Beneath the Steeple with Pastor Hans Becklin

Trinity Lutheran Church
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Beneath the Steeple with Pastor Hans Becklin is produced by Trinity Lutheran Church in the heart of Reading, PA where we share God's love with all people.

  1. 5d ago

    The Son Who Went | Beneath the Steeple

    Most of us know which son we'd rather be seen as: the one with good manners, who says the right thing at the right time. In this message on Jesus' parable of the two sons from Matthew 21, Pastor Hans asks the harder question of which son we actually are, and looks at how easily a heartfelt yes to God can become a place to stand still. It's an honest look at the gap between what we say and what we do, and at the grace that meets us there. Wherever you are on the road today, you're welcome here.

  2. Sep 21

    Fairness Is Not the Gospel | Beneath the Steeple

    What do we owe someone who shows up at the very last hour? In this episode, Pastor Hans tells the story of baptizing a dying man in a hospital room — a man who, in the world's accounting, had worked only one hour of a whole life — and holds it up beside Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard, where the last hired are paid exactly the same as the first. It's a challenge to anyone who has ever totaled up their own faithfulness and resented someone else's grace. Whether you've been counting Sundays for decades or you're just walking through the door, we're glad you're here.

  3. Sep 14

    Everyone Is Recovering From Something | Beneath the Steeple

    What does it feel like to finally be seen? In this episode, Pastor Molly Haggerty of Common Ground Recovery Community shares stories of reconciliation, art, and simple human presence — the everyday moments where people carrying shame and brokenness start to feel loved again. Drawing on Jesus's teaching about making peace with one another before we can truly worship together, she reflects on what it means to build a community where everyone can come exactly as they are. We're glad you're joining us today.

  4. Sep 8

    Where Two or Three Are Gathered | Beneath the Steeple

    There is a verse people reach for when the room is emptier than they hoped: where two or three are gathered, I am there among them. It gets said over half-filled chairs and coffee that outlasts the crowd, a kind of consolation prize. Pastor Hans reads the whole paragraph that sentence sits in — Matthew's account of a congregation with a real grievance inside it — and finds something far better than consolation there. Christ is not absent from the lake, or the ridge, or the back porch on a September morning; he fills all things. But presence is not the same as promise, and there are things that only ever get placed into your open hands. Whatever you believe, and whether or not you have ever belonged to a congregation, you are welcome to listen in.

  5. Aug 31

    Human Things | Beneath the Steeple

    Almost everyone has said the sentence Peter says in this passage. Sitting in a doctor's office, hearing a word you refuse to accept: God forbid it. This cannot go that way. Peter says it to Jesus quietly, with an arm around his shoulder, out of love — and Jesus answers him harder than he answers anyone. In this sermon, Pastor Hans follows what happens next: a man who has just been handed the keys and immediately tries to lock the door, who fails in a courtyard, who fails again years later in front of everyone, and who is never once replaced with somebody steadier. Along the way there is a word for anyone carrying a hurt no one ever answered for — that the deepest fear in suffering is not the pain, but that nobody saw it, and that God is neither neutral nor a spectator. Wherever you are coming from, and whether any of this is familiar to you or not, you are welcome here.

  6. Aug 24

    The Pagoda and the Gates of Hades | Beneath the Steeple

    Most of us have put something up where people can see it. A name on a door, a photo on a wall, a line in a bio that says who we are. It is very old work, and we are remarkably good at it. Inthis sermon, Pastor Hans begins at a cliff in the ancient world — drilled full of niches, crowded with statues of a god, a temple to the emperor standing out in front, and beneath it a cave that people believed was the door to the land f the dead. Standing there, of all places, Jesus turns to his closest friends and asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, and is told in the same breath that the answer was never his own idea. What follows is a word about identity and calling that arrive from outside us, about a promise made againstthe largest ending there is, and about what it means to say something true out loud in a year when someone we love is leaving. Wherever you are coming from, and whether any of this is familiar to you or not, you are welcome here.

  7. Aug 19

    The Woman Who Crossed the Line | Beneath the Steeple

    When she was 12 years old, Deaconess Deborah crouched down on all fours at the Four Corners Monument so she could have a hand and a foot in four states at once — at a dot thatsomeone, somewhere, at some time simply decided to draw on a map. Most of the lines we live with aren’t on any map. In Matthew’s Gospel, a woman crosses the deepest one of her day because her daughter is sick and she has nowhere else togo, and what happens when she kneels in front of Jesus changes the shape of who gets included. If you have ever wondered whether you would be welcome in a roomlike this one, this is a good place to start listening.

  8. Aug 10

    Righteousness and Peace Kissed | Beneath the Steeple

    It is August, and the evenings are long. Thecorn along the country roads is over the tallest head, the market is up, and most of the people we love are well. And yet the calm some of us are enjoying is not reaching everyone in the room, and none of us can promise it will last. In this episode, Pastor Hans takes up an old line from Psalm 85 — righteousness and peace have kissed each other — and finds in it something more durable than good season: a peace that was already settled rather than one we have to keep negotiating. Along the way there is a medieval poem about four sisters having an argument, a garden before daylight, and Peter going under in the waves witha hand reaching for him. Wherever this finds you, and whatever kind of week you have had, you are welcome here.

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Beneath the Steeple with Pastor Hans Becklin is produced by Trinity Lutheran Church in the heart of Reading, PA where we share God's love with all people.

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