What Kind of Church Are We Anyway:
What It Means To Be Presbyterian.

Oct 8, 2017 ~ What Kind of Church Are We Anyway – What it Means to be Presbyterian from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on October 8, 2017.

The last in a three part sermon series on our community’s identity.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
1 Corinthians 14:26-33a, 37-40
and Philippians 3:4b-14

This week I was thinking about my friend and mentor Mark Ramsey,
One of those people
who taught me pretty much everything I know about preaching.

He believes in the power of story,
The way story helps open up this world of faith
That we’re trying to live in, in its full, complex, MESSY truth.

Story is important, when you’re a finite creature
In a community of finite people
Trying to discern the movement of an infinite God.

Mark once shared a story in a sermon on tragedy that has stuck with me
After a nation was in yet another bout of morning
And people were searching for meaning,
People of faith were looking for God.

Into that moment, Mark told a story first told to him by
The late theologian John Claypool.[i]

Its an old story, from ancient China,
About a farmer who owned only one horse.

He depended on that horse for everything:
To pull the plow.
To draw the wagon.

He didn’t have much, but he had that horse.

One day a bee stung the horse,
and in fright
the horse ran away, off into the mountains.

The farmer searched and searched for him but couldn’t find him.

His neighbors came up to him and said,
“We are really sorry about your bad luck in losing your horse.”

But the old farmer shrugged and said,
“Bad news, good news — who is to say?”

A week later, incredibly his horse came back,
accompanied by twelve wild horses,
and the old farmer was able to corral all these fine animals.

News spread throughout the village, and his neighbors came and said,
“Congratulations on this bonanza out of the sky.”


To which the old man shrugged and said,
“Good news, bad news — who is to say?”

Now, the only son of the farmer decided to make the most of this good fortune,
so he started to break the wild horses
you know, so they could be sold and put to work in the fields.

It was their future. It was their way out.

But as he attempted to do this,
The son got thrown from one of the horses,
his leg: broken, in three places.

When word of this accident spread through the village,
again the neighbors came saying,
“We are sorry about the bad luck of your son getting hurt.”

The old man shrugged and said,
“Bad news, good news — who is to say?”

Not two weeks later, a war broke out among the provinces in China.

The army came through conscripting
every able-bodied male under fifty.

Because the son was injured, he did not have to go,
and it turned out to save his life,
for everyone in the village who was drafted
was killed in the battle.
“…Bad news, good news — who is to say?”

///
Powerful story.
Now, Ramsey points out: This parable is not simple.
In fact, it resists simple answers.

It’s NOT saying that “God has a plan” and we can only see the plan
in the rearview mirror.

It is NOT giving permission for oppression or tragedy to run rampant
with some vague promise of it all “being well” someday later…

This parable pushes—-
especially those of us who
want to draw clear, unarguable boundaries
around the kingdom of heaven.
[Read more…]

What Kind of Church Are We Anyway:
What It Means To Be catholic.

Oct 1, 2017 “What Kind of Church Are We Anyway – What it Means to be catholic” from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on October 1, 2017, World Communion Sunday.

The second in a three part sermon series on our community’s identity.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Philippians 2:1-13
and 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; 3:1-9

 

Life, it seems, is full of mystery.

The deepest, richest, most complex theories
that our rational abilities can formulate,
that science help us understand
serve really to highlight the fact
that there is still a depth of mystery
that goes way beyond it all.

You can study biology, or human genetics,
And know everything there is to know about reproduction and fertilization,
About pregnancy, birth, and childhood;
But when you see a newborn child, for that first time
And two eyes meet yours with a look that seems to say
Not, “who are you?”
But, “so—its you!”

You glimpse a mystery
that no physical explanation can ever fully explore.

It is the same with music.

The physicist can, in principle,
Explain what happens when a particular instrument is played.
Sound waves. String tension. Aperture.
But why Mozart makes us want to laugh and cry and dance,
Why you start singing along to McLean’s American Pie
Or the Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine
Or Adele’s Hello
And you don’t even know why…
Why some music is deeply consoling and some is deeply disturbing
That remains a mystery.

The deepest mysteries of human life—love, death, joy, beauty,
take your pick—
have, for millennia, pointed us to the deepest mystery of them all
the mystery of God.[i]

///
What are some of your experiences with the mystery of God?

Some of the earliest moments I remember, in church
Were communion moments.

That’s not surprising.
Food has this ability of sticking to memory.

Think your mother’s go-to casserole,
Or what you were eating on that important first-date. Do you remember?

I remember, as a kid, sitting through another worship service
Doodling on my bulletin,
Trying not to make the oak pew creek as I fidgeted next to my mother
And look: they passed by little cups of juice, wedges of doughy bread
And I thought, hey, I could get used to this.

We used to go up to the communion table, after worship
To get the extras, you know. I think my father frowned at this.

A bit later, as I learned about Christ and him Crucified, as Paul puts it
About agape—that’s the word the Bible uses for
a love that gives all it has for another
the very love of God
and that story of deep compassion and ultimate betrayal and
unexpected resurrection
and life overcoming death
all because God loves you and loves me
and there ain’t nothing you can do about it
When I learned all that,
and they passed the juice and the doughy bread
and remembered the body and blood of Jesus
I wept.

So much mystery. So much I didn’t understand: why me? Why all this?
And even as an adult, so much I know that I really never will understand.

There’s a science to making bread: just enough wheat and water, and yeast too
If, unlike the Hebrews in Egypt, you’ve got time for it.

Get the oven hot enough, but not too hot
The yeast eats the sugar in the mixture
Produces carbon dioxide, it rises
And you’ve got bread.
And it smells so, so, so good.

But none of that explains to me why the smell of bread
Reminds me of those early communions
The feel of the pew
The joy of knowing I am loved unconditionally
The tears of thinking about Jesus’ betrayal and death
Ultimately, the comfort of knowing that I belong to God.

And I smile every time I taste the juice of concord grapes.

///
For me, it was around communion that I first experienced the mystery of God.

It might be different for you,
and maybe its not primarily mystery that characterizes what’s going on
when God peeks into your life.
[Read more…]