Crackers & Grape Juice

Crackers & Grape Juice

Share this post

Crackers & Grape Juice
Crackers & Grape Juice
Unfair

Unfair

God’s unfairness is Good News. For, if God were really fair, fair according to the terms set by the world, then God would’ve closed to the door to the party a long long time ago.

Taylor Mertins's avatar
Taylor Mertins
Oct 20, 2022
∙ Paid
2

Share this post

Crackers & Grape Juice
Crackers & Grape Juice
Unfair
Share

Published in 2019, Crazy Talk: Stories Jesus Told is Crackers & Grape Juice’s attempt to preach on the parables of Jesus. We offer these sermons to preachers and teachers to aid them in preaching and teaching this week’s gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary.

selective focus photography of assorted-color balloons
Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

(This sermon was preached on the occasion of a church’s 60th anniversary. The text was Luke 18.9-14, the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee)

60 years.

That’s a long time.

Basically double my life.

It is a really remarkable thing that this church is celebrating its 60th anniversary. And yet, the entire Christian tradition is 2,000 years old. 60 out of 2,000 sounds a little less impressive. 

However, to live, and survive, in a time such as this is truly worth celebrating. The last 60 years have been marked, much to our chagrin and disappointment, with the decline of the church in America.

But here we are!

And not only are we here, but we are celebrating our being here! We have much to celebrate - not just the anniversary of the church, but also the gospel being made manifest in a place like Woodbridge to those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Seeing as its the church’s anniversary, we can’t really know who we are without knowing where we’ve been.

Cokesbury began in that strange and picturesque time we call the 50’s. In the 50’s everything felt right - we were on the other side of the greatest war ever waged on the earth, and we won. Hawaii and Alaska were added to the union. The Barbie Doll was first introduced.

A gallon of gas only cost 25 cents!

We are inherently a nostalgic people and it is very easy to look back and remember what we might call good. We can turn on an old movie, or remember a particular politician, or even a fashion trend from the past and think fondly of each of them.

However, the 50’s, for whatever good they might’ve introduced, there was an equal number, if not more, of what we could certainly call the bad.

In the late 50’s the first Americans were killed in Vietnam. The Civil Rights movement was spreading across the country and black churches were being regularly bombed on Sunday mornings. And the scapegoat of Communism was causing us to ostracize and at times imprison some of our own citizens.

I once heard someone describe the fifties as a time when everything was black and white and everyone knew right from wrong. And yet, if you just look at a list of major events that took place the year this church started it feels more like a time of gray, when everything was confused.

60 years ago a handful of people from our community started meeting and called themselves Cokesbury Church. To those individuals, the time was ripe for the gospel and the sharing of the Good News, so they did.

But then something changed. It’s not possible to pinpoint exactly what happened, but we all know that we live in a very different world than the world of 1959. In 1959 everyone assumed that you would grow up, get married, have 2.5 children, pay your taxes, and go to church. Business were closed on Sundays because everyone had a church to go to and it was a major moment of the week for all sorts of communities.

That world is long gone.

Which leads us to the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee…

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Crackers & Grape Juice to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Crackers & Grape Juice
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share