Modern Worship | February 28, 2026 | Resurrection Online

33:55 Well, this Lent, we are walking with Jesus through the final week of his life. Last week, we began the Lenten season with Palm Sunday. On Sunday of Holy Week, Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. He overturned the money changers' tables and those who were selling merchandise, selling doves for sacrifice, and he drove them out of the temple. And by the time he left the temple that day, the religious establishment was furious and wondering what had just happened. and we're plotting already against him. So now we turn to Monday of Holy Week, Monday of that final week of Jesus' life. And he's gonna make his way from Bethany back to the temple. Let me just show you once more. This is a map of Jerusalem. This is the top of the Mount of Olives over here. There's Bethany. He's gonna come down the Mount of Olives, this time not riding a donkey, as near as we can tell. And he makes his way back over. And this was, all of this was the temple courts in that time.

34:49 Let me take a little closer look here with you. So this is the Dome of the Rock, but in Jesus' day, the temple would have been standing here in this area right here. You've got the Kidron Valley over here. This is where Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. The temple courts where he would have taught would have been right around this area here. And this is where the merchants had once been. So what we want to look at today is what Jesus says and does at that time. And I want to encourage you, if you have a Bible, go ahead and get it out. I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 21. and we're going to start with what happens when Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, on his way to the temple from Bethany where he'd spent the night. And this is what we read. Early in the morning as Jesus was returning to the city, he was hungry. He saw a fig tree along the road, but when he came to it, he found nothing except leaves. Then he said to it, you'll never again bear fruit. And the fig tree dried up at once. Now, I want to just pause and recognize most of us when we read that story, we feel sorry for the fig tree.

35:45 I mean, I do. I read it like, wow, that's just so out of character for Jesus. he's really ticked off because he's hungry, and the fig tree doesn't have any fruit on it. By the way, one thing to know about fig trees, this fig tree had leaves but no fruit. So, fig trees produce fruit first, and then the leaves come. So, when you find a fig tree with leaves but no fruit, there's something wrong with that particular tree. That's not how it's supposed to happen. And so, Jesus comes to the tree, he's hungry, and it would have been green, kind of nasty tasting figs anyway, but you know, he's looking at it and there's nothing there to eat. So he curses the fig tree. Now the disciples don't get the point. They are surprised that the fig tree withered so fast. They say, how could this happen? How did you, how did you, you know, curse the fig tree and it died instantly? They totally missed the point. But then Jesus goes on to teach them a different point. You know, whatever you ask for by faith, amazing things can happen. But the point of this wasn't about, I mean, the point of Jesus doing this wasn't about having faith, that's a secondary point, Jesus was actually enacting. He was living out a parable, which is what the prophets often did in the Old Testament. They would do things. They would physically enact. They would physically display the message from God. And that's what Jesus is doing here. And in some ways, it ties back into what happened in the book of Jonah. You may remember the story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, and then he's erped up onto dry land. And he goes to the city of Nineveh, and he preaches for them to repent, and they do. And he's mad because he hoped God would destroy all the Ninevites.

37:10 And then he's sitting out there pouting and God causes a bush to grow up and give him shade because it's hot out there. And so suddenly, you know, the bush gives him shade and he's at least feeling a little relief, but he's still ticked off at God for, you know, forgiving the Ninevites. And then God sends a worm to destroy the bush that he'd made. And then, you know, Jonah's really mad that the bush is destroyed. And God says, hey, don't you understand? You're mad about a little bush I made grow for one day and killed the next day. But, you know, you wanted me to take out all of these people in the city of Nineveh, including their animals. Like it was a, you know, God was teaching Jonah by the, you know, by the bringing up or raising up quickly of a bush that gave him shade and then taking it away. This is what's happening here is Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and this is setting the stage for everything else that Jesus is going to say over the next couple of days. He finds a fig tree. It has no fruit on it when it's supposed to have fruit. All right, so I want us to think about that for a moment.

38:07 This is a picture of what God is expecting of us, what Jesus was hoping for from humankind, and that is that we might bear fruit. This theme shows up over and over and over again in Matthew's gospel. In Matthew chapter three, John the Baptist is preaching, and he says, every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. He's saying, listen, you are, he's preaching to all of these people who came out to be baptized by him in the Jordan, And he's saying, you are meant to produce fruit, meant to produce fruit. Then we go on to the Sermon on the Mount and we read every good tree, this is Jesus now in Matthew 7, every good tree produces good fruit and every rotten tree produces rotten fruit or bad fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit and a rotten tree can't produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. The same thing that John the Baptist had said, therefore you will know them by their fruit. So Jesus is saying, you know, humans, we as God's people are known by our fruit.

39:06 Humans are known by their fruit. So when he's talking about these, he's saying, you know, if you're rotten to the core, you're not gonna produce good fruit. If you are changed inside, you're meant to produce good fruit. You're meant to not simply be changed, but to actually produce, to be a productive part of God's people, to produce good fruit. Matthew 12, we read, consider the tree good and its fruit good, or consider the tree rotten and its fruit rotten. a tree is known by its fruit. So you see this theme just is picked up all the way through the Gospel of Matthew. And I was thinking about this idea of a tree and rotten fruit and good fruit and, you know, what kind of fruit we produce. And so we're meant to produce fruit. And the first question I would ask you is, are you producing fruit? Are you a productive human being? Not by, in terms of how much work you get done, but in terms of impacting positively the world around you? Are you a productive, are you a fig tree with no figs or are you bearing fruit?

40:04 Second thing is, is the fruit that you're bearing good or rotten, right? So there's some kind of fruit that you're not supposed to eat. I was thinking about a particular tree that grows in a Southern North American, a Northern Southern American. It's called the mancaneel tree. I think that's how you say it, mancaneel tree. And here's a picture of a mancaneel tree. So the fruit you see on the left will make you very, very sick. It actually, not very many people died from it, but it certainly will make you very sick. And so if people know they have a manconeal tree there, you see signs like this, manconeal fruit is poisonous. And so I was looking up on the Wikipedia site just to find out what happens when you actually eat manconeal fruit. So this is what it says. When ingested, the fruit is reportedly pleasantly sweet at first. Now I'm not gonna try this to see if this is true, but pleasantly sweet at first, with a subsequent strange peppery feeling, gradually progressing to a burning, tearing sensation and a tightness of the throat.

41:00 Symptoms continue to worsen until the patient can barely swallow solid food because of the excruciating pain. Now, that's a pretty great metaphor for how we are sometimes as humans. There are humans who produce toxic fruit, right? The result, the impact of our lives on other people makes them sick or it hurts them, right? And so the question is, are people blessed by the fruit that you produce? Are you positively impacting other people's lives? Or are you producing toxic fruit that leaves people hurt and wounded off to the side because they had an encounter with you? All right, so Jesus notes in the Last Supper in John that we are to bear fruit that will last. And when he says this, bear fruit that will last, he goes on to say the fruit that he's looking for is that we follow his commandments, that we obey his commandments. So part of what we do as Christians and we try to figure out what did Jesus teach us to do and then we try to do that.

41:55 And the Lenten season is that time when we're really intentional. Lord, what did you teach and how do I live that out? But then Jesus goes on to say this. He says, and this is my commandment that you love one another, right? So he's saying, follow my commandments. The fruit I'm looking for is you follow my commandments and this is the chief among those commandments that you love one another. And I just remind you of this. Love is ultimately defined by agape. Agape is the New Testament word for the kind of love Jesus is asking for, and that's defined by kindness, compassion, and humble service towards other people. So I just want to ask you, are you producing the fruit of kindness, compassion, humble service towards other people? Are you a giver or a taker? And are people blessed because they're around you and with you, or are they harmed by you? This week, Pastor Cheryl Jefferson Bell was speaking to our staff. She's our pastor of Community Justice.

42:48 And she shared something that just moved me. I wrote it down very quickly. She was quoting Cornel West. Now, she was speaking because this is Black History Month. And as she was speaking, she quoted Cornel West, the famous philosopher and theologian. And he said this, justice is what love looks like in public. Just like tenderness is what love feels like in private. Justice, that's fairness. That's compassion. That's concern for other people. Justice is what love looks like in public. I just thought that was powerful. So again, is your life bearing good fruit? Is the world better because you were here? That's part of what we're meant to ask when we come to the parable, really the lived out parable of the fruit tree, the fig tree that was cursed. Okay, from there, I want you to turn, if you would, we're gonna skip the parables of judgment that Jesus has. You're going to have a chance to read them using the GPS this week.

43:40 Some other time, I hope to preach on those. They're very powerful. and they pick up on some of these same themes. But I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 22, verse 15 in your Bible. And there we read that the Pharisees, then the Pharisees met together to find a way to trap Jesus in his words. Met together to find a way to trap Jesus in his words. All right, so at the end of the sermon, I'm gonna talk to you about a big announcement I made in my e-note this last Friday about possibly considering a run for the United States Senate from the state of Kansas. I'll talk more about that at the very end of my sermon today. But I've been learning things in the process. LaVonna and I have been discerning, talking. We've been, you know, talking to people. And I'm learning stuff I'd never known about politics. So at one point, somebody said to me a couple of weeks ago, well, if you finally announce that you're running, or maybe even when you announce that you're thinking about it, you're probably going to have a tracker assigned to you by, you know, by the opposition. I'm like, what are you talking about?

44:34 A tracker? You mean like a tracker? You mean like an air tag? Or is this something that's like on my phone? Or what is this? They say, oh, no, no, a tracker is somebody who's assigned you, a person who's assigned to you. And they come to all the things, all the times you're speaking, they come and they try to trip you up with their questions. They ask you questions that are like trick questions that are meant to trip you up. And then they film it so that they can use that to make you look stupid. I'm like, oh man, I know about that. Jesus had trackers. Jesus had people. So the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians, they said, let's figure out how to make him look stupid. Let's figure out how to get him to say something that will alienate his followers. That's what's happening in Matthew chapter 22. So here are the three questions. Let's just walk through them really quickly. The questions that these Pharisees, Sadducees, the Herodians, ask Jesus to try to trip him up. Here's the first one.

45:25 Tell us then, what is your opinion, Jesus? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Now, the question was brilliant because, you see, the imperial tax was something most people really hated. They were paying a tax to support the Roman apparatus that was in the Holy Land. That included the Roman soldiers that they didn't want to have there anyway. So few people liked paying the Roman taxes. Some of them didn't mind so much. And then, you know, there were tax collectors who collected the taxes. And, you know, the tax collectors weren't particularly loved people. And they were collaborators with the Romans. And so here's this idea that, you know, that, you know, Jesus is being asked, is it right? Is it lawful? Is it appropriate for us to pay taxes to Caesar? And by the way, most people resent that payment of taxes. And then there are a certain group of people like the zealots who are going to do everything they can not to pay the taxes. And actually, sometimes they'll go so far as to kill tax collectors or beat tax collectors or kill the Roman soldiers. And so whatever Jesus says, if Jesus says, yes, it's okay to pay taxes to Caesar, then you're going to have a whole lot of people who are pretty perturbed to Jesus because he's coming to Jerusalem riding on a donkey, you know, giving the sign that he is the coming king, and they're expecting he's going to raise up an army and a rebellion against the Romans. So he can't say, yes, it's lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. But if he says, no, it's not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, then the Romans are going to look at him and they're going to say, well, look, he's coming and he's actually teaching them to rebel against us. We better arrest him now.

46:51 I mean, Jesus is, it's, you know, darned if you do and darned if you don't, but that's what they've try to do with Jesus in this moment. And I love what Jesus says. So it's a kind of a poison pill, but I love what Jesus says. He says, you hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax. They brought him a denarius and he asked them, whose image is this? And whose inscription? Caesar's, they replied. Then he said to them, so give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God, what is God's? All right. It's a really great statement he makes and it's hard to respond to that. I have a coin here, actually, one of the Roman denarii, from the time of Jesus. In fact, you can see it on the screen. There's an image, one. And on the front side is Tiberius Caesar, who is the emperor when Jesus is crucified. On the backside is the Roman goddess Pax for peace. She's the goddess of peace. And so whose image is on this?

47:43 Well, the image on here is the emperor's. So give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor. I mean, it was kind of hard to argue with his logic. But part of what I love that he's doing here is he is saying to them, these coins with the Roman emperor's face on it, why do you even have it anyway? You're not to have anything with a graven image, but you've got the graven image already. And listen, here's another part of what he's saying is, it seems to me, is he's saying, you know, there are lawful rules. There is the payment of taxes and you're meant to do this. That is just a part of, unfortunately, the world that we're living in is you're gonna have to pay taxes. And he goes on to say, but render to God what belongs to God. Now, the coin was made, He asks, whose image is on the coin? It's the emperor's. Do you remember what Genesis says about us, about us as humans? It says that we were created in the image of God. So the coin was created in the image of the emperor, but you as a human were created in the image of God.

48:39 So render to God what belongs to God. That is your heart, your life, your allegiance, your all. Give your all your allegiance to God. And then if you gotta pay taxes, you gotta pay taxes. This is what you're gonna do. And so I love this. And the question that we're really meant to ask is, are we rendering to God what is God's? Are we actually giving God our heart, our soul, our mind, our all? Now, this idea that we belong to two kingdoms I think is really important. So we belong to the kingdoms of this earth. Most of us are citizens in the United States. This is our earthly kingdom. And our task is to, we try to live according to the laws. We try to make the laws better if we need to. We try to work to do as good as we can with the country that we live in. So we're citizens of this country. But our ultimate destiny is not this earth. It's the kingdom of heaven. And I think about this.

49:31 We use this a lot here at Resurrection, but this idea of the world as it is, and I'll just show you, this is the world as it is, the world as it is, and the world as it's supposed to be, or as it should be. Well, Jesus gives us a picture of that. That's the kingdom of heaven. That's our ultimate destiny. That's our final home. This is the world as we find it today. And what we're gonna find is the world as it is is nowhere close to the world as it should be. And we talk about this a lot here at Resurrection. So part of our task is to close the gap. Part of our task is to try to not only pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, but it's actually lived that way, to go about our daily lives producing fruit that helps the world that we live in look more like the kingdom of God. I'm reminded in Hebrews chapter 11, these words, this is the great faith chapter. And the author of Hebrews is saying in here, he's describing all these great saints of old who had deep faith and trusted in God.

50:25 And then he says this, he says, they confessed that they were strangers and immigrants on earth. That is that this is not their final home. They are longing for a better country that is a heavenly one, a better country, a heavenly one. So we know that we live here, but we are strangers in a strange land. We are immigrants or foreigners here. We're gonna live here our entire lives. We're gonna make the best of it. We're gonna love this earth. God gave it to us. We're going to take care of it. We're going to look around in this kingdom that we're a part of, and we're going to say, how do we make it better? That's part of our task. It doesn't matter whether you run for politics or not. We look around and we see, how do we make this country that we live in better? And then we look and see, what does it look like for it to be better? Well, we look at the world as it should be, as we find it in Scripture, as Jesus describes the kingdom of God. Surrender to Caesar what is Caesar's. You've got to do your part as a citizen in this world. And you also look to see, how do we make this world look more like the kingdom of God?

51:21 How do we close the gap? All right, that leads to a second question. And in this case, so his critics were silenced. The Pharisees were silenced. And so next come the Sadducees. Now, the Sadducees were sort of the upper crust among the religious elites in Jerusalem. And they did not believe in the resurrection. So they only believed in the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. Everything else was fine, but it wasn't sacred text. They believed in the Torah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They also, again, did not believe in the resurrection because you don't find that in those first five books of the Bible. And so they come to Jesus and they're gonna try to trip him up and they know that the Pharisees believe in the resurrection. Jesus seems to believe in the resurrection. And so this is the question they ask. Oh, by the way, before I get to the question they ask, a little background information. In Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses five and six, we read these words.

52:13 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man's wife must not go outside the family and marry a stranger. Instead, her brother-in-law should go take her, to go to her and take her as his wife and then produce offspring for, you know, in place of the deceased brother. So this was called the Liberite Law. And that was, again, if you in your family, your brother dies, you must go and marry his wife. Now you might already have a wife. They practiced polygamy at the time. And so, but you need to marry her. You need to provide an offspring. You need to be with her so that maybe she can have a child. And then that child takes your brother's place. So this is the question that comes up. The Sadducees say, so Jesus, let me just say, we once had a man around here who died and his wife didn't have, you know, they didn't have children. And so his brother married her and they didn't have children and he died.

53:07 And so then the next brother, and altogether he had seven brothers. I mean, there were seven brothers and each one of them, you know, had their turn marrying this woman. and none of them produced offspring. And they made it sound like it actually had happened. Probably it was a totally make-believe story. But each one was married to her at some point. So now in the resurrection, Jesus, because you believe in the resurrection, you believe in life everlasting. So in the resurrection, tell us which one will be her, you know, which one will be her husband? I mean, it's such a fun question. At the resurrection, you know, which one will be her husband? And Jesus says, you know, you're mistaken because you don't understand the scriptures. Wow, what a thing to say to the Sadducees. You don't understand the scriptures. And then he says, at the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They will be like the angels in heaven. What exactly does this mean? I do not know exactly. But when I think about this, I think, first of all, we encounter this question when anybody loses their spouse and then they remarry, right?

54:08 And then now you have a second mate. and maybe never as much love as you had with the first mate, maybe more love with the second mate, who knows. But when you get to heaven, how's that gonna work out? And what Jesus is saying is, you don't really understand in heaven, it's not like here on earth. And then we gotta stretch our brains to try to understand. And I'm not sure I fully understand, but here's what I think he's saying when he says, we'll be like the angels in heaven. He's saying, we're gonna have a different kind of body. We are not gonna reproduce. We're not gonna have children in heaven. And see, many people believed in Jesus' day that the afterlife would continue much like the current life. In fact, some taught that women would still have babies, but just there would be no pain in childbirth. Jesus is saying, no, it's not gonna be like that. It's not gonna be people having babies. It's not gonna be people having physical intimacy in the way we do. Our heavenly bodies are not gonna be wired for that. Our current bodies are, and our drives are such so that we can reproduce. Not gonna do that in heaven.

55:01 And so when I think about this, I love LaVon more than I've loved her ever in my life. I love her more today than ever. And I love the fact that she is my wife and that we have a chance to be intimate. We have a chance to just, you know, to love holding hands and to care for one another. And I don't want to share her or she, me. That's just our faithfulness is we're together. And when I get to heaven and, you know, I kind of hope that we both die at the same time, you know, of a massive heart attack, you know, when we're 95 years old or 100 years old, you know, we both go together. It probably won't happen that way. But so I prayed, Lord, help me to live longer than she is so she doesn't have to live with the grief and help me to take care of her to the very end. I don't know if that'll happen, but that's my hope and prayer. But when we get to heaven, I'm counting on the fact that I'm still gonna love her like crazy. It's just that now I'm gonna love other people that way too. I'm gonna have the capacity to love. And I think about our dearest friends, the people that we're closest to.

55:54 There's no romantic exchange in there with my closest friends, but there is a closeness and a connection. And what would happen if the same kind of connection that we can have, the same deep friendship I have with LeVon, I can have with other people, I will have with other people, and they will have with me, but no romance, no jealousy, no physical intimacy, but instead just people in deep friendship and companionship with one another. I think that's what Jesus was saying, but I won't really know until we get to heaven because it's just not fully clear. What I think is clear is that when we get to heaven, that we are gonna be, Paul says, we will be known as we are known, that we will have those same friendships and relationships, take away all the things that make us jealous or exclusive to one another or having to do with sexuality and you find just deep, close relationships, friendships. And I'm counting on that with Levon for the rest of my life. All right, so that leads to a third commandment and that is, it comes this way.

56:51 Not a third commandment, but a third question. So hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, so what could they say to that? They had nothing to say. So hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees The Pharisees got together once more, and one of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Now, all the Jews were clear about the first great commandment. So Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5 says, Hear, O Israel, Shema Israel, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. That's how it is in Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5. So with all your heart, soul, and strength. Now, every faithful Jew is supposed to say that every day. Maybe more. Maybe I believe that faithful Jews will say that before they go to bed at night. The hope is that's the last word on your lips or on your mind before you die if you're a faithful Jew. This is the chief and most important commandment. Love God with everything that's within you.

57:43 Heart, soul, and strength. Now, it's interesting. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus changes that one. He says, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, or all your soul, and with all your mind. Now, Luke adds both mind and strength, but here in Matthew, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind. And mind, I've taught you before, is deanoia. It's a Greek word that means to practice critical thinking. It's to think through things. And I love the fact, you know, we've talked about here at Resurrection, we are a church where you don't check your brain at the door when you walk in. You're meant to ask questions. It's okay to struggle with doubts and to have questions and to wonder. That's part of how we grow is by having doubts and asking questions. And so we're meant to think critically. We're meant to read scripture and we're meant to bring our critical thinking skills to scripture. We're meant to bring our critical thinking skills to theologizing and to our spiritual life. And so I love the fact that Jesus changed strength to deanoia, to critical thinking, to the mind.

58:44 All right, so that's the first great commandment. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul or all your being and with all your mind. And then the second great commandment he says is like to the first. Now, you remember, this is in Leviticus 19.18. And here's where the Jewish people, there was some debate about what commandment comes after the first one, right? And so Leviticus 19.18 is actually kind of a minor scripture in the Torah. It's not one that you would have, it's not right there in Deuteronomy next to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength. So Jesus goes and he pulls out this commandment and he says, this one summarizes all of the rest of the commandments towards other people. And here it is. In fact, why don't you read this with me? Let's put it up on the screen. You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Now, this is a powerful, powerful word. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. This is what it means to be human.

59:36 We're created for fellowship with God and to find our identity in God, but we're created to love our neighbor, which takes us back to the fig tree, right? So the fig tree, there's a fig tree with leaves. Like it's all, I remember one bishop was, two bishops were sitting together in a church service ages ago and they were listening to a young preacher and that young preacher was just blasted away and a lot of vitality and excitement and plenty of energy. And the one bishops leaned to the other and said, hey, he's a pretty good preacher. And the bishop said, well, you know what? He's got a lot in the showroom, but not much in the storeroom. like there's a lot of you know heat and energy but there's not much depth underneath that or all show and no go or in the case of a fig tree a fig tree with plenty of leaves but no figs on it and so you know again here we go what's the second great commandment what does it mean to bear fruit we learn Jesus says this is fruit that you obey my commandments and and the number one commandment is that you love one another and here we go what does it mean you And what's the greatest commandment?

1:00:46 Well, the second greatest commandment, like to the first, is you love not only God, but you love your neighbors, you love yourself. You agape them. You serve, you bless, you care for, you show compassion, you show mercy, you're showing kindness to people. This is what we were made for. And Jesus goes on to say, all the law and the prophets hinge on these two commandments. I don't know what this looks like for you. I know on a daily basis, we would do very well if we woke up every morning and said, Lord, help me to love my neighbors. I love myself. Right, if we looked around at the people and just said, how can I bear good fruit, not toxic fruit? How am I life-giving to other people? Right, I try to do that. I know I fail at it a million times, but this is part of my aim every day is when I get up, like, Lord, please use me today. Make me a blessing to other people. Help me to, and using this language, Help me to be a fruitful follower of yours. I got to see a picture of that this last Monday.

1:01:42 So my mom lives in an assisted living center in Olathe. And I went to see her. I went to take Panera dinner to her. And we had a nice dinner. And we were talking about stories and her childhood. And then we went out to walk. I said, hey, mom, let's get some exercise. Let's go walk. So we walked down the hallways, down one wing. And then we came back. And then we walked down another wing and came back. But this is what I noticed. My mom stopped. this is in the evening, probably seven o'clock at night. Everybody's done. They're in their rooms mostly, but she's walking down the hallway and every staff person, she talks to them. Every one of them, she says, I so appreciate how you care for us. I'm, you know, and she's with her walker walking down the way. She might see a resident who was coming by and she knew some of their names. And we got to one of the dining rooms and there's a man named Gary who was sitting there and he was in a wheelchair. And she says, hey, Gary, you know, this is my son. And she said, now, are you need any chocolate? And my mom told me later, she said, Gary doesn't talk very much, but if you can get him to talk, he often will ask for chocolate. And so she said, you know, I try to go and get chocolate for him and bring it back to him. And I'm just watching this and I'm just so touched by my mom, you know, and how, you know, in this stage in her life and in this place where she's living, she's focusing on how do I bless other people? How do I care for other people? How do I lift them up? How do I say kind words to them? How do I know she knew people and what their, you know, how it was that they would respond to things and trying to figure out how she could be salt and light at Evergreen, how she could care for her neighbor and love her neighbor as she loved herself.

1:03:14 When we got back to her room, she said, you know what, Adam? People from Resurrection came by the other day. That's one of the places our members visit. And she said it was Valentine's and they brought Valentine's for us and they had Valentine's that children had made. And here's my Valentine. Now this is a week later, but she's still got her Valentine. Here's a picture. I snapped this and I snapped it so I could share it with the team that does this. And I just want to say, you know, the kids and the people who brought these over, you know what they were doing? They were loving their neighbors. They love themselves, right? And my mom was one of those neighbors who was blessed by somebody else coming in to love on her and care for her. And some child who had made out that, you know, that I think it was a child made out her Valentine's. She still got it there by her walker. So I want to close by asking this question one more time. are you a fig tree with only leaves or are you bearing fruit?

1:04:09 And I wanna call you to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God and to not forget that the prime directive for us and how we live our lives towards other people is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Let's pray. God, we thank you so much for everything. We thank you, Jesus, for the way you walked among us. On that Monday, you passed the fig tree and you made quite a dramatic picture of what you want us to know, that we are meant to bear fruit, not to be all show and no go. We thank you that you went into the temple facing people, trackers, people who were there ready to trip you up and you had such wisdom. And we pray that you would help us to render to Caesar what's Caesar's, but to render to God what is God's. Help us, oh Lord, to trust that whatever happens in the afterlife, it's gonna be good and awesome. And we pray, oh Lord, that you would help us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. in your holy name. Amen.

1:05:03 It's been such a joy to worship God with you today. Thank you so much for being here. I wanna encourage you to be back next week. So this was Monday of Holy Week. Next week, we're gonna follow Jesus on Tuesday to see what he said, what he taught in the temple courts. And you won't wanna miss it. I also wanna remind you, next week is daylight savings time. And so in the springtime, we spring forward. So don't forget to set your clocks forward on Saturday night so that you make sure you're at church on time. And if you worship online or on TV, of course, set your clocks forward too because the times will be based upon the new springtime. So anyway, it's been a joy to worship God with you. I'd like to invite you to bow with me for our closing prayer. Lord, send us forth from this place that we might be fruitful Christians, that we might bear much fruit, that we might close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it's supposed to be, that we might be people who remember and reflect this truth, that we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

1:05:56 In your holy name.