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. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week:
No Insignificant Question-When It’s Better to Keep Silent

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 5, 2021.

Part Two of a eight-week sermon series inspired by questions submitted by the Kirk community.

Special Music: Talking to the Moon
Hymn: All Things Bright and Beautiful

Keywords: Sitting With, Still Small Voice, Zechariah, Some Help isn’t Helpful, Centering Others. #pcusa​​​​​​​​​​​​

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Luke 6:39-45
and Philippians 3:4b-14

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469. All rights reserved.

I completed my seminary training at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

When you go to seminary and prepare to become a pastor
The coursework is almost like a smorgasbord,
Such a variety of subjects you might take:
some of it is what you would expect,
classes in the Old and New testaments, for instance,
but also the languages, Hebrew and Greek,
the original languages of the Bible.
We study the art and the history of Interpreting the Bible too,
Along with all sorts of classes in theology—
Systematic theology, liberation theology,
Reformed Theology, for the Presbyterians,
Theology from the margins.
We study Christian history and maybe some ethics.
Presbyterians might study church polity,
The particular way we run our churches,
Roberts Rules of Order and the Constitution of our church and all that.

There were classes in leading worship, and in preaching,
You know, how to craft a sermon
that is both grounded in what the Bible actually says,
And relevant to the era we’re reading it in,
And, hopefully, meaningful enough
so as to not make everyone fall asleep along the way.

We also look at church systems, the dynamics of a community, right,
As well as the basics of pastoral care,
maybe looking over a balance sheet,
Some cultural and political analysis,
And, of course, the fine art of setting up tables in a fellowship hall.

Ok, we never actually studied that last one
But there’s really so much to cover in three years worth of work
That they leave the important things like chair and table management
for you to pick up in your first post.

So there’s a lot.
But in addition to the formal coursework
we also have a practicum or two
an assignment at a church, if it is a pastoral internship,
or as a student chaplain, for what is called clinical pastoral education, or CPE.

You learn a lot in these practicums,
Maybe as much as the book learning in the classroom.

I’ve talked about my chaplain work before.
It might have been the most meaningful part of all those years in seminary.
I worked as a student chaplain at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago
A major teaching and trauma hospital serving the entire region,
Similar to KU med or St Luke’s hospital here in Kansas City.

It was a wildly diverse, incredible place,
Kind of like the city of Chicago itself.

And I was assigned two units,
One that treated patients with multiple, complex conditions,
And another unit for those in orthopedic care,
often pre or post-surgical care—back, knee, or hip.

My time was focused on nurturing the spiritual and emotional health
Of all sorts of people who were in those units.

When you are a chaplain at a hospital,
Your job is to see beyond your own particular confessional perspective
And, instead, to seek to meet people where they are,
That is, If they’re open to working with you.

Not everyone wants to see the chaplain.

Not everyone is religious, of course.
And that’s fine. There are good alternate options the hospital might offer.

Or they might be religious,
But they might really want to just speak to someone of their own tradition.
That’s fine too,
even though we are prepared and adept at
working with people of all sorts of backgrounds.

Or, then again, they might be religious,
And they might be open to talking with a chaplain
But they might not know YOU, you know,
Might not know what you’re going to do, or say, or bring to the table,
And they might not be in the place, at that moment,
to deal with something that,
they worry, might not be what they need right then.

We all know what we mean by that, right?

Have you had those moments when you are hurting,
And someone tells you: don’t worry.
God never gives us more than you can handle.

When you’re broken and bereft,
And someone says
This is all part of God’s plan.

These trite statements of faith might be uttered by someone who means well,
But they cut so deeply,
and at just the wrong moment,
As if to say:
If you have more than you can handle,
then maybe God has given up on you.
As if to say:
It must be God’s plan
for your love to have an inoperable tumor.

A good chunk of my time as a chaplain, actually,
Was spent with people who were struggling
emotionally, spiritually,
Because they had internalized just that sort of message,
Rooted in bad theology.
God doesn’t micromanage our life that way.
God doesn’t send suffering your way.

But you can see why some people may not want to speak with the chaplain,
In those moments,
If that’s maybe what they think the chaplain is going to bring to the table.

We weren’t.
When you accept a chaplaincy position,
you learn basic counselling techniques
Like active listening,
And compassionate mirroring.
And in the hospital most chaplains provide an essential service
Walking alongside a patient, praying with them or their family,
Or the staff that is working there,
Assuring them of God’s love and God’s care.

And because Rush University Medical Center, in the heart of Chicago
Was so diverse,
I would often pray with or sit beside
Protestants, Catholics, Coptic Orthodox, Unitarians, Jews,
Sheiks, Muslims, agnostics, and more.

It was a deeply rewarding experience.
And, I think, I hope, for the patients and families and staff I worked with,
Hopefully a helpful part of their healing as well.

Sometimes, though, the work of the chaplain isn’t to engage a problem.
Sometimes the chaplain just needs to be still,
To sit there,
offering another helpful presence in what can be, for many, a very difficult time.

I mention all of that because I remember that it took work to get there,
To learn to just sit with others.
Sometimes all that we were asked to do was sit with them.
Not to work through problems to offer solutions
Certainly not to offer answers to their medical issues—
we weren’t doctors or therapists—
but to just be, to just pray, to offer, through our presence,
compassion and companionship.

///
One of the first things I remember doing as a Student Chaplain
Was what is called the chaplain verbatim.
A verbatim is essentially a written report of an encounter with a patient,
Where you take out names and identifying characteristics, of course
But you narrate what happened in the encounter,
Along with how you, the chaplain, engaged in that moment:
What did you say, how did you feel, what did you see,
Did your encounter cause you to reflect, in your memory,
some similar experiences you had had,
and, if so,
did that impact what you said to the patient,
and so on.

Have you ever done anything like that,
Considered some encounter of yours,
What was going on inside of you when you had it
How that impacted things, for good or for…well, maybe not so good?

The verbatim is one of the centerpieces of a chaplain’s training,
Because that verbatim would be shared with a small group
And we would dig into it,
Exploring how and why we said what we said, did what we did.

Did we find ourselves trying to get out of the room sooner
Because some memory made me feel uncomfortable?

Did something we said not have the impact we thought it would, and why not?

And after you do that work for a while,
After more than a handful of verbatims,
You start understanding your presence a bit more clearly.
You hopefully start nurturing the ability
to react a little bit less out of your emotions
A bit less out of what you need,
and a bit more out of what the patient might need.

It isn’t that your emotions don’t matter,
or what you need isn’t important.
Chaplains are also BIG on self care,
And they urge self care, too,
For doctors and nurses and orderlies and family members and patients.

But when you’re in that moment,
taking your ego out of it,
if that’s possible, insofar as possible,
gives you more of an opportunity to be helpful,
and not to say or do something that is more, well, for you, about you,
to calm your worries or your anxieties or your hurts,
because that moment is not about you, chaplain,
it is about the patient.

If you are in a helping profession,
or if you are more formally trained as a therapist
This is all familiar to you.

But I think for most of us, this is hard for us to work on.
It is often when we are wrapped up in our own head
Wrestling with our own grief, our own pain,
That we say or do things to help deal with THAT.

And, in my experience, so often
Those who think they mean well
When they say to you, when you’re down:
Oh, God has a plan for all of us,
That’s often more about them, right,
More about THEIR difficulty just being there,
with you, in that moment, as you hurt.

Let’s face it, it’s hard to accompany someone when they’re down.
To see a friend in pain.
To comfort someone who is crying.
To watch someone searching for answers.

And the instinct, at least for me,
And maybe for some of you,
Is to try to solve things, to give answers,
To just make things better….

But chaplaincy isn’t about that.
It is about the ministry of presence,
Of being there, accompanying, supporting,
Listening, bearing it with them.
It is about talking through things
Maybe buttressing the coping mechanisms that we all have
And through that presence,
We in our faith tradition believe,
We offer the presence of our God,
Who loves us and cares for us and nurtures us though all things
and through every challenge.

///
I’ve come to appreciate chaplains so much,
And really all of those who do this sort of work
Where they can center the needs of those they’re trying to help
Rather than primarily their own needs,
their own reactions to the hurts of the other. [Read more…]