Evansville Congregational United Church of Christ

06/15/2026

The Purpose of Suffering

Congregational United Church of Christ
Romans 5: 1-5
Rev. William R. Wineke, preaching

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know they are good for us. Romans 5: 3

As we all know – and as none of us truly believe – suffering is good for us.

In his letter to the Christians in Rome St. Paul argues that we “should rejoice” when we run into trials and temptations because, in his translated words, “they are good for us – they help us learn to endure. And endurance develops strength of character in us and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation.. .”

My guess is that each one of us has, at one point in life or another, responded to that hopeful exhortation by explaining that we have just about enough character building as we can handle and now we would like the suffering to go away.

I don't rejoice in my own suffering and I don't rejoice in your suffering, either.

I have had three very close friends and one parishioner who suffered and died from a “rare” neurological condition called “Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which strikes people in the prime of their lives and is sometimes called “Parkinson's on Steroids.”

I don't think they rejoiced.

Nor did other friends who died of lung cancer and from leukemia while at the peak of their professions in their late 40s.
And, now, I attend the funerals of men and women my own age who experience years of cancer treatments or years of dementia.

Personally, I have experienced very little suffering in my life and almost all of the suffering I have experienced was due to my own selfish and childish actions.

I'm not sure that “suffering” built character, either.

But, Saturday, in the Washington Post, a read an essay on suffering that really opened my eyes to what Paul is talking about in this morning's scripture.

What opened my eyes wasn't the explanation of suffering. What opened my eyes was the explanation of “salvation.”

The author is a writer named Helen Andrews and her essay was titled “After My Sister died, I Came to Understand What Suffering is For.”

Her sister suffered from a genetic condition that prevented her from learning to speak or, really, communicate much at all. She most likely didn't even recognize the family that sacrificed much of its life for her.

And, when the sister died, Andrews' friends tried to comfort her with the promise that, when they all met again in heaven, the sister would be joyous and complete.

Except, how would you know?

When we think of being reunited with our loved ones in heaven, don't we think of them at their best?

When I think of my own mother, do I think of the 89 year-old woman, suffering in a nursing home, being fed through a tube, crippled with arthritis, as she had been for decades?

No, I don't. I think of someone younger, more vibrant, happier.

For that matter, when I think of me in heaven – which is probably a bit arrogant on my part –I do not think of someone who uses a railing to ascend two steps to the pulpit.

But, Andrews asked, if you never knew the perfect inner person you lost, how would you identify her?

And the answer she came up with – with the help of a Catholic friend – is that you don't.

Because in God's kingdom perfection is that which God created.

“My sister would be the same. The transformation would be in the rest of us.”

“We will accept my sister just as she is. That is the perfection toward which we should strive and toward which our suffering on earth should be oriented.”

Wow!

So much of what we tend to think of as “Christian” isn't really Christian at all. It is Platonic

And by that I mean we have a sense that somewhere, somehow, there is a perfect form of who I am and that when I get to heaven all the impurities that keep me from becoming who God intended will be stripped away and that I will not only be pure in heart but, also, perfect in body.

That, incidentally, is not what Plato would say but it is what most of our descriptions of heaven surely imply.

But, what if that's not so.

What if God created us just the way we are, that God finds worth in us just as we are at this moment?

I get a sense of that when I travel to nursing homes to conduct midweek services. I don't really know the men and women who come to the service. I am often meeting them for the first time and, often, they don't even seem to know I am there.

But, I expect they're important to someone, just the way my mother was important to me as she lay in a nursing home bed, just as my grandmother was important to me when I spent nights with her at Madison General Hospital when she appeared to be in a coma.

Just as they are important to God, who created them and promised to be with them throughout all days.

And what if the real message of Paul's encouragement to the Romans is not that in salvation we escape this world but that, in salvation, we find we can accept this world and accept one another has God's children?

What if we learned to love our neighbor just as he is today, not as what he was yesterday or might be tomorrow?

What if we could do that?

Wouldn't that make each day we are here together part of heaven?

Just a thought.

That is the Good News. Thanks be to God!

06/15/2026

Sunday Worship June 14, 2026
Pastor Bill Wineke

06/11/2026

Pastor Bill On Gathering Rose Buds

06/08/2026

06/08/2026

Tax Collectors

June 7, 2026
Matthew 9: 9-19
Rev. William R. Wineke, preaching

That evening Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to be his dinner guests, along with fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners. The Pharisees were indignant. “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” they asked his disciples.

There is a truism in our society that asserts “You can judge a man by the company he keeps.”

The reason that is called a “truism” is that it is most generally true. Most of us hang out with people who are pretty much like us, who share the basic values and behave in similar ways.

Just to use an obvious example, if you were to learn that one of your grandchildren is hanging out with known drug addicts, you'd be concerned, wouldn't you?

Our scripture lesson this morning deals with the call of Matthew to become one of Christ's 12 disciples.

And it starts out with a problem:

“As Jesus was going down the road, he saw Matthew sitting at his tax collecting booth. 'Come be my disciple,' Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him.”

Now, tax collectors are always unpopular, but they were especially unpopular at the time of Jesus.

Tax collectors worked for the Roman government, which had power over Judea. They set up check points along major highways to intercept travelers and demand tribute on behalf of the government.

The problem is that Rome was pretty good at exacting its due but Rome was pretty negligent at disciplining its agents. The tax collectors would extort the payment due Rome and, often, add a little extra on the side for themselves.

Unsurprisingly, this did not make them popular.

So, it is within this context that we find Jesus, who has recently begun preaching salvation in Galilee and who has attracted crowds of admirers because of his miracle healings and who has raised fears among the religious authorities that he might be a wolf in shepherd's clothing.

As our story begins, Jesus walks up to Matthew and tells him to become a disciple.

That's bad enough. But what comes next is worse.

“That night Matthew invited Jesus and his (other) disciples to be his dinner guests, along with his fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners.”

You can tell the measure of a man by the company he keeps. Jesus is making a public declaration by attending a dinner with a group of men known to be crooks and sinners.

And Jesus is doing so while claiming to be a religious leader, one who gathers great crowds and, not so incidentally, keeps pointing out the hypocrisy of the existing power structure.

“Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” they asked the disciples.

Good question.

You know, in Madison there is a bar/restaurant named Bennett's Meadowood Country Club. It's kind of a dive bar but features good food. On weekend mornings, it also features S**t and Eggs, so patrons can watch x-***ed movies while eating breakfast. It's actually fairly popular.

But, if you were to stop in there Sunday morning before church and found me sitting at the bar, sipping a Bloody Mary and commenting on the “stars,” you might honestly wonder whether I am setting a good example for the church.

That's kind of what happened with the Pharisees and Jesus.

The Pharisees get a bad rap in the Bible. They weren't really hypocrites or snobs. They were good people who tried to lead exemplary lives.

The Pharisees, however, would not have breakfast at a P**n and Eggs joint and they would not join a group of “tax collectors and notorious sinners” for dinner.

Jesus would and Jesus did.

Jesus called Matthew and accepted his dinner invitation because Jesus saw his mission as proclaiming the good news of salvation to those who were open to hear it.

“I have come to call sinners,” he told the skeptical Pharisees. “Not to those who think they are already good enough.”

But, now, the question becomes, who do you and I identify with? Are we righteous but judgmental Pharisees or are we shady but curious tax collectors?

Do we feel more comfortable hanging out with the popular people?

And do we really have a say in things?

Because, when you think about it, Jesus chose Matthew. Matthew did not seek out Jesus, though he did respond to the invitation.

I bring this up because my social media accounts are going nuts this week.

Apparently, President Trump made some declaration that he is helping Christianity return to public life and will honor Jesus as king. Secretary of State Rubio has proclaimed that Jesus is the only savior and Franklin Graham is attacking the Christian faith of Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico, mostly because Talarico – a Presbyterian seminarian – says the Bible doesn't mention abortion and that transgender people are children of God.

The up roar of all these social media posts is that the highest ranking officials in the United States government have given Jesus their endorsement and that this is a marvelous thing for Christianity.

No it's not.

What was a marvelous thing for Christianity is when Pope Leo XIV issued a public apology for the participation of the Roman Catholic Church over the years in the institution of slavery.

Because what the pope understands and what all those people rejoicing in the president's endorsement of Jesus don't understand is today's story in Matthew: Healthy people don't need a doctor; sick people do. Before we can be grateful we must understand that we, too, are sick people.

The blessings we receive from God are not payment for our personal goodness. They are. . .blessings. Our response is to be grateful, not judgmental.

But I have to say this, too: We shouldn't be judgmental ourselves. A few months ago, when a very right-wing Christian organization asked to rent space here in our building, one of the objections I heard most is that other people in town would see them here and conclude that we identified with their anti-gay, anti-woman teachings.

Actually, I also had those concerns.

But, then, I'm not Matthew.

It's just that the lessons of the Bible always have to be read through my own eyes, through your own eyes, because – if they don't apply to me – then I probably can't offer them as good news to anyone else.

And that is the Good News. Thanks be to God!

The Calling of Saint Matthew by Hendrick ter Brugghe

06/07/2026

Sunday Worship June 7, 2026
Pastor Bill Wineke

06/04/2026

Pastor Bill On Triumphal Arches

06/01/2026

Trinity

May 31, 2026
Matthew 28: 16-20
Rev. William R. Wineke, preaching

Today's Scripture lesson is generally known as the “Great Commission.”

It is only four verses long and, in it, the resurrected Jesus is meeting with his disciples, and he tells them to go out into the world and “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

So, that's what we do.

We don't have too many baptisms here in Evansville anymore. In fact, most of the baptisms I have performed have been for my own relatives, which suggests, of course, that my own relatives don't have churches of their own.

But in the baptism ritual, I anoint the baby's head with water and say that I, as a minister of the Gospel, baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

And, honestly, most of us don't think too much more about it.

It is a ritual. I was baptized with the same words. So were you.

But, honestly, what does it mean?

We may get a hint from the fact that the church dubs this day as “Trinity Sunday.”

Not “Baptism Sunday” or “Church on a Mountaintop Sunday” or anything practical like that.

When we say “Trinity” we say something serious about Jesus, something we kind of take for granted because most of us went to Confirmation Class and were taught something about the Trinity that we can't really remember because we weren't paying much attention in the first place.

Now, I have to confess to you that I spent a fair amount of time last week thinking about the Trinity and what it means for our faith.

I researched it to the point that I was able to complete three pages of my normal four-page sermon.

And, then, I looked at it and said, “I really don't care about definitions of the Trinity and I am willing to bet no one in our congregation cares, either.”

And I hit the “delete” key.

Because the important part of this scripture lesson, honestly, is the very last sentence of the Gospel of St. Matthew:

“And be sure of this: I am with you always, even onto the end of the age.”

That was his promise to the disciples who had been with him for three years, given up careers, endured poverty and scorn, stood at the foot of the cross and watched him die and who were astonished to see him once again in their midst.

Essentially, what Jesus said to those disciples on top of the mountain in Galilee is “I've done what I can do. Now, I'm turning it over to you guys.”

It had to be that way.

Otherwise, there would be no Jesus movement. Otherwise there would be no Christian Church.

The disciples believed initially – and maybe right up to this moment – that Jesus was the promised Messiah who would score a political and moral victory over the enemies of God and restore the throne of King David.

As long as Jesus was with them, that's the goal they would have. Even when Jesus rose from the dead and that hope was rekindled.

But the Kingdom of God is not built of stone and is not defended by armies. The Kingdom of God – and Jesus kept saying this – is the opposite of what we expect. It is a kingdom in which the last become first and the first become last. It is a kingdom in which the despised Samaritan becomes a savior to the battered Jew while pastor and deacon walk by on the other side. It is a kingdom in which the widow's mite is worth more than the billionaire's gold.

Jesus was not and will not be the king riding a white horse to create that kingdom.

That's what we're here for.

That's what our fathers and grandfathers, our mothers and grandmothers, were here for. To build that kingdom.

It hasn't gotten easier. We still live in a world of triumphal arches and detention centers filled with immigrants whose main mistake was coming here for a better life. We still live in a world where drones fly back and forth while the poor perish.

But that's not the end story.

That has never been the end story.

Those confused disciples on that Galilean mountaintop watched as Jesus disappeared into heaven and, then, rather than returning home and facing defeat, went on to tell others the Good News about the kingdom that didn't exist but was being built and they suffered persecution and defeat after defeat – but the movement grew.

And they were able to do that because God was with them, because Jesus was with them, because the Holy Spirit comforted them.

Just as the Holy Spirit is with us and comforts us.

In many ways, our days of kingdom building are limited. Hell, our days of anything are limited.

So, why are we so happy? Why do we gather before services and laugh at our aches and our pains and at our inabilities to remember what we ate for breakfast, assuming we remembered to eat breakfast.

Why are we so happy?

Because Jesus, just as he promised, has been with us, been with us as individuals and has been with us as a congregation, right up to the end of our age.

Jesus was with us when we were one of the two largest congregations in town and Jesus is with us even when the Lutheran confirmation class has more members than our congregation counts.

Jesus never told us to win. Jesus told us to witness.

Even to the end of the age.

That is the Good News. Thanks be to God!

Christ Weeping over Jerusalem, published by Currier & Ives.

05/31/2026

SundayWorship May 31, 2026 with Pastor Bill Wineke