June 21, 2026

Indianola Presbyterian Church

" The Soul Feels Its Worth "
Sermon by Rev. Trip Porch

June 21, 2026                                                                                                                                      Based on 1 Timothy 1:12-17 

There is a street corner I want you to picture.

Even if you’ve never been on a corner like this you can probably imagine it from countless hours of news footage.

It is the middle of the night in a housing project in East Los Angeles, in a time when that neighborhood was the gang capital of the world. And on that corner there is a kid. His name is Bandit, a name he earned from his gang because of just how much he stole.
A car slows down, and Bandit runs up to the window, he passes drugs through it, and walks away counting his money in the dark. This is what Bandit does, night in night out. If you asked the world what Bandit was, the world had its answer ready. Lowlife. Good for nothing. People had been saying it to his face for years so much he started to believe it himself, and this corner at midnight seemed to prove them right. 

He was running with a gang, selling poison to his own neighbors, and life had him by the throat. He was doing harm out there, real harm, to the people buying from him and to the neighborhood and, though it is harder to see, to himself. The life was burning him down from the inside. But all anybody saw was the lowlife on the corner.

Now I want you to see one more person in that scene.

There is a man riding a bicycle through the project in the middle of the night. His name is Father Greg Boyle, and he is a Jesuit priest, the pastor of the poorest parish in the city. He had started something called Homeboy Industries, which is a long way of saying he started giving gang members a way out. A real job. A different life. And some nights he just rode his bike through the projects to be there, to be a person you could walk up to.

And on his rides, Boyle kept passing that corner. Kept seeing Bandit. And every time, he made the same offer. How about a real job? And every time, Bandit gave him the same answer, polite as could be.
I'm okay, G. Thanks. 

Boyle says Bandit was the most resistant kid he knew. The door was always open but Bandit kept walking past it.

I want to leave him there for a minute. On the corner. Offer on the table, hands in his pockets, the world's judgement already draped over him.
Hold that picture, because we are going to come back for him.

Because there is a man in scripture this morning standing in a strangely similar spot, and I need you to meet him.

Open the letter we read. It is from Paul, or at least its attributed to him (scholars debate this), the letter comes near the end of his life, writing to a young pastor named Timothy. And right in the middle of it Paul gives his thesis statement, for this letter and for his life it seems:
”Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,"
he writes, "and I'm the biggest sinner of all."

Now here is what is strange. Bandit had the word forced on him. Lowlife. Good for nothing. Sinner.
Other people decided what he was.
Paul does the opposite. Paul takes the worst possible label and reaches out and puts it on himself, on purpose. Chief of sinners. First in line. If there were a trophy for biggest sinner in the league, Paul would walk up and take it.

Which is odd, because if it were me, that’s a label I would run from. It’s a word that makes me uncomfortable. My assumption is that’s true of a lot of you in this room too. 

We are fluent in a lot of things here in this church. Words we use casually and often: Justice. Grace. Belonging. The worth of every single person. But say the word "sin" out loud in a progressive church and watch people shift in their seats. 

And we come by that flinch honestly. A lot of us are here because We’ve heard so called Christians using that word as a weapon. Spitting it with venom. Maybe they even aimed it at you… at who you love, at your body, at your questions, at the shape of your family, and they called it sin. So we set the word down. We figured we could follow Jesus without it.

But watch what Paul actually does with the word because I think he uses it well. Look at what he names. He says he persecuted God's people. He attacked them. He was violent, arrogant, abusive, and greedy. He took advantage of folks, he destroyed lives.
And here at the end of his life, He names what he did.
He doesn’t make excuses. He does not confess his background, or his temperament, or the kind of person he is. He confesses harm.

That is what sin is, when you scrape all the weaponizing off of it. Sin is harm. Harm we do to each other, and harm we do to ourselves. It is not a label for an identity. It is a name for the damage. 

The church got that backwards for a long time. We thought our job was to aim that word at people's identities, at who they love and how they look and whether they fit, while at the same time being exceedingly quiet about the actual sin the bible spends a great deal of time on, the cruelty and the exclusion and the harm done to the most vulnerable among us. We call the wrong things sin. That is why most of the word feels poisoned. It was pointed the wrong direction. Paul points it the right one.

And once you define sin as harm, look again at that corner. Bandit's sin was never that he was a lowlife. There is no such sin because there is no such thing as a lowlife. His sin was the harm. The drugs going out into his neighborhood. The violence that life demanded. 

And the slow harm he was causing himself, a man made for so much more, burning his one life down on a corner in the dark. That is the real thing. And the real thing, it turns out, is exactly the thing that grace knows how to touch.

So let's go get him.

Because one day, years into all of this, Bandit walks into Boyle's office. And Boyle can hardly believe he is standing there. And Bandit says the thing that gang members say to Boyle when something finally gives way. He says, “I'm tired of being tired.”

This wasn’t a speech he planned. Just a guy whose way of life had wrung him dry…The harm he was doing to himself finally got heavier than the life was worth. I'm tired of being tired.

So Boyle walks him down the hall to a job developer, and that very day they find something. An entry level job. Its Low pay work in a warehouse but its the first real job of his life. 

Nobody makes a movie about a job like that. You clock in, you move boxes, you clock out.

And then When Boyle tells this story about Bandit he skips way ahead over years… Cut to today.
That same Bandit is now the head supervisor of the entire warehouse. He runs the whole operation. He owns his own home. He is married. He has three kids. And Boyle had not heard from him in a few years, which, with gang members, is usually good news.

But Then on a Friday afternoon the phone rings, and it is Bandit, a little breathless, a little panicked.
“G, he says, you gotta bless my daughter.”
And Boyle's mind jumps to the worst.
Is she sick? Is she in the hospital?
No, no, Bandit says. On Sunday she starts college. My oldest. My Jessica. She is going to college. And he is half bursting with pride and half scared to death, because she is a little thing and the school is way up north, far from home, and nobody in their family has ever done this before. Could you bless her before she goes?

And Boyle says, are you kidding, I would be honored.

So the next day the whole family shows up. And Boyle stands Jessica in front of the altar and says, let's surround her. Everybody get close. They lay hands on her, hold her arms, a hand on her shoulder, on her head. Let's surround her with our bodies and with our love, Boyle says. 

And he starts to pray, and he goes on, the way pastors do. And somewhere in the middle of that prayer he opens his eyes and sees that every single person is crying. He is crying. 

And he is not entirely sure why, except that Bandit and his wife do not know one single person who has ever gone to college. Nobody in their families. Maybe Boyle, and that is the whole list.
And they are so happy Bandit’s life has led to this end when it could have led so many other ways…

They say Amen and they wipe their eyes and laugh about how mushy they all got, and to change the subject Boyle asks Jessica what she is going to study. She says, forensic psychology.
And Bandit, quick as anything jokes
…yeah, she wants to study the criminal mind.
And Jessica, perfectly deadpan, turns and points at her father, half hiding the gesture behind her other hand. 

Bandit catches it, gets the joke, and says,
yeah, I'm gonna be her first subject.

Then everybody piles into the car, and Bandit hangs back, and Boyle is glad he does. And Boyle says to him, “hey. I want to give you credit for the man you have chosen to become. For choosing to walk in your own footsteps. I am proud of you.”

And Bandit's eyes fill with tears. And he says, 

“I'm proud of myself. All my life people called me a lowlife, a good for nothing. I guess I showed them.

And Boyle says, yeah. I guess you did.

Boyle ends his story by saying
“the soul feels its worth.”

That last line is not Boyle's. It is from the old Christmas carol “O Holy Night.”
Till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. 

Boyle reaches for it because nothing else fits. Something in that warehouse, and that office, and that little sendoff at the altar, let a man feel all the way down that he was worth something. That he always had been. Even on the corner. Even at his worst.

It’s like Bandit is standing there next to Paul, the chief of sinners sure, but redeemed, on the other side of it.
Able to see clearly a redeemed life next to a life of harm.
And I think you will finally see why Paul can say this word so easily.

Because Paul is not running himself down. Paul is doing the bravest thing a person can do. He is telling the whole truth about himself out loud, the harm and all, with no flinch, because he is that certain of mercy. His thesis starts where everything for Paul starts. 

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
The grace comes first. The grace is so settled, so completely his, that he no longer has one thing left to protect. He can name his worst because his worth is not in question anymore.

That is what humility actually is. It is not having the lowest possible opinion of yourself. 

It is no longer needing to defend yourself because you already know how loved you are. Bandit could stand by that car and say I'm proud of myself out loud, with tears in his eyes, because somebody had finally treated him like his worth was already there. 

Paul can stand in this letter and say I am the worst of them, out loud, with no shame, because grace got there first. They are doing the same brave thing. Telling the truth about themselves, from inside a love they finally trust.

Which means honesty about your sin is not the enemy of grace. It is the fruit of it. You can only afford to tell the whole truth about yourself once you already know how the story ends.

And notice who this Jesus came for.
He came for Sinners, Paul says, which in his world meant the people the respectable had already filed under hopeless. They called Jesus a friend of sinners, and they meant it as an insult, but he wore it like a badge of honor . He looked at the people everyone else had given up on, the ones on the corner, and he saw what nobody else could see, and he spent himself on it. 

But the amazing thing about grace is that …The persecutor can become the apostle. The man who set out to destroy the church and its people became the one who planted it across the world. If grace can do that with Saul, and with Bandit, there is no one in your life, and no one in your own mirror, beyond its reach.

So Paul hands us two questions this morning, and I will let you carry them home.

The first is about other people. Who have you decided is beyond reach? There is probably a name surfacing in your mind right now, or even if not a name, maybe a face, or a kind of person, or a whole category you have written off. Paul says be careful. The biggest sinner he ever met became the greatest apostle he ever knew, and it was the same man. Nobody is the worst thing they have done. Saul wasn't. Bandit wasn't. Whoever you are picturing isn't either.

The second question is harder, because it is about you. Can you be as honest as Paul? I am not asking for shame. I am not handing you back the old weapon. I am asking for the plain truth about the harm you have done, the person you have been on your worst day, named out loud. Because once you name the harm you’ve caused, you can begin to repair it. 

Paul could do it because he was sure of mercy. You are held by that same mercy. You can afford to tell the truth about yourself. You are as beloved as Bandit. You always have been.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
That is every one of us.
And the good news is not that we get to pretend we never needed saving.
The good news is that we do not have to pretend anymore.

And the soul feels its worth.

Amen.

WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE

PRELUDE                                                      “Amazing Grace”                                    arr. Douglas E. Wagner

INTROIT                               “This Is the Day”                                           Pablo Sosa

WELCOME                                                                    Rev. Trip Porch

One: This is the day that the Lord has made

All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

*CALL TO WORSHIP                                                                               

         One: Here is a saying worthy of full acceptance:

                  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

All: If this is true, then there is room here for every last one of us.

One: God sees what the world overlooks
          and calls the ones the world discards.

          God's favor pours out until it runs over.

All: We gather to worship the God who looks at us honestly
         and believes we are capable and worthy of goodness. Thanks be to God.

*HYMN 288                             “Spirit of the Living God”                                                                 LIVING GOD

*PRAYER OF CONFESSION                                                           Jeremy Carroll      

God of endless patience, we confess that we are quick to decide who is beyond hope. We sort people into the worthy and the lost, and we trust that we can tell the difference. We look at others and see only their worst day, their record, their reputation. We look at ourselves the same way and forget the mercy poured out over us. Forgive us for the people we have given up on. Forgive us for the  ministry we have failed to see in them, and in ourselves…

Silent Prayers of Confession are offered

Open our eyes to see what you see, that no one is past your reach and everyone carries a gift meant for the good of all. In the name of Jesus, who came to save sinners, the whole lot of us. Amen.

 *ASSURANCE OF PARDON                                                       

*RESPONSE OF PARDON 582 “Glory to God, Whose Goodness Shines on Me” GLORY TO GOD

*PASSING OF THE PEACE   

     One: The peace of Christ be with you!

     All:      And also with you.

WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD 

ANTHEM                                                    “Look at the World”                                                    John Rutter

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE                                                                   Dorothy Kyle

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION                                                                  

SCRIPTURE    1 Timothy 1:12-17  CEB

 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength because he considered me faithful. So he appointed me to ministry even though I used to speak against him, attack his people, and I was proud. But I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and without faith. Our Lord’s favor poured all over me along with the faithfulness and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is reliable and deserves full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I’m the biggest sinner of all. But this is why I was shown mercy, so that Christ Jesus could show his endless patience to me first of all. So I’m an example for those who are going to believe in him for eternal life. Now to the king of the ages, to the immortal, invisible, and only God, may honor and glory be given to him forever and always! Amen.   

SERMON                                                                               Rev. Trip Porch

WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD 

*HYMN 649                                               “Amazing Grace”                                                                AMAZING GRACE

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE  followed by the Lord’s Prayer using debts and debtors.

TIME OF OFFERING   online giving is available at  www. indianolapres.org/give

OFFERTORY                                             “Grace Greater Than Our Sin”                                   arr. Richard Kingsmore 

*OFFERTORY RESPONSE            “God, We Honor You”                                    ABUNDANT BLESSINGS

*PRAYER OF DEDICATION 

Generous God, your favor poured all over us before we had done a thing to earn it. Now we return these gifts, small signs of a grace we cannot repay. Use them, and use us, to reach the ones the world has counted out and to call out the good you have already planted in them. Through Christ, who believed in us first. Amen.

*HYMN  728                     “Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door”                          SOMEBODY’S KNOCKING 

CHARGE & BENEDICTION                                                         

POSTLUDE                    “Somebody’s Knocking at your Door”                        arr. Philip Keveren 

  Acknowledgments: Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net