Sermon Notes — October 26, 2025
James 1:17-18, 22-25
A Chorus of Generosity
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
October 26, 2025
I want to start this morning with a huge “thank you” for giving your blessing to my travel plans last weekend. Columbia was kind enough to schedule Family Weekend at the same time as my birthday, so we made the most of both and had a wonderful time.
Thank you also for an absolutely beautiful worship service last Sunday. In the newsletter this week I confessed that I did not watch the worship service live because my children wanted us to bring them bagels and cream cheese for breakfast, and of course we obliged. But the first thing I did Monday morning was watch the service on YouTube. It was breathtaking. And if it was breathtaking on a screen twenty-four hours later, I can only imagine the experience of being here in person. I have heard from so many of you just how wonderful it was, so thank you to everyone who read, who spoke, everyone who sang and played, and to Glenn not just for sharing your gifts with the church last week but for being a wonderful Lay Leader for the whole congregation.
In the past week Terry has referred to last Sunday’s service as a revival. It was refreshing and renewing. It was a chance to remember our identity as God’s beloved children, and also to remember that all of us are ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are all called to share the love of God in Christ wherever we are in both word and in action. And it was a reminder of what a force the Body of Christ can be in the world when we let God’s power and the Holy Spirit’s inspiration flow through us.
If you go into my office, you’ll see that I have a giant calendar on my desk – the flat kind where you look at the whole month at the same time. There’s one month per page, and when the month is over you tear it off and then you look at the next month. Well, this one was on the desk when I arrived, and I have been meaning to throw it out because I don’t use it. Except that the other day I realized that I actually do use it quite a lot. It’s my scratch paper. I jot down ideas, lists and phone numbers. So according to my desk it’s still July 2025 but now I can’t get rid of July 2025 because it has all kinds of important stuff on it.
Including –
Notes that I took while I was watching last Sunday’s service on Monday morning. I’m not much of a note-taker, mostly because I jot down my notes, and whatever I’ve written on I will inevitably lose or throw away. But Monday I took notes on my giant July 2025 notepad, and as I went back and looked at them throughout the week I noticed repeated themes of openness and hospitality – maybe not in those exact words, but the tone was there. More than that, what I heard was openness and hospitality not just because openness and hospitality are nice. Not just because being open and hospitable makes us feel good, or makes other people feel good. But openness and hospitality because you understand that when we are open and hospitable we are actually pointing to the openness and hospitality of God – we become a sign that points to God’s openness and hospitality shared with us through our brother Jesus.
Will you pray with me and for me?
By this time you should have received a letter from me asking you to begin considering how God might be calling you to financially support the ministries of Bethlehem in 2026. In my experience, money and giving are among the least popular topics of conversation in the church. At the same time we also know that as followers of Jesus, our choices about how we spend our money and how we give our money are important parts of our Christian discipleship. And so, in an effort to make this stewardship season as fun and full as possible, we have adopted this theme
Because, you know, everything’s better with music. That said, I hope that you have also participated in our Fall Madness Music Tournament. If you haven’t had a chance to yet, don’t worry – there are plenty of opportunities still coming. Last week you had a chance to nominate your five favorite traditional hymns and your five favorite contemporary worship songs. Today you have the chance to rank your Top 8 favorite Traditional Hymns and your Top 8 Contemporary Worship Songs from among all those that were nominated last week. Be sure you actually rank the hymns and songs in order of your favorite because the ranking actually matters as we create our Sweet 16. We’re going to keep going week by week until we pick our two favorite hymns and our two favorite contemporary worship songs, and we will reveal all four of those in worship on November 16, which is also the day we hope you will bring your pledge cards for 2026 to worship. And if you’re lucky you might also see two pastors in turkey suits. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Any conversation about generosity must begin with God.
James tells us, and Georgie read for us, that
Every good gift–every perfect gift–comes from above. These gifts come down from God, the creator of the heavenly lights, whose character never changes at all.
In the chorus of generosity, God is the composer – God is the creator – of every good and perfect gift. Last weekend for my birthday my family took me to a cute little place called Brooklyn Charm, just a little unassuming space in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. It sounds like what it is – a cute little spot to pick a bracelet and some charms to go on it, and then you take the bracelet and the charms up to the counter, and they make your bracelet for you. My first idea was to decorate my bracelet with birthstones, but then I decided that I wanted Joshua, Clare, and Jay each to pick a charm that would remind me of them, and I picked a charm, and now I have a lovely little piece of jewelry to remind me of my family and the weekend. But of course the gift is not only lovely in itself. It is also a sign. It’s a sign that points to the greater gift – the gift of my family and time to be together, which in turn points to the greatest gift – God’s grace in giving me more than I could ask for or imagine. Every good gift – every perfect gift – comes from above and points us to God’s grace.
God is the creator and giver of every good gift.
James is careful to point out as well that God – the giver of every good and perfect gift – God’s character never changes at all. Early in his letter, James addresses a concern among some early Christians that God was sending challenges in order to test them – that God was putting temptations in their way to see if they were really true followers of Jesus. And so James tells them in verse 13 that
God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one (James 1:13)
And then he goes on in verse 17 to remind his readers that God’s character does not change. Not only has God never tempted anyone, but we can be certain that God will never tempt anyone because God’s character is changeless.
We can take that promise of God’s unchangeableness and apply it in other ways, too, like James does in verse 17. God is above all the giver of every good and perfect gift. And that never changes.
Above all, God is – and always will be – generous.
And because God is the creator of all things – and because God freely gives those things to us – we believe that giving – that generosity – is at the very heart of the universe. It is built into the very fabric of creation. And it follows that if God is generous, we who have known and experienced God’s love are also invited to be generous. Our generosity reflects God’s own generosity. When we are generous, we reflect the very nature of God to the world.
But I’m not telling you something that you don’t already know. You are generous people, and this is a generous congregation. I have never been in a congregation so committed to giving. And I can’t help but believe that your generosity is rooted in your experience of and gratitude for God’s generosity.
Two weeks ago you heard an honest assessment of where we are financially as we near the end of 2025 and start to think about 2026. When I first became aware of the potential shortfall, which was also my first Sunday here at my very first Finance Meeting, my immediate response was, “Let’s tell the congregation. If they know there’s a problem, they’ll do what they can to fix it.” And I stand by that, because I know how important this church family is to all of you, and I know that this congregation is nothing if not generous.
But let’s pray even bigger than closing the gap on a shortfall. Let’s pray for God to reveal what God is doing in our community and let’s pray to have the faith and the courage to join in where God is already at work. If God is the composer, the creator, then let’s ask God where we come in.
There were a couple of things that I heard last Sunday that made me think about what God might be up to, and about how Bethlehem is uniquely situated to be a generous presence in the world.
Gabby said that when her family came to Bethlehem they found people who were down to earth, service-oriented, friendly, and open to new helpers.
Open to new helpers.
Bryan Ward and I had a brief conversation a few weeks ago after church about just this thing – that we are surrounded by people who want to help, who want to do something that makes a difference, who want to pitch in in a way that matters. We are surrounded by people who want a place to be generous and a way to be generous. And I can’t think of any better place to be a generous person than in this church community.
James tells us in verse 22 to be doers of the word and not just hearers. If we just hear what Jesus is calling us to and don’t do anything about it, he says, we’re like people who look at ourselves in a mirror and when we walk away we forget what we just saw. Imagine that we have a community full of people who want to be doers of the word – maybe they wouldn’t put it in those terms, but they want to be generous – they want to feed people who are hungry and provide a warm place to sleep for men who are experiencing homelessness, but they don’t know where or how. And what if we invited them to come and help, to help us set this wide and welcoming table, to help us fulfill the law of love for our neighbors. What if this was the place where people showed up when they wanted a way to be generous.
God has made us into a new creation for a purpose. That’s what James tells us in verse 18. God gives us new birth, makes us into new people, not just so that we can be saved, but so that we can point other people to the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ. We become the sign that points to God’s unchanging generosity, God’s unchanging compassion, and God’s unchanging love for all of God’s creatures.
In these next few weeks, I hope that you will spend time praying about how you will support the ministries of Bethlehem financially in the next year. But I also hope that you will spend time in your own prayer life and as you gather with others in meetings, in Bible studies, and in conversations asking God how we can invite others to come and be generous with us, how we can offer them a place to be helpers alongside us, and how our generosity can be a sign to the world of God’s unchanging, unfailing generosity to the whole world.