Sermon of the Week
A Foolish Message.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on January 26, 2020.
#pcusa

Keywords: Concord, Unity Not Uniformity, Foolishness, Guthrie.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Matthew 4:12-23
and 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 (included also in the text below)

I’m glad that the lectionary planners
have turned our attention back to First Corinthians.

I’ve always liked this letter, which one of my seminary professors described as
“Paul’s plea for concord.”

She got that description from today’s reading,
where out of the gate Paul points out
various diverse groups in this church he founded, and urges them to come together
not under the most plausible argument they can muster,
not on which side has the most votes,
but under the “foolish message of the cross”
the power of God to save and to enliven us.

I invite you this morning to open your hearts and your minds
to this reading of God’s Word.

10 Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, 
by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you should be in agreement
and that there should be no divisions among you,
but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. 

¹¹For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people
that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. 
¹²What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’,
or ‘I belong to Apollos’,
or ‘I belong to Cephas’,
or ‘I belong to Christ.’ ¹

³Has Christ been divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 

¹⁴I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 
¹⁵so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 
¹⁶(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas;
beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 
¹⁷For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel,
and not with eloquent wisdom,
so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.
18 For the message about the cross is foolishness
to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

And may God bless our reading,
and our understanding,
and our applying of this word,
to how we live our lives. Amen.

///
I love this letter because you can almost picture Paul writing it,
or maybe dictating it as he paced back and forth from where ever it was he was,
having first received a note from the Corinthians
who were concerned about all sorts of things.

He cared for that church, there in Corinth,
the people he came to know over several months
the people who came to know what it meant to love God
because of Christ’s foolish gift of selfless love.

And so, when he heard from them and saw that they were stressing out
about how to be community together, about what to do next,
about where to go, collectively, into an unknown future,
he sets about to respond, out of compassion for them,
and out of the conviction of faith.

What you get is this letter which we call First Corinthians,
this appeal for concord.

What we get is Paul appealing to the sensibilities of those he has come to know
that, yes, they each have their own perspectives, their own passions,
their own biases and yearnings and ways to do things.

Paul isn’t going to denigrate that,
in fact, just a few chapters later, he’ll celebrate that:
there are many gifts, but one spirit, he will say,
some are teachers, some speak with spirited tongues,
some might be plumbers or mechanics or preachers or bookkeepers or singers
but all of you are gifted, in different ways,
with different perspectives and passions and yearnings,
for a common purpose:
which Paul called the common good,
or which we might call the Kingdom of God.

Paul wasn’t pushing uniformity,
which is something we get wrong sometimes when we hear today’s reading
this “be of the same mind” part.

Unity and uniformity aren’t the same thing.

What gives us our unity, instead,
isn’t our all being the same.
Our unity comes from the one who unifies us,
the one who calls us, and who sends us.
Our unity comes from our following God on the path of Jesus Christ.

///
And so Paul is pacing back and forth
trying to figure out how to help these beloved people claim that calling.
It’s not about me, Paul says.

(So he rambles a bit about baptism,
knowing full well how people seem to follow the one who does the baptizing;
just ask John, as we peek at our other reading from Matthew,
John the Baptist:
whom many would turn to as their leader,
John who was trying to point to Jesus instead…
I am glad I didn’t baptize many of you, Paul says,
except one or two, or maybe five or six or ten or who knows,
but it wasn’t about me…
right, my Corinthian friends?”).

And it’s also not about you, come to think of it,
not even about the other ways you’ve clustered yourselves,
–belonging to Paul
–belonging to Peter
(That’s Cephas, right, the rock on which the church would be built,
the popular leader of the predominantly Jewish followers of Christ in Jerusalem).
–belonging to Apollos (he was more out there, think the Andrew Yang of his time)
–or even quote “belonging to Christ”….
if that is a way you separate yourselves from the others.

Christ is not divided, Paul says.
We don’t do this, not in the church,
not the way the world does.
(Paul would likely look at all the various denominations
over the years and wonder what happened)

The world does not get this,
but, then again, the one who died for you and for me
is not really something we have gotten our heads around yet.

Even today, 2000 years later.

Its foolishness. And we know that.
And still, we are amazed by what it means for us and for the whole world.

///
Paul’s appeal for concord.
But it is also a call for each of us to follow, right,
to work together for the realm of God. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
Calling

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on January 12, 2020.
#pcusa

Keywords: Baptism of the Lord, Matthew McConaughey, Suffering Servant.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Isaiah 42:1-9
and Matthew 3:11-17 (also included in the text below)

Can I just note the irony
of talking about baptism on one of the snowiest and coldest weekends of the year.

I was looking back, and over the seven Januaries I have been here,
we’ve had to cancel worship twice on this weekend
due to snow and ice.

Jesus was baptized out in a river. The river Jordan.
I’m guessing it was in the summer, or at least not in the heart of winter.

We’re lucky we do baptisms indoors,
rather than out in a river or a lake somewhere.

Last night, I noticed that Lincoln, the automobile company
has another one of those Matthew McConaughey commercials out,
where he doesn’t say a word.
It is just him, in a warm coat
up north somewhere, parked next to a lake all by himself.
And he walks out on the ice
and he drills a hole
and he sets up an ice fishing rig
and it looks so cold…
and instead of retreating to a hut or a nice fire
or, well, leaving because it was so freezing cold,
they show him sitting in the back of his Lincoln SUV
blowing a little warm air into his hands and smiling his trademark smile…
as if to say: buy a Lincoln, and you can be cold here too.

No thank you.

(Here’s the commercial)

But here we are, the Baptism of the Lord Sunday
in the heart of January. In snow and ice season.

McConaughey’s Lincoln commercial placed next to this reading from Matthew
made me chuckle, at first,
and then made me think of people who actually like to go do the polar bear dips
in the freezing water,
and the zeal and joy with which some people really give to the winter months
and I just wanted to curl back up under a blanket and dream of spring.

I know many people are thinking about a big Chiefs game today.

In fact, as I was working on some changes to the sermon this morning
I was interrupted by a chime on my phone,
and it was my brother,
in town from Minneapolis,
tweeting a picture of the tent they’ve erected out at Arrowhead Stadium
trying to stay warm as they wait for kickoff this afternoon.

I am happy for the Chiefs, I really am,
and I remember one play-off game, years ago
back when we had Joe Montana for a few years
and I was in the upper row of the upper deck in sub-zero temps
and the hot chocolate that I bought steaming-hot from concession
was like ice water when I got back to my seat
and all I can just say, is:
pitchers and catchers report to Sunrise, Arizona,
in 30 days, 12 hours,
and oh 30 minutes or so…

I really am, at heart, more of a baseball fan.
But, for those who love football: Today’s sermon is a bit of an audible.

The plan had been to tie the themes of Jesus’ baptism
and of Jesus’ call to serve God that he finds there
with the ordination and installation of our new ruling elders
and our common calling in the life of a church
to serve together,
but since our January snow and ice storm came yesterday morning,
rather than today,
the session was not able to meet as planned yesterday,
and we have had to postpone the ordination and installation
to a Sunday in the near future.

So, we will change it up just a little bit
an audible: call for a running play, instead of a passing play
and we will instead talk a bit more generally about Baptism.

I invite you to listen for the Good News this morning
as we consider these words from the Gospel According to Matthew:

John the Baptist said:
11 ‘I baptize you with water for repentance,
but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me;
I am not worthy to carry his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 
¹²His winnowing-fork is in his hand,
and he will clear his threshing-floor
and will gather his wheat into the granary;
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan,
to be baptized by him. 
¹⁴John would have prevented him, saying,
‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ 
¹⁵But Jesus answered him,
‘Let it be so now;
for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’
Then he consented. 

¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized,
just as he came up from the water,
suddenly the heavens were opened to him
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 
¹⁷And a voice from heaven said,
‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

And may God bless to us
our reading
and our understanding
and our applying of these words, to how we live our lives. Amen.

///
This text invites us to attend a BAPTISM.
In the life of the New Testament, few things are more important.

All four of the Gospels record the baptism of Jesus.
That alone should get us to sit up and take note

And Matthew, in particular,
not only offers one of the longer descriptions of Jesus’ baptism
but also ends his Gospel with these words from Christ:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all people,
baptizing them in the name of
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe everything
I have commanded you—
–and remember, I am with you always,
to the end of the age…”

So Baptism is a pretty big deal.

But as important as baptism is,
we get NO words of instruction,
as to HOW we are to BEHAVE at a baptism. [Read more…]