You are peculiar people. Some of you more than others.
But collectively, together, you are strange. You are odd.
And I can prove it.
You show up on Sunday mornings when you could be
sleeping in. You sing out loud, in public, together, in
harmony…sometimes. You pass a plate and give your
money away—your hard-earned, deserved money. Not
for a product. Not for a service. You just give it away.
And you call all of this worship.
You greet each other with ancient words of peace. You
build friendships that span decades. You share the
burdens that you cannot shoulder all by yourself. You
show up for funerals of people you barely knew. You
bring food to families in crisis and shoes for children who
are not your children. You call all of this discipleship.
By any rational measure—comfort, convenience,
conformity—you are wasting your time.
Unless…it’s true.
Unless Jesus Christ really is Lord.
Unless death really has been defeated.
Unless this costly, inconvenient, irrational thing called
grace is the strongest power in the universe.
If that’s true, then what you do here carries weight
beyond measure. But, will anyone notice?
Philippi was a Roman colony. In fact, it was a kind of
showcase city for imperial power. Everywhere you
looked in the city of Philippi, carved in stone, stamped
on coins, proclaimed in public, these words: Caesar is
lord. Worship. Obey. Bend the knee.
Now, the Apostle Paul writes this letter from prison. His
body bears the scars of his resistance. And he says to
the Philippians—and to us—here’s what you must do:
Shine like stars in the night sky. Don’t blend in. Don’t play
it safe. Don’t keep your head down. Shine.
Where? In a crooked and perverse generation—
Paul’s words, not mine—you are called to be visibly,
unmistakably, defiantly different.
Somewhere along the way, I think we forgot. I think the
greatest threat to the Church today is not rejection. It
is invisibility, that no one notices us at all because we
sound, act, and are carved up just like everybody else.
In the beating heart of Roman rule, our ancestors dared
to profess:
Christ is Lord.
Not Caesar.
Not empire.
Not wealth or nation or party.
Christ is Lord.
It was the earliest and most powerful Christian
conviction. And if it is true, then everything changes. It
starts here. It starts with us when we refuse to shrink
the gospel, to confine it to one small part of our lives or
our witness, when we refuse to blend into a broken age.
You start by seeing. Every person you encounter reflects
the image of God. You know the ones I’m talking about.
The neighbor whose uncut grass or obnoxious yard
sign makes your blood boil. The stranger who crossed
the border for work to feed his family. The friend whose
Facebook posts offend you. The believer told their
identity is unworthy or unholy. All of them. Each of us.
The estranged family member you struggle to forgive.
You see, God’s image is not yours to grant or deny. It
is frustratingly and beautifully beyond our pay grade.
And so, scripture must shape our faith, not endorse
our opinions. The Bible is not a weapon to wound our
enemies, but a mirror that tells the truth about us.
If Christ is Lord, then we must refuse to excuse cruelty
from our own side. We must stay at the table across
deep disagreement. We must hold one another
accountable to a standard higher than victory—and
that’s when we become strange. Peculiar. Odd. Hard to
label. Impossible to co-opt.
The crisis we face isn’t that people have rejected faith—
it’s that they’ve seen a Church that looks just like the
world. Tribal. Fearful. Shallow. But we draw others not by
force, but by radiance. We shine, not to be seen, but to
be faithful. Jesus tells his disciples, “When you’ve been
given a light so great that it lights up the whole world,
you cannot hide it. You cannot blend in. You have a role
to play. A mission to fulfill. A purpose.”
Right now, in our city, that faithfulness takes shape
in Streets to Homes Indy, where we partner to find
permanent supportive homes for those who need them
most. Let me tell you, this is patient work. It is relational
work. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t produce quick
victories. The kind of work that defies the math of
efficiency and ROI. But for 47 souls in the last three
months, who now have homes, it is lifechanging work.
A month ago, I received this note from a parent in
our congregation. Her five-year-old, Ethan, had been
listening carefully to the sermon that Sunday, and when
the plates were passed for the offering, he turned to his
dad and said, “Dad, the church needs money to help
people. I need a thousand dollars.” (I love this kid!)
She writes, “He settled for a twenty, and then proceeded
to decorate the offering envelope in order to make
people feel better.” Five years old—learning right here
what generosity means, what it looks like to be part of
something bigger than yourself.
Three weeks ago, I was visiting with a member of
our congregation, one of our saints. I had joined her
for lunch at her new retirement community, and she
insisted that after lunch we have a scoop of mint
chocolate chip ice cream. She said it was the best in
the city, and she was right. And as we enjoyed the ice
cream, she told me how members of this congregation
showed up for her this summer when she needed it
the most, when it mattered the most. She said, “I don’t
know how they knew, but somehow they knew. Right
when I needed a phone call, my phone would ring. Right
when I needed a visit, somebody would show up. In the
moment I needed a card, one would arrive in the mail.”
And then she said these words. She said, “Without my
church, I would not have made it. You go tell them that.”
That Sunday, right after the benediction, just over in
this section, a guest sat in one of these pews. She was
weeping. It was quiet, but heavy. The kind that comes
when home has become unsafe but leaving it feels just
as dangerous. And she was here in this sanctuary, safe
for just a moment. And after the service, she lingered in
that spot, and most of us were headed toward coffee,
conversations, the Colts playing on TV.
But I noticed one of you change course. You walked
across the aisle. Sat down. Placed a hand on her
shoulder. And there, in the pew, you prayed. You saw the
image of God, afraid and alone, and you stayed. That’s a
strange thing to do. A moment of grace.
Of course, when this church has been at its very best,
we’ve always been strange. We’ve refused to bend the
gospel to fit the times. Our founding pastor, Henry Ward
Beecher, stood in Second’s pulpit on May 28, 1843, and
from that pulpit he called slavery a moral evil. He was
just shy of thirty years old. It was risky. Indiana. Before
the Civil War. In fact, the local papers covered the
sermon and the fallout. It cost the church members. It
cost the pastor friends. Even job security. In fact, he had
waited to speak for those very reasons. But after four
years as your pastor, he couldn’t wait any longer. And
so, he spoke.
Down in South Carolina, there was another
Presbyterian pastor. His name was James Henley
Thornwell. He was a brilliant scholar, a graduate of
my alma mater seminary. Henry Ward Beecher called
Thornwell the best debater in the General Assembly.
And James Henley Thornwell had a clear message for
the Church and preachers like Beecher. Stay in your
lane. Thornwell quoted Proverbs, “Put your hands upon
your mouth.” Slavery, he said, was a political matter, not
a spiritual one. Not the Church’s business.
Thornwell said the Church should stay silent.
Beecher determined silence was the sin.
And Beecher was right.
The argument echoes in our time:
Cuts to hunger programs and childcare vouchers for
poor families.
Contempt for those from other lands.
Political issues. Not the Church’s business.
But then pastors weaponize scripture against people
whose stories they do not know, real people with
names, and faces, and families, and souls. And leaders
in our state defend dehumanizing policies on Christian
grounds, fueling fires of suspicion and fear. And the
voices repeat: put your hands upon your mouth. Just
blend in.
But somewhere I read, “I was hungry and you fed me.”
Somewhere I read, “I was a stranger and you
welcomed me.”
Somewhere I read, “Beware of wolves in sheep’s
clothing who lead the flocks astray.”
Somewhere I read, “Woe to those who deprive the poor
of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed.
Look, I know this is hard. Tough for me too. Part of me
wants to hold back. Play prevent. But Beecher rings
in my ears: the greater sin is silence. And the Church
cannot be silent. The gospel is too beautiful to be
reduced to a politics of fear. God’s kingdom is too vast
to fit within the narrow walls of nationalism. These are
not party lines. They are gospel demands. We will differ
on how to translate these convictions into policy, but
together we must uphold the dignity granted every
human soul by God.
Second Church—what will you choose? Comfort or
costly faith? Narrow allegiance or the Lordship of Jesus
Christ? Will we bow to lesser gods—or stand firm? Will
we shine—or blend into the night?
After worship today, I’ll have an hour to sit with our
eighth-grade confirmands. Twenty kids. You know their
faces. You made promises at their baptisms. Some of
you taught them in Sunday school. You watched them
run our halls, climb these pews. You saw them sit and
sing on these stairs.
Now, they’re asking the ancient questions: Who is God?
What does it mean to follow Jesus? What place will the
Church hold in my life?
They’re asking, and they’re watching. Will they see
a church formed by scripture, even when it costs
comfort? Or a church bending to power, blending in to
avoid attack? What will we choose?
I’m asking you to commit generously to Second
Church today. Your generosity sustains the pastoral
care that holds us together—hospital visits and crisis
counseling, the relationships that span decades. Your
generosity sustains confirmation and worship and
fellowship and formation.
Your generosity sustains our witness beyond these
doors. And all of it, every bit, matters. All of it. It matters
to a five-year-old in the pew decorating an offering
envelope. It matters to a woman adjusting to life in
a retirement home, and to our unhoused neighbors
downtown, and to eighth graders on the second floor.
Not to keep the lights on. Not to pay the bills. But to
sustain a church that chooses courage over comfort,
the vulnerable over convenience, and Christ over every
competing loyalty.
The world does not need Christians who blend in or
build power. It needs Christians made strange by Jesus.
Our city needs a church like that.
Fifty years from now, those twenty teenagers will tell
this story. My sons will tell this story. I think about that
a lot. I’ll be ninety-three. Probably well past preaching.
An old man wondering what difference it all made. Did I
tell the truth or keep the congregation comfortable? Did
we shine—or blend in? Were we bold in our witness or
silent in fear?
I want them to remember that, in this church, we
refused to bow to lesser gods. Christ alone is Lord.
From his prison cell, Paul pleas across centuries: Hold
fast to the word of life. That word runs through the
story of this place. Christ’s call. Beecher’s courage.
Our legacy. The next chapter is yours to write. Hold
fast to faith. Hold fast to courage. Hold fast to the light.
Peculiar people, it is time to shine.