Sharing God's Love and Grace

Be Still and Know

Meditation on Psalm 46

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Reformation Sunday

Oct. 26, 2025

**Art by Stushie, used with permission**

We’ve been hearing about AI lately. Artificial Intelligence. If you don’t know what I am talking about when I say AI, that’s OK. I don’t know what I am talking about, either. Not really.

Earlier this week, Jim and I watched an interview with Nobel prize winning computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton. Hinton, who is called the godfather of AI, is afraid that the technology he helped to build may “wipe out the world.”[1] At the same time, he “acknowledges its potential benefits, such as scientific discovery. He advocates for safety regulations and suggests that we prioritize building AI that cares about people.”[2]

That’s news to me—that computers could “care” about people.

AI seems to be everywhere. When I open a Zoom meeting, AI wants to listen and take notes. I always say no. When I type a document in Word, an AI assistant pops up and asks if I need help. No, I do not! When I text or email, AI anticipates what I am going to say and tries to fill in the words before I have written them. Often, they are wrong! Sometimes I don’t catch the AI edits until it’s too late. Has that happened to you?

We have Alexa in our house. Do you? When I ask her the weather, which is about the only questions I ever ask her, I think she is about 50% correct. She says we live in Street James, instead of Saint James. I’m not sure how to fix that. Yesterday, she told us that there was a freeze warning in our area, in Coshocton, Ohio. I would be worried if we still lived there. I don’t know how to fix that, either.

Last night, I wondered if Alexa could have a different voice. We wasted a few minutes listening to other choices for Alexa’s voice and had trouble getting her to stop with the offerings. In the end, I opted to keep her voice the same, as if she is a human being we have come to know.

Have you noticed that Alexa is able to carry on conversations better these days? When she tells me the weather, I say, “Thank you.” She has different responses for my “Thank you.” Yesterday, she said, “You’re very welcome.” And added, “It’s my job.”

Does it ever bother you that Alexa is always listening? Have you ever been talking to someone and Alexa interrupts, and says something like, “Hmmmmmm. I don’t know about that.” After the weather report, she often tells us we have a “new notification.” Do I want to hear it? Jim usually says no. When I say yes, she tells me that according to our Amazon orders, it’s probably time to buy cereal, again.

She’s probably right.

Now if only we could train her to pick up the Amazon boxes off our front step, open them, put all the groceries and household supplies away, and take the boxes to the recycling pile. Then, she would be truly useful.

Christian Century magazine’s cover story in September was on AI. Splashed on the cover was, “Can AI do ministry?” Episcopal priest Danielle Hansen, while recovering from a serious hiking accident, wrote an article called, “My artificial chaplains,” posing theological questions to AI spiritual counselors.[3]

AI has been “wowing us left and right,” she says. “It can generate a high school English essay on The Scarlett Letter in a matter of a second. It can summarize research findings and complete complicated math equations faster than my fingers can enter them into a calculator. Ask chatbots anything, and they will have an answer—which gives the impression that they’re tantamount to an omniscient, omnipotent God, even though I believe this is more of a golden calf situation. Still, maybe I’m wrong,” she goes on. “Maybe AI can replace a minister. Maybe it can replace me.”[4]

Hansen says that options for “AI-based spiritual care are now as plentiful as the fruit hanging from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden.” Her phone’s app store has a section labeled “AI-Powered Divine Chats.” You can, “‘Text Jesus,’ which allows you to chat with the members of the Holy Family, each of the disciples, and a spiritual counselor named David, who is tanned and chiseled, with teeth the same bright white color as the pages of the open Bible in his hand. Beneath his photo is a disclaimer: ‘This A.I. chatbot provides responses on available data. Interpretations and accuracy may vary.’ Satan is also available for conversation, but only with a paid subscription.”[5]

I wish I were making this stuff up!

When David asked how he might support Hansen on her spiritual journey, she told him what had happened. He replied too quickly, “I’m so sorry to hear about your fall.” He then went on to tell her how “it’s human nature to question why bad things happen to good people. ‘Life has its challenges. And accidents can happen simply due to the nature of living in a fallen world.’ He cites the story of the man born blind in John 9:1-3, reports that God is present in (her) troubles and suggests that this experience might help (her) heal … physically and spiritually.”[6]

“So neat. So tidy,” Hansen says. Then, “an advertisement pops up … for an investing app called eToro.” Hansen, who oversees the chaplaincy program and teaches in Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, concludes, “I would fail David if he were my student.”[7]

Today, on Reformation Sunday, we give thanks to God and for our ancestors in the faith who were courageous enough to bring about important changes in beliefs and practices. We recall Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church’s door on Oct. 31, 1517, and his work trying to reform the Roman Church, especially when it came to the Church forcing the people living in poverty to buy indulgences to secure theirs and their loved one’s salvation. Money that was raised went into pope Leo X’s pet projects, such as the building of Saint Peter’s Basilica and supporting his lavish lifestyle.

There were other important Church reformers before Luther, however, such as John Wycliffe and his associates in England, who worked on a translation of the Bible into English beginning in the 1370s. This allowed for his followers, the Lollards, to read God’s Word for themselves and make their own decisions about interpretation and living out their faith, rather than submitting to the authority of the medieval Roman Church.

Today, it is appropriate on Reformation Sunday that we welcome Liliana into the Body of Christ through the sacrament of Baptism and remember with joy our own baptisms. Liliana has been claimed by Christ and will experience, as we do through faith, newness of life every day. She will be empowered by the Holy Spirit, just as our Reformation ancestors were, along her faith journey, with the help of her family and her church family. Friends, she cannot be the woman of God that God wants her to be without your help.

My hope for Liliana and all our children and youth is that they will grow and mature in spirit, something that cannot come about through any computer revolution or artificial intelligence. There’s no substitute for the gathering of the people of God for worship and fellowship in person, with the Spirit dwelling in our midst, and for the age-appropriate, hands-on learning and relationships that grow in Sunday School.

As for what the reformers long ago would think of AI, I have no idea. I don’t think they could have imagined there would ever be computers or phones, let alone AI chaplains or apps called, “Text Jesus.” They might like that we can read our Bibles in our own languages on our smart phones that we carry with us every day. But I know they wouldn’t like the way that we are so attached to our phones that we are less than present with the people we are with. And they wouldn’t like how busy our “high tech” lives have become, so busy that we rarely “unplug” and have little time to be still and know the Lord, who is our refuge, in every day and age.

The Psalmist in 46 describes a feeling of stillness and “knowing” and being with God when he is out in nature. God is a very presenthelp in trouble. This feeling of closeness to the Lord calms and encourages him. He says, “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.”

Words cannot describe that feeling of stillness and peace that comes over me—of knowing God and being known by God—when I walk in a dense forest or on an empty shoreline. But also, when I am writing my Sunday messages or notes to care for my flock, and when I am leading worship and prayer.

When do you have a feeling of stillness and peace with God, my friends? How does it feel?

I pray that you will slow down and have more of these quiet, still moments and come to know God more. May you come to realize that the God who knows you is a very present help for you, a place of peace and rest, in times of trouble.

And may your children and grandchildren be stirred to search for God in the silence, out in nature and everywhere, and know the One who is a very present help in times of trouble, as well.

“Be still and know that I am God!” the Psalmist sings and urges us to join in with him as God’s people have done for thousands of years. ‘I am exalted among the nations; I am exalted in the earth.’ The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Let us pray.

God who is our refuge, thank you for being a very present help to us, especially in times of trouble. Thank you for waiting for us in the silence and beckoning us to come closer and know you more. Thank you for the reformers of the faith long ago, for their courage and persistence, for their willingness to embrace change. Help us to have this same courage and persistence and an openness to change as your Spirit leads. Thank you for knowing us and loving us. Please bless and empower Liliana and her family, and all our children and grandchildren, in their journeys of faith. Teach us to slow down, put down our phones, and be still, dear Lord of hosts, and know you who are our refuge. Amen.

[1]Matt Egan, The Godfather of AI reveals the only way humanity can survive superintelligent AI (Aug. 13, 2025, CNN) at https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/tech/ai-geoffrey-hinton#:~:text=Hinton%2C%20a%20Nobel%20Prize%2Dwinning,that%20AI%20wipes%20out%20humans.

[2] Matt Egan, The Godfather of AI.

[3] Danielle Hansen, “My artificial chaplains,” Christian Century Magazine (Sept. 2025), 48.

[4] Danielle Hansen, “My artificial chaplains,” 48.

[5] Danielle Hansen, “My artificial chaplains,” 48.

[6] Danielle Hansen, “My artificial chaplains,” 48.

[7] Danielle Hansen, “My artificial chaplains,” 50.

Pray Always! Do Not Lose Heart!

Meditation on Luke 18:1-8

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Oct. 19, 2025 (Baptism of Oliver Reinhardt)

Did anyone read Anne of Green Gables as a child? The story is by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery and is set in a farming village on Prince Edward Island in the late 19^th century.

I read the book as a child and now I’m being charmed with the TV series streaming on Netflix. It’s called, Anne with an E.

Anne Shirley is 11. She has spent all but a few months of her life in an orphanage or sent to work as an unpaid servant, caring for large families, many of whom have treated her cruelly.

She has never known the love, safety, and sense of belonging of a family until she is sent

by “mistake,” to live with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, two older siblings, neither of whom has been married or had any children.

Matthew and Marilla have requested a boy to help with the farm-related chores. When Anne shows up, the quiet, reserved Cuthberts don’t know quite what to make of the little red-haired girl who never stops talking and has a vivid imagination. To make things more difficult, Anne has been traumatized by her experiences. She has flashbacks, remembering the cruel punishments, and is terrified that she might, once again, do something to displease the people who have taken her in and be sent back to the orphanage.

The first night of her stay with the Cuthberts, Marilla takes her to room and helps her get ready for bed. She tells her to say her prayers and then is horrified when Anne announces matter-of-factly that she never says her prayers. Marilla asks, “Don’t you know who God is, Anne?”

The girl has memorized the catechism from church because she likes the sound of the old-fashioned words. She responds promptly, “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” But she has never been taught to pray or that she can have a relationship with God. Marilla is a private person and isn’t sure how to teach Anne to pray. She finally tells her to just thank God for her blessings and ask politely for the things that she wants. Anne obediently thanks God for the beautiful views of the countryside on the wagon ride from the train, then prays that she’ll be allowed to stay at Green Gables, and that God will make her good-looking someday. She ends her prayer like a letter with “I remain, Yours respectfully, ANNE SHIRLEY.” The next night, she prays alone without prompting, after an emotional day. She is growing in her relationship with God—learning who God is. She tells the Lord that it’s OK if she’s not good looking, but please let her stay with Matthew and Marilla. And she has learned to say, “Amen.”

Today, as we baptize little Oliver and make a promise to help the family nurture him in the faith, we are reminded of the importance of learning to pray and not just assuming that children know how or will learn without our modeling it for them. We are encouraged to pray the prayers we learn in church (such as the Lord’s Prayer) or have memorized as children, such as “God is great; God is good,” and “Now I lay me down to sleep.” But we are also encouraged to pray the prayers that spring forth from our daily life, using words that come from our own hearts and minds, and tap into true longings, such as Anne’s desire to be safe and secure, living in a home with a loving family.

Today, in our Luke reading, Jesus tells a parable to teach his disciples to pray always and not to lose heart. His example of praying with persistence is a widow, who would, along with the orphan, be among the most vulnerable people in their society. Widows play prominent roles in Bible passages in the OT and New. Ruth and Naomi come readily to mind from Ruth; they are widows without children and models of faithfulness. In the second chapter of Luke, a widow named Anna blesses Jesus in his infancy. She is described as “one who never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.” In Luke 7, Jesus has compassion for a widow and raises her only son from the dead. Jesus will again hold up a widow as a faithful example in Luke 21 when he praises one who drops just two copper coins in the treasury—giving all that she had.

In Acts, we hear about the concern for widows in the daily distribution of food (Acts 6:1-6) and in Peter’s raising of Tabitha, also called Dorcas, in 9:39-41. She is “devoted to good works and acts of charity,” and is gifted at making clothes for other people. In 1 Timothy 5:3 and 5, we read, “Honor widows who are really widows…The real widow, left alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.” James in 1:27 says that caring for orphans and widows is “religion pure and undefiled by God.”

The widow in Luke 18 is a victim of some act of injustice. We don’t know the particulars, but she is bold and relentless in her demand for justice. She doesn’t appear to be afraid of the unjust judge, who neither fears God nor respects people. She keeps pressing him, until finally, just wanting to get rid of her, he gives in.

Here is a funny thing in this passage. The Greek of the unjust judge’s inner monologue isn’t really that he is afraid the widow will “wear him out,” as it says in our NRSV Bibles. The Greek literally says that he is afraid of “being punched under the eye.” The language of a “black eye” is a boxing metaphor that adds humor to Jesus’ story, just before he explains the meaning of the parable for his followers. This is it: God will render justice to God’s chosen ones, those who pray for it—crying out to him day and night. So don’t give up. Don’t lose heart.

Today’s passage ends with a lingering question. “And yet, when the Son of Man comes,” Christ asks, “will he find faith on earth?” Will we ever give up on prayer, crying out to God? May it never be so.

Anne’s story is one of hope and healing for the red-haired orphan and for Matthew and Marilla, who prayed for a farm hand, but instead, receive a devoted daughter. God knows what we need, dear friends, before we ask. The Lord beckons us to come to His Son, who says in Matthew 11, “Come to me, you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens. And I will give you rest.” And in Matthew 7:7-8, “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.”

To Ollie’s family, and to every family, I encourage you to pray with your children and grandchildren so that they can hear models of simple prayer. Let them know that you are praying for them. With all the life skills that they will need, prayer is one that should not be overlooked. Let them know that God is always listening with love and will respond.

As the Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” And in 1 Thessalonians 5:16, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Sisters and brothers, may your prayers strengthen and guide you and your family always.

Don’t give up. Don’t lose heart!

So that when the Son of Man comes, he may find us faithful.

Let us pray.

Gracious and loving God, teach us to pray like your Son, the persistent widow, and the Apostle Paul. Lead us to teach our children and grandchildren to pray with our own good models of simple prayer. Draw Ollie and the other children of the church closer to you so that they learn when they are young to cast their burdens upon you—to ask, seek, and knock. May they all come to know your love! Stir us to pray for justice and peace and for all our longings. Help us to never give up. To never lose heart. And when you come again to take us to yourself, may you find us faithful. Amen.

Praising God with a Loud Voice!

Meditation on Luke 17:11-19

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

Oct. 12, 2025

I had a nice phone conversation with Sue Potter Spencer yesterday. Does anyone remember the Potters? Sue, who now lives in Weston, MA, mailed me a large envelope of church materials belonging to her parents, Edwin and Marjorie Potter, from the 1960s. She had come across the materials while going through some family papers. They stirred good memories for her, and she hoped they would stir good memories for us, too.

Her father was chair of the financial campaign in 1962 when the church was preparing to build an 9,800 square foot addition for Christian education. They hadn’t yet raised the $300,000 that would be needed for both building and the interior furnishings, but they went ahead with the plans. The church was responding to what was happening both inside and beyond its walls. The Rev. Raymond Case writes of the unprecedented growth—from 300 members in 1955 or so to 600 in June 1961, with 400 young people enrolled in Church School. Rev. Case says that this is due to a population shift and explosion on Long Island “far beyond the wildest imagination of any real estate promoter.”

To understand what was happening at the time, I had to look no further than the bulletins that Sue sent, revealing the congregation welcoming, in June 1961, a Confirmation class of 40 students! George Ludder and Lucia Spahr were in that class!

The church hoped to lay the foundation by April 1, 1963. The reason to expand, they say, is that the Church School was “literally bulging at the seams.” The new Church School facilities would help the church to grow. The thinking at the time is that “Home buyers always investigate church facilities, with an eye to providing the best for their children.”

Two years after the Christian Education building is complete, the church starts the Village Presbyterian Pre-School in 1965. Although it is begun with the members’ needs in mind, the cooperative helps the church grow even more as families join the congregation after their kids begin attending the pre-school.

Sue Potter Spencer remembers the church of this time. She writes, “My family was deeply involved in the life and ministry of First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown from the late 1950s through 1972. My parents and their four children (Don, Sue, Kathy, and Judy) lived in St. James and attended church services nearly every Sunday until we relocated to Westport, CT in 1972. During those years, my parents served on many committees. My father sang in the choir at the 11:00 service and played clarinet in the church members’ band …. My mother served as Superintendent of the Sunday School after the addition was completed and, along with my father, organized and called regular square dances and folk dances at the church.

“My siblings and I attended Sunday School and when we were old enough helped out in the classrooms. We sang in the Primary and Chapel choirs at the 9:00 service led by choir director Robert Lawton. I remember singing Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence for the introit before processing each Sunday. We were routinely at the church from 8:00 until almost 1:00 when my parents were finally done visiting with everyone. We knew every nook and cranny of the church and especially liked hiding in the closets under the stairs at the front of the church.”

Today, we read about the grateful outsider in the gospel of Luke whom Jesus heals of a contagious skin disease. The man who is healed is a model for us because of his response to the merciful gift. He falls at Christ’s feet and praises God with a loud voice. Jesus makes a point to emphasize that this man whom he healed is not of their faith community. He is a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jewish people of the time. This Samaritan, who is not welcome in his hometown, anymore, because of his sickness, lives on the margins of the village with the Jewish men who suffer with the same disease.

Jesus comments on the man’s status to those who have witnessed this miracle. He seems to be asking, “How can a Samaritan believe in me and my power to heal, when Jewish people do not?” The answer is because faith is a gift offered to all who seek to follow him. No one is excluded. And not only is the gift of faith offered to this man; he is healed, a gift that essentially grants him a whole new life and restores him to his own family and community.

But the man doesn’t seem anxious to go home. For his healing is not just a bodily healing. His healing is spiritual, as well. He has been made whole.

Jesus doesn’t seem to warmly welcome him, at first, after he is healed. He is a “foreigner,” Christ says, and the word makes me cringe. Isn’t “foreigner” what we call people who are not like us? People whose differences stir fear and suspicion in us, as they did in ancient days?

He is a “foreigner,” Christ says, using the word his own people would use when they see a Samaritan, though Jews and Samaritans have a common ancestry. They are both descendants of the ancient Israelites.

Jesus is challenging his community’s prejudice, when he points out that a Samaritan and not a Jew is doing the righteous thing. Jesus already did this in Luke 10 and shocked his audience when he tells a parable with a Samaritan man as the one who is “good,” caring for a Jewish man set upon, beaten, and left for dead by robbers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

“Were not ten made clean?” Jesus’ words ring in my ears. “So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then he turns to the grateful man who is no longer unclean, and says to him, in the hearing of the villagers, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

This passage in the context of our looking back at our history this year and leaning forward into the future God has planned stirs me to consider two questions. The first is, “How did we treat the stranger, the outsider, in our faith community in the past?”

Looking at the enormous growth of the church in the 20^th century, I have to say that we were willing to take on an expensive building project, one in which we hadn’t raised even half the money before we began, and we did this to welcome young families coming to our community. As the population shifted and grew, this little church had a vision to nurture the faith of the children of our new neighbors. The Village Presbyterian Preschool served the members and children of the community, too.

My second question is, “How do we treat the stranger, the outsider, in our faith community today?”

Last week, on World Communion Sunday, I emphasized how the Lord’s Table is open to all people, no matter our age or religious background. The Sunday School children were invited to stay for the liturgy and the partaking of the bread and cup. This is the Lord’s Table, and Christ welcomes all to come to him, all who seek to be made one with him and all his followers, in every time and place.

And while the Christian Education building is no longer overflowing with Sunday School children and youth, like it once was, it has been opened wide to numerous community groups, along with our parish hall and narthex. We were the charter organization for Boy Scout Troop 214 of Hauppauge back in 1959, which still has about 35-40 active scouts. Over the years, 145 of the scouts, including our own Daniel Davidsen in August, have earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

We were talking about this in book group this week, but Nanume, a Korean Presbyterian congregation, met for worship, food and fellowship, and Bible study in our building for about 20 years—until they were able to move into their own space a couple of years ago, closer to Stony Brook University.

And I know that healing takes place in our building for those struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. I have heard stories. AA meets 6 days a week in our building to provide support and encouragement for those on sober journeys.

Another way that we welcome the stranger, the outsider, to our faith community is through our livestream. All you need is an internet connection and you can join with us in worship on Facebook and YouTube. Our livestream connects with people, right where they live, in the privacy of their home. My blog—pastorkaren.org—is the same way. You can read my message for every service, including our funerals, from any place in the world if you have a computer, tablet, or smart phone.

We don’t know what unexpected changes will happen in our ministries as we seek to follow Christ in the years to come. But I do know that our faith and gratitude will be required. It’s no accident that the gifts of faith and gratitude often come together in the gospels. I am not sure that one can be present without the other. Can we be faithful without being grateful to the God who loves us so much and made a way for our salvation, the God who continually welcomes and restores by grace those who go astray?

Sue Potter Spencer’s gratitude for the church of her childhood and its pastors is evident throughout her letter. She writes, “Thank you for all you do to nurture and sustain the life of a church that meant so much to our family. In times like these, strong and caring churches are more important than ever, offering hope, community, support, and encouragement in a world that often feels uncertain and divided. It brings me great joy to think that First Presbyterian continues to be such a place.”

Dear friends, may we, like Jesus, welcome and bless the stranger and outsider with our friendship. May we seek to bring about healing and wholeness in Christ’s name through our prayers, worship, and witness. May we, like Sue Spencer, be grateful for one another, our siblings in Christ, and this ministry, that has continued for generations. With God’s grace and our faith, may we continue in ministry for generations to come.

May we, like the man who is healed when he cries out for mercy, respond to God’s goodness with loud praise. The man to whom Jesus says, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Let us pray.

Healing God, thank you for your Son’s mercy and compassion for the sick, even the outsiders from his own faith community. Lead us, by your Spirit, to welcome and bless the stranger and outsider with our friendship. Grant us your power as we seek to bring healing and wholeness through our prayers in Christ’s name. Help us to be grateful, dear Lord, for all that you have done, and for your everlasting presence with us. May we be faithful to give you loud praise and serve you for generations to come. In your Son’s name we pray. Amen.

Embracing our History, Living our Faith

Meditation on 1 Cor. 3, selected verses (MSG)

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

The Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

Oct. 5, 2025, in honor of our 200^th/350^th anniversaries

Four years ago, when I was in conversation with a committee seeking a pastor for the Presbyterian church in Smithtown, I was curious how a congregation could endure so many years. They eloquently shared the church’s story, or at least the last 100 years or so, of pastors who stayed for decades, shepherding a diverse body of people. The story includes some difficult interim periods between called pastors, when the people missed their beloved ministers, felt like sheep without a shepherd, struggled to carry on, and lost their peace.

But I could see that the church had weathered many storms and had remained strong in hope and faith, with God’s grace. I felt compassion for the group that desired their ministry to be made known to their community, and not just the familiar white building with a clock tower looming over one of the busiest intersections in town. They did not want to be seen as a relic of the past or museum.

We don’t know the exact day or even the season when the first church is organized in Smithtown. No records remain concerning its formation. But historians believe that the year is 1675. And that the first church is this church.

Nine years have passed, in 1675, since Richard Smith receives the clear title to the lands comprising Smith’s Town.[1] Smith, an immigrant from England, had come to the New World with a tide of religious refugees seeking freedom from persecution, land to farm, and a community in which to raise their children to live out their dreams. Smith’s church in 1675 is more like a family chapel. The little wood meeting house is built on a frontier settlement on a rise of a hill off a dirt wagon path, where Moriches and Nissequogue River roads intersect.[2]

Smith and his family aren’t Presbyterians. They are Congregationalists, free to govern their individual churches without interference from any higher church authority. They are free to draft their own statements of belief and decide on their manner of worship. Congregational churches had been in existence on Long Island for 25 years in 1675, but only one Presbyterian Church had been founded; that church was planted in Jamaica three years before at the western end of Long Island.[3] There were no presbyteries in America in the 1600s. The Presbytery of Philadelphia would be formed in 1706, followed by the Synod of Philadelphia in 1717. The first General Assembly would be called more than a century after our congregation was founded—in 1789, after the Revolutionary War, with the creation of a national Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

In the 1600s and 1700s on Long Island, there aren’t enough pastors for every Congregational church and little money to pay them. Smith’s family and neighbors solve the problem by sharing pastors with the Congregational Church of Setauket in the early years. The first minister is probably Nathaniel Brewster, who serves Setauket from 1665 to 1690.[4] Brewster is among the first graduation class of 9 men from Harvard College. Our first recorded minister is shared with Setauket, as well, beginning in 1697; he is George Phillips, another Harvard grad.[5] Richard Smith passes away in 1692, but his children and their families and neighbors continue to gather at the meeting house.[6]

Finally, the church is able to call its first resident minister in 1712—a 28-year-old Yale grad named Daniel Taylor, who takes on a second job as the town clerk. Another pastor, Abner Reeve, is called to serve the flock at the meeting house in 1735. The 25-year-old Yale grad is from Southold, Long Island.[7]

The little flock decides to become affiliated with the Suffolk Presbytery a few years later, though some members are reluctant to give up their Congregationalist leanings. Then in 1750, they sense the Lord leading them to a new mission field. The business center of the Town, which had grown to about 700 people, had evolved in our present general location. So, the little wooden building is dismantled and reassembled here on donated land from Obadiah and Epenetus Smith.[8]

The flock in 1750 numbers just 7 people, who, at the time, don’t have a resident pastor. They are in one of those uncomfortable interim periods. Napthali Dagget, a Yale grad, who would be ordained here in September 1751, dedicates the rebuilt Church. The seven members are Obadiah Smith, Susannah Smith, George Phillips, Elizabeth Phillips, William Saxton, Dorcas Saxton, and Mary Blydenburgh.[9]

It is an act of hope and faith and God’s grace for the fledgling congregation. Soon after the relocation, 14 more people join, including a man named Peter with no last name, an African American who may have been brought here as a slave in his youth.[10]

The congregation has some tough times ahead. The early part of the Church’s second century is one of political and religious turmoil.[11]

The colonists are defeated in the Battle of Long Island. The entire island falls under British military rule in 1776. Some residents flee across the Sound to Connecticut. Those who stay are harassed by British troops. These troops help themselves to 6,396 feet of lumber from our meeting house and from the fencing and horse sheds on the property.[12] And our minister from 1774 to 1787, the outspoken patriot Joshua Hartt, a Princeton grad, is fired on by a British soldier during a worship service. He is arrested and placed in British prisons on several occasions.[13]

By 1797, the church is struggling. Session records say that the congregation is “destitute of a pastor and … in a deranged and broken situation.”[14] The Presbytery advises the divided church to draw up a covenant that each member would sign. And they do. The congregation promises to “watch over one another in the Love of the Lord and give up (themselves and theirs) to the discipline of the Church, according to the direction of Christ.”[15] They promise to “hold Communion with each other in the Word of God, and in the careful and diligent Use of the Ordinance of Jesus Christ, so long as (they) continue together in this relation(ship) by the Grace of God.”[16]

Disagreement continues between factions in the congregation in 1810, this time, over the use of the meeting house. Caleb Smith, President of the Board of Trustees, orders that “no person be permitted to enter without permission.”[17] The following year, in 1811, a new minister comes, Bradford Marcy, who serves Smithtown and Babylon concurrently, and during his pastorate, Articles of Agreement are drawn up reuniting dissenting members.[18]

About a decade before the congregation begins its first Sunday School, the first schoolhouse in Smithtown, where the poet Walt Whitman taught for 2 years, is organized in 1802 in a small frame building on the western boundary of our church property.[19] I wonder if the Sunday School came about as an outreach to the students next door to the church? In 1813, our church is incorporated with the name we carry today: the First Presbyterian Church in Smithtown.[20] A Female Charitable Society, the first women’s association of our church, is organized in 1816.[21] All of this is taking place in the original meeting house building.

In 1823, the congregation votes to build a new church. The Trustees have $1,410 for that purpose,[22] and the builder will be George Curtiss.[23] The flock waits two years after their new house of worship is finished in 1825—till all the debts have cleared—before this building is dedicated for a holy use.[24] Ithmar Pillsbury, a minister representative of the presbytery, presides over the service on Sept. 9, 1827, because the church is, once again, without a resident pastor.[25]

It is another leap of faith for the now 32 members.[26] With the new building, the pastoral leadership of the Rev. Pillsbury, installed in 1830, the congregation’s outreach, and by the grace of God, the church grows by 52 new members, and will rise again in 1840, under a new pastor’s leadership. Many of the old Smithtown names are recorded at this time: Smith, Blydenburgh, Wheeler, Miller, Mills, Hallock, Arthur, Saxton, Hawkins, Conkling, Davis, Wood, Vail, and Bailey.[27]

Today, as we rededicate this sanctuary and ourselves for a holy use, and celebrate 350 years of ministry, we give thanks for all Christ’s followers who came before us who gave of their time, treasures, and talents—from all that they had, all that they were, and all that they would become. The seeds of faith were sown long ago in the hearts of the pioneers who came from the Old World to the New and planted and watered the seeds in their children.

As we move forward into our future, the next 350 years, we are called to continue to plant and water and pray for the growth. May we never forget that it’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of the process, but God, who makes things grow. May we be forever grateful to the foundation of the spiritual building already laid for us all: Jesus Christ.

The Lord, who was with our ancestors, is with us still. Our call to love and serve God and neighbor has never changed, though Smithtown hardly resembles the tiny, pioneer town it once was.

Dear friends, may we leap like a deer over every obstacle and weather every storm like an oak tree. May we never forget where we came from—a little wooden meeting house on the rise of a hill, off a dirt wagon path, where Moriches and Nissequogue River roads intersect.

May we embrace our history but never get stuck in the past. May we forgive one another and dwell in peace during times of uncomfortable transitions and uncertainty. May we lean into our future with courage, hope, faith, and God’s grace, without any second guessing, no looking back with regrets. May we remember that WE and not the building, no matter how precious it is to us, are God’s house, a holy temple, and servants of our Master Lord.

Let us pray.

Holy God, we thank you for the centuries of ministry in the name of your Risen Son, and that you have empowered us in this place and in a little wooden meeting house at the intersection of two dirt wagon paths, on the rise of a hill. Thank you for all your beloved children who have come before us, worshiped here, loved one another, served this community, planted seeds, watered, and prayed for growth. Guide us into the future with courage, hope, faith, and grace. Amen.

Here is a link to the Presbyterian News Service article of our anniversary celebration:

https://pcusa.org/news-storytelling/news/2025/10/7/pcusa-congregation-celebrates-350-years-serving-its-long-island-community

[1] J. Richard Mehalick, Church and Community: 1675-1975, the Story of the First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY (Second Edition, 2010), 17.

[2] Mehalick, 23.

[3] Mehalick, 16.

[4] Mehalick, 17.

[5] Mehalick, 18.

[6] Mehalick, 17.

[7] Mehalick, 19.

[8] Mehalick, 27.

[9] Mehalick, 28.

[10] Mehalick, 28.

[11] Mehalick, 45.

[12]Mehalick, 46.

[13] Mehalick, 46.

[14] Mehalick, 46.

[15] Mehalick, 47.

[16] Mehalick, 47.

[17] Mehalick, 56.

[18] Mehalick, 56.

[19] Mehalick, 57.

[20] Mehalick, 56.

[21] Mehalick, 71.

[22] Mehalick, 58.

[23] Mehalick, 76.

[24] Mehalick, 58.

[25] Mehalick, 58.

[26] Mehalick, 59.

[27] Mehalick, 60.

Guard This Treasure, This Precious Thing

Meditation on 1 Timothy 1:1-14 (MSG)

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

World Communion Sunday: Oct. 5, 2025

Earlier this week, families with young children received a letter from me. I told them that today, on World Communion Sunday, we would be celebrating Communion early in the service, immediately following a children’s story called, The Greatest Table by Michael Rosen.

I had never thought to do this before—to change the order of the service when we celebrate Communion. For I learned when I was studying to be a Presbyterian pastor that we share the word before we celebrate the sacrament. They are done side by side. This is the usual order of our worship services. However, Presbyterian worship has a great deal of flexibility, particularly when it comes to the order of the parts of the service.

And the problem with waiting to celebrate the sacrament until after we share the word is that the children are no longer in the sanctuary. They are in their Sunday School classes. They always miss the celebration of Communion, and would have, even today on World Communion Sunday, when the emphasis is on the wide welcome of the Lord’s Table, the unity of the Body of Christ, and our sharing in the meal with believers around the globe.

We have been celebrating World Communion Sunday since 1936 throughout the Presbyterian Church. The tradition was started in 1933 by Hugh Thomson Kerr who ministered in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside Presbyterian Church. “Dr. Kerr first conceived the notion of World Communion Sunday during his year as moderator of the General Assembly (in 1930),” Dr. Kerr’s youngest son, the Rev. Dr. Donald Craig Kerr, pastor emeritus of the Roland Park Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, told the Presbyterian Outlook some years ago. Donald was sixteen in 1933. It was an “attempt to bring churches together in a service of Christian unity,” he said, in which everyone might receive both inspiration and information, and above all, to know how important the Church of Jesus Christ is, and how each congregation is interconnected one with another.”

World Communion caught on quickly with other denominations around the nation and then across the globe.

So, back to the question of or problem with us always celebrating Communion when the children are out of the room and in their Sunday School classes. When I met last summer with Lori Yastrub, our Faith Formation Ministries elder, and the two Sunday School teachers, Kathy Seymour, and her daughter, Jessica Carbonara, we talked about my desire to invite the children to participate with their families when we partake of the bread and cup.

They told me that some people, especially people who have been in the church for a long time, might question that practice of including young children. Traditionally, some congregations had the children wait until after they were confirmed in their faith, usually when they are teenagers. Maybe this is your experience here?

I thought more about this, and I prayed about it. And, finally, I asked Lori, Kathy, and Jessica, if I could send a letter explaining why the children will be invited, including what we believe as Presbyterians about Communion. At the same time, I assured the parents that if they wanted the children to refrain from eating the bread and drinking the juice, that would be completely up to them. If they felt that the children should be older, then that would be their choice. But I wanted the children to be present when we shared the bread and juice on this day, in the context of the Communion liturgy, just as I want the children to be present with us when we baptize and to participate through the filling of the font, the asking and answering of the questions of the children, and the presentation of the children’s Bible to the parents.

Well, Lori, Kathy, and Jessica thought the letter, story, and invitation to the children to fuller participation in their church’s worship and sacraments were all good things.

This is how I explained what we are doing for today, on World Communion Sunday, with our parents:

“Are they old enough?” you ask. “Isn’t that what they do after they are confirmed?” That might have been the church’s tradition to wait, but the understanding and practice of the sacraments in the PCUSA have changed. In short, we believe that Christ comes down to us as we are raised to him during the sacrament by the Spirit, as Reformer John Calvin taught. Why, then, would we refuse to serve Communion to all who come to the table joyfully and willingly, no matter their age, seeking to know Christ more and be strengthened to serve the Lord as Christ’s Body for the world?

The rest of my message is for all of you who are parents or grandparents or great grandparents, or you have a parent or grandparent who taught you the faith and love of Jesus.

In Paul’s letter to the young man he is discipling as an evangelist and church planter, the apostle tells Timothy, whom he loves as his own son, “to be bold and loving and sensible” with the gifts that God has given him for ministry and to guard the good treasure, the precious thing that is the faith that was passed down to him from his grandmother to his mother and to him.

Paul wasn’t the first person to teach Timothy the faith, just like the pastor or the Sunday School teachers are not the first people to introduce your children to the faith. You are! The first place where Timothy’s faith is learned is in his home. Now Timothy’s father was a “Greek” or a Gentile at the time, and not a Christian, but he allowed his son to be raised in the faith of his Jewish Christian mother and Jewish Christian grandmother.

This is the calling of every Christian parent and grandparent. And if your children have grown up, moved away, gotten married and now have their own children, then your first job is to pray for the faith of your children and grandchildren.

This is what Paul does when is no longer with Timothy; he makes a point to pray for the young missionary, not just daily, but “practically all the time.” And not because he has turned prayer into a work and thinks that the more he prays, the more effective his prayers will be. But because he loves Timothy, and he loves the Lord, and this is what he wants for the young man more than anything, to carry on sharing the gospel and building up the Church when Paul has gone home to be with the Lord.

I hope that you have grace for me, with my doing a few things in worship that may never have been done before, especially when they have to do with my welcoming the children to participate in the Sacraments more. When I was preparing to be a pastor, years ago, I never thought I would be doing this. I am as surprised as you are. But I think the Spirit is leading me.

I just have a feeling, when I am stirred to do such things as send a letter to the young families of our church about welcoming the children in our celebration of Communion, that something important is happening here.

My prayer and I hope this is your prayer, too, is that these children will be the leaders of our Church someday. I can imagine each of them, especially the more talkative ones who obviously have leadership gifts, becoming elders, deacons, trustees, and perhaps even ministers.

Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?

Dear friends, remember what Paul says to Timothy. Let us do the same. Be bold in using all the gifts for ministry that God has given you. And guard your own faith and love, rooted in Christ, as a treasure, a precious thing.

Will you pray with me?

Loving God, thank you for the Sacrament of Communion, for your Son’s wide welcome to all people at his table, where we partake of the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Thank you for your Spirit that comes to us in Communion and that comfort, heals, unites, and equips us to take our faith out to love and serve as we leave this place and be Christ’s Body for the world. Thank you for this day when we celebrate our unity as believers around the globe. Lord, we lift up our church and ask for your help as we seek to nurture our next generations in the faith and love, rooted in Christ, a faith that, as the apostle Paul taught young Timothy, is a priceless treasure, a precious thing to be guarded. In Christ we pray. Amen.

Run for Your Life!

Meditation on 1 Timothy 6:6–19

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

Sept. 28, 2025

I pulled out Eugene Petersen’s paraphrase, The Message, for the reading of Paul’s first letter to Timothy today.

On this day when we celebrate Christ’s claiming little James Lawrence in the waters of Baptism, and the gifts of the Spirit granting us power to grow in faith and love one another more, I wanted a translation that would be accessible to everyone on their unique walk with God. Eugene really did have a way with words, a talent for making the Scriptures seem as though they were written in modern times and not thousands of years ago.

Eugene, born in 1932, had studied Semitic languages in his master’s program at Johns Hopkins University. He had fallen in love with Hebrew and Greek while studying at New York Theological Seminary at 235 East 49^th Street. When he came back to seminary to teach biblical languages, he couldn’t afford to live off his assistant professor salary, especially since he had met and married his wife, Jan, during his years in Baltimore. So, while he was teaching, he “added another job,” as he describes it in his memoir. The other job happened to be an associate pastor position in the Presbyterian Church in White Plains. He fully expected the position to be temporary. “I thought of it as something of an off-the cuff job,” he writes. “I did it for the money and only for the money, for I had no intention at the time of being a pastor.” He always assumed that he would be a professor.

After being married for 3 years, becoming a father, and working as a pastor and teaching biblical languages, as well as trying to write his dissertation, he realized that he was called to be a pastor. He abandoned the dissertation writing and accepted a call to plant a new church in the town of Bel Air, MD, which was fast becoming a suburb of Baltimore. He would spend the next 29 years there, and while all his life up into that moment—including growing up with a devout mother who told him Bible stories in plain, everyday language—had prepared him for his future ministry, he had a lot to learn about being a pastor.

Reading Paul’s letters to Timothy, we can hear from his tone both his confidence in the young man’s abilities and his concern for the challenges Timothy would face in Ephesus with Paul no longer there. He is concerned that the church has been visited by evangelists “introducing fantasy stories and fanciful family trees that digress into silliness,” as Eugene translates, “instead of pulling the people back into the center, deepening faith and obedience.” The whole point, Paul goes on in the beginning of this first letter to Timothy, is “simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God.”

Paul likens his and Timothy’s work to a fight that must be battled with courage and prayer. Timothy must resist the culture that surrounds him, a culture that is, like today, filled with idols. Ephesus is a wealthy, sophisticated city on the coast of Ionia in what is now present-day Turkey. It was famous for the Temple of Artemis, completed around 550 BC. The city’s many monumental buildings include the Library of Celsus and a theatre that could hold 24,000 spectators.

From all this wealth and a culture filled with much to tempt and distract, Paul says to Timothy, “Run! Run for your life from all this.” And, “pursue a righteous life—a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy. Run hard and fast in the faith. Seize the eternal life, the life you were called to!”

Earlier in this letter, Paul tells Timothy not to be naïve. Eugene translates, “There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self- absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God.”

Timothy, who was nurtured in the faith by his Jewish mother, Eunice, and grandmother Lois, would eventually become the first bishop of Ephesus. His calling from the start will include equipping new leaders, especially those with gifts for preaching and teaching, who will take the good news of the Risen Christ throughout the city and beyond.

As Paul reveals his intimate connection with Timothy, knowing so many of his personal characteristics, I feel more connected to both of these ancient men who loved the Lord. Timothy struggles with self-confidence and needs the older man’s encouragement. Paul knows this and says in chapter 4, “Don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young” and not to worry about what critics will say. We can tell that Timothy is sensitive, caring, and loyal. He was there for Paul when Paul needed him. The older man writes in his second letter, “You’ve been a good apprentice to me, a part of my teaching, my manner of life, direction, faith, steadiness, love, patience, troubles, sufferings—suffering alone with me in all the grief I had to put up with in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra…Anyone who wants to live all out for Christ,” he goes on, “is in for a lot of trouble.” What’s more, Timothy may have had some physical challenges. The apostle alludes to the younger man’s health issues in chapter 5, advising Timothy to “Go ahead and drink a little wine…it’s good for your digestion, good medicine for what ails you.”

It was my joy to baptize little James today and to feel the power of the Spirit in our midst. It was even more meaningful and emotional, perhaps, because it came in the same week that I mark the anniversary of my ordination, on Sept. 25, 2011, and the anniversary of my installation here in Smithtown in 2022. When pastors and elders laid hands on me and prayed during my service of ordination in Renville, Minnesota, 14 years ago, I had no idea how much I would come to love baptism! It’s my favorite thing in worship! And because I have always been a small church pastor, I have never had so many baptisms that I would do them all at once, in groups, on certain days in the church year. I choose to do them one at a time and keep them separated and special unless they are brothers—like Bronx and Roman—or cousins—like Grayson and Diego, Jr.—and the families want them baptized together.

Like Timothy, I have had wonderful mentors along my life’s journey. And I still have a lot to learn about being a pastor. I continue to be inspired by my siblings in the faith—all of you.

Like Eugene shares in his memoir, The Pastor, I didn’t grow up wanting to be a pastor. I never really thought about it until I was in my 40s. Eugene wanted to be a professor and I wanted to be a writer, as many of you well know. But I left journalism to go to seminary, assuming that I would return to it, someday. One thing led to another, and my mentors and the Spirit guided me to parish ministry. And here I am!

I don’t think that I ever met Eugene in person, but I was living in Bel Air near the end of his parish ministry. He had planted a Presbyterian church there, but I wasn’t Presbyterian at the time. He went on to be a professor, after all, of spiritual theology at Regent College in British Columbia. He published 30 books, including his Bible translation, which he worked on throughout the 1990s, finishing in 2002. Eugene went home to be with the Lord in 2018.

I hear echoes of Paul’s words to Timothy when Eugene ends his memoir with a letter to a young pastor. “Even though we have never met personally,” he writes, “because of my long friendship with your father, I feel we are part of the same family, which, of course, we are. But also companions in finding our way as pastors in this American culture that ‘knew not Joseph’ and doesn’t quite know what to make of us. That makes for lonely work. We need each other.”

Eugene speaks of the messiness of ministry: “a lot of stumbling around, fumbling the ball, losing my way and then finding it again. It is amazing now that anything came of it…” The two things that preserved the “uniqueness of pastor” for Eugene were worship and family. “I knew in my gut,” he says, that the act of worship with the congregation every week was what kept me centered and that it needed to be guarded vigilantly—nothing could be permitted to dilute or distract from it. And I knew that family provided the only hope I had of staying grounded, faithful, personally relational, in the daily practice of sacrificial love.”

Dear friends, we also need each other as we continue to embrace the faith in a counter-cultural kind of way. Next weekend, as we celebrate World Communion Sunday in the morning and rededicate ourselves and our 200-year-old sanctuary in the afternoon, we will need one another, even more. As Paul says, “There are difficult times ahead.” Our culture will continue to be materialistic, and religion for many people will be less important than it is today. And as Eugene told the young pastor, ministry is lonely work.

Paul’s words long ago ring true for us today. “Anyone who wants to live all out for Christ is in for a lot of trouble.”

But there’s one thing we can do, my sisters and brothers. Run, he says.

“Pursue a righteous life—a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy.

Run hard and fast in the faith. Seize the eternal life, the life you were called to!

“Run for your life!”

Let us pray.

Good Shepherd, thank you for the blessing of a baptism and the privilege of experiencing growth in Your Body. We lift up James and all the little ones in our church family and ask that you help us to nurture their faith. Stir us to remain centered on you and not distracted or pressured by the material culture in which we live as we seek to care for the next generations. Stir us to simply love, a love uncontaminated by self-interest, with a life open to God. Lord, the world is going to continue to change in ways we cannot anticipate. Only you, Lord, and your promises will stay the same. Strengthen us to pursue a righteous life—a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy. Stir us to run hard and fast and seize the eternal life. Stir us to run for our life. Amen.

Pray for Everyone

Meditation on 1 Timothy 2:1-7

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

Sept. 21, 2025

How many of you have ever ridden in a sailboat? How many of you have rowed a boat? It’s a lot of work to row a boat, isn’t it? Which would you rather do? Sail or row?

I started reading a book by Joan S. Gray this week called, Sailboat Church: Helping Your Church Rethink Its Mission and Practice. Some churches in the presbytery recommended it. I haven’t finished it, yet, but I already feel led to share some of what I read so far.

In the early days of Christianity, a boat was one of the symbols for the church. In Christ’s time, you could row or sail. The boat symbol that early Christians used was never a rowboat, though. It was always a sailboat. This image was stirred by the second chapter of Acts. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, while the disciples were praying, came like a rush of a violent wind.[1]

“For these early Christians, church was a God-powered, God-led, God-resourced adventure,” Gray writes. “They found they were caught up in something much bigger than themselves. Day by day, hour by hour, they moved as the Holy Spirit led them. They depended on the Spirit to provide what was needed to do God’s work. They knew that God was really in charge of what was happening.”[2]

The difference between sailboat and rowboat churches might not be apparent on the surface, she says. It doesn’t depend upon the size of the church membership or building or bank accounts. It doesn’t depend on the denomination or location. The difference is mindset.

The thinking of the rowboat church is that “God has given us a basic agenda (for example, to make the world a better place, save souls, help the poor, spread”[3] the gospel, and work for peace and justice. These are all good things for the church to do, but the mentality is, “We can do this” or We can’t do this.”[4] The rowboat church “focuses on circumstances, such as the money that it has or can raise, the available volunteers, the charisma and skill of the leaders, and the demographics of the community.”[5] The rowboat church relies on themselves—their own wisdom, strength, and resources. “It’s all about how hard, long, and well people are willing to row.”[6]

Another sign that a church has forgotten its sails and taken up rowing is the “frantic search for ways to fix perceived problems of both congregation and denominations” and find someone to blame if the “problems” aren’t easily solved. But this is all a form of “lightly disguised works righteousness,” she says. If we rely on ourselves alone for the direction of and success of our ministries, then we have forgotten that we belong to God and “God is the only one who saves.”[7]

Rowboat churches also tend to have “a mindset of scarcity,” always worrying that there won’t be enough resources (material or human). “If we believe that God has left us alone to do the work of the church by ourselves, we will row,” she says.” Rowing flows from the belief that the church is “essentially a human … institution.”[8]

The question for those desiring to sail rather than row is do we really believe when Ephesians 3:21 assures us, that “through the power at work within us we can do abundantly far more than we could ever ask or imagine?” Do we believe like Mary when the Angel Gabriel responds to her questions, “With God nothing is impossible?”[9]

Let’s hear more about the characteristics of the sailboat church. “Sailors put up and shift the sails and partner with the wind to move the boat.”[10] What believers do in this divine partnership is important. What God does in this partnership is “essential,” such as when Jesus says in John 15:5, “I am the vine and you are the branches… Apart from me, you can do nothing.” Sailboat churches also make nurturing relationships with Jesus Christ the highest priority. They are guided by Scripture, illumined by the Spirit. And they live to sail.

This is the part that really touches my heart—the living to sail. I had a great uncle who had a houseboat. When we went to visit him, it was always tied up in the marina. We hardly ever went anywhere in that boat. We just sat and rocked. Gray says that marinas around the world are full of sailboats that seldom leave the dock. Just as many churches have beautiful buildings and programs, but they seldom take the church outside the church’s walls and live out what they believe. They forget that “they exist to sail with the winds of the Spirit on the course that God has set out for them in the world.” Each one of us, Gray says, is called by God “into the sailing life.” [11]

There’s at least one other characteristic that divides sailors from rowers. Sailboat churches live by prayer,[12] something Gray emphasizes throughout the book, which ends with a guide to 40 days of prayer for congregations seeking spiritual transformation.

This is a prayer that requires not only speaking but listening for God’s voice. And sometimes it takes a while to hear from God.

Today, I am seeing both you and my IPAD clearly as I share this message. This is happening because a local optician and I have persevered, trying three different sets of glasses over the last 6 months or so that might help me when I am leading worship and for meetings and night driving. I also have prescription sunglasses for daytime driving and prescription reading glasses for using the computer. My vision struggles came about after my cataract surgeries a year ago last summer, when I was left with double vision and the sensation of walking around in a fog.

God has been faithful to respond to my prayers with an answer that was not what we were expecting. I wasn’t expecting that three different pairs of prescription glasses would help me in my vision challenges and the work that I need to do in ministry. I expected that one pair of glasses would be sufficient. And I wasn’t expecting to meet some of the nicest, most caring medical professionals on this journey to wholeness.

Providentially, Paul also speaks at length about congregational prayer in his letter to young Timothy in our lectionary epistle this week. Friends, we have stumbled upon the longest discussion about prayer in the New Testament!

Paul emphasizes the congregation’s practice of prayers for everyone. No one is to be excluded from the church’s prayers. In an echo of the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus tells his followers to pray for their enemies, he singles out the need for prayer “for kings and all who are in high positions” so that the church may live a “quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” This is long before Christianity became the religion of empire in the 4^th century. In Paul’s time, the church is a small, often persecuted minority, and Paul himself is beaten and jailed for his church planting efforts. The congregation is to pray specifically for people to “come to the knowledge of the truth.”

The apostle expresses the “truth” to Timothy in this way. First, there is one God. This comes from the OT Shema in Deut. 6:4. This One God has a single desire to save everyone and everything. Second, there is one mediator between God and humankind. This dangerous belief rejects “the king’s role as the sole medium of the gods.”[13] Third, Paul affirms Christ’s humanity. God becoming one of us reveals God’s desire to save every one of us. Fourth, Christ gave himself as a “ransom for all.” This would have been meaningful to the people of Ephesus, which had a huge slave population at the time. His mention of payment of a ransom would “evoke images of a ransom price paid to set a slave free….(In effect), Jesus (has) exchanged his life as one human on behalf of every other human.”[14]

The passage ends with Paul declaring that he is a herald, apostle, and teacher of the Gentiles, something that he never says quite this way in any other place in the New Testament. It has taken years of prayerful discernment, but Paul has found his calling and it’s not—or no longer—a ministry to people of the religion of his childhood.

As we draw closer to celebrating our long ministry in Smithtown and long history in this centuries’ old building, I believe God is calling us to a season of grateful prayer and discernment.

May we remember, as Paul taught Timothy, to pray for everyone, especially those in high positions of authority. May we come to know Christ more and be transformed. May we let go of fears for scarcity and set sail by the winds of the Spirit for a new, abundant life. May we be granted strength and peace to seek greater involvement in our community and carry Christ’s saving love beyond these 200-year-old walls. May we be stirred to believe that we can do abundantly far more than we could ever ask or imagine with the power of God that lives within us. And with God, nothing is impossible!

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for your Son’s saving work for us on the cross, how he willingly served as a ransom payment for all sin, setting all the captives free. Thank you that we belong to you. Thank you for your Spirit’s transforming, guiding presence in our church for hundreds of years and for the faithfulness of the generations who worshiped and served here before us. Stir us to pray, dear Lord, for everyone, including those in high positions. And through our prayers and loving witness in our community, may others come to know Christ and enter the sailing life with us, never being stuck moored to the dock. May we all be stirred to believe that we can do abundantly far more than we could ever ask or imagine with the power of God that lives within us. And with God, nothing is impossible! Amen.

[1] Joan S. Gray, Sailboat Church, Helping Your Church Rethink Its Mission and Practice (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 1.

[2] Joan S. Gray, Sailboat Church, Helping Your Church Rethink Its Mission and Practice, 1.

[3] Joan S. Gray, 2.

[4] Joan S. Gray, 2.

[5] Joan S. Gray, 2.

[6] Joan S. Gray, 2.

[7] Joan S. Gray, 4.

[8] Joan S. Gray, 5.

[9] Joan S. Gray, 6.

[10] Joan S. Gray, 8.

[11] Joan S. Gray, 13.

[12] Joan S. Gray, 10.

[13] Robert Wall, Connections: A Lectionary for Preaching and Worship,Year C, Vol. 3 (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2019),329.

[14] Robert Wall, Connections:Year C, Vol. 3,329.

Lost and Found

Meditation on Luke 15:1-10

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Sept. 14, 2025

Our young disciples are back in worship! Isn’t it fabulous??

Someone texted me yesterday, “Rally Day. All your special young disciples will return. I’m sure you are excited, and we will have more stories!”

Rally Day means not only the return of Sunday School and our choirs singing and ringing, but also the return of a weekly children’s message or “Time with Young Disciples,” as we call it here. I do have to say that we had quite a few children’s messages for at least two of our children, Scarlett and Grayson, this past summer. That was an extraordinary blessing.

I realize that not every pastor is as excited as I am about children’s messages. One Orlando pastor says he can’t find anything about children’s messages in the Bible; it must be wrong to do them. “It is just a tradition that has no real standing from God’s Word,” he writes. “It’s time to let it go.”[1] Another pastor, who sees benefit in children’s messages, is less confident of his ability to share them. He starts his article, “Please pray for me: I’m going to be preaching three Sundays in three churches the next three months. Intimidated as I am to take to any pulpit, what really scares me is the possibility that one or more of these churches might also request a children’s sermon.”[2]

The children’s sermon as a genre has been around for more than 100 years. It was more common in the beginning when the children were separated from the adults. Ministers in the 19^th century published volumes of sermons preached for children’s-only worship services, such as one of the first American missionaries to India, Samuel Nott, Jr., in 1828.[3] The idea was that if you could win the hearts and minds of the children, then they would share their faith with their parents.

Christian education has a long history. In the First Century, education was evangelism through the sharing of personal testimonies. New believers memorized statements of beliefs or creeds when they were baptized. The Roman Church in the Middle Ages, though services and prayers were in Latin and not understood by the common people, used stories, objects, figurines, drama, and artwork, such as stained-glass windows, to teach the faith. Martin Luther in the 16^th century, like other reformers, believed Scripture and Christian education should be accessible to all people. His Small Catechism of 1529 was for parents teaching their children at home and for adults to learn the basics of the faith.

At the turn of the 20^th century, new understandings of child development led educators to conclude that the catechism and rote memorization alone could not meet the needs of children for religious instruction. John Dewey said in 1897 that the “child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education,”[4] and that education “is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”[5] Relationships are as important as the concepts being taught.

Sunday School had begun as an outreach in England to needy children in the 18th century. It included religious instruction and basic education in literacy and math. Our Female Charitable Society on Oct. 5, 1817, started such a school in the church for needy children in our community with 3 teachers and 38 students, adding four more teachers the following February.

A brief children’s worship service was begun at 10 o’clock in 1898 in our Chapel, which is now the children’s library. After worship, they would form into groups and meet with their teachers in various places in the building, with older kids in the Chapel and younger ones in the pew boxes and balcony until worship began at 11 a.m. In 1950, when the Parish Hall was built, it provided space for children’s Sunday School with moveable partitions. But it was noisy and crowded. In 1963, the Christian Education addition was finished and dedicated.

When the building opened, the community’s children poured through the doors. It was, as the old saying goes, a case of “Build it and they will come.” By the mid to late 1960s, our church claimed the highest Sunday School enrollment in Long Island Presbytery. I am proud of my church that embraced its responsibility to share its gifts and resources and nurture the hope and faith of children, youth, and their parents. The calling and our challenge to remain faithful as our society changes around us continues today.

We are still learning how to do Christian education from our greatest example, Jesus Christ, the originator of children’s sermons and sermons about children. He scolded the disciples for shooing young mothers with their infants away when they came seeking his blessing. Our Savior held up the youngest children as examples for the rest of his followers, for the Kingdom of Heaven “belongs to such as these.”

When we interpret our gospel lesson in Luke today in light of our Rally Day theme of nurturing the faith community, it is easy to see that every person matters to the Lord. This is a God who cares, a God who perseveres to seek and save what is lost. The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 sheep in the wilderness to go after and save one who has gone astray. This reflects the welcome and inclusivity of God’s love and the lengths the Lord is willing to go—all the way to the cross and the giving of his life—to save us all!

Jesus is telling stories with spiritual lessons to a crowd that includes men, women, and children. These lessons, which come from the daily life in which Christ and his first audience lives, aren’t just for his 12 male followers. Men and women, boys and girls are listening and finding connections.

Both genders and all ages are shepherds in Jesus’ day and in ancient times. Rachel (who would go on to marry Jacob) in Genesis and Jethro’s daughter Zipporah (who would marry Moses) in Exodus are shepherds caring for their father’s flocks. Every person in this agrarian society would understand the responsibility of a shepherd. The loss of just one would have great impact on not just a family, but the wider community. When the one who is lost is found, it is cause for celebration. The shepherd in Christ’s story calls all his friends and neighbors to say, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep… For there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

Today, the woman sweeping her house, searching high and low for the lost coin, grabs my attention. Jesus is reaching out to the women in his audience. Sweeping or vacuuming is something I do almost every day. Every woman or girl in Christ’s audience has held a broom and swept a home, probably every day. Would it be a serious thing to lose one silver coin when the family had just 10? Of course it would! It might mean less food to eat. This would be a loss not just for one family but for the community. This is why the woman, when her diligent and persistent sweeping results in the discovery of the lost coin, calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost’… For there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Today, our congregation is a little different than it was in the 1960s. Our Christian Education building is no longer crowded with students, and we use only two classrooms and a few adult teachers and teen helpers for the program. We are hoping that next year, however, we will be able to divide the group into three classes. We will need a few more faithful teachers and helpers. God will provide!

I am sure that some of our older members may feel as if something has been lost when they look around the sanctuary and don’t see as many young families as there were in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. I don’t see it this way. I know of too many churches that no longer have any Sunday School students. They have given up on Sunday School. May we never allow that to happen here!

I look forward to the lessons the Lord will lead me to share during the Time with Young Disciples. I look forward to talking with the children about their lives of faith, hearing their voices, and seeing their expressions when I share stories or ask questions they aren’t expecting.

The children, when they come to us, already have faith. They know the Lord, though they might not yet have the words to talk about their faith. Christ, our Lord, has made himself known to each of them. He has claimed them in their baptisms. I firmly believe that children have as much to teach us about faith as we have to teach them. If you spend time with children in church, you will find that they understand what prayer is, without having to go into complicated explanations. If you ask them if they have any prayer concerns, they are anxious to share them with you.

The children, no matter how many are here, are precious to us and will continue to be a priority in my ministry. In some ways, I think Christian Education or Faith Formation, as we call it now, has improved because the program is more intimate. The teachers and helpers really get to know each of the children by name and personality. They receive more attention not only from those helping in Sunday School, but from the members of the church. We know when they are in church. We notice when they are not. We have truly become a church family.

I invite you now to celebrate and give thanks with me today on Rally Day, as we recognize the hand of God and the move of the Spirit in our lives and in this place, and as we seek to be faithful and nurture all the generations. Like the shepherd and the woman in Jesus’s stories, I invite you to rejoice with me as we share the stories of our faith community, celebrating our 350^th and 200^th anniversaries this year, and all that our faithful and loving God has done and will do as we seek God through Word and prayer.

Let us remember that every person matters to the Lord and treat everyone as if they matter to us. Let us remember the shepherd who left 99 to find one and the woman who didn’t stop sweeping until the 10^th coin was restored and reach out to the children and youth when they are here and when they are not.

And let us be diligent in our prayers for their families.

Dear friends, rejoice with me as we consider all that was lost and found.

Let us pray.

Good Shepherd, thank you for your love for us, a love that would lead you to go after the one lost sheep, or sweep away the dust of our lives until you have restored the one lost coin. Thank you for your suffering work on the cross and the promise of salvation that remains the same, though the world around us is ever changing. Thank you for the children and young families and the volunteers who are willing to serve them in Sunday School. Bless them, Lord, and help us, to grow all the generations in spirit and number, to nurture the faith, hope, and love of all the ages, for all the ages. Stir us to treat all people as if they matter to us, for they matter to you. Lead us to pray and rejoice with you, faithful God, as we consider what you have done, all that was lost and found. Amen.

[1] Nathan Eshelman, “Suffer All The Children: Why a Children’s Sermon?” July 2, 2025, at https://gentlereformation.com/2025/07/02/suffer-the-children-why-a-childrens-sermon/

[2] Chris Gehrz, “A Brief History of the Children’s Sermon” at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2018/01/brief-history-childrens-sermon/

[3] Chris Gehrz, “A Brief History of the Children’s Sermon.”

[4] John Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed” in School Journal, vol. 54 (January 1897), 77-80.

[5] John Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed,” 77-80.

“O Great God”

Meditation in Memory of Harriet McMahon

November 16,1942 – July 23, 2025

The Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

Smithtown Cemetery

Sept. 12, 2025

Not long after I began serving our flock, Harriet’s family contacted the church. They were emptying out the home in Saint James where Harriet had lived for many years with her husband, Harold.

“Did anyone in the church or community need a table?” they asked.

By chance, my family and I didn’t have a kitchen table at the time. We were eating in our dining room for all our meals. But I wanted to be able to eat our informal family meals in our kitchen so that we could look out onto our deck and watch the birds and other wildlife in our backyard as we ate. Like Harriet, I am an animal lover.

I asked about the table. Next thing I knew, I was visiting Harriet’s home and loading up my sedan with wooden chairs, cat pillows, and, of all things, a working fan in the shape of a cat! It still works! We went back later with our SUV and my young adult son, Jacob, to help move the table and small, matching hutch, just the right size for our space.

I was so happy and grateful for the generosity of Harriet and her family! I still am, every time I see their gift. They told me, when I said this, that Harriet was happy knowing that the new pastor of the church that she loved wanted her table, where she had enjoyed countless meals with her husband and other family and friends over the years. This was even before I met Harriet, for she had already moved into a senior care home.

After Harold went home to the Lord in 2021, Harriet wanted to continue to live in their home, where perhaps they had lived since their marriage in 1980. But as her health became increasingly fragile, there came a time when she was no longer able to live on her own, even with caregivers coming to help during the day.

Later, I visited Harriet at the senior living community with June Auer, a longtime friend of Harriet’s from the church. And when I saw the cats on her bedspread, and the many cat knick-knacks and other decorations in her room, I felt like I had already known her for a while. She told me about her last cat and I think she showed me a photo. She missed him, but knew he was doing well in Michigan with her grandson, Kevin. Her cat’s name was Banjo, named for the instrument that Harold played. Patty, Kevin’s mom, tells me that Banjo, a handsome, well-cared for cat, lived to be 21 years old before he passed in January of this year.

The day that I visited, I learned about Harriet’s love for music, and her amazing gift as a pianist! She talked about playing piano at the senior community where she lived. She even had people singing with her. I am sure it brought back happy memories of Harold, maybe even helped her feel as if Harold was still with her. For the two of them, he with his banjo, used to travel to bring the joy of their music to senior care homes, much like the one where she had just gone to live.

Harold and Harriet called themselves the “Ivory Strings,” and played not only for nursing homes and family gatherings, but for their church, for parties, and at restaurants. Their material ranged from hymns, such as “How Great Thou Art,” to Dixieland/folk/Americana tunes, such as “O Susanna” and the song, “Secondhand Rose,” written in 1921 for Fanny Brice.

Her family shared that Harriet had been playing since she taught herself songs on a miniature piano when she was 4. Her parents bought her a full-size piano when she was 10, and she could play just about any song that she heard. She knew the words to 100s of songs!

Just before she moved to Michigan, June and I visited, again. I hugged her and said a prayer of blessing. I told her, once again, that I was grateful for her gift of the table and chairs and the beautiful matching hutch, just the right size, where I keep my grandmother’s dishes. I showed her photos of my kitchen, with my own orange cat, Liam, naughtily posing on the table, and she smiled. She was sad to leave her church and her friends, and was anxious about the move, but she had had more struggles with her health. She needed more care than the senior living community on Long Island could provide.

Off she went to Michigan with Patty, about 2 and a half years ago, to a new senior living community with more skilled nursing care and eventually was moved to a memory care unit. The piano that her parents had bought her when she was 10 went with her to Michigan!

I don’t know if Harriet remembered us as her memory loss progressed. But I am here to assure all who are gathered that Harriet’s church never forgot her. She has remained on our mailing list for our newsletter, One Body, One Spirit: Connecting the Faithful, along with my weekly messages, posted at my blog. We sent her birthday cards and Christmas cards.She has remained on our prayer list. And whenever there have been updates from Patty that information was shared during our joys and concerns during worship.

Today, after our service here at Smithtown Cemetery comes to a close, the ladies of the church, led by June, will host a lunch in her honor for her family and church family. It will be a time of sharing food and table fellowship and loving memories of Harriet.

To be honest, a day didn’t pass that I didn’t think of her—and I’ll tell you why. It wasn’t just because her name was on our prayer list. I had her table, chairs, hutch and cat-shaped fan in my kitchen to remind me daily of the generosity of my faithful, cat-loving, musical friend.

This is what we believe. With Harriet going home to be in our Lord’s embrace, she has joined with all the saints in the Great Cloud of Witnesses that is now cheering us on as we try to persevere and run the race of faith. This is in a day and age when fewer people feel a strong connection with church and the Triune God of our faith, so it truly is a challenge for we Presbyterians, who have always been seen by the world as a peculiar people. I believe Harriet and Harold, with their unique personalities and gifts, fit right in with us at the little, historic white church over yonder with the clock tower and bell ringing on every hour. Now, though she is no longer physically present, she is more connected with the church that she loved more than ever before. Harriet joined the congregation in 1972 and became ordained and served as a deacon beginning in 1982. She is spiritually present with us now and every time we celebrate Communion at The Lord’s Table and partake of the bread and cup.

Today, we will comfort one another with the words of David the shepherd boy to Psalm 23 in the King James, especially when we say this part with gratitude for our blessings:

“My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

The one thing that makes me sad is that we have no one to play music or sing on this day as we give thanks to God for the precious gift of Harriet’s life and lay her to rest beside Harold. If I were to choose a song to sing here at the grave, I would choose, “How Great Thou Art.” Coincidentally, I just learned from Patty a couple of days ago that this was one of her favorite hymns.

The original text to “How Great Thou Art” came from a poem by a Swedish preacher named Carl Boberg. He was inspired to write the words after experiencing the presence of the Lord while visiting a beautiful country estate on the southeast coast of Sweden.

Boberg said of the experience,

It was that time of year when everything seemed to be in its richest colouring; the birds were singing in (the) trees and everywhere. It was very warm; a thunderstorm appeared on the horizon and soon there was thunder and lightning. We had to hurry to shelter. But the storm was soon over, and the clear sky appeared. When I came home, I opened my window toward the sea. There evidently had been a funeral, and the bells were playing the tune of “When eternity’s clock calls my saved soul to its Sabbath rest.”

That evening, he wrote the song, “O Store Gud,” or “O Great God,” published a few years later in 1886. The poem would be matched with an old Swedish folk tune and sung in public for the first-known occasion in a church in the Swedish province of Värmland in 1888.

Here is a literal translation of the hymn’s first verse and refrain:

O great God, when I behold that world

You have created with your omnipotent word,

How your wisdom guides the threads of life,

And all beings are fed at your table:

Refrain:

Then my soul bursts forth into praise:

O great God, O great God!

Then my soul bursts forth into praise:

O great God, O great God!

You and I, we look forward to our glad reunion with Harriet and Harold and all the saints, when Jesus returns in glory for His Church or when we join our family and friends who have gone before us to eat from a seat at Christ’s banquet table in the world to come. But if we pause a moment right now and listen with the ears of our hearts, with our soul bursting forth into God’s praise, we can feel the presence of our loved ones with us, here in this place, in the song of the birds and the whisper of a breeze. Harriet and Harold and all our loved ones will remain present with us as long as we hold tightly to our memories and keep on sharing their stories.

As an old Irish saying goes:

Those we love don’t go away.

They walk beside us every day.

Unseen, unheard, but always near.

Still loved. Sill missed and very dear.

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal.

Love leaves a memory no one can steal.

Amen.

Being Made Useful to the Lord

Meditation on Philemon

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

Sept. 7, 2025

My mom and I just returned from our cruise, traveling from Norway to The Netherlands. It was amazing at times, especially when we were in the little village of Flam, and we had breathtaking views of the fjords.

We began our journey in Oslo, arriving after an overnight flight from JFK. Oslo is Norway’s capital and largest city, founded at the end of the Viking age in 1040 A.D. first as Anslo. Fire destroyed the city, built from logs, more than a dozen times. After burning down in 1624 during the reign of King Christian IV, a new city was built of stone, with the help of Danish masons. The new city was relocated closer to the fortress and re-named for its king—Christiana. In 1925, it became “Oslo,” a Norwegian word that might mean meadow at the foot of a hill or meadow consecrated to the gods or both.

We had two different bus and walking tours of the city with two different guides—first before the cruise and as a stop in a port along the way during the cruise. Our female guide, whose name I don’t recall, was a retired teacher who went with us to the Ski Museum and Tower, where the world’s oldest skis (thousands of years old!) are on display.

Then we went to the Vigeland Sculpture Park with 200 sculptures of bronze, granite, and cast iron, inside Frogner Park. The park was still beautiful, though it was pouring rain.

Our guide Roger, a teacher in an international school on a gap year, led us to the grounds at the king’s palace. We could walk right up to the gate and have our pictures taken with the guard! He pointed out the Munch museum and the building where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. We admired the architecture of the library and the new opera house. He took us to a scenic overlook, where we could view a new line of 12 tall buildings, each with distinctive architecture, between Central Station and the waterfront called the “bar code.” He pointed out floating salt spas at the waterfront that encourage people in winter to heat up in saunas, then jump in frigid water.

Then we went to a maritime museum, where we saw a man building a replica of a wooden Viking boat. Turns out, Vikings traveled all over the world with these tiny and medium sized wooden boats. New Viking settlements, from the 8^th century to the 11^th century when the Viking Age ended, are still being discovered and excavated.

What was unexpected to me about the Viking cruise was how they attempted to re-educate us on the Vikings and dispel myths and stereotypes (such as the horns on a Viking helmet. Vikings never had horns on their helmets!) They attempted to rehabilitate their unsavory reputation.

As our guide, Roger, said, matter-of-factly, “Yes, there was the pillaging.” Chieftains led raids for gold, silver, and other valuables from monasteries and churches. They ransacked Medieval villages. They captured people and sold them as slaves and kept them as wives and concubines. But then they gradually turned their focus to trade—not just food staples, such as grain and dried cod, but luxury items such as textiles, pottery, silks, spices, reindeer antler combs, walrus ivory, and jewelry. They built settlements on shores and became integrated into communities.

We are looking at one of my favorite of Paul’s letters in Scripture—the letter to Philemon. Paul, too, is attempting not only to rehabilitate the unsavory reputation of a runaway slave, but to reconcile a man with his community of faith and two siblings in Christ with each other.

Philemon lived in Colossae, in an area that is now Turkey, roughly a hundred miles inland from Ephesus, also in what is Turkey. The letter to the Colossians was being sent there at the same time as this letter. Philemon had become a Christian after hearing Paul preach.

“Paul had been thrilled with the way Philemon, a man of some means and influence, had responded to the gospel. It had gripped his heart and made him a man of love and generosity. He and his wife, Apphia, and their son, Archippus, had joined Paul in the work of the gospel. They had gone home to Colossae and made their home a place of love and hospitality, where the handful of Christians in the area had begun to meet.”[1]

Philemon, like every other person of wealth and substance in the biblical world, owned slaves. Scholar N.T. Wright says, “To them, this was a natural as owning a car or a television is for people in the Western world today. Indeed, most people would wonder how you could get on without them.”[2] One of Philemon’s slaves had run away, which was a capital offence. Worse, the slave may have taken some money to help him while he was on the run. He had gone to the nearest city—Ephesus—and perhaps when the money ran out, he had met Paul.

The slave’s name was Onesimus (Own-ee-si-mus). The Greek name means “useful.” Paul is playing with words when he says, “Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.” In gratitude to Paul for telling him about Jesus and his love, “he had started to look after Paul in prison, to attend to his needs with a devotion”[3] that he may not have shown to his master. “He and Paul had become friends, brothers in the Lord Jesus, close partners in the gospel.”[4]

I read this letter with mixed feelings. Something in me questions why Paul would send a runaway slave who had accepted the faith and was partnering with him in ministry, caring for him in his time of need, back to his owner. Onesimus may be punished, though his master Philemon is a Christian, because he has broken the law! This week I had a new thought. What if Onesimus wants to go home to his family and his faith community? What if he is tired of living as an outlaw? Now that he has accepted Christ’s forgiveness and the new life that Christ offers those who believe, what if he wants to be forgiven, reconciled, and restored to right relationship with the people whom he loves? Maybe whatever caused him to run away doesn’t seem like such a terrible offense anymore, not after all he has seen and experienced in the real world and all that he has learned from watching Paul suffer in jail. Maybe he who has received Christ’s forgiveness wants to extend that forgiveness to those who have hurt him.

And what if Paul worries that he may die in prison, for many people did perish in prison, and he wants to be sure that Onesimus is safely returned to his family and Christian community?

I can’t help but think, though, that when he asks Philemon, near the end of his letter, to prepare a guest room for him, he writes as much to encourage Onesimus that they will be together again, as it is to stir Philemon to hope for Paul’s release and remind him of his need for the church’s prayers.

And what of Paul’s promise to pay Philemon whatever Onesimus owes? Wright says that this is a reminder to Philemon of what he owes Paul—his very life! Paul, probably in his 40s or 50s at the time of this writing, “will stand in the place of risk and pain, with arms outstretched towards the slave and his owner…He will close the gap not just between Philemon and Onesimus but between the two sides of the great divide,” Wright says, “that ran through, and in some places still runs through, the life of the world.” This is what Paul is trying to communicate in 2 Corinthians when he says that he has been “entrusted with the gospel of reconciliation.” Like us, Paul is seeking to put his faith into practice and discover what the cross means for our daily lives!

The phrase that touches me the most is when Paul says that he is making his appeal on the basis of love. On the basis of love. As I come to the end of my message today, on this day when we mark the World Day of Prayer for Creation, I urge you to consider the broken relationships in your life. We all have broken relationships in our families and our communities, but also we have broken relationships with the earth. Here on Long Island, we are frustrated with the deer and rabbits eating our trees, shrubs, and gardens. In Flam, where herds of reindeer graze, villagers plant grass and wildflowers on the rocky landscape, so that the animals have food to eat.

I can’t help but marvel at how Norway and The Netherlands are making use of green energy. They are tapping into the power of wind and water; the people are walking and bicycling more and using trains and buses that run on electricity. Gas stations are being converted to battery charging stations because if and when they drive, they are driving electric cars.

At the same time, Norway and The Netherlands and much of Europe these days is secular. Churches are empty or are being used for secular purposes—as libraries, coffee houses, stores, museums, and such. The people, more and more, refuse to identify with any religion at all. Yet they have this strong connection and concern with the earth.

And we, who believe that God made us and all Creation, in this country, don’t necessarily connect our Christian faith with our need to care for and be concerned about the health of our water, soil, forests, animals, and air.

So, what I am trying to say today is that those who are seeking to follow Christ therefore must also accept the great responsibility of which the apostle Paul spoke. We are entrusted with the gospel of reconciliation—reconciliation between God and human beings, reconciliation between human beings with one another, and reconciliation between humanity and all Creation.

What can just one person do, you ask? The problem of brokenness is so big. It’s overwhelming, at times, when I think about it. And then I remember Paul writing this letter to Philemon, seeking to restore what was broken between not just a master and slave but two people now on equal footing and value in the Church—those who have been made siblings by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Though I can’t say for sure, I have to think that if Paul’s letter is included in our Holy Scripture, Onesimus must have gone home to his master and family of faith and experienced welcome and grace. Why else would it be in our Bibles? This letter stirs me to consider how many people over the years have been inspired by the story of Onesimus—those who went astray, but then bravely came home? I believe that many broken relationships, because of the letter to Philemon, were made whole!

This is my hope for my flock. May each of us be open to the Spirit of transformation and be empowered to be instruments of Christ’s peace and healing. May we who have received Christ’s forgiveness learn to graciously extend that forgiveness to others. May we, like Onesimus, be made truly useful to the gospel mission.

I appeal to you, my sisters and brothers, on the basis of love.

Let us pray. Holy One, we give you thanks for this world of natural beauty that we enjoy—that feeds us and sustains our lives. Thank you for the way that you provide for all our needs through the abundant bounty of the land and those who labor in the soil. Forgive us, Lord, when we have forgotten our dependence on your wonderful world and taken for granted that natural resources will always be abundant, without our need to change our consuming habits. Stir our hearts, Lord, to embrace the call to be reconcilers, like the apostle Paul, and be made truly useful to the gospel mission, like Onesimus. May your Spirit empower us to be instruments of Christ’s healing and peace. In the name of our Triune God we pray. Amen.

[1] N.T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (KY: Westminster John Knox, enlarged print edition, 2015), 198-199.

[2] Wright, Paul, the Prison Letters, 199.

[3] Wright, Paul, the Prison Letters, 199-200.

[4] Wright, 200.