Sermon of the Week
Parched Places and Strong Bones
A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on February 9, 2020.
#pcusa
Keywords: Agape, Saltiness, Strong Bones, Parched Places, Integrity, Newspaper, Barth.
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Matthew 5:13-20
and Isaiah 58:1-12
I was thinking back to my first preaching class this week.
Like most classes in college or graduate school,
you read a lot of books,
you talk a lot with other intrigued and similarly clueless peers,
you focus on theory
and then you test it out by putting it into practice
which meant, for us, we wrote some practice sermons
and then climbed a pulpit and tried them out.
My first sermons weren’t very good.
It wasn’t that they didn’t have a point.
They had too many points.
It wasn’t that they rambled.
It was that they rambled nonsense-ably.
I’ll leave it to you to decide if I ever learned anything from that
or any subsequent preaching class.
But there were a couple of things that I took away from that class
that shape every sermon I offer to this day.
My professor taught us that the heart of every sermon
is the love of a congregation.
The preacher loves the people, and seeks to speak the truth in love.
The preacher is of the congregation,
and brings their shared love to the Holy Scripture,
asking the questions that they might ask
and bringing back the word that they need to hear,
whether it is a convenient word or not.
If you wondered why love was such a prominent theme,
this is one reason for it:
because God is love,
and every sermon worthy of that title
ought to be an encounter with the love of God.
This might be why I never can quite understand
the religious impulse to treat the religious life as some sort of fight
as a spiritual battle that rages and requires scorched earth strategies to survive.
One of the unique and I think so-very-true characteristics of Jesus the Christ
is a refusal to get caught up in all that
but to engage the world out of self-less love.
The other thing I took away from that class
was to hold close this little aphorism of Karl Barth:
when you preach, “hold the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.”
(I know we don’t read newspapers anymore but get our news on our little pocket computers, but stay with me)
To put all this another way,
we don’t approach this hour, these twenty minutes,
in a vacuum,
and what happens here, in this very room,
isn’t an escape from the world,
as much as we DO come here to catch a breath, take a break,
find a peace that passes understanding that we just can’t find the rest of our week.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting a break from all of that.
There’s not.
And some weeks we might need a break more than others,
and if there are moments in this hour where you just get lost
lost in the music
lost in the prayers
lost in a moment of silence
lost in the middle of a sermon, even, drifting off to memories
of a glorious fourth quarter comeback and confetti
raining down on Hard Rock Stadium
that’s ok.
Mark Humphrey, Associated Press
That’s one of the purposes of this space, this time.
God gets it.
It is why we read that God through the spirit
prays for us, even when we do not have words to pray…
because sometimes we need God to drive for us
while we take a little nap in the back seat.
That’s ok.
It’s just that the church itself cannot do that,
because the church has a mission to serve and love the world,
with the bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other,
and we ourselves know that a break needs to be a break, a breather,
a pause before we jump back in.
We ourselves are called to be engaged in the world just like the church is,
because we are the church.
There is no church outside of us, my friends.
We are the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in the world.
And thankfully we don’t have to read every story,
follow every minute detail,
know the names of the impeachment managers
or the Sergeant at Arms of the United States House
or the lead researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(and the coronavirus outbreak they’re dealing with)
to nonetheless decide to care about this world that God made
and the hurting people that God loves
and the policies and programs that address their real concerns.
///
I know that’s a hard thing to do in February of an election year
when we might all be wanting to get away on one of those “wanna get away” fares
that Southwest offers.
Actually, I usually feel something like that every February
when the snow and the cold and these gloomy days
fall over us like a heavy blanket.
The last time I preached on this passage in Matthew
where Jesus talks about Salt losing its saltiness
only to be worth throwing on the ground to be tread underfoot,
we reflected on how amazing it was that Paul understood
truly understood, what winter was like in Kansas City.
Salt underfoot. He gets me.
I heard a really good, and challenging, interpretation of this text this week.
Another preaching acquaintance of mine, Richard,
has a novel take on this passage about Saltiness.
Here’s what he offered about it this week in his so-called “90 second sermon”
‘Put up, or shut up!’
That was a common taunt we used on the playground as kids,
but there’s a certain validity to it.
Don’t just talk. Act.
Our passage this week continues the famous teaching of Jesus,
the sermon on the mount.
Jesus speaks of his disciples being Salt.
But warning them not to be salt that has lost its saltiness.
We don’t think of salt ever losing its taste,
but in that time, salt was impure.
It had white mineral residue,
so with exposure to moisture,
the salt could leach out
leaving a useless mineral behind.
It looked like salt. But it was worthless.
I wonder if this happens to us, sometimes:
the faith that undergirds our actions starts to leach away.
Maybe we start going through the motions of faith
but our actual connection to God has faded.
We become a Christian shell:
we might have the outward appearance of being faithful,
but the substance isn’t there.
But unlike salt, which was just a metaphor,
in us, the process is reversible.
I don’t think our state is binary.
We aren’t salty or not salty.
We are more salty, or less salty.
And we can build ourselves up, bit by bit.
How are you choosing to be more faithful today, than you were yesterday?
If we ask ourselves that question, every day,
we won’t ever have to worry about losing our saltiness,
and we’ll be living our faith for real, not for show.
///
“You are the salt of the earth” said Jesus…
but if salt is no longer salty…it is just good for tossing on the ground
to be trampled under foot.
Now, you and I both know that’s not a worthless use of salt,
because an icy parking lot ain’t no joke,
but that’s not the point.
Richard has more of the point:
are you more salty these days, or less salty?
How am I choosing to be more faithful today, than I was yesterday?
How am I living so that God can use me?
How is God teaching us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true?
Powerful questions that we encounter in the church
when we hold the bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.
I’ve been disheartened lately by the actions of so many people
leaders and people with a platform
and, as the people my kids age call them,
influencers,
so many people
who have sought to follow Christ but who seem to have had all the salt leach away.
People who claim the name of Christ
but then don’t really act much like it.
Breaks my heart.
And I know that integrity is a struggle,
I do
the integration of our faith with our everyday life is an imperfect science
but I’d like to see them try.
These days, we marvel more when ONE person shows some backbone
and articulates a fidelity to an oath and cites the desire to be able to stand before God
and say “I did my best”
when that should really be a sort of accepted standard for all of us
instead of something that is mocked (and at a prayer breakfast, no less).
But we remember, the verse right before this one in Matthew
anticipated something like that,
when Jesus said
Blessed are you when people revile you
and persecute you
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account…
And still,
Jesus somehow knew,
the one who retains their saltiness
who asks how am I choosing to be more faithful today, than I was yesterday?
How am I living so that God can use me?
How is God teaching us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true?
…that person is a light on a lampstand
a city on a hill
a beacon of possibility.
So, says Jesus, let your light shine.
///
This reading in Isaiah feels quite a bit like the reading from Micah
that we read last week.
In Micah, we heard about a squabble between God and God’s people
where God said “why aren’t you doing the Good I know you can do”
and the people say
“I’m trying: is my going to church not enough?
What do you want? Do I need to offer the perfect Goat
or maybe thousands of rams
or tens of thousands of barrels of oil?”
Those are all the stuff of ritual offerings back then, right?
Most religions way back when thought that the way to make God happy
was to burn something that smelled good,
or pour out something like wine or oil over the ground
(but not all of it…the priest would like the left overs thank you very much…
it was not a corruption free system)
And God looked at that hyperbole and sighed gently
and, like a caring parent,
said again what she meant:
What does the Lord Require of You
but to do justice
and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God.
That was last week.
Like that reading, when we listen to Isaiah,
you notice once again that the people are asking God
what is it you want me to do?
They get points for asking that question, in my book.
They also are asking if going through the motions is enough.
I fast.
I humble myself
(a reference to some of the physical things we might do
when we come into the presence of a holy place
these days, faithful people might cover their head
make the sign of a cross
look reverently to the ground,
take a deep breath at a holy sunset
all ways of humbling oneself, perhaps, before the holy one)
Is that not enough?
Well, says Isaiah,
take a look at why you are doing it?
Are you serving your own interests?
Are you fasting to be seen?
Are you genuflecting so that others might see you and say
“that guy, he loves God”
and then go and treat your workers badly
or pick a fight with the guy who cut you off on I-35
or fail to see your neighbor as someone worth caring about?
Fasting is good.
A properly humble heart is good.
But this is the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free…
to share your bread with the hungry
to care for the homeless poor and those with even clothes to wear.
And did you hear how Isaiah describes THAT sort of life:
your light shall break forth like the dawn…
healing shall spring up quickly…
your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
It is like Isaiah is speaking to a people stuck in February
with dreams of the springtime.
The Lord will guide you continuously
and satisfy your need in parched places
and make your bones strong.
Is there a better, more succinct description of a salty Christian than that?
One where God guides us,
provides for our every need
and gives us strong bones, so we can stand tall
while we do justice
and love kindness
and walk humbly beside our God?
///
Did you watch the super bowl this year?
Yes, a rhetorical question, I know.
I asked you last week to watch the commercials
and I was doing that, too
and I was particularly moved by one that I didn’t expect.
It was for a life insurance company, of all things: New York Life.
Did you see it?
I’m guessing their ad agency creative specialist went to seminary,
because that commercial was a sermon
with the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
The ancient Greeks have four words for love, the commercial reminds us.
Something we likely know, because we talk about it,
but something likely new to the Super Bowl audience.
The first is philia. Affection that grows from friendship.
Next, there’s storgé, the kind you have for a grandparent, or a brother.
Third, there’s eros, the uncontrollable urge to say “I love you.”
The fourth kind of love is different.
It’s the most admirable.
It’s called agape,
love as an action.
It takes courage.
Sacrifice.
Strength.
(Then it turns to the company:)
For 175 years,
the narrator says,
we’ve been helping people act on their love
so they can look back, or look ahead, and say ‘we got it right. we did good’.
Here, if its ok to show a commercial in worship,
let me show you:
So, yeah, that’s an ad for a life insurance company
but that was a no look, fifty yard, game winning touchdown pass of a commercial
at least for this faltering preacher.
Every time God’s love is described in the new testament
it is agape,
love as an action
the kind that gives of itself so that the other person can have life
the one who restores streets and repairs the breach
light in the darkness.
How am I choosing to be more faithful today, than I was yesterday?
How am I putting my faith into practice, today?
How am I choosing the way of love, today?
How am I seeking to be Christ to my neighbor, today?
This is how we keep our saltiness, my friends.
May we remember that
as simple and as hard as this is,
God will guide us
God will satisfy our every need in the parched places of our world
God will make our bones strong
and the joy of living that life of love
will make our hearts leap and our souls sing
for the glory of our God.
Thanks be to God this fine Lord’s day
and may it be so.
Amen.
——-
Image: Helen Siegl, Isaiah 58:7, found at http://artandfaithmatters.blogspot.com/2017/01/Isaiah-58-art-lectionary.html (accessed February 9, 2020)
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