithful: remembering what God is up to. Because at the end of the day, that is number one. What God is up to. Not what we want, not what we hope, but trusting that God is up to something far more than we can think or imagine. I can say to you all confidently that God is at work here at Unity. The last nine months have blown me away. God is here. God is moving, and fruit is being borne here as we enter a season of harvest at the end of October and into November. I know vines are being pulled up from gardens. I know the peppers sitting out here on the table may be the last of the season. But this is the time of year that the generations before us would have celebrated the harvest of what God has done, and we enter now into a season of remembering what God has done here at Unity.
When the Pharisees approached Jesus in this morning's gospel, it says they came to test him. It is easy to read that word, test, as adversarial. Do you know the right answer? But sometimes a test is just finding out whether a thing is what you think it is. If you take a soil sample and send it off to make sure the ground is good for planting your garden, you are not saying, "Oh, this is bad soil." You are saying, "I want to know what this soil is." The test brought to Jesus is a test of whether we see eye to eye on what matters most.
It is easy to assume, from our perspective two thousand years later, that Jesus was being revolutionary when he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself." But that is an ancient Jewish teaching called the Shema. It had been taught for hundreds of years by the rabbis. What Jesus was saying is, we are all on the same page. We all agree on what is most important, and that is that we love God with all we have. That is the start.
Gina pointed out in Bible study this past week how many times the word "all" shows up. God is in fact our all in all. All of our hopes, all of our dreams, all of our desires, all of our mind, all of our spirit, all of our soul, all of our strength. When we put all of that into loving God, what naturally flows from it is loving our neighbors and following the way of God.
But a lot of times we get caught up in our own understanding, our own cleverness, our own "I've got this." Y'all, I love my understanding. I think I am pretty smart, I will be honest. And I can easily start leaning into that, coming up with reasons and explanations and saying, "I know what God is up to. I know what is going on." Jesus recognizes that this is a human tendency. We look into our own depth of understanding to prove that we are right.
So once he has established that the Pharisees, the Sadducees and Jesus all agree on this orthodox understanding, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus wants to remind them not to drift away from it. His next question looks like a gotcha. Y'all cannot answer this one, can you? If the Messiah is the son of David, how can David call him Lord? In those days you did not call the ones who came after you Lord. The younger generation called the older generation Lord. So how could David possibly refer to the Messiah as Lord, when by their understanding the Messiah was not coming for centuries? And they say, "We don't know."
Jesus is not trying to get them. He is not trying to win an argument. He is saying, remember that you do not have all the answers. You do not understand all the things. Even with all of your learning. Even with your Master of Divinity. Gosh, what a weird name for a degree. I remember getting mine and thinking, okay, what is next? Master of the Universe? Wait, no, that is He-Man. Wrong one. But think about the idea that we could master divinity. How conceited would we have to be to come up with that title? And Jesus is talking to the supposed masters of divinity of his day, and saying, even with all of your study, you cannot answer a simple question about how David and the Messiah are related. Because what God is up to is so much bigger, so much more complex.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength is a pursuit of God. A pursuit of living from God, living for God and living toward God. It is not something we have arrived at. Instead, we must learn. We must learn to live from the goodness that God gives us. That does not mean we cannot be disappointed at times. It does not mean we cannot be angry at times. It does not mean we cannot have our own wants and desires. But it means we still live in faith and trust in a God who has shown up in ways we never expected, and who will keep showing up in ways we never expect.
It means our role as followers of Jesus Christ is to pay attention to the very first thing the Psalms tell us. Do not go the way of the wicked. Go the way of the righteous. Which is pretty easy, right? Anybody in here trying to follow the ways of wickedness? Just checking. I did not think so, but it is always good to clear the air. It is also easy to assume we are following the ways of righteousness, or at least the ways of mediocrity, and not the ways of the wicked. But Psalm 1 lays out what those ways are. The way of the wicked is not described as being an evil person. It is not described as being a serial killer. It is described as being planted away from the living streams of water. Planted in instant gratification, in the easy getting of what we want, which produces quick fruit that will not last. The way of the righteous is planted by the stream of the Lord, with roots that can be fed and fed again.
If you have ever planted a garden, you know it depends on something watering it, whether that is the rain from heaven or your hose. You also know it is better if it is the rain from heaven, unless you have a good water barrel. The same is true for us. Are we fed and nourished by a water that is ever giving, ever living? Are we planted by the streams of God, receiving what God gives us? Are we attentive to the ways God has provided for us? Because that attention is what helps us bear fruit in the future. And I can say, because of the fruit that is borne here at Unity, that yes, we are planted by streams of water.
But we have to keep remembering that the way of the righteous is not about getting everything right. It is not about having the right opinions. It is not about making sure we do the things we think are good. The way of righteousness is about where we are planted, and what we are fed and nourished by.
When we think of number one, a lot of times it is part of a list. I do not watch a lot of college football, but about three weeks ago the University of Texas was number one. Are they still number one? Not anymore. We tend to think of rankings. But in this morning's scriptures, number one is a different thing. It is an all-encompassing thing. Number one can never drop to number two, or number three, or out of the rankings altogether into the "others receiving votes" category. Number one is number one is number one, and everything else flows out of it. Jesus compares it to a house built on a foundation. If you do not have number one, what happens to the house? That is exactly right. Down it goes. You have to have the foundation. That is what the number one of God is about. Are we building on what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will continue to do in this world, no matter what? All your mind, all your heart, all your soul. Are we living from what we have received?
We have been talking for the last month and more about being in God's country, and really what it boils down to is this commandment. Do we look for what God is doing? Are we attuned to God, attentive to what God is up to, and living from that? Y'all, I am not going to claim to be perfect. There are plenty of times I look around wondering what I need to do to fix a situation, what I need to do to make things right, what I think of as right, rather than asking what God has been up to and what God is up to now. There are plenty of times any of us might give in to the anxiety of "I've got to make this work," instead of remembering that the God who created all things is still at work, and looking for the signs of it. Is the stream rising? Is the stream falling? Do we go back to it when we are thirsty? That is really the question of whether we are following the greatest commandment. Where do you go when you are thirsty? When we feel that anxiety, that need, that "I don't have enough," do we go to our own stores, or do we turn to God, the source of light, the source of love, the source of all life?
I do not know what is coming next. I have been surprised around every turn, it seems like, for a couple of years now. But what I can say with confidence is that God has been at work through all of it. That does not mean everything that happened, happened for a reason. It does not mean God made everything happen. It means that no matter what has happened, God has still been at work. And from this day, I want you all to know: God is at work right here. God is at work among you, binding you together, bringing forth fruit for this community and providing good soil where people can grow.
I do a lot of raise-your-hand things. Maybe too many. But raise your hand if Unity has made a positive impact on your life. God is, and will continue to be, at work. The love of God surrounds us. It is in all. It is our all. And as long as we continue to receive that love and live from that love, there is so much more ahead than we can think or imagine. God is at work. Amen.