Sermon of the Week
When God Breaks (Open) Your Heart

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 12, 2019.

#pcusa

Keywords: Good Shepherd, Retribution, Reconciliation, Feed my Sheep

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 23
and John 21:15-19

It should be no secret that I like to linger with these so called post-resurrection stories.

They’re the handful of episodes that the gospels record
about Jesus interacting with his friends and loved ones
after Easter morning, after the tomb is discovered open and Jesus himself not there.

There aren’t many of these stories. Not enough of them.
You get the stories of Easter morning
with all that frenetic energy and running back and forth.
John tells us about the closed and locked room
and Jesus coming back to fill Thomas in on the story.
Luke tells us about Jesus visiting some of his followers
when they’re on the highway out of town.
Both of them have a version of Jesus making a meal for them.
Luke and Matthew share with us Jesus’ final goodbye and ascension back to God.

Just a handful of stories.
They leave me wanting more.

The fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday.
We read from the 23^rd Psalm
and often from the 10^th Chapter of John
where Jesus says “I am the good shepherd.”

When Jesus says that, that he is the Good Shepherd,
he explains that other voices claim to guide us, but they inevitably fail,
either because they’re not reliable, or they’re easily distracted,
or because they cannot give us the protection and care we actually need.

Jesus, on the other hand, is different.

Jesus offers healing when others say it’s the wrong time or place to heal.
Jesus offers welcome to those who are kept out.
Jesus offers forgiveness to those who are judged unforgivable.
Jesus offers peace for the troubled, and disrupted.

Unlike any other, Jesus’ compassion is steadfast and sure.

It is reliable.

And for those who stumble and search for direction,
as we all invariably do, Jesus is a safe and trustworthy leader.
That’s what Jesus means when he says he’s the good shepherd. And we the sheep.

///
I know we don’t really like to be called sheep.
Not this type-a, pull ourselves up by our boot-straps, driven and self-reliant culture.

But maybe we make too much of that metaphor in this regard.
Jesus seems to ask a lot of his sheep.

I’ve always liked how John offers a continuation of this theme
at the end of his Gospel
in one of those rare post-resurrection stories.

Jesus pass along this work, this responsibility,
this work of healing and feeding and tending and welcoming
to Peter, and through Peter, to all of us.

Listen for God’s word to us this morning
as I read the scripture lesson from the Gospel According to John.

15 When they had finished breakfast,
Jesus said to Simon Peter,
‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’
He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ 
¹⁶A second time he said to him,
‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’

He said to him,
‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’

¹⁷He said to him the third time,
‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’
Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time,
‘Do you love me?’
And he said to him,
‘Lord, you know everything;
you know that I love you.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. 

¹⁸Very truly, I tell you,
when you were younger,
you used to fasten your own belt
and to go wherever you wished.
But when you grow old,
you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will fasten a belt around you
and take you where you do not wish to go.’ 
¹⁹(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)
After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’

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

///
We spend Six Sundays in the Season of Easter.
We might be forgiven if the experience of this year’s Easter proclamation
feels like it is fading a bit into memory.

Before that happens, lets reflect a bit on something
that often goes unnoticed.

One of the things about Jesus that I’ve found remarkable
is his lack of vengeance, or retribution.

Nowhere does it suggest that, when Jesus rose from the dead,
that he had revenge in his heart.

I think this is one of the yardsticks
I use to measure what someone is saying about God:
is the God they offer a wrathful, vengeful God?
Is the path they offer based on joy, because of God’s gracious gifts and protection,
an experience that life and love will win?
or is it based on fear, founded on worry that God is angry at you?

Jonathan Edwards, that titan of early American Christianity
famously preached a colonial-era sermon entitled
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
which, apparently, so-stirred a guilt-ridden puritan population
during the great awakening, that they passed out in the pews
and called out to the preacher: “what can I do to be saved?”

It was a different time.

But the street corner preachers of Chicago, where I went to graduate school,
sometimes offered a version of this theology.

I think it persists a lot in fearful corners of the church, even today,
to my great sadness.

But look closely: Jesus did not bring violence, anger or retribution
upon those who plotted to kill him.

He, instead, brought forgiveness, reconciliation and peace. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
How Might God Get Your Attention?

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 5, 2019.

#pcusa

Keywords: Rachel Held Evans, Authentic Faith, Saul, Lakeshore, Sent a Boat

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
John 21:1-3b, 9-14
and Acts 9:1-20

Rachel Held Evans died yesterday
after complications following the flu
and an adverse reaction to antibiotics.

She was 37.

Among my pastor friends and those who follow churchy things online
she was a well-liked and much sought after author and speaker
having spent most of her life in the evangelical community
and then publicly and somewhat painfully leaving it
due to her movement toward a more inclusive and loving theology.

She particularly wrote about her love for God.

I learned about her through publicity for her 2012 book
A Year of Biblical Womanhood
where she attempted to live
by a so-called literal reading of women’s familial roles
in the Old and New Testaments.

Rachel loved God. She loved Jesus.

And through the words of the Bible, she sought after the divine
and it was that experience, perhaps
of trying to thoroughly live-out what she was being taught
in her self-described narrow-minded corner of our own religious neighborhood
that led her to begin standing up for the broader themes of scripture:
welcome
hospitality
the image of God being planted in all of us in equal measure.

These things led her to search deeper for God,
not to turn away from her.

I admired Rachel.

Over the past three weeks, since she fell ill
and into a medically induced coma
various friends and colleagues have been lifting up
little prayers to her online
with the hashtag #prayforRHE.

Today, when she died,
many of them posted pictures they had of her
selfies taken at one of many public speaking engagements she had.
And since I’ve nurtured friendships with a lot of churchy types on line,
there were literally hundreds of selfies with Rachel
that I found myself looking at yesterday.

Hers was a rather public form of spiritual searching.

She wrote a few books about it.
She coalesced around a few simple but profound values
and sought to engage the world with them.
Once, she said:
“I am a Christian
because the story of Jesus
is still the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.”[1]

Because of this, she cared about what was being said about Jesus
and she spoke up about it, not really combative, but assured.
She did what many of us think is folly:
she got into twitter arguments
mainly with people who told her to be quiet,
mainly as her effort to speak up for people who
couldn’t speak up for themselves.

She wrote pieces that showed up in USA Today and Newsweek
a public voice for a generous, welcoming, benevolent and loving God.

I confess I was a little surprised
to see even the New York Times publish an obituary for her today.[2]

Not many 37 year old religious leaders have that sort of caché,
but I was glad to see that they saw it in her.

The Times wrote this:
Her work became the hub for a diaspora.
She brought together once-disparate progressive,
post-evangelical groups,
and hosted conferences to try to include nonwhite and sexual minorities,
many of whom felt ostracized by the churches of their youth…
her upcoming conference, called Evolving Faith,
to be held in Denver in October,
describes itself as “a gathering for wanderers,
wanderers and spiritual refugees to help you discover…you are not alone.”

Maybe particularly poignant to me
was a report of her last public writing
shared on her blog back in March
on Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent.[3]

She was healthy then
optimistic showing unwavering trust in the goodness of God.

Here’s what she wrote, on that day we reflect on our mortality:
It strikes me today that the liturgy of Ash Wednesday
teaches something that nearly everyone can agree on.

Whether you are part of a church or not,
whether you believe today or [you] doubt,
whether you are a Christian
or an atheist
or an agnostic
or a so-called “none”
(whose faith experiences far transcend the limits of that label)
you know this truth deep in your bones:
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”

Death is a part of life.

My prayer for you this season
is that you make time to celebrate that reality,
and to grieve that reality,
and that you will know you are not alone.

///
When I was working on a sermon about God grabbing our attention,
mine, yesterday, was preoccupied with Rachel,
and her profound witness to how to be a faithful Christian
in the modern age.
God grabbed me yesterday, and I’ve not been able to let it go. [Read more…]