Did God Plant This Mess? | Beneath the Steeple

Did God Plant This Mess? | Beneath the Steeple

Every gardener knows the frustration: good seed, careful soil, straight rows — and still, by midsummer, something growing that nobody planted. It's a small, earthy image, but it opens onto one of the oldest questions we carry: if the world is this tangled, did God plant this mess? In this sermon on Jesus' parable of the wheat and the weeds, Pastor Hans wrestles with that question honestly and finds in Jesus' own answer a word of patience, justice, and grace — the promise that the one who planted the good seed is also the one who will bring in the harvest.

Lectionary 15 | Beneath the Steeple

What would it take for a mother to forgive the teenager who killed her son? And what does that have to do with you? In this episode, Pastor Hans Becklin takes one of the most remarkable true stories of forgiveness you'll ever hear and places it alongside one of the most powerful declarations in all of Scripture — Romans 8:1: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Whether you're a lifelong churchgoer or you haven't set foot in a sanctuary in years, this sermon has something worth hearing. Pull up a chair. We're glad you're here.

Lectionary 14 | Beneath the Steeple

On America's 250th birthday, Pastor Hans preaches on a nation that wrote the truest sentence about human dignity — "endowed by their Creator" — and has been struggling to live up to it ever since. Drawing from Jesus's invitation in Matthew 11, he names the exhaustion underneath our cultural moment for what it is: the crushing weight of self-justification. And he points to the only rest that no election, platform, or anniversary can deliver. A timely word for a weary people. #TrinityReading #SermonPodcast #FaithAndCulture #Lutheran #RestInChrist #FourthOfJuly

Lectionary 13 | Beneath the Steeple

"Putting on Christ is not just a costume. It is a whole identity." Matthew 10:40-42 Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple— truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

Lectionary 12 | Beneath the Steeple

"In Christ, there is no such thing as a little gesture. Even a cup can carry the kingdom." Gospel: Matthew 10:24-39 "A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! "So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. "Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."