Becoming Chefs in God's Kitchen

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Feast of Pentecost on Saturday, July 7, 2025.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Joy of Cooking

How many people here like to cook? I didn't say good at cooking; I just mean enjoy it. A good number of you do, and that's wonderful. Plenty of you don't, and that's perfectly fine too. Cooking is one of those amazing things. You can take things that grow, apply heat, mix them up, grind them, and create so many different dishes. It's almost like magic, or even better, like science. Follow a recipe, and you can generally get pretty good results.

That said, you've all followed recipes that are incomplete, haven't you? You think it's your fault when things go wrong. But when the recipe is good, it produces a reliable result. Experienced cooks, however, don't always follow recipes exactly. They know when it matters to follow the recipe perfectly and when they can get away with a little flexibility. They adjust to the situation.

For example, my wife, when she makes chili, puts V8 in it. Has anybody else ever heard of that? I think it's delicious. If you haven't tried a chili recipe with V8, you should. It's awesome. Sometimes, though, she finds there's not enough V8 to fulfill the recipe's requirement. Instead of opening another bottle, she'll adjust by adding a bit more tomato sauce, some water, a little salt, and some chili powder. Pretty soon, it might even be better than the original.

How does she do that? It's not because she followed a recipe strictly. I'm not even sure there's a substitution table for V8. She does it through experience. She's a really good cook, and I'm very blessed. There's a reason why I'm the size I am—my wife is an excellent cook.

Discipleship as Cooking

Discipleship is like cooking in this way. When we start as disciples of Jesus Christ, we need a recipe to follow. Have you ever noticed that we follow the same pattern of things every week in church? We have unusual events from time to time, but generally, we stick to a familiar structure.

Here's our typical worship pattern:

• Confession and absolution
• Greeting
• A Kyrie or Glory to God
• Prayer of the day
• Readings (Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle, Gospel—usually standing for the Gospel)
• Sermon
• Hymn
• Confession of faith in the creed
• Sharing of the peace
• Offering
• Holy Communion

We follow this pattern where we're gathered, receive the Word of God, are nourished by the Word made flesh in Holy Communion, and then are sent out into the world. We always end with, "Go in peace, serve the Lord. Thanks be to God." You all know this. It's a recipe we follow regularly because following a recipe does something.

Learning Through Repetition

When you're a cook starting out, you follow the recipe. If you don't get it right, it's often because you didn't follow it correctly. Then, when you're in a different situation or something doesn't go as expected, you can improvise, and it works. Similarly, as disciples of Jesus, we start with a recipe. That's what we do when we gather for worship. We're using the recipe, going through those well-worn paths, making patterns in our minds that prepare us for when things don't go according to plan.

We're making it possible for the Spirit to change our hearts and shape us into the people He's calling us to be as followers of Jesus. That recipe is very directive:

Pray this. Do this. Stand up. Sit down.

Repent. Confess. Be absolved. Receive.

Pentecost: Growing into Relationship

As we grow in discipleship, when things go wrong, we are not shipwrecked or thrown off course. When we run into unexpected challenges—someone gets sick, there's a tragedy in the family, you lose a pet, receive bad news from a family member, or get into a fight with your parents—the routine of worship, the recipe of the Spirit at work among us, becomes the means we use to interpret that new reality and respond.

That's what it means to grow in discipleship—to move away from mechanistic thinking because it starts to change who we are. It becomes less about going through the motions and more like a relationship, less like following a recipe and more like a master chef addressing whatever comes their way with grace because of experience.

That's the kind of relationship God is calling us to today on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit reminds us that what God really wants for us is to grow into a relationship with Him. That doesn't mean we've got it all figured out or that we all start in the same place.

Some of us are following that recipe, trying to do the good things exactly right because we know the way we've been living before wasn't working, but this does. We continue to follow that recipe. Over time, as we change, adapt, and grow, we're more equipped to do what needs doing and respond to the unexpected.

If we grow and change through the simple acts of discipleship, we become who God is creating us to be. If we don't grow, we remain stuck and might become excellent recipe followers. But God's looking for chefs.

From Slavery to Adoption

Today in our reading from Romans, St. Paul reminds us that the purpose of God sending His Word and Spirit is not to make us slaves, doing everything exactly as someone said long ago, nor to make us merely rule followers captive to a new law, but rather to make us sons and daughters, part of the family.

He describes it this way: there is a spirit of slavery from which we have been taken and a spirit of adoption into which we have been placed. We have moved from a spirit of slavery that says you must follow these rules in these ways at these times or else—a slavery to sin, fear, law, and death—and into a spirit of adoption where we can gather and rejoice because God has rescued us through Jesus Christ and has put us in His kingdom.

The law shows us our sin. The law is not bad, but it demonstrates that we are sinners in need of a Savior. The law cannot set us free. Indeed, we know that sin abounds in us—all of us stand under accusation.

By the way, do you ever wonder where we get the name for the devil, Satan? The word Satan is a Hebrew word that means accuser—"hasatan," the accuser. The accuser stands and points and says, "You do not live according to God's law. You are not good enough. You have not saved yourself. This one is not worthy."

But then we can boldly say, "This is true. By my own power, might, righteousness, goodness, or blessing, I am not worthy of the Lord Jesus. But it is not upon my righteousness but upon the righteousness of Christ. Yes, I am not worthy through the standards of the law. I do not love the Lord my God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. I do not love my neighbor as myself perfectly as I ought. But yet, the Lord Jesus Christ has claimed me and bought me with the price of His precious blood and has made me His own."

An Advocate by Our Side

So now here we are, standing before the throne of God today, and we should not feel ashamed. For the Lord Jesus has sent us His advocate. In Romans and John, we translate it as advocate. The word there, paraclete, means advocate, helper, guide. He stands beside us. He defends us. He teaches us.

If there is a prosecuting attorney pointing at us saying, "You are not worthy," the defense is the Holy Spirit standing beside us saying, "Ah, but Your Honor, by the grace of Your Son, this one should be saved." Yes, there is a prosecutor, but we have a defense attorney. Yes, the road ahead is confusing, but we have a mapmaker. Yes, the burden we carry is heavy, but we have a helper, an advocate, a guide who walks with us through this life.

God has come in the Holy Lord Jesus Christ to redeem us, and now He gives us His Holy Spirit—first as a recipe writer calling us to deeper understanding and discipleship, freeing us from our sins so that we are freed to move about in the world with confidence and hope.

Over time, as we move through the lessons of worship and daily discipleship, we internalize the lessons that recipe teaches us. When life throws us a curveball or we run out of V8, we can adapt. Much of the church's life together is a recipe—paths repeatedly walked, prayers repeatedly said, songs repeatedly sung—but these things are given to us as a starting point for the Spirit's work, a recipe upon which God builds His church.

God gives us as sons and daughters to raise us up in His family, to change us, to free us—not to be excellent recipe followers but to be artists in the kitchen of God's world. So, people of Christ, welcome to the church—a cooking school for the soul, the birthplace of an art of living, comfort, peace, and hope in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In His name, amen.