We Welcome Our Interim Pastor
Congratulations to Pastor Murray on his retirement! Welcome Rev. Lorraine De Armitt as our interim Pastor. To learn more about her, go to the Pastor button on the navigation menu. You may also read previous sermons on the sermon page. Please join us. Service begins at 10:00 am.
Beacon Light Newsletter November - December
Check out the new Beacon Light newsletter located in the navigation menu above. We are grateful to Collene Richardson who has edited our newsletter for many years. We welcome Rev. Bonnie Miller as our new editor.
Sunday School: Please call our church office at 631-727-2621 if you would like information for this year. Sunday School is held during church services at 10:00. We hope to begin Sunday at the end of November.
Bible Study: Will restart on Friday, November 6. Pastor DeArmitt will provide an overview of the New Testament and then compare the four gospels. Please contact the church at 631-727-2621 if you are interested in joining. All are welcome to attend. Zoom meeting are available.
Thrift Shop: The thrift shop hours are Tuesday and Thursday 10-2 and Saturday 9-1. Clothing, knickknacks, and other small household items are accepted. No furniture or children's clothing. Please bring your donations only when we are open. Thank you for your support.
If you would like to join us on Zoom, please follow the link
Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting chat ling ink
https://us06web.zoom.us810/launch/jc/84520152334
Meeting: 810 8693 1922
Pass code: 123456
There will be no Community Thanksgiving Service this year, but we do hope that you will join us for our Thanksgiving Worship Service, Thursday, November 22, 10:00 am. Our altar will be decorated with a beautiful harvest display.
SERMON, NOVEMBER 1, 2025 ~ Rev, DeArnutt
23rd Sunday after Pentecost/ All-Saints Sunday Nov. 1, 2026
Joshua 3. 7-17; Mt 23. 1-12 ~ Don’t Let it Go to Your Head
There’s a story about how the governor of a particular state, far from here, he thought he might like to run for reelection, so he figured he needed to get out and travel around the state a little. One town was having a street fair, with a fried chicken dinner. And he went.
He gets in line for a chicken dinner, meeting and greeting his constituents. Spreading good will all around. He finally gets to the front of the line, pays his $10, and moves up to the woman handing out the food. She puts two pieces of chicken on his tray. He asks for a third. She says No. He says, “Darlin’, do you know who I am?” She says, “Yes, Governor, I know who you are. But do you know who I am? I’m the one giving out the chicken.”
Power and control. We humans have been posturing, maneuvering, angling, grabbing, for power and control, since the beginning of time. We are more vulnerable to those abuses than we are to the common cold.
In our first reading this morning, Moses has died – we talked about that last week, the end of the Torah. The people need a new leader, and the Lord God has chosen Joshua, and is now equipping him to lead the people.
“The Lord said to Joshua, ‘This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses. You are the one who shall command the priests who will bear the ark of the covenant.’” I will begin to exalt you…You are the one who shall command… That kind of stuff could go right to your head!
Can you imagine what it would have been like, if Joshua got all star-struck with himself when the Lord God said to him: “This day I will begin to exalt you.”? First, he would have needed to make sure the people knew he was the new Moses. There would be a press conference, a position statement, talking points for his deputies to follow, an on-going campaign to make sure the people knew what a fine leader he was.
Instead, Joshua got right to work. He did not spend even one moment, as far as I can tell, not one moment, proclaiming he was chosen by God, special to God, the new Moses, the real and forever leader of the people, or anything else that set him above anyone else. He just went to work.
He told them God was still with them. He organized them, motivated them and gave them courage to move forward, and they did.
President Harry S. Truman: "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
Joshua simply went to work, elevating the Lord God, and leading the people according to the Lord’s direction. And his work was fruitful.
I hope that I never get so prideful, so concerned with my own importance, so defensive about power and control, and status, that I start arguing how important I am, with the lady who’s giving out the chicken.
Jesus, in our gospel lesson, Jesus took on the very same issue, our human tendency to abuse power and control, he did that when he talked to his disciples about the scribes and the Pharisees. He advised his friends to “do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”
Unfortunately, the religious leaders of that time had fallen into the trap of being more concerned with looking holy, looking obedient to the laws of Moses, looking devoted to the service of the LORD God, than actually working at a relationship with God, learning to be holy, obedient, devout.
Jesus criticized how the Pharisees showed signs of thinly veiled hubris, those exaggerated symbols of their religious office, and how they greatly enjoyed being called “Rabbi” and being given the best seats in the assembly. The focus of Jesus ministry was never to impress people with his holiness. He barely spent time with the influential, with the rich, with the ruling class. Instead, he ate with sinners. He told his followers to feed the poor.
We’ve created, at least online, a character who embodies this abuse of power. Karen, that middle class, middle-aged white woman who thinks that her very high status grants her much privilege. You know, to park where she wants, to go to the front of the line, to bully staff and to feel righteous about all of it. People hate her. Online. They hate her abuse of power, and then feel good about not being like her.
The tricky thing is, while we are virtuously hating Karen, we forget we also are vulnerable to abusing power, to nurturing an addiction to self-justification. Our deft ability to become blind to our own need for control and the many ways that plays out in our lives when we objectify each other, use each other for our own gain, deny each other’s full humanity, all that mess puts a heavy weight of our own dysfunctional love of power on us.
Jesus said, come to me, all you who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.
It is a terrible burden to feel you need to maintain a certain image, to promote ourselves as righteous and powerful. We are invited to let go of that burden, to worry about no one’s opinion of us but the Lord God’s judgment. To proclaim no power but the Lord’s. May God help us to have courage, and humility, enough, to embrace that. Amen.
(For previous sermons, please go to the sermon
button on the navigation menu above)
.jpg/:/rs=w:370,cg:true,m)
