The Leander Table | A Podcast from Leander UMC

Is there such a thing as a pointless climb on a hike?

In this episode, our friend and guest preacher Rev. Chris Estus, known on the Appalachian Trail as Bonespur the Chappalachian, joins us for a sermon called "Pointless Ups and Downs." Chris has served as a trail chaplain, and he knows the frustration of long hikes, hard trails, and steep climbs that seem to lead nowhere. Sometimes you reach the top of the mountain, and all you find is a bank of clouds.

Drawing on a song he wrote from those moments, and on Psalm 30, Chris explores a pattern of spiritual transformation described by Richard Rohr in three experiences: order, disorder, and reorder. Life rarely moves in a straight line, and the lows and highs are part of the path, not a detour from it.

Rev. Estus finds that there is indeed no such thing as a pointless up and down.

Is your eye evil because I am generous?

In this episode of A Life Shaped by Jesus: Everyday Discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew, we sit with the parable of the laborers in the vineyard—workers hired at dawn, at noon, at five o'clock, all paid the same generous wage. The ones who worked all day grumble. And the landowner's response, more physical and more pointed than our English translations let on, isn't really about fairness. It's about the eye: is yours evil because of my generosity?

In Jewish thought, the eye wasn't just a window for seeing the world—it shaped how you saw other people. A good eye meant generosity, hope for your neighbor's flourishing, celebration when someone else received good. An evil eye meant scarcity, envy, resentment at another's gain. This sermon asks what's happened to our eyes in a culture built on scarcity, competition, and the fear that someone else's blessing means less for us.

Alongside the prophet Jonah—who resented God's mercy toward Nineveh so much he wished for death—we explore what it means to belong to a covenant built on generosity from the very beginning, and what it might cost us to actually live inside it.

How many times do we have to forgive?

In this episode of A Life Shaped by Jesus: Everyday Discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew, we close out Jesus' community discourse in Matthew 18 with Peter's question about forgiveness—and Jesus' surprising answer: not seven times, but seventy-seven. Through the story of a king who forgives an impossible debt only to watch that forgiveness go unshared, we trace an ancient pattern of unrestrained violence—from Cain to Lamech—that Jesus asks his disciples to reverse with unrestrained forgiveness instead.

But this parable can lead us to uncomfortable places if we read the king simply as God. This sermon pushes past that reading toward something more tender: forgiveness as breath. As air we cannot hoard, air we must breathe out in order to breathe in. Drawing on the Hebrew concept of nefesh—the breath and life within us—this episode explores how our capacity to receive grace is tied to our willingness to extend it, without losing sight of the real need for boundaries and honesty about harm.

We have been given breath. This sermon asks what it looks like to breathe it out.

What if Jesus’ teaching on conflict is not about kicking people out, but about finding ways to bring one another back?

In this episode of A Life Shaped by Jesus: Everyday Discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew, we turn to Matthew 18 and one of the few places in the Gospels where Jesus uses the word we translate as “church.” And where does that word show up? Right in the middle of a teaching about conflict.

Too often, this passage has been used punitively—as a step-by-step process for correction, shame, or exclusion. But in the larger movement of Matthew 18, Jesus is teaching his disciples how to build a community marked by humility, care for the vulnerable, restoration, and relentless grace.

Conflict is real. Harm matters. Boundaries can be faithful and necessary. But the goal of Jesus’ teaching is not separation for its own sake. It is restored relationship, honest accountability, and a community willing to keep choosing one another.

Where two or three are gathered, there may be disagreement, tension, and even divisiveness. But there is also Christ—present among us, calling us back to grace.

What happens when we try to get out in front of God?

In this episode of A Life Shaped by Jesus: Everyday Discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew, we continue in Matthew 16 as Peter moves from confessing Jesus as Messiah to rebuking Jesus for the path he is choosing. Peter wants to protect Jesus from suffering, but in doing so, he becomes an obstacle to the very grace God is bringing into the world.

Through echoes of Genesis, Jonah, and the long pattern of human beings trying to control God’s gifts, this sermon explores what it means to follow Jesus rather than manage him. Like Jonah, Peter is tempted to resist the costly road of mercy. Like so many before him, he receives grace and then tries to take charge of where that grace should go.

But Jesus does not discard Peter. Even after calling him an obstacle, Jesus calls him back into discipleship: “Get behind me.” Not away from me. Behind me. Follow me.

This is the good news for us too. When we get ahead of God, when we try to force outcomes, control the promise, or decide who deserves grace, Jesus invites us back to our place as disciples: walking behind the Rabbi, one faithful step at a time.

What does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord” in a world like this?

In this episode of A Life Shaped by Jesus: Everyday Discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew, we sit with Jesus’ question to his disciples in Matthew 16: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” But Peter says this before the cross, before Easter, before the empty tomb. His confession is based on what he has seen in Jesus’ life.

So what does Peter see?

Someone who notices the overlooked, feeds the hungry, touches the untouchable, tells the truth to power, forgives, widens the circle of grace, and insists that those called disposable are beloved by God.

This sermon asks what our lives say about who we believe Jesus is. In a beautiful, broken, beloved world marked by hunger, fear, division, and loneliness, our confession cannot only be something we say. It must become something people can see.

Every act of mercy, every neighbor loved, every injustice resisted, every table widened, every time we choose grace over fear—we are answering Jesus’ question with our lives.

What do we do when grace presses against the boundaries we inherited?

In this episode, we begin A Life Shaped by Jesus: Everyday Discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew by wrestling with one of the most challenging encounters in the Gospels: Jesus and the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15.

This passage is not easy. A desperate mother cries out for mercy, the disciples want to send her away, and Jesus’ response creates real tension. But her persistence, love, and faith push the story toward healing. Her voice from the edge of the table invites us to ask hard questions about tradition, exclusion, and who we have been taught does or does not belong.

Along the way, we reflect on the Methodist tradition, including the stories of Richard Allen and Jarena Lee, and the ways racism and sexism have wounded the church when we failed to listen to those crying out for mercy.

This story invites us to hold the tension long enough to be changed—and to become people who open the table wider in the name of the God whose grace is never meant to become a cage.

What if Peter didn't sink because he doubted Jesus, but because he doubted himself?

In the final sermon from our Back to Bible School series, we revisit the story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter stepping out of the boat. But this story is not only about storms, fear, or miraculous faith. It is also about discipleship.

In the world of Jesus, a disciple was a talmid—a student who did not simply learn what the rabbi knew, but sought to do what the rabbi did and live the way the rabbi lived. So when Peter sees Jesus walking on the water, he does what disciples do: he follows his rabbi.

And when Peter begins to sink, Jesus reaches out his hand.

This story reminds us that Jesus calls ordinary people—not just the best of the best, not just the most qualified, not just the ones who have it all together—and says, “Come, follow me.” Maybe the invitation is not only to have faith in Jesus, but to trust that Jesus has faith in us too.

This week, guest preacher Renee Purvis invites us to look at the cross not as a sign of divine violence or punishment, but as the fullest expression of God’s love. Rather than understanding atonement as God needing someone to pay a penalty, this message explores the cross as at-one-ment: God drawing near to us, reconciling us, and revealing a love strong enough to meet suffering, sin, and death with mercy.

In the cross, we see not a God who demands harm, but a God who enters the depths of human pain to bring healing, restoration, and new life.

What if belonging is not the reward for transformation, but the beginning of it?

In this episode of Back to Bible School, we revisit the familiar Sunday School story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19—the “wee little man” who climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus. But beneath the song is a much deeper story about wealth, corruption, exclusion, grace, and restoration.

Zacchaeus is not simply a disliked outsider. He is a chief tax collector, a man who has profited from a system that harms his own community. And yet, when Jesus sees him, Jesus does not begin with condemnation or conditions. He begins with belonging: “Come down. I’m staying at your house today.”

That welcome does not excuse the harm Zacchaeus has caused. It transforms him. The man who took becomes a man who gives. The man who accumulated wealth becomes a man who restores what was broken. This is what grace does: it sees us, welcomes us, and invites us into a new way of living.