Sermon of the Week:
No Insignificant Question-Is A Dynamic Faith Normal?
A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 12, 2021.
Part three of a eight-week sermon series inspired by questions submitted by the Kirk community.
Special Music: Standing in the Need of Prayer
Hymns: Great is Thy Faithfulness / I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me
Keywords: Space Shuttle Challenger, Important Moments, Mary and Joseph, Dynamic Faith, Aristotle. #pcusa
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Matthew 1:18-25
and Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469. All rights reserved.
I want to share with you a few of the experiences
that have significantly impacted my faith
My love of God
My trust in Jesus
My hope because of the Holy Spirit.
When I was ten years old
I was home sick one January morning.
At least this is how my memory holds it
Age ten was a long time ago now.
It was a big day.
My teachers had been hyping the news
that another teacher
Christine McAuliffe
Was going into space.
Every ten year old I knew wanted to be an astronaut.
We had seen Star Wars.
ET The Extra Terrestrial.
The Last Starfighter.
When my family ate dinner and talked about our school day
the evening news was on in the background
and Peter Jennings told us all about the Strategic Defense Initiative
The effort to put things in space to protect us from soviet nuclear missiles.
The year before, NASA had completed its first ever untethered space-walk.
So space was a big deal.
And now there was McAuliffe,
The teacher who won the lottery, so to speak,
A contest where she prevailed over
11,000 other teacher-applicants
To be the seventh crew member on the space shuttle Challenger’s next mission.
For weeks we had been studying the space program in school
what felt like a nation-wide build up to the launch of the Space Shuttle.
We had great teachers. They knew we’d be excited by all of this.
So we did math problems about space.
We did Science experiments about space.
I think my teacher had some of that space ice cream
That tasted like cardboard.
We wrote essays about the whole thing:
third grade essays, so maybe a couple of sentences.
We learned a lot that year, because we were excited and motivated.
Teachers were proud.
Students were in awe.
Look at this thing that we’re able to do,
Launch ordinary people into space on a rocket ship
that can land just like an airplane.
At 9:30 that morning everyone at my elementary school
was in the auditorium to watch.
I just remember being at home, sick I guess,
watching on our tv.
Like they had done for decades,
they broadcast the communication stream from mission control
We are go for launch
10 9 8 7 6
And the engines roared and pushed upwards against the railing
And then it was off.
And it flew, and it was beautiful.
The explosion that followed a minute later was powerful and numbing.
There was confusion and heartache and sadness.
We now know that cold weather
Had weakened an o-ring seal on the right booster rocket
And physics did the rest.
It seems like every generation has these significant events
that impact everyone, and maybe particularly so young people
as it shakes up what they thought they knew
and makes them grow up, in a way.
September 11 was like that for many of us.
Kent State for many others.
Sandy Hook.
Normandy. Hiroshima.
For me it was definitely January 1986,
The day that childhood innocence of sorts faded
And the questions started.
So many questions:
How can this happen?
Christine was married. Had two children.
How can they possibly?
The unimaginable hurt.
How is it we can do such amazing things, as a people,
science, technology,
But tragedies like this just…happen?
Powerful questions for a ten year old.
And up to that point, my faith, such as it was for a kid,
Was nurtured by caring parents who did everything
they could to gift me with a safe, protected, gentle path through life,
as long as they could.
They knew, though, that that isn’t sustainable.
Life is life. There are no absolutes. We are finite, fallible creatures.
And we all face that reality,
whether we are privileged and can avoid it for so long, or not.
And it is no understatement to say that the space shuttle explosion
Was the catalyst for my adult faith.
I was shaken up for a while.
It led me to think about suffering and heartache and where God is,
in the middle of that.
It helped me see that faith is complicated, because life is complicated.
It led me to open my heart up to other people’s pain, to see it, to not run from it
Because I came to believe that God doesn’t run from it.
One of the most powerful implications of the incarnation
Is that God experiences the same pain we experience,
The same hurt,
The same heartache.
And as I explored the Christian faith from that experience,
Singing hymns on Sunday, listening to scripture read and proclaimed
Reading it myself from time to time
Talking to people about their experiences,
My faith took shape, stretched and groaned and pushed and yelled.
I came to find God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, truly, powerfully, present
In those moments, standing in the gap, picking up the pieces
Praying with sighs too deep for words, sometimes
as we heard last week
with a new appreciation for why Jesus was so interested in healing
In providing food, sustenance, basic needs for people,
So committed to helping people who had….nothing
Committed to making their life better,
to work to end their suffering and their hurt.
And why those who followed Jesus, the church,
Picked up that work from the very beginning
And became a safe place for orphans and widows and foreigners
A place where there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, Male and Female
Because all are one in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It took years, that meandering, wandering, journey
From third grade to adulthood,
With ups and downs, detours here and there.
Not to suggest that I’ve reached a final destination.
But my point is that that experience stands out to me
As particularly impactful for my life.
///
Here’s a second experience to share.
Not every formative moment is challenging, or painful.
Sometimes they are the most beautiful, most lovely moments.
They’re the watching-the-meteor-shower at midnight,
catch the sun set over the spectacular valley,
feel the sun on your shoulders and know that you’re alive
and be so thankful for it moments.
The look into your newborn’s eyes for the first time sort of moments
When she says ‘I do’ sort of moments
When you choose the right, the good, the true over the alternative
And no one knows it…but you do
And you feel good because you’ve experienced integrity sort of moments.
This moment that I want to share was from Chicago
When I was at a churchy conference talking about churchy things.
It was about a decade ago now,
And that night there was an author speaking,
talking about how the church is doing.
She was sharing hard truths about how the world is changing
and how we might want to pay attention to that
and she was going through some PowerPoint slides
when someone interrupted her.
It was in a big sanctuary, bigger than ours
With balconies that flanked both sides and the back of the room
And someone stood up in one of the balconies and stopped the presentation.
It passed. Said the interrupter, almost in tears.
It just passed.
And we all knew what she was talking about
Because, lets be honest, there was social media back then, barely,
And we were all keeping our eyes on it, anticipating this very moment
When our church decided to drop the fidelity and chastity clause
in our constitution.
What that meant was that LGBTQIA people would, finally,
be seen as equals in our church
Could be ordained as elders and deacons and pastors
Could come out from the shadows and be authentic and true to who they are,
Who God created them to be.
It passed.
And there were cheers throughout the sanctuary.
And I looked around the room, and in the back
there was a young couple
College kids, holding hands and looking at each other, crying,
Because the church that had nurtured them
and gave them this faith that means so much to us
finally had said that they belonged, that they mattered.
And one of them wiped the eyes of the other, and they hugged,
And it was beautiful.
And I had spent years talking with people, studying the scripture,
reading various theological papers, writing a few of them myself,
translating the Greek and the Hebrew,
getting my head around this whole thing
but it was then, that moment, where I knew that our church had gotten it right.
This detail doesn’t matter, because they could have broken up the next morning
And the truth of that moment would have remained
But not that long after that,
one of those women got ordained as a Presbyterian Pastor.
They have children of their own now, with normal and happy lives,
Leaders in the church, bearers of God’s love in the world.
///
So those are two important, formative experiences of faith for me.
When I got to work on this sermon,
And started to think about what some of those experiences were
I ended up writing down a lot of them:
Taking communion, as a teenager, and as an adult,
experiencing wonder
through normal, everyday things, bread and juice.
That moment when I saw a father strike his kid
At the Fourth of July fireworks near the Washington monument,
and not saying anything.
I think about that kid…a lot.
And it makes me think about the time
when a scoutmaster slapped me
Broadside, across my face.
I didn’t say anything about that, either.
Or there was the moment when my grandmother held my hand after my grandfather’s funeral.
It meant so much. I miss her. And I miss him.
When my friend and I were in a record store, and security pulled him aside
And started asking him about shoplifting,
He wasn’t doing anything, but he was the only black person in the store.
When I said goodbye to Ann,
one of the saints who was there to lend a hand when our daughters were born,
who would die that day of renal cancer.
Each of these, and more, would have an impact on my faith.
They would change how I would pray.
They would impact how I would read sacred stories.
They definitely became a part of me,
beauty marks or scars or precious memories.
Sometimes they would lead me to rethink something that I had long thought,
And either confirm what I thought to be true,
Or helped me see a new, a different, way to think that thought.
Sometimes I had to sit with that for a while,
Learn to become more comfortable with not having all the answers,
And sometimes I found things settled, confirmed.
What about you?
What are some of the experiences in your life that have shaped your faith?
And how have you felt about that?
If faith is more a journey, something more dynamic,
than a set of things we believe in, just so, from our first day to our last,
how have you adjusted when life happens, and things are just, well, different,
maybe for the good, maybe more challenging, but different?
///
This third installment of our sermon series “No Insignificant Question” is great,
Because it is something that we can all, in a way, relate to.
I’ve rephrased the question to read “Is a Dynamic Faith Normal”,
And I hope that this gets at what the asker was asking.
They said that their faith was more like a pendulum than a cross,
Meaning that instead of getting deeper and taller, it seemed to meander
Maybe a bit more conservative here and then a bit more progressive there
A bit more literal and then a bit more symbolic
And they wondered: is that normal?
Is this what Jesus would encourage?
Would it be pleasing to God, or is it a sign of falling short?
And that’s a great question,
Because it illustrates a few different and contrasting views
of what the life of faith is about.
I don’t want to create a strawman argument,
And I can’t fully articulate what this questioner is asking,
But it is often the case that one view of the life of faith is
firm obedience to some set of unchanging perspectives.
I mentioned Plato a few weeks ago;
Today we lift up his protégé, Aristotle,
And how we have him to thank for this, actually, at least in part,
because it was Aristotle’s philosophy
that influenced Thomas Aquinas, and others,
to talk about how God is all powerful, all knowing, all good,
so we really ought to have a faith that mirrors that sort of God
omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent.
And I actually think that God is all those things, in God’s way,
In God’s infinite, bigger than existence sort of way,
A reality that I can’t ever quite understand completely,
Because I am a finite creature,
Because I am not God
Because there will always, by necessity, be mystery.
But Thomas Aquinas went further, affirming that God
never changes, never grows, never adapts.
And maybe, our faith needs to mirror that too.
Maybe Thomas missed those passages
in the Bible where God changes God’s mind
Where Jesus prays in the Garden,
weeps over Lazarus,
Tells us that the Spirit will come to help us
navigate a challenging life
(check out John 14:
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything,
and remind you of all that I have said to you.)
Jesus was constantly engaging the disciples,
Trying to teach them, through stories, parables, hands-on-experiences.
Yes, he marveled at their inability, at times, to get it,
But he didn’t chastise them for it.
He didn’t dismiss them for it.
He appears, instead, to take all that in stride,
As if it is indeed normal, indeed natural,
And that God is willing to take those moments in our lives
And keep working with us
Whether we’re more like a lost sheep, a lost coin,
a son who takes the inheritance and skips town,
or his brother who grumbles at the grace given him
when he comes back, hat in hand.
God never closes the door.
Did you notice that?
God never closes the door.
Maybe we shouldn’t assume that we can walk always in a straight line
When God doesn’t presume that our lives will work out that way.
///
This is the second week in a row
we’ve taken a look at a story from the Christmas Gospel.
Last week we talked about Zechariah.
This week we have Joseph.
Joseph is an important figure in the New Testament,
And not just because he is Jesus’ father.
Joseph is a faithful guy.
Poor, hardworking, doesn’t have very much,
But he is seeking to be true to his faith.
We don’t know how, or for how long,
Joseph and Mary were betrothed to each other
But they were. They were engaged.
One day they would be married, maybe when they got a bit older,
They were likely pretty young, given that they weren’t married yet.
And Mary, well, one day he finds out that she is pregnant.
And that’s a problem. A problem for Joseph, and a problem for Mary.
And custom, as well as the teachings of his faith,
would be for Joseph to end it.
To announce to everyone that the engagement was over,
Which would allow Joseph to find another wife,
And Mary, well, to find a way to raise her child,
A much harder go, for sure, without a husband.
And that’s what he planned to do, only quietly,
not wanting it to be so embarrassing for her…
although not particularly worried, it seems,
about how she’d manage a newborn on her own.
But that’s not what happens.
Joseph has a dream, and Gabriel is there,
and tells him what’s going on,
And what he should do,
And that this child would be so special…
And Joseph wakes up, and what do you know,
His whole perspective has changed.
He bucks tradition and religious teaching and history
And takes Mary as his wife,
And they welcome Jesus, Emmanuel, and that is that.
Joseph, one of my Bible professors liked to say,
Was the first person in the New Testament
who shows us how to faithfully interpret scripture,
how to engage with the reality that is before us
as well as the foundations of our faith
and through all that, to discern what God is trying to say to us.
Without that openness, without the willingness to listen to Gabriel,
Joseph wouldn’t have been there for Mary, for Jesus,
And who knows what the story would have been.
Something like THIS is more how our tradition understands the life of faith
Each day going to the well with our questions and our experiences
and then drawing up living water to drink.
There are so many stories in the bible, both old and new testaments,
Of faithful people engaging what is going on in their lives
And working out a fresh, new, faithful way of seeing the world
Abraham and Sarah, having a child,
Isaac and Jacob, questions about birthright and wrestling with God
Jonah, not wanting to go to Nineveh
Jeremiah, during a time of exile
Paul, on the road to Damascus
Peter, with his dream of all that good food to eat
The disciples, faced with hungry crowds needing to eat
Or being sent out to serve, two by two,
Or finding a quite alive Jesus
in the locked room on Easter morning, wounds and all,
Or hearing the holy spirit blow through town on Pentecost.
Faith isn’t just an intellectual exercise that,
once we have it, it stays the same forever.
Faith is the act of engaging the world,
It is a way of living.
We can’t assume that
our belief and our trust and our hope and our love
is separate from our living,
and so our belief and our trust and our hope and our love
is going to change, grow, adapt, push, struggle,
and that’s ok, if we hear what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit as Good News.
One of the basic principles of our faith is that
Even as we journey, we never journey alone.
Jesus meets us on the road to Emmaus.
And sometimes, thanks be to God,
our eyes are opened, and we recognize him there with us
And when that happens, there is peace, and there is joy.
In the meantime, our lives move forward
With a season for every purpose under heaven,
according to Ecclesiastes.
A time to rend, and a time to sew.
A time to weep, and a time to dance,
A time to seek, and a time to lose.
Here the author isn’t telling us what life is meant to be like, necessarily,
Just what life is actually like,
That we do in fact live dynamic lives,
Where we are not always in control,
Where we are called to seek the good and the true and the just
And to work to bring about God’s world everywhere we go.
Between the time to be born, and the time to die,
The time to plant, and the time to harvest,
The time to keep silent, and the time to speak,
All of that time is God’s time.
And God can handle it, as we, in our quite human sort of way,
Work it all out, the best we can.
I do believe that a dynamic faith is normal.
Because life is beyond our control. Things happen.
And when they do, we necessarily change with it.
But God is always there, working with us, loving us,
Encouraging us to live our lives with God’s values in mind,
Compassion for all, concern for peace and for justice
Sharing God’s love with the world.
May we, my friends,
Trust that whichever way our pendulum may be moving
That God is big enough to understand, to guide, to care
And that God is able, through it all, to work with us,
Because that is who God is,
And why God came to us in Jesus in the first place,
And may that trust comfort us, and help us grow
In faith, in hope, and in love.
May it be so.
Amen.
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