Words to Build a Life On:
The Greatest is Love

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 1, 2018.
The First in a Multi-Part Sermon Series

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Luke 24:13-19, 27-32
and 1 Corinthians 13

(The Luke passage shifts the subject speaking from the two people walking to Emmaus [v.19] to Jesus [v.27]. This isn’t immediately obvious on this particular bible website. FYI. One solution is to read the entire Emmaus Passage)

I’ve been thinking this week about words.

We human beings are meaning making creatures
And we do that, largely, with our words.

There was a time, as a child, that I marveled at language.
Now, I don’t want to oversell this.
I didn’t go through a dictionary page by page with a highlighter or anything.
I didn’t have a THESAURUS more beloved than the favorite books of my childhood.

And I spent more time watching Thundercats or Looney Toons
Than I did thinking about any of this
But I remember making lists of words that I found absolutely incredible

“Bodacious”
“Inculcate”
“Trapezoidal”
“Peckish”

That last one I had a friend use once when we were out flipping through CDs
I’m sure he was trying to sound smart.
And he did, in a sort of weird way for a 13 year old.

What he meant was that he was hungry, and he wanted to go get some pizza.
It might have just been easier for him to say that, you know,
Instead of having me wonder which album he was going to “pick”
As he was going about being peckish.

Words are fascinating.

I used to love contemplating words.
I would listen to the speeches made by presidents or leaders
And they would sometimes bring me to tears.

We’d talk in Sunday School about stories from the Bible
And we’d talk about what was said, and what wasn’t said
How things got left out,
Or maybe how the story was told in a different way in a different place.
And I’d try to get a handle on it
And then I’d sit during worship
And there’d be a sermon about it…more words, sometimes way too many words
But it might be a completely new way of thinking about those stories
And I’d leave wondering all over again.

I would gravitate towards music that played creatively with words

“Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety ‘til I sank it
I’m crawling on your shores….” So sang Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls

“Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible told you so?
Do you believe in Rock and Roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance, real slow?”
That was Don McLean, singing American Pie

This is some of the foundation for making me who I am today
All of these words, signifying ideas and emotions and experience.

We human beings are amazing creatures
People who carry this ability to conjure up words
that structure and shape understanding
that enable us to convey something that’s going on up in our heads
or deep in our hearts to another person standing in front of us
or on paper, a few marks joined together
that someone, somewhere, days or years or centuries later
can look and read and, in some way, come to grasp what it is you meant
more or less.

We were cleaning out our basement the other day
And I came across some old pictures with my mom’s handwriting on them
Indicating the picture was me, at age 4 or something [Read more…]

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on June 10, 2018.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Mark 2:19b-35
and Revelation 21:1-6

A word of thanks to Don,
Who offered our first reading with great finesse
Even the pronunciation of Beelzebul.

We’ve been looking at this reading from Mark in our bible studies this week and
There’s a lot going on in that text:

Jesus going back to his home town and finding a hoard of people
Who want to be near him, to hear him
In particular, To be healed by him

Or others who want to challenge him,
Confront him
Undo him.

So there’s that.

And there’s all that stuff tossed around to do that,
This language about Satan and Demons and unforgivable sins.

Even if we remember that the writers of the Gospels and Jesus himself
Were living with an ancient cosmology, an ancient way of understanding
How the universe works
For many of us this language strikes us as strange, and bizarre
And maybe useless if we don’t unpack it.

Its important for us to remember that “possession by demons” is often language
Used in the ancient period to describe what we might understand
As mental illness: bipolar conditions or schizophrenia or depression.

And while it is true that our tradition doesn’t speak very often about demons
Or possession or the exorcism that we see Jesus performing in scripture
—for good reason, since that is an ancient worldview
that doesn’t really have very much use for us—
we also don’t speak very much about mental illness,
which is a shame.

Jesus was a healer, of body, mind, and spirit.
And Jesus was interested in bringing all sorts of healing,
Including relief from mental illness. THAT we shouldn’t shy away from.

So I was pondering all of that this week, in particular.
This week with the high profile deaths of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade
Both of whom died by suicide following struggles with their own demons.

We need to talk about mental illness, and mental health
which impacts all of us, one way or another.

We particularly need to do this because the Church has resources to help
So we can encourage each other to get the medical care we need
And can love one another as we seek healing for ourselves and our loved ones.

///
This week, my thoughts kept returning to
this section of the book of Revelation
Words that are often read during memorial services
But words worth pondering today as well.

I invite you to open your head and your heart to this word to us
From the author of the Book of Revelation:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more. 

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them; 
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;
mourning
and crying
and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said,
‘See, I am making all things new.’
Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ 
Then he said to me, ‘It is done!
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end.
To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

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

///
These days, I rarely watch television LIVE anymore.
True for almost everything except Royals Games, I think.

I did watch the Golden State Warriors sweep Cleveland
to win the NBA title this week. So sorry, LeBron fans. Always next year.

Sometimes, as the girls are sleeping soundly and I’m home folding clothes
I get the chance to catch up on my favorite shows on the DVR or Netflix.
A little Amazing Race. Some Game of Thrones.

Recently I found myself flipping through the ancient stuff on Comedy Central.
By ancient, I mean 10 or 12 years old.
And I found myself watching some re-runs of a show called Scrubs.
Do any of you remember that show?

I’ve shared this little story with some of you before:
Scrubs is a somewhat bizarre and irreverent but always entertaining comedy
about the staff at Sacred-Heart hospital.

I was watching the episode where they said goodbye to Nurse Roberts.

She was a steady hand and the voice of steadfast faith
Steadfast faith at a place where faith and hope often get challenged
and courage sometimes needs as much support as it can get.

Nurse Roberts and one of the doctors, Dr. Cox, had recently gotten into a scuffle
about the existence of God, and why bad things happen to good people.

And they go back and forth with it,
in the middle of some horrible diagnosis and some similarly horrible grief
and just when Nurse Roberts convinces Dr. Cox of the need
for faith, for hope, for believing in the promise of God’s grace,
Just as Nurse Roberts seems to win her debate
we learn that Nurse Roberts has been in a horrible car accident
on her way home from work.

She is in a coma, an injury that will eventually take her life.

Its devastating. [Read more…]