Sermon of the Week
Words to Build a Life On:
You Shall Not Oppress the Alien

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 19, 2018.
The seventh in a Multi-Part Sermon Series

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Mark 10:13-16
and Leviticus 19:32-37 (also found in the text below)

Good morning

We’re continuing our sermon series today
Words to Build a Life On

The most central teachings of our faith
Summarized in just a few words

–Words that you can write down and put somewhere for you to remember
–Words that can help you think critically
about the issues that impact the world today
–Words that can help you grow closer to God
–And can help you be a more loving,
more faithful, more caring human being.

Words to build a life on.

This sermon series has taken us all over the place in the bible
We’ve read from the letters of Paul
And from the Gospels: Mark and Matthew, so far
We’ve looked at some of the words of the ancient Prophets
Micah and Isaiah.

Today we’re reading from the book of Leviticus.

A quick pop quiz
For those of you who have been going to church for a long time
How many of you remember a sermon preached specifically
About a passage from the book of Leviticus?

Its ok: no need to shout Amen! or raise your hand or anything.
I’m guessing its not all that many.

I promise you: there is no one at seminary offering advice to preachers:
Stick to the good stuff
Avoid books Leviticus as much as possible.

That doesn’t happen.

Leviticus is the third book in our bible
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
followed by the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy
And those five, together, constitute the Pentateuch

They are the so-called Five Books of Moses
And they have an important place within the Hebrew Scriptures
Revered because they tell the story of God’s movement
from the beginning of time
God’s movement to create this world that we live in
and to call forth from the people God created
a nation that would bless the earth
because of its covenant with God.

The stories of the creation,
The promise to Abraham
The Binding of Isaac
The wrestling of Jacob
The famine during the time of Jacob and his sons
That take them all to Egypt
As refugees
The long sojourn there, hundreds of years, generations
And their mistreatment there under the Pharaoh
Leading God to rescue them with a mighty hand…
The journey in the wilderness
The encounter with God on Mount Sinai
The gift of the ten commandments
And other laws that helped organize the people as a people
And to prepare them to settle in the land of Canaan.

All of that narrative
Is here in the Pentateuch.

Given the importance of these books
You might wonder why we don’t spend more time in Leviticus.

But when you crack it open and start reading it
You begin to see why:

The book begins with nuanced instructions
About how, and when, and why
To offer burnt offerings

It starts with livestock: something from the herd or the flock.

There are specifics. Lots of specifics:
IT should be a male.
No blemishes

(sorry, you blemished ones,
your ego may be hurt
but you won’t be on the altar tonight).

The priest is supposed to put his hand on the offering just so
The wood gets arranged in a particular way
Certain parts get put up there over the fire

Its all quite nuanced, you see.

And then there are instructions about grain offerings, and sin-offerings
And offerings of well-being
And then more about instructions about purification offerings
And reparation offerings

And you begin to get the sense,
If the repetition hasn’t numbed you too much
That offerings were rather important back then, weren’t they.

One of the reasons we don’t spend a lot of time here, in Leviticus,
Is not because we find these things historically un-interesting
Or that we don’t care about our ancestors and their religious practice.

We do.

These are good passages, particularly for a bible study.

They tell us a lot about their religious motivation
The depth of their faith
The way that they wanted to make things right with their God
And how God was giving them a way of life that mattered to them.
We can learn something from that.

But there is a lot here that we no longer observe.

Some of that is because we believe that all that ritual observance
All that effort to be brought closer to God
To help form a community in the way that God wants us to be formed
Has been fulfilled,
for us,
in the person of Jesus Christ.

We no longer offer sacrifices.
The sacrificed one no longer needs them.

We no longer follow elaborate holiness rituals,
no matter what some other Christians might say
Or reject people as being unclean or unworthy
Because Jesus came and taught us some lessons about all of that
Because Jesus reminded us that all people are beloved in God’s eyes
And Jesus is the fulfillment of that ancient time and its purification code.

So it is that, most of us, no longer follow the dietary laws that you find here
We eat shellfish and bacon
and sometimes even bacon-wrapped-shrimp.

We are ok with synthetic fabrics
We might even be ok with tattoos
Or, if you aren’t,
at least you don’t turn to God as a reason for your raised eyebrow.

Fair enough. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
Words to Build a Life On:
You Give them Something to Eat.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 12, 2018.
The Sixth in a Multi-Part Sermon Series

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Isaiah 58:6-12,
and Mark 6:30-44 (also included in the text below)

Due to technical problems, there is no sermon video available for this week.

We’re about halfway through this sermon series that we’re calling
Words to Build a Life On.

These are basic ideas of the Christian Tradition expressed in just a few words
Ideas that can become the building blocks for a vibrant, living faith.

We had a bit of a break last week
And a rest is sometimes good for the spirit.
How many of the first five themes do you remember?

The first phrase was “The Greatest is Love”
We borrowed those words from Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth
And Now Faith, Hope, and Love abide
And the Greatest of these is love.

It is a reminder to us that God is love
And we are to read scripture and to look for God’s movement in the world
Through the lens of love.

Then we explored a beautiful passage in the Hebrew Scriptures
With the words:
Seek Justice, Love Kindness, and Walk Humbly with your God
Which, according to the prophet Micah
Are Requirements of our faith
Justice Seeking
Kindness loving
And humble walking.

Week Three looked at the sermon on the mount
And particularly the blessings of God
Blessed are the Poor in Spirit
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness
Blessed are the meek.

Our word that week was Blessed…
A reminder of the spiritual geography of Jesus’ teachings
The way that the life of following Jesus
Has us standing with those that God stands with.

The next phrase to build a life on
Was a favorite passage of Clay Cook, our pastor emeritus
Live Peaceably with All.
We looked at the real challenge of that sort of ideal for our life:
How living peaceably doesn’t mean living passively
But seeking justice, always seeking justice,
while honoring the humanity of ALL people
Even those we disagree with, even people doing horrible things.

And finally,
We explored Jesus describing the greatest commandments of them all
Including the commandment to
Love your Neighbor as yourself
Meaning, of course, that we have to love ourselves in order to love our neighbor.

Five weeks
Five important phrases
Each of which we can draw upon today
As we live our life here in Kansas City
As we go to work or walk around school or shop in the grocery store
Or watch the evening news.

Words to build a life on.

Today we are looking at one of the most well known stories about Jesus.
This is a story that, in one form or another, is told six times in the gospels.
This story, today’s story, is in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Sometimes we get stories in those first three.
Not very often do we have the same story in all four.
(The Gospel of John has a mind and a plan of his own, as it were.)

But there it is, in each of them: Jesus and his disciples, feeding the 5000 thousand.
And then, as if to put a punctuation on it,
Mark and Matthew tell another story,
A separate story,
Where they feed 4000 people. Well, at least. Not including the women and the kids.
(That exclusion is another sermon for another day).

As I mentioned last time:
Long Form Writing, writing something like a gospel,
wasn’t all that easy during Jesus’ day
You needed special material: animal hide and scarce writing implements
Not many people knew how to read, much less how to write.
It took time and focus and not much margin for mistakes
There was no word processor, no ancient white out
And so you needed to pick and choose rather carefully.

All that is to say:
When the gospel writers include the same story
The feeding of a multitude of people
Who are out in the middle of nowhere
And are seeking the presence and the power of God
People who are growing hungry
Feeding them with just a few loaves and some fish…
When they EACH tell THAT story
And some of them tell a version of it two different times
It is something for us to pay attention to.

It matters.

And it mattered rather deeply to them and their communities.

This story would have been well known
Part of the legend about this Jesus fella
That people whispered back and forth to each other…
Hey, did you hear about Jesus of Nazareth
You know, that guy that fed 5000 people out in the sticks
Yeah, let me tell you something I heard about him…

So, lets turn with fresh ears
To this story in the Gospel according to Mark
As we open our heart to God’s word:

30 The apostles gathered around Jesus,
and told him all that they had done and taught. 

³¹Jesus said to them,
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
For many were coming and going,
and they had no leisure even to eat. 

³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 
³³Now many saw them going and recognized them,
and they hurried there on foot from all the towns
and arrived ahead of them. 

³⁴As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd;
and he had compassion for them,
because they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began to teach them many things. 

³⁵When it grew late,
his disciples came to him and said,

‘This is a deserted place,
and the hour is now very late; 
³⁶send them away
so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages
and buy something for themselves to eat.’ 

³⁷But Jesus answered them,
‘You give them something to eat.’

They said to Jesus,
‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread,
and give it to them to eat?’ 

³⁸And he said to them,
‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’
When they had found out,
they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’ 

³⁹Then Jesus ordered them
to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. 

⁴⁰So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 

⁴¹Taking the five loaves and the two fish,
Jesus looked up to heaven,
and blessed and broke the loaves,
and gave them to his disciples to set before the people;
and he divided the two fish among them all.⁴²
And all ate and were filled; 
⁴³and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 
⁴⁴Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

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

///
Sometimes sermons end up going somewhere I don’t expect them to go.
You sit down to work on them and they surprise you.
That’s where this one ended up. We should talk a bit about all those broken pieces.

The reason we’re focusing on this phrase:
You, Give them Something to Eat
Is because you find that phrase
In each of the versions of this story of the Feeding of the 5000. [Read more…]