Sermon of the Week:
Food for Thought–Leisure to Eat

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 18, 2021.

Part one of a five-week sermon series about Food and the Christian Faith, called Food for Thought.

Special Music: Give me Jesus
Hymn: Come! Live in the Light

Keywords: Self-Care, Side Story, Gospel of Mark, Food for Thought. #pcusa​​​​​​

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 23
and Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469. All rights reserved.

My kids were shocked, shocked,
when we told them that we ate at IHOP,
the International House of Pancakes.
on the night we got married.

Nothing wrong with IHOP, of course,
Just our first dinner as a married couple, that very night of our wedding:
A couple of eggs, hash browns, and orange juice.

Brook and I celebrated our anniversary this weekend,
And milestones often prompt memories, right, and reflection.

And so we were talking with them about that night
Which was a wonderful occasion for us.
We were just kids, 22 years ago,
Middle of July, middle of a heat wave…
The church didn’t have air conditioning
And I thought that the pastor was going to faint.
I think she thought we were going to faint.

But no one fainted, thank goodness.
We held hands, said our vows, gave thanks to God for it all.
And when it was all complete,
we all left the church to find some air conditioning somewhere.
We experienced a quick rain shower
on the drive over to our reception, which they said was good luck,
rain on your wedding day.
It had stopped by the time we got there
this place called the Barn of Barrington.

We had a relatively small wedding,
And it is all a bit of a blur, to be honest,
As major life moments sometimes are.
We had maybe 80 people with celebrate our wedding with us
And then afterwards they joined us at our reception,
Which featured music on a 6 track CD player that we had planned out in advance
And a buffet style meal.
That evening was great, and people had a good time
And there was laughter and some dancing
And Brook and I mainly went around the room
and said hi to everyone and the whole bit
And then when it was all over
We realized that neither of us had eaten dinner.

Brook said to me: Are you hungry?
And I said to her: Are you hungry?
And, confirming that we were both peckish,
We walked from the La Quinta Inn that we were staying at
Across the parking lot to the IHOP
For our first married meal.

We’ll always remember that detail.
Honestly, it stands out to me more than the reception
or half the wedding service itself.
Our memory does that for us, sometimes,
It remembers the side story as much as the main story.

In addition to our anniversary celebration yesterday,
Our daughters had their wisdom teeth removed on Friday,
Which isn’t a big deal,
but it’s still a deal, you know
Anesthesia and sutures and the whole thing.
They did great, and are doing great
but I worried a bit about them.

So all this reflecting this weekend had us reflecting about them, too.
And we were thinking about the day that they were born,
And there’s a story we tell about that day
Which is another example of this feature of our memory
How we sometimes remember the side story as much as the main story.

The main story here, of course, is that we went to the hospital as two people
And we left the hospital a couple days later as four.
Two new people were born.
And it was an amazing, marvelous, stressful, fantastic sort of thing.
On that August day of their birth,
much like this past Friday when they had their wisdom teeth removed,
the kids did great,
they are doing great, to this day,
Even if I was worried a bit about them…as maybe all expectant parents do.

But there’s a side story that we often tell
About that momentous day at the hospital.

We arrived early because Brook was induced.
Twins usually arrive early,
but Nora and Tessa were taking their time
and at 39 weeks we were ready.
They were ready too, they just didn’t know it yet,
And so we got there early that morning
Settled into our waiting room and got started with the induction medicine.
We were getting our minds and our hearts ready.
And we did all of that,
and we were talking
and I was making jokes
Because I knew those wouldn’t be appreciated later, you know,
And it was nice.
It was quiet and calm.
Now and then a nurse would come into the room,
check on things, write some things down, then leave for a good while.

Through all of this, I would look up at the clock,
and watch the time pass:
10 o’clock. 11 o’clock. 12 o’clock.

The kids were taking their time.
Which was fine and normal of course.
Brook was good. The kids’ vitals were good.
It just looked like we might be there a little while.

And someone had shared with me the notion
That my job was to be positive, to be encouraging,
and to help out … if asked….
But to otherwise not make myself stand out, you know.
Brook may like my attention, and distraction,
Or she may not,
And, you know, I should follow her lead
but otherwise just go with the flow.

The main thing
was for me to be there to help her through
the moments just before she’d be ready…
what they call the transition phase of labor.
Again, just to do whatever she needed, to be supportive,
to be present.

And so it got to half past noon or so
And I was over in the corner of the room or something,
just trying not to be obvious,
and I took a granola bar out of my jeans pocket
and I tried to open it so quietly,
to eat it without drawing attention to myself
and, apparently, I did a poor job of it,
because Brook looked over at me and she looked at the clock
and she told me to go and get myself something real to eat.

And I looked at her
to be sure she meant it,
And she did,
She knew it would be better if I had eaten something,
So I followed her lead and I told her sure, great, I’d go do that,
Knowing both that I didn’t want to leave her alone,
But also that I needed to do what she wanted me to do,
So I went to the door, and I told her that I’d just go down to the cafeteria
and I’d be back up in a bit.

And I opened the door and I slipped out and closed the door so softly,
as quietly as I could,
And as soon as that door was closed completely,
I turned, and I sprinted…
Down the hall,
Over to the staircase
Down three flights of stairs, all the way to the basement
One, two, three,
Trying to go as fast as I could while not being wild, you know,
I didn’t want to run into a doctor or a nurse or anything,
Though if one of them had seen me I’m sure they would have said
Oh yeah, expectant father, that one…
And I made it to the cafeteria.

And when I got there, I filled a plate with some chicken tenders and some fries
And I headed over to the check-out line.
Only I ate it,
all of it,
before I got to the cashier.
I paid for my lunch
And then I ran back up the three flights of stairs
All the way back to our room.

That was probably the fastest fast food I had ever eaten.

Now, I was gone for no more than 10, 15 minutes.
And in that 15 minutes,
Brook had gone from not being anywhere near ready
To being ready ready… you know.
They were coming,
any minute now.
And indeed, just a couple minutes later, we welcomed Nora. It was amazing!
And then a bit later Tessa, hurrah!
And everything would be different, from that moment on.

That was the main story.
The side story, was the time I missed transition
When I ran down and back to get some lunch…

///
This section of the Gospel of Mark
offers one of several retellings of what is called
the miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes.
Maybe you remember that story.
Sometimes we call it the Feeding of the 5000.

That story is amazing and wonderful
and we’re going to look at that story next Sunday,
John’s version of that story.

When Mark tells that story, he puts it here,
between the parts that I read today
When Jesus’s apostles gather around him,
and he sees that they’re all kinda exhausted,
because they’ve been working really hard…
And then a moment, later, after the feeding of the 5000
Where they cross over to a different place
And there are all those crowds there
that want to get close to Jesus
who want to find healing and comfort and relief.

If you were to sit down and just read Chapter 6
of the Gospel according to Mark
You would see that there’s just a lot going on here.
It opens with Jesus speaking in the synagogue of his home town
And finding no reception there.

And then there’s Jesus sending out the disciples in pairs, two by two,
to heal and to teach and to serve in various cities throughout the region.

Then there’s a story about the death of John the Baptist,
Then a transitionary piece, which we read today,
about those disciples coming back to Jesus
to share with him
all the things that they had seen and done.

Did you notice that Jesus sees that they’re exhausted.
So he says:…let’s get away,
Come on, lets go rest a while.
For many were coming and going,
And they had no leisure even to eat…

They try to do that,
But the people see them, the crowds follow them
And when they get to the other side of the lake
They’re all there, and Jesus has empathy for them
And he teaches and he shares the good news with them
And that’s the scene, when it starts getting late
That becomes the story of the feeding of the five thousand.
Again, we’ll get to that next week. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week:
Love is Kind–In Defense of Kindness

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 11, 2021.

Part six of a six-week sermon series about Kindness and the Christian Faith, called Love is Kind.

Special Music: Then I Shall Live
Hymn: We Are One In the Spirit

Keywords: Observation Bias, Inattentional Blindness, Kindness, Paul, Be Good to People, Bruce Reyes-Chow. #pcusa​​​​​​​​​​​​

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Titus 3:3-8
and Romans 12:1-18

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469. All rights reserved.

Sometimes all you need is a little encouragement,
A little nudge
And you can begin to see something new, something different.

Once I had a professor do a little experiment with his class.
Close your eyes, he said.
And we closed our eyes.
Ok, the goal of this exercise is pretty simple, he continued,
All I want you to do is think of anything,
Anything at all,
Except the color blue…
Got it.
Anything but the color blue.

The professor said another thing or two, just to keep the instruction going,
But then he said we were done, and he asked us to open our eyes
And to start talking a bit about it.

Who, after I told you not to think about the color blue,
Immediately conjured up an image of something blue in your mind?

Answer: all of us had.
One: the sapphire blue ocean.
Another: a blue toy teddy bear he had as a child.
Me: George Brett in his Baby-Blue Royals Jersey…

Just a little suggestion,
And all of us couldn’t help but think about blue things
Even when the professor asked us not to.

The human mind does this sort of thing, all on its own.
And we go about sifting through all sorts of thoughts and ideas and images
That come to us as we go about our day.

Most of that we just ignore.
Sometimes we focus on some of those thoughts more than others.
We can focus when we need to focus; wander when we are free to wander.

And we human beings are good at detecting patterns and anomalies,
But we can also miss things, obvious things, as we do that,
Things that are right in front of us.

In a famous example,
The Smithsonian Magazine published an article a decade ago
Titled “But Did you See the Gorilla?”
Where they described a video
Where six people were playing basketball,
Three with white t-shirts
And three with black t-shirts
And as they are dribbling and passing and defending the basket
A woman in a gorilla suit walks on camera
Moves to the middle of the screen, thumps her chest
And then walks away…
Only you don’t see any of that when you watch it the first time
Or the second or third time,
Because you’re not expecting it. You’re not looking for it.

It happens right there in front of you, and you miss it.

The researchers then repeated the experiment,
Telling new watchers to look for the gorilla,
And they do, and look, they see her,
But, in watching for her,
They miss other obvious things going on,
Like the background changing color.

There’s a term for this: inattentional blindness,
or sometimes observer bias,
A tendency to see what we expect to see, or what we want to see.

This is what makes magicians successful, or not, right
Their ability to guide your observation here, and not there,
So they can palm the quarter or the card or the ball
and make it “re-appear” from behind your ear
or from under the cup
that was clearly empty just a moment ago.

A form of this is what makes marketing and advertising so successful
As we go along with this trend or that worry.
There’s a reason why that blazer looked better on me
in the store than it does at home.
I really wanted to look good in it, and the salesperson said I did…

We don’t need to go too in depth here.
That blazer looks just fine.
A good magic trick can be quite exciting.
Just because we can get a group of people thinking about George Brett
Doesn’t mean that the Royals are going to start doing any better this year
But it helps us to ponder just a little bit, from time to time,
The power of observation on our emotions and our thought process
And how these can impact how we go about living our lives.

///
We started this sermon series on Kindness with an assertion
That we’re experiencing a Kindness problem.
Not a niceness problem, we said
Not a civility problem,
But a kindness problem.

And then we spent some time talking about what we meant by kindness,
Kindness being the steadfast affirmation of the dignity of everyone we meet
and actions that uphold, enhance, expand, protect, affirm their humanity.

We got that definition from Bruce Reyes-Chow
In his book “In Defense of Kindness,”
Where he says
To be kind
Is to accept that each person
Is a created and complex human being—
And to treat them as if you believe this to be true.[i]

That book of his, and this topic in general,
Felt rather timely to me,
Given how central Kindness is in holy scripture,
As we’ve discovered these past six weeks,
And how fragile our relationships with our neighbors have felt of late.

///
But a strange thing has happened to me,
Over these past few weeks.
I wonder if it has happened with any of you.
Ever since I started thinking more concretely about kindness—
Looking for it as I read the bible,
Reflecting on it through books like Bruce’s
Trying to find moments where I can choose kindness in my day to day—
Ever since then,
I have begun to see Kindness as an idea, as something being promoted
All over the place.

For example:
On the walk that I take our pups Ryder and Annie on every day
There’s a sign that says ‘choose kindness’ in someone’s yard.
I hadn’t noticed that before.

This week, we went on vacation,
And on the bus from the long-term parking to the airport,
One of the riders wore a “Kindness is Magic” t-shirt.

Actually, when we were at Denver International Airport
And I went looking for a replacement cord to power my laptop
Right there in the middle of the terminal was a kiosk
By an organization called Be Good to People.
With the sign “Kindness Sold Here.”

They had all sorts of hats, shirts, keychains,
With the phrase Be Good to People
And Choose Kindness.

And yeah, it’s more than a bit commercial,
An airport kiosk selling kindness merch
But there indeed it was, right in the middle of the airport
A giant reminder to everyone walking by
That kindness is possible,
That you, good traveler, could make a difference
Not because you bought a shirt
But because you lived up to what the shirt was trying to get you to think about.

I talked to the worker at the Kiosk
And apparently the Be Good to People foundation was started
Because someone had an “unkind experience” in 2008—
It isn’t clear what that kind of experience was—
And she was committed to turning that around.

Seriously, you are not going to believe
How powerful wearing, carrying and sharing the Good is.
Once you experience it, you’ll want more of it. [Read more…]