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Sermon: Loving Our Enemies

November 13, 2016 by Chad Herring Leave a Comment

Loving Our Enemies.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 13, 2016.

1 Corinthians 3:16-22
and Matthew 5:38-48

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Leonard Cohen died this week.
He was 82.

Cohen had a rather storied career in music and art,
And his most famous work, perhaps,
Is the deeply moving song Hallelujah,
Which he wrote in the 1980s.

Like many monumental works of art,
Hallelujah didn’t have much initial success.
Not until John Cale did a cover of it
And then Jeff Buckley,
Rufus Wainright
K.D. Lang
Bon Jovi
Regina Spector
Brandi Carlile

Today it is one of the most recognizable cover songs of all time
With more than 300 renditions recorded. And many more besides…

I’m not sure if you saw Saturday Night Live last night.
In its coda to this week,
The passing of Cohen on Monday
and the Elections they’ve been satirizing coming to fruition on Tuesday,
They chose to bypass snark and shade, which they excel at
And instead they asked Kate McKinnon to sing Hallelujah.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

Were going to miss Cohen.
This title, Hallelujah,
Which means “praise be to the Lord”
Evokes for us followers of Jesus holy week, and Easter.

Talk about an emotional week.

A recollection all the way back to Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem
Cloaks on the ground
Shouting Hosanna to Jesus as he rode by
Riding, maybe no one but he quite knew, to die…
Riding, maybe not even he knew, to rise again in this Easter world
Of undying hope and unyielding love.

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah…

///
Conventional wisdom, such as it is,
will tell you: if you know what’s good for you,
don’t talk about religion, or politics, with your neighbor.

Don’t do it.

Its far too risky.
You’re likely just to make them mad,
say something insensitive
assume something awful
and, before you know it, you turn that neighbor into an enemy. [Read more…]

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Filed Under: america, church life, faith, Jesus, love, sermon

Sermon: Summertime Fruit–Good for Something

July 10, 2016 by Chad Herring Leave a Comment

July 10, 2016 – Summertime Fruit – Good for Something from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 10, 2016.
The sixth in a sermon series on The Fruit of the Spirit.

Adapted from a previous sermon series at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas 
and inspired and using ideas and content from the Rev. Chris B. Herring
preached at Westminster Presbyterian Church of Saint Louis. Original citation lost.

Matthew 20:29-34
and Ephesians 5:1, 8-14 (NIV)

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During difficult times I turn to stories,
and I’ve learned a lot in my life from the stories of Tony Campolo.

This one in particular stuck with me this week,
as I’ve been thinking about how particularly vulnerable I have felt
and how fragile I think much of our nation is feeling.

Here’s Campolo’s little story:

There was a schoolteacher.
She taught students in several grades
in a small, one-room schoolhouse in upstate New York,
including one particular child
who was euphemistically referred to as “special [needs]”.
That particular boy was what [some called] “slow.”
That’s how Campolo put it.

When Christmas came,
the teacher decided to put on a Christmas pageant,
and the … [kid] wanted to have a part in it.

He didn’t want to just stand around on the stage;
he wanted to have a SPEAKING part.

Now, they all knew that he could not remember lines very well,
but they came up with what seemed like a viable solution.

They told him he could be the innkeeper.

When Mary and Joseph knocked at the door of the inn,
he was to open it and say, “NO ROOM!”
That’s it. “No Room!”

Mary would then say something,
and when she finished her lines
he was to say again, “NO ROOM!”

Simple enough.

They thought he could handle this,
but just to make sure,
they appointed someone to stand near him, you see
and to poke him at the proper time,
and whisper just the right words:
in his ear, in case he forgot them. “No Room!”

The night of the Christmas pageant, all seemed to be going well…
UNTIL, that is, Mary and Joseph got to the inn door.

Mary Knocked.
Our little friend opened the door,
and he said what was expected of him: “NO ROOM!”

Mary responded: “But sir, its cold!
Have you no place at all where we can stay?
Its freezing and I’m sick.
I’m going to have a baby, and unless you help us,
my baby will be born in the cold, cold night.”

The boy just stood there, and said nothing.

The prompter nudged him and whispered, “No room! Say ‘No room!’”

The boy turned to the prompter and blurted out,
“I KNOW what I’m supposed to say!
But she can have MY room!”

Campolo concludes this little tale this way:
“To some, loving comes easily and almost without thinking.
The rest of us must be more deliberate,
and it is to that end that the Holy Spirit comes…”[1]

///
What a good little boy!

That he would be so concerned with the needs of the people in front of him
that he can’t help but try to respond to them, to help.
Would that we all be filled with that kind of…goodness!

“And the fruit of the spirit…
 is love, joy, peace,
 patience, kindness…GOODNESS.”


That’s what the Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Galatians

 as he describes the Fruit of the Spirit,
  how God dwells within us, as we seek to dwell in the world.

Dear friends, this has been such a hard, hard week.
Maybe we’ve all been praying a bit more fervently
 a bit more urgently
  for the Holy Spirit to come and parcel
out some of that goodness.
[Read more…]

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Filed Under: america, Current Affairs, ethics, faith, Holy Spirit, sermon

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Chad Andrew Herring

Chad Herring

kairos :: creature of dust :: child of God :: husband of 20 years :: father of 2 :: teaching elder/minister of word and sacrament in the presbyterian church (u.s.a.) :: exploring a progressive-reformed – emergent-christianity :: more

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