Sermon of the Week:
All Things Work Together for Good
A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 31, 2022.
Hymns: Give to the Winds Thy Fears
and Live Into Hope
Keywords: The Palace Theatre, Bible and Newspaper, A Future with Hope, Serve the City.
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Romans 8:24-28
and Jeremiah 29:7, 11-14
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469.
All rights reserved.
Editorial Note: This sermon was my last as the Pastor of the Kirk of Kansas City. I’ve been fortunate to work with this wonderful church for the past nine years.
Today we’re turning to a passage in Jeremiah
that has a special meaning for me.
Our friend Landon Whitsitt and I
preached this text together back in 2010
when I was installed as Moderator of Heartland Presbytery for that year.
And I’ve turned to this passage time and time again since then
As I’ve tried to process this weird time that we are in
Both in the church and in our culture,
and look for signs of hope and possibility.
This is Jeremiah 29, verse 7, then verses 11 to 14.
I invite you to join me in listening for God’s word to us today.
7 But seek the welfare of the city
where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the Lord on its behalf,
for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope.
12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me,
I will hear you.
13 When you search for me, you will find me;
if you seek me with all your heart,
14 I will let you find me, says the Lord,
and I will restore your fortunes
and gather you from all the nations
and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord,
and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
And may God bless to us our reading
And our understanding
And our applying of this word
To how we live our lives. Amen.
///
One of practices that preachers often develop
Is that we’re always on the lookout
for things to talk about in our sermons—experiences, stories, examples.
Legend goes that the 20th century theologian Karl Barth urged preachers
To always keep the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
It’s not that we’re desperate for things to talk about
Because, Lord knows,
If you just look around,
there’s always something for people of faith to talk about.
And I’ve never known a preacher
Who doesn’t have a good 20 or 30 minutes in them
About anything you might ask them…
I know some of you factor this in before asking me something…
So I try to restrain myself, most of the time,
Unless I’m up here,
Bible in one hand, newspaper in the other…
But it’s more that this is a habit that preachers cultivate
the practice of trying to pay attention.
We think that if we can look around and notice
And can share that noticing with all of you
Then that might help you nurture your own practice of paying attention.
The faithful life is all about paying attention
Looking, listening, for the movement of God in the world.
Bible in one hand, what’s happening in our world in the other
This is a good way for all of us to go through life
Neither just reading scripture alone and ignoring the real world,
as if that were possible,
Nor assuming that what happens in our day to day lives doesn’t matter
for our faith,
that the real needs of others, concerns of others,
questions that I have, that these don’t matter.
Because all that matters.
So I remembered this
when I first saw a news report back in January
from the ABC affiliate in New York City, WABC,
and I saved the story back then.
And since January, Week after week, I’ve asked myself
If the time was right to talk about it in the sermon that week.[i]
And it never quite was right…
It’s been six whole months now
And this is my last chance, you know,
So I wanted to give this interesting little story a shot.
It’s not life changing or anything,
But it caught my eye, as I was going about my day
Looking, and listening for the movement of God in our midst.
///
There’s apparently this place in New York City called the Palace Theatre.
New York is famous for a lot of things,
And maybe it’s theatres are on the short list of what its best known for.
Every trip I’ve ever taken to New York has included
at least an attempt to get tickets for a Broadway show.
I’ve not always been able to fit them in,
and I’ve not been to New York that often,
But I have seen iconic shows there
Shows like Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera and the Lion King,
And some less well known shows too, like
Mean Girls and Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.
That last one had one of the original Hamilton actors as the lead.
Some people argue
that New York City has the best Theatre in the World.
They’ve not seen Kansas City’s Theatre in the Park, but we’ll go with it.
And I don’t quite know if the Palace Theatre ever hosted any of those superlative shows like Les Mis or School of Rock
You know,
But they held their own.
It opened in 1903 as a vaudeville theatre
And hosted the musicals Oklahoma and La Cage aux Folles
During its heyday.
And maybe more notoriously, it was a favorite place for performers
Like Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and even the Marx Brothers.
“Everyone wanted to perform there,” said David Levinson,
chairman of the company that owns the theatre.
It sounds like a great place to catch a good act.
Now: the Palace Theatre has had its share of ups and downs.
It had a rough patch in the 20s, during the great depression
And again in the 50s before it was converted
into a venue for major productions
by the Nederlander organization in the 1960s.
But as things go,
the economics of what it takes to put on a show
Particularly in an aging theatre
meant its days were numbered.
According to Wikipedia, SpongeBob SquarePants
was the last musical to play there, ending its run in 2018.
All this is somewhat interesting, perhaps,
Particularly if you love theatre or Sinatra or SpongeBob
but the challenges of this particular theatre
aren’t all that different from many others, really.
There are other venues in New York City
that are more than a hundred years old
That had famous acts fill their halls with thunderous applause
And yet which struggled, went under, fought for survival.
I’m not sure any of this would have caught my attention, normally.
I’ve not been to the Palace Theatre myself, though I’ve seen it,
Hard not to, really, being right there at 47th and 7th avenue,
right on the corner of Broadway.
Would have been easy enough to pay it no nevermind.
But here’s what happened:
On a Friday morning in January this year,
Construction crews started lifting the palace theatre
a full thirty feet into the air.
You heard that right: they lifted the palace theatre up to about the third story.
The Palace is becoming part of a new 46 story tower
built on the site where it once stood,
And all 1700 Palace seats,
And the walls, stage, orchestra pit, curtain apparatus, and more
Was hoisted nine or ten meters into the air
Where it will live on… hopefully for another hundred years.
Now, why would they do that?
Well, the answer is pretty obvious:
“This is the most heavily trafficked corner in the western hemisphere”
said Levinson
“and there was no retail space here,
But [had the potential to probably be]
the most valuable commercial retail space in the world.”
The plan is to put retail there on ground level.
But they didn’t have to save the Palace Theatre.
But save it they did, nonetheless.
Just when things looked like the end for that Theatre,
An innovative, different plan was considered, and then pursued.
It took them five years to arrange this whole operation,
Lifting the 14 million pound theatre
Over the course of about eight weeks.
It moved about a quarter of an inch an hour
Through innovative hydraulically controlled steel posts
and a special concrete cushion to protect it from below.
Think of it like a whole bunch of specially built jacks, said ABC news,
Just like you use to lift your car when you get a flat tire
only this time for a significant building
in what is one of the busiest parts
of the busiest city in the world.
When the New York Times wrote about the project in May[ii]
They opened the story this way:
“If you’ve ever lost at Jenga by toppling a tower after removing a block,
You might appreciate what developers
have accomplished at TSX Broadway.
The developer of the 46 story building
has managed to loosen its bottom floors
And lift them 30 feet without sending anything crashing down to earth.
And what has been elevated isn’t any old section.
It’s the Palace Theatre…
[which] had to be moved, from the stage to the balcony,
Without suffering as much as a crack in the delicate plasterwork
adorning ceilings, arches, and box seats.”
The entire project is scheduled to open sometime next year
After those seats and curtains get a facelift
And the rest of the building is finished.
Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance,
Is hopeful about all this,
And sees the project as important for the entire theatre industry
As it seeks a revival following these difficult pandemic years:
It is “symbolic of the resolve of the recovery.”
///
So, yeah, that’s kind of fascinating, don’t you think?
I heard that story and thought about the ingenuity of the human spirit
The way that, sometimes, when people face significant challenges,
Fall on hard times, can’t quite figure out what the future might hold,
Imagination and innovation and determination sometimes offer
such creative ideas,
Solutions and activities that
no one in their right mind would have ever thought of.
It’s a pretty cool story
And I hope one day to be able to see a show there,
If it’s a good show, of course.
Maybe James and KC A Capella Soundproof can perform there one day.
And I actually think this story fits our readings quite well
If we have eyes to look a little bit closer
at what Jeremiah has to offer for us today
this day of transitions, this day of change.
Jeremiah had a difficult task assigned to him.
In part, that’s because the Hebrew people were going through
A very difficult time themselves,
the beginning of the exile
After the nation of Israel had suffered a significant defeat
at the hands of the Babylonian empire.
The Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s temple,
Toppled Jerusalem,
And took many of the city’s leading merchants, scholars, scribes
With them back to Babylon when they went back home.
It is really impossible to overstate how painful and challenging this all was,
The people forced to live in a foreign land
Away from the center of their cultural and religious life
For what ended up being several generations.
In our reading today,
we catch a glimpse of a moment early in the exile,
Where Jeremiah is charged with speaking a word to his people
Who were not just grieving this major loss
But who were hearing from others that, hey,
this was just going to be a short blip, you know,
nothing significant has to change…
In just a couple of years or so we’ll head back
And we can put our lives back together.
That wasn’t true.
Those other voices, people Jeremiah called false prophets
Were deceiving them.
And Jeremiah had to tell them that,
That this time of disruption and disorder and chaos
Was going to last a while,
Seventy years
So that a generation or two would pass
Before they would get to return to the ruins of Solomon’s temple
And pass through the gates of their home once more.
What do you tell a people who are facing that sort of moment?
Or what do you do, if you’re those people,
And the good days are a memory and you don’t really know where you’re going
And you wonder where in the world God might be.
What are you thinking, feeling, looking at,
As you look around for God in your midst?
Sometimes the newspaper you’re holding
doesn’t really have much good news, you know.
And the challenges that stain your fingers while you flip through the pages
Are just too much to take.
///
If I’m honest,
I don’t think it helps to draw too much of a comparison
between the struggles of different people
in different ages and with different circumstances.
The Exile that Jeremiah is addressing
Isn’t the same as other obstacles and oppression
that our Jewish Cousins would later endure.
They might resonate, but they’re different experiences.
And though we ourselves are living through a very difficult time
Our moment isn’t the same kind of Exile, either.
I don’t know if that’s what this moment feels like to you or not. Exile.
But I’ve heard some people lately describe
what this moment feels like as exile
As a time of significant disruption, where it is hard to see a hopeful future.
Some of those voices are talking about the church
The larger church I mean
Which once had full parking lots and Wednesday night suppers
And now has to reassess what it means to be a church
when so many of the people who say they follow Jesus
adopt a rather judgmental, intolerant, nationalistic thing that Jesus would reject,
and the rest of us struggle to serve and to love and to welcome
in new ways, ways we can’t quite envision yet.
It feels like we’ve been in a sort of exile for a while now.
What, two, three, four decades.
How far back we keep looking, for some heyday…
And then still other voices are talking about this societal moment
we’re living in as a sort of exile
This moment of constitutional amendments and January 6th hearings
What feels, to some, a teetering democracy, fragile world peace
Climate change, the gridlock and inaction and even sabotage of our leaders.
Moments like this can be disheartening.
That is certainly what the Hebrews were feeling,
even though their Exile was unique.
What in the world could Jeremiah say to them,
And what might we learn from that
For our particular moment, for a time such as this?
Well, Jeremiah said two very important things, in fact:
First, he tells them: don’t try to avoid the situation you find yourself in,
But look, instead, for opportunities to love and serve those around you.
That’s the first thing:
seek the welfare of the city
where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the Lord on its behalf,
for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Jeremiah is speaking with the voice of God here, that first person “I”
And We might well challenge that part about God sending them all into Exile
Just as surely as we, today, reject the idea
that God sends hurricanes on people.
We do not believe that God’s causes that cancer or addiction or lost job
God doesn’t micromanage our world in that way
Though this was the prevailing thought of the day, back then
What they all felt. The Babylonians would have thought the same of their Gods.
And the Hebrews certainly felt like the exile was caused by their misdeeds,
as a nation
Years of mistreating the poor and the foreigner
Years of taking advantage of others for economic or political gain
And those things do indeed destabilize a nation, don’t they
They make it harder to defend when mighty army of Babylon
comes knocking at the gate.
What they felt was divine retribution, which we question, rightly.
But be that as it may
The broader point shouldn’t get lost here:
You are in a foreign land, Jeremiah says.
You’re going to be here for a while.
So seek the welfare of the city where you are living.
Love. Serve. Build.
Indeed, just before our reading,
Jeremiah urges them to lay the foundation for new homes
and to plant gardens and to celebrate weddings and to have children…
things you do when you’re expecting a future
things you do when you trust that there’s a tomorrow coming.
Seek the welfare of your new city,
For in its welfare, you’ll find your welfare.
Another way to say this
Is that their future is now bound together with the Babylonians.
They will be foreigners in that land for two generations.
Don’t fight this change. Don’t look back to a time that no longer exists.
The toothpaste is out of the tube. The temple no longer stands.
You’ll need to adapt to get through all of this.
That’s Jeremiah’s first message.
Fair enough.
But how do you do that?
How do you gather the courage you need
To face tomorrow, when you might be here for a good long while?
That’s where Jeremiah’s second message comes in,
Important context for them to understand.
If the first point is: seek the welfare of the city you find yourself in
The second point is: have hope, for I know the future I have planned for you
Plans for your welfare, and not for harm.
When you call upon me, I’ll be there.
When you look for me, you’ll find me.
If you seek me with your heart, there I’ll be.
You have a future with hope, believe it.
And one day we will figure out how to put these shattered pieces back together
And gather you back with your loved ones
And we’ll fix the things that made the exile happen in the first place.
That hope never ends. It is trustworthy, and reliable. And it is a gift for you.
///
One of the things that I have always admired about the Kirk
Is the way we do our business during these challenging times.
This congregation decided, long ago,
to seek the welfare of those around us
As our primary goal,
to love and serve our neighbor.
There is a heart for mission in this church
That runs deep
When I first became your pastor, Oh the stories that were shared
Of habitat houses built, of refugee families welcomed,
Of peacemakers celebrated,
Of food shared with the hungry
Mittens knitted for children with cold hands.
There’s a heart for mission that runs deep here
And I’ve seen that continue to inspire us and to ground us over recent years
As we’ve sought new ways to do this
To nurture the welfare of the city in which we find ourselves.
And I’ve seen us lean on the hope that God offers us
A trust that our future, whatever it might be,
Will be something good
And that we’ll find our way
By searching and by praying and by calling on God together.
What makes our Kirk the Kirk
Is this shared vision of being God’s people,
Inviting others to experience the love of God
Through our worship, authentic relationships with each other,
And meaningful service together,
As we promote peace and justice in the world.
How many times do we read Jesus telling us not to fear
And when we read that, we remember that we follow a God
Who gave hope to the exiles and led them into a brighter tomorrow,
So we, too, claim that very hope.
We, too, seek the welfare of the city.
I have been so proud to say that I’m the pastor of a community of faith
Where all are welcome, as God made them,
A community that wants to look to God’s future, not to the past
That believes, in its core, that all things work together for Good
For those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.
This Kirk has always been that kind of church.
And it will be for years to come.
I will always remember you, good friends, for how you bear this purpose
And how you’ve nurtured it
In your friendships with one another, and with me.
///
I grew up in a rural town in south west Iowa
and for a few years, I lived right on the edge of that town.
Cornstalks were pretty much on the other side of the road
And I remember that you could look out and see for miles across those fields
All the way to the horizon.
Like any horizon, you couldn’t see what was there, beyond it
But you knew there was something. Had to be.
I remember looking out at that vast landscape
And wondering: what was out there?
What was just past what I could see.
I got older, and found that you could ride your bike our that direction
Or, later, get in a car, and go cruse out that way and see for yourself
But o matter how far you’d pedal,
No matter how long you’d drive,
there would always be a horizon.
There was always something unknown.
The future is like that.
And this can be quite worrisome, if we let it be,
Or we can trust that the journey we are on
Leads us to a good and loving place.
Sure, we might have to adapt along the way
Plant some gardens
Raise some theatres
Dream of new ways to love and serve our neighbors. Who knows.
But just because you can’t see over the horizon
Doesn’t mean that the destination isn’t over there
And it doesn’t mean that the travel necessary to get there
Hard and challenging though it may be
Isn’t worth it.
Every new day is an opportunity to love and serve the city
In the welfare of your neighbor, we find our welfare.
And along the way, we’ll find a God who walks with us
Prays for us, sometimes with words we don’t quite have
And guides us, always guides us
Towards God’s new kingdom.
My friends, I will always remember the journey you and I have taken together
And I trust that The Kirk is faithfully walking with God every step of the way.
And that God will be with you,
Praying with you
Helping inspire you
To be the kind of Kirk that seeks to be the hands and feet
of Jesus Christ in the world, loving and serving our neighbor
welcoming all with the love and the compassion of God.
May God bless you and keep you.
May God’s face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May God’s countenance shine upon you and give you peace
As we live into hope, today and tomorrow,
All in God’s good time.
May it be so.
Amen.
[i] https://abc7ny.com/palace-theatre-lift-times-square-construction/11438262/
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/business/palace-theater-times-square-lift.html
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