A talented musician wrote a song about my hometown. Actually, more than one musician has written a song about Paducah, Kentucky. But I’m thinking of George Coryell, a hometown contemporary of mine.
George wrote and performed “Paddlewheels.” It’s a fine little song about Paducah that includes many of the town’s hallmarks. Chief among those is Paducah’s two rivers and the paddlewheel-driven riverboats that ply them.
“We played down by the river,
where the Ohio and Tennessee meet.
We were always there to see
the Belle of Louisville and the Delta Queen.”
When two waters flow into the same space, it’s called a confluence. That’s what forms two sides of my hometown: The Ohio River and the Tennessee River blending together. It's very picturesque—when described in words.
In real life, it is two very different energy flows slamming into each other. From the moment they meet, these distinct entities are trying to overpower each other, neither giving way. You can actually see the two rivers fighting to remain distinct. They even look different. One is smooth, darker, richer in color. The other is choppy, roiling almost, and much lighter hued.
Paducahans also know a truth that changes how one views that river battle: There is something much larger just over the horizon. About an hour farther on, the two warring waters smack into the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi is the river. On the north, its headwaters are just shy of the Canadian border. It knifes through the U.S. all the way south to the Gulf. The "Mighty Mississippi" is so big it absorbs all other waters. It takes them—and all they represent—down to the sea.
Paducah’s two rivers form a perfect metaphor for the two main Jewish groups competing at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees believed in an afterlife and that each person must scrupulously keep the laws and God’s Commandments to ensure actually getting to that afterlife. The Sadducees rejected the idea of an afterlife, believing each person must do good now, because this life is all there is.
Those two fought like my two hometown rivers. They were using the laws and the Commandments in their battle to control people's lives. They had been battling before Jesus began his ministry and they continued to do so well into the early church years. They were always in conflict over which was right, each wanting to transcend the other.
The apostle Paul’s response to that conflict is in this week's Romans passage. He wrote that Jesus taught a much larger, all-consuming truth: Love is the fulfillment of all those commandments and laws.
Like my two rivers meeting the Mississippi, all those laws and commandments—and all the conflicts based on them—were swallowed up in something much, much larger. The love taught and modeled by Jesus is almost too much to grasp. But the metaphor of a mighty river can help.
The battles that raged among us before we became followers of Jesus are as meaningless as the fighting of my two hometown rivers. And like the Mississippi, God’s love is the mighty flow that will take us all in and carry us to the sea—an ocean, really—of living water.
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BONUS MATERIALBONUS MATERIAL
(1) Listen to the song “Paddlewheels”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDqdcWe4A80
(2) PHOTO and all about the Delta Queen paddlewheel-driven riverboat:
https://www.steamboats.org/steamboat-pictures/delta-queen.html
(3) Article about Paducah-related music:
(4) Watch a clip from “The Gang’s All Here” and enjoy their version of “Paducah”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGNoH4bjHmo
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Will you be with us Friday morning at DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast? Come at 8:00 to enjoy good food, good fellowship, and the good word. We meet on Zoom* and in Waco at Our Breakfast Place. Look for us around the back.
Water is free. The balloons, on the other hand . . .
Blessings,
Steve
*Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard):
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=17134&z=p&d=72
Print them from here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Ax_Proper18.pdf
Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 149
Ezekiel 33:7-11
Psalm 119:33-40
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20
Proper 18 (23) (September 6, 2026)
