First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 28 2025)
Sermon Title –Love is For-Giving
Text – Matthew 18:21-35
Rev Dan Pure

d​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 14 2025)
Sermon Title – God Created the Great heavens and the Great Earth and the great You and Me
Text – Gensis 1:1-5, John 1:1-5
Rev Dan Pure

​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 14 2025)
Sermon Title – My Last Will and Testament to Eternity
Text – Romans 8:31-39
Rev Dan Pure

​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 7 2025)
Sermon Title – Righteous Individualism
Text – Genesis 6:8-14, 17-22
Rev Scott Morschauser

​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ August 31 2025)
Sermon Title – The Hospitality Boomerang
Text – Luke 14:1, 7-14
Rev William Gaskill

​Hospitality Boomerang

Read: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
Dinner at the house of a leader of the Pharisees, a Sabbath meal; they were
watching him closely. Why? This young carpenter turned itinerate rabbi was getting a
reputation for playing fast and loose with the Sabbath. To the legalistic religionists, the
Pharisees, this was an outrage!
And sure enough, though our text from the lectionary this morning skipped over
it, there was a man at the party who had dropsy. What in the world is dropsy? You
don’t hear that diagnosis much anymore. Now it might be more likely called edema, I
don’t know. And of course, Jesus couldn’t resist the chance to heal him; and he did heal
him, right there before the Sabbath meal.
As a kid in western Pa, I saw my puffy-ankled grandmother, several aunts, and
various and sundry local women of a certain age, all of whom it was said had dropsy.
“Mom, why are their ankles so fat and swollen?” They have dropsy. Is that why they all
wear clunky black, lace up shoes with the thick heels? Maybe it was just the style and
had nothing to do with dropsy.
I had a parishioner named Peggy, a highly intelligent woman who had traveled
the world. She became afflicted with lymphodema. Her whole body filled up with so
much fluid that she spent many years living in a hospital bed in her living room. What
was amazing to me was that I never heard a word of self-pity from her. She managed
our prayer chain from her laptop computer. If I’d have been Jesus I’d have healed her
on any day of the week, including the Sabbath. She died at home in that bed.
So, on to dinner. I’ve been to just a few of these dinners with leaders, though for
me they weren’t people cloaked in religious pretense. The few that I was invited to were
usually populated by local dignitaries, successful business people, even a politician and a
Catholic priest on occasion. I usually felt more or less like a religious mascot than one of
the truly important people.
One year, I was introduced to a senator. When I saw him the next year, he
wouldn’t even acknowledge me, even when I tried to wave across the room. Remember
me? No, and I’m not interested. Maybe he found out how I voted.
To be honest, I soon became quite bored with it all. The year I did not get invited
was truly a relief. I didn’t really fit in with all those important people, eking by on a

preacher’s salary while they waxed eloquent about their yachts and cruises to distant
islands, dripping with diamonds and pearls, the fruit of their worldly success.
I wonder if Jesus got bored that evening at the dinner for all the important
people. Probably not. All eyes were on him when he healed the man with the swollen
joints. Then Jesus used the occasion to do a little teaching about humility and
hospitality. The socialites soon lost interest in Jesus and began to jockey for position at
the table, seeking to let everyone else see how influential they were.
Think of planning a wedding and the reception to follow. What’s one of the
hardest jobs? Not selecting the wedding dress or the color of the men’s tuxedos or the
flowers or even the choice of little kids to be the flower girl and the ring bearer. No, it’s
the seating chart. Who will sit with whom at the rehearsal dinner and the reception
after the wedding?
I’ve never had to do this because God loves me, but I’ve seen those who have.
They had to unearth all the potential trouble spots, people who should not be placed
next to each other under any circumstances. Relational and emotional landmines lie
around everywhere. We want this day to be special. Who will sit at the head table? Who
will sit with the parents of the bride and groom. To whom do we wish to show special
honor by their placement in the room?
What a faux pas it would be, if I, the important man of the cloth, arrived and
went right up to the head table and sat in the seat reserved for the best man. Someone
would be appointed to remove me to my intended seat next to a retired Baptist preacher
whose job it would be to get me saved before the last dance. Yes, I would like wine with
my dinner, and lots of it, thank you.
I never thought about this before, but upon reflection, it sounds as though Jesus
was directing this teaching about how to behave at banquets more to his close friends,
his disciples, than to the crowd at large. It seems almost like an aside to his insiders.
The crowd had already lost interest in Jesus and each one at the banquet began
looking out for number one. What do you suppose those seat seekers hoped to gain by
their efforts: higher social standing, local prestige, better business opportunities,
bragging rights for later at the pub, what? “See how important and influential I am!”
Think of the lack of awareness on their part. Did they even suspect Jesus of being
the Messiah, the only begotten Son of God, or even a powerful rabbi, even though they
had just witnessed a remarkable healing at Jesus’ hands?
To be fair about it, I don’t think even the disciples had much of a clue as to whom
they were following around. The twelve were in school, learning from Jesus what

discipleship would look like. His true identity would wait until Easter morning to be
revealed.
For disciples of Jesus, then and now, humility is always the order of the day. Real
honor in the end comes to the humble. God resists the proud. Those who exalt
themselves are destined to be embarrassed.
The contrast between being honored by people instead of by God is stark indeed!
We are to care more about what God thinks of us than we care about what people think
of us. We may work strenuously for the world’s acclaim but in the end it pales in
comparison to hearing God say things like, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter
into the joy of your master.”
We are told that our Lord endured the cross, despising its shame, enduring the
sufferings of the cross for the joy that was set before him. The cross of Christ stands at
the heart of our own discipleship. Philippians 2 tells us that the one we call Lord did not
count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but that Jesus emptied himself, taking
the form of a servant. And being found in human form he humbled himself, even unto
death on a cross. As a result, God has highly exalted him, giving him the name that is
above every name.
Servants are not greater than their master. Jesus laid down the pattern of
discipleship for all who would wish to follow him. The template for our discipleship
begins in humility. Jesus told us to do what we see him doing. Humble yourself under
the mighty hand of God and in due time he will exalt you.
Humility is the manger out of which something important grows. In our flesh we
tend to be calculating, always asking in our hiding places, “What’s in it for me?” What’s
in it in the world and in the flesh may be no more than social security; I hang around
with people who are more or less my equal. I don’t have to concern myself with those
beneath my station, with their needs, their wants, their wounds, their disappointments,
the swollen limbs of their dropsy. I want to have fun, not be challenged by the neediness
of others. We insiders, we club members, can get together, first at my place, then at
yours, and there will be balance.
Have you ever been in an unbalanced relationship, where you do most of the
giving and others do most of the taking? I don’t like it and I’m guessing neither do you.
You begin to feel put upon, taken advantage of, then resentful of the unfair imbalance.
You stop inviting them to dinner that’s for sure. Your friendship just drifts apart after a
while and you find other people more to your liking, people who understand reciprocity
in relationships.

If that describes you or me, we’ll prefer to skip this little portion of scripture that
tells us to do just the opposite. Jesus tells us to invite those who can’t pay us back, who
most likely will never be able to reciprocate. Then he promises that we will be rewarded
by God at the resurrection of the righteous.
Too many of us don’t want to wait that long. And I suspect, there are people who
don’t really even believe in the resurrection, or at least, they don’t connect the quality of
our discipleship here in this life with the outcomes that await us in eternal life. But
according to Jesus, they are connected.
Did it ever occur to you that generosity and hospitality serve as gateways to a
great adventure with God? We know God has particular concern for the poor and the
needy, for widows and orphans, for those stricken and broken by conditions in this
world. But to get involved in what God is doing with these people can be costly, even
scary. We might bite off more than we can chew. We might find ourselves in way over
our heads. And it is easy to lose sight of our promised rewards for doing so.
My friend and prayer partner Pastor John serves as the point man for a
community ministry to the homeless. It is a cooperative effort among several local
churches, but when the calls come in, they come to him. The work can be very time and
energy consuming, can be frustrating to say the least, and heart wrenching too.
A week ago, one of his clients, whom he had kept in a local motel for nearly a
year, was discovered to have died on the bed in her room. It took some detective work
to locate any family to step in and care for her affairs, her funeral, and her burial.
John was reflecting with me about her life and his experience in helping her. He
remembered a time when he was driving her to an appointment of some sort and she
must have sensed his fatigue. She turned to him and said, “You’ve got to slow down,
take a break.” And, he said, here I was driving her around!
It can be frustrating to be sure, but here’s something else. Getting involved gives
us a better appreciation for the compassionate love of God. That love, sent out to the
needy in God’s name has a way of boomeranging back upon us. We begin to have a
deeper conviction about the grace and mercy of God as it applies to our own lives.
Our hidden shame and guilt comes into the light of God’s love, those conditions
of spiritual dropsy that have our senses of inadequacy and incompleteness swollen and
not yet relieved begin to be dealt with and healed. It’s a process that begins well before
the resurrection of the righteous. It starts now, here in this life.
And there’s more. In our text from Hebrews, it tells us not to neglect showing
hospitality to strangers because thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Strangers are to us, well, strange. We don’t know what to expect, what they may be like,

what they may do. Strangers feel risky. I don’t know if any of you have an angel story or
two. I’ve had a few encounters that left me wondering at least. Here’s one.
On a trip to Israel back in the 1980s I was part of a Presbyterian tour group from
a congregation in Wilmington. Their pastor did the heavy lifting as the group shepherd.
I was along for the ride.
One day we planned to celebrate communion in the traditional site of the upper
room. There we were, gathered in a circle, with our little olive wood cups in hand, ready
to receive the sacrament. Just then I noticed a man standing very near our little circle. I
don’t think he spoke English, but I was prompted, using hand motions, to invite him to
join us, which he did. His face looked very grateful.
We celebrated the communion together, and then, when I looked around, he was
gone. But I felt the joy of the Lord and his approbation too. I’ve never forgotten it. It
was an act of kindness, very inexpensive to me, but one that required me to be awake to
the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit and to the presence of the stranger.
Generosity and humility are like Monday morning caffeine to the spiritual life.
They keep us awake and alive. Both require us to let go of lesser things in life, things we
can see, and trade them in for blessings which often we cannot see; we can only believe,
trust, obey, and walk by faith in the One who gives us promises of blessings.
It was the famous Jewish theologian Martin Buber who said that the main
theological category between God and human beings is blessing. I think he was onto
something important.
Do you want to please, even bless the heart of God? Try this: each day when you
awaken, ask God for the privilege of being a blessing to at least one person during the
day.
Each day you live is a blessing, a gift from your generous Heavenly Father. And
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, all three persons in God, have
appointed us to be God’s conduits for grace, mercy, and peace, to pour the love of God
upon a parched and barren land, to be agents of healing, provision, protection, and yes,
blessing.
Can you think of a better way to spend the gift of your life than that? Hearing all
this do you really care what chair you sit in at the banquets of people who may or may
not know God? Would you agree that there is really nothing better than blessing the
heart of God and the lives of other people? And don’t forget to keep your eyes open; you
might just see and angel or two!