Sermon of the Week
No Insignificant Question: The Gospel and Pets.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 1, 2019.
Part five of a nine part sermon series on questions and topics submitted by listeners for consideration

#pcusa

Keywords: pets, dogs, cats, creation, learning from animals.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Genesis 1:1-2, 20-28, 31a
and Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon dedicated to current pup Annie

I admit, when I proposed this sermon series,
I was not sure what kind of response I was going to get.

I have had colleagues try this kind of experiment out themselves:
inviting members of their community to propose a topic or a question
for the community’s reflection during the week.

I checked around, and found that our responses are remarkably consistent
with those that other people ask.

Generally what you see in the responses
show the kind of everyday matters that are alive in us
as we try to engage the world through the lens of our faith.

Responses generally fall into a few categories:
maybe the biggest category are topics
that relate to one’s own spiritual formation,
the sort of personal questions or concerns or searching
that often feels very unique and particular,
but, when you examine them, they’re questions that connect us with other people
going through a lot of the things that we all are going through.

Many of our topics this summer have been these sorts of questions:
—How do I know God is out there, when sometimes it doesn’t always feel that way?
—How do I know I’m doing God’s thing, what God wants me to be doing,
rather than some other thing?
—Is it ok for me to be angry at God? That was last week’s sermon.

One of the Theologians I studied a lot at seminary, Paul Tillich,
argued that human beings are meaning-making creatures.
That we use language and ideas to try to make sense of our experience,
and that exercise leads naturally to all sorts of questions,
including the big questions of existence and purpose.

Religion, Tillich would say, are ways that we address those big questions,
he called them questions of ultimate concern,
like Who am I?
Why am I here?
What am I supposed to be doing with my life?
When are the Royals going to be any good again?
[How did that question get in there?]

And from those big questions, those questions of ultimate concern,
we seek after ultimate answers,
and many of us experience the answers in an experience of God.

It makes sense, therefore, that the topics we’ve been exploring so far
have been these sorts of topics.

They’re something we share because we’re human
and we’re paying attention
and we want to know more about our place in the world
and our relationship with the God who made us and who loves us.

Beyond these sorts of personal, introspective topics
we often also ask questions about impact, about where all this religion is taking us.
We’ll get into some of these sorts of questions later on this month,
as we explore some of the different ways we engage our faith:

We’ll explore efforts to find peace in our chaotic world.

We will look at this interesting idea in the book of Ephesians called The Armor of God
what does that mean?

We will ask how the church, Church with a big c, relates to our political world,
and how does the idea of privilege impact our faith day in and day out.

If August was maybe more personal in many ways,
some of these topics in September are more about going out into the world
and engaging it on behalf of Jesus.

///
Today’s topic is a bit of a bridge between those two, perhaps.
While I can deduce who submitted it
in part because of some of the other questions that were offered along with this topic,
I know that many of us have, or once had, companion animals that are important to us:
dogs and cats, mainly,
but maybe fish or gerbils or who knows what.

My maternal grandfather used to keep birds
and I have a rather strong memory of visiting his house as a child
and going into the basement
and seeing a half dozen cages of birds
and they would sing and flap with excitement at my company.

Brook and I both have mainly been dog people,
and generally, the one dog at a time sort of dog people.

Our current dog, Annie, is really in charge of our house
greeting everyone who comes to the door
with a sort of inspection that looks more like aggressive affection:
she will sniff around your feet and ankles,
and then your knees, and then your belt,
and then about as close to your chin as she can get on her hind legs
before one of us tells her to knock it off.

Annie usually helps me write my sermons.

She sits at my feet Saturday evenings while I’m working on them
snoring occasionally to let me know that everything is ok in the world
even if news of another mass shooting or a category 5 hurricane
means it doesn’t quite feel like it.

Annie is a Wheaton Terrier mix.
Before her was Frank, who was a Shih Tzu mix.
Frankie was the first dog Brook and I adopted
when we got married, before kids, as we were neck deep in school
and thought, hey, why not take on major responsibility
when we really don’t have the time or the money for it. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
No Insignificant Question: Is it Okay to be Angry At God?

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 25, 2019.
Part four of a nine part sermon series on questions and topics submitted by listeners for consideration

#pcusa

Keywords: Suffering, Anger, The West Wing, Jonah, Jacob wrestling with God.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Genesis 32:22-31
and Jonah 3:1-5, 10, 4:1-3, 6

The thing that particularly struck me in researching this sermon
is how much pain people are carrying.

I read a lot about people’s anger,
and that, in turn, is often about their pain.

Anger is often in reaction to something that hurts
some wrong done
some loss that we experience.
Anger doesn’t just come out of the blue.
It is a response to something.

A dictionary tries to put words of definition to this emotion
by saying that anger is an intense emotional state induced by displeasure
but that’s kind of soft.

We can be displeased by things, or by people,
or often by circumstances caused by people,
and it’s not really accurate to say we get angry at things.

I stubbed my toe really badly the other night
when I was rushing around my kitchen too quickly doing something or other
and I wasn’t wearing shoes.
For a moment, I felt rather intense displeasure at that blimey stool that I hit rather hard
but I wasn’t angry at the stool.

I know better.

Anger, as an emotion, is reserved or directed at someone, at a person,
sometimes at ourselves,
for something that is done, or left undone,
or maybe for conditions that someone has control or responsibility over,
something that they can impact, or effect.
I should have been wearing shoes around my kitchen, you know?

And it is a powerful human emotion.
Anger itself can cause intense pain and hurt,
prompt us to make choices we otherwise wouldn’t.
Unresolved anger often is at the root of a lot of our ailments.
Sometimes it lingers, for days, for years
and if unresolved it can be one of those emotions
that bursts out of us.

People who study our emotions—
psychologists, ethicists, philosophers, advertising executives—
they tell us that anger can also be good thing, at times,
like the emotion of fear, or dislike of something,
because these emotions clue us into what is going on in our world.
Fear is important, right, because it helps keep us safe, when it’s working properly.

In a similar way, Anger tells us of a powerful disconnect
between what is and what ought to be
not just hurt about a situation, but a disruption of what is right, or just, or appropriate
or, sometimes, what I hope for, yearn for, dream about.

Those psychologists, ethicists, philosophers, advertising execs
tell us that these emotions, among others, are what they call basic emotions.[i]

These include happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, and anger.
They’re hardwired in us,
part of our evolutionary history,
and they form the building blocks of all of our other feelings.

Anger isn’t always a bad thing.
It can prompt us to do something important,
take on constructive work to tackle a problem
address an injustice, stand up to a bully.

There’s this great sentence in the book of Ephesians
that encourages people to “be angry, but do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger,”[ii]
by which the author was trying to make some of these distinctions
to acknowledge that anger can be a helpful thing sometimes
to distinguish between anger and sin…
not always the same thing.

That passage, in Ephesians
talked a lot about justice and righteousness
basically about the shalom or the peace that God intends for the Kingdom of God
and how we need to act in order to bring it about,
Thieves give up your thieving.
Don’t share evil talk with each other.
Use your words to help build up good relationships.

There’s another sermon about forgiveness in there
and maybe a third sermon about what might motivate us to seek the good.
Jesus himself showed flashes of anger, we might remember,[iii]
when he entered the temple
and saw that the moneychangers were taking advantage
of ordinary, everyday people
people who just wanted to be able to have the right dove
for the particular offering that God expected them to offer. [Read more…]