God — Page 5

July 31, 2016 – Summertime Fruit – The Whole Basket Full from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.

Summertime Fruit: The Whole Basket Full

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 31, 2016.
The ninth 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.

2 Peter 1:1-8
and Galatians 5:16-25

I returned back home after another work trip recently
and sat down to read this poem called Daybreak.
It nurtured my soul and re-oriented me back to life:

Early Morning. Early spring.
Light comes to the earth’s lip, a taste of day’s dawn.
Coffee comes to my lips, a sip of brewed awakening.
This time alone—the furnace still asleep at its nighttime setting,
the dog unmoving among the muddy boots
piled in the pantry—
I sit in a chair that sighs as I settle.

Outside, a few crows caw plots of thievery.
They are like noisy shadows,
dark harbingers of tomorrow’s troubles.
Outside, thawed soil has recently endured the overturning blades.
It curls back upon itself row upon row, open and receptive.
I drain the cup and pause, struck by the fullness of gratitude within me.
In spirit I am myself a lengthening day, a land furrowed and ready.

And there is work to be done.[1]

///
Sometimes we know there is work to be done in our lives, I think
and we turn to God for help, for guidance,
for shaping what we are and what we can be.

One sort of place to look for inspiration
is the notion that God can work in us all sorts of wonderful things.

The Apostle Paul, when he sat down to do some work
and wrote the letter we now call Galatians
he thought about God’s working in us as a basket of fruit
juicy oranges
tart apples
succulent strawberries and melons and grapes
lemons for lemonade and limes for making your lips pucker
kiwis and mangos and bananas.

So so good.

Its meant to be inviting, this idea,
not just because we know it tastes so darn good
but because we know how good it is for us, right.

And so it is with these gifts of the spirit.

Now, we’ve covered a lot of ground since we started way back in May.
You’ve made it, hurrah,
all the way through Paul’s list of the Fruit of the Spirit
these qualities of human living made possible
not only because they are gifts from God
and also because we allow them to work in us and through us
as we aspire to be more deeply, more truly, more wholly God’s people.

Let us look at the fruit basket, and see what we’ve discovered: [Read more…]

2016 07 17 – Summertime Fruit – Faithful and Reliable from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 17, 2016.
The seventh in a sermon series on The Fruit of the Spirit.

Matthew 23: 1-4, 23-26
and 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Tony works on the East Coast,
and he was sitting in his office one day when the telephone rang.[i]

It was his mother.
She told him that Mrs. Kirkpatrick had died
and that the least he could do, you know, was go to the funeral.

Tony’s mother was big on funerals.

She felt it was of enormous importance to show “respect”
and to honor the deceased with our presence.
And, truth be told, when Tony was growing up,
he attended more funerals than he could remember out of “respect.”

But, in Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s case, it was more than respect that made him say yes.
Mrs. Kirkpatrick was a wonderful lady, and as Tony was growing up
she did many wonderful things for the children of her church.
Tony could always COUNT on her giving him candy at Christmastime.
On one occasion,
she took him to a concert so that he could hear his first symphony play.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick had added so much to his life,
and his mother was right.
Going to her funeral was the least he could do to show respect and appreciation.

///
Tony arrived at the funeral home at two o’clock,
just as the funeral was scheduled to begin.

He rushed up the steps and hurried by the somber man at the door.

There were several funerals in progress at the time,
and Tony slipped into what he thought was the designated room for
Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s funeral and he quickly took a seat.

He had done this so… hurriedly, that he failed to notice:
other than an elderly woman, two seats away from him,
no one else was in the entire room!

Tony looked over the edge of the casket,
and HE did NOT look like Mrs. Kirkpatrick!

Tony was at the wrong funeral!
He was just about to leave, when the woman reached over
and grabbed him by the arm: “You WERE his friend—weren’t you?”

Now, he didn’t know what to say. What do you say?

Well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
the famous German theologian and martyr, once said,
“There comes a time in every man’s life
when he must LIE
with imagination, with vigor, and with enthusiasm!”

I don’t know if you concur with good Mr. Bonhoeffer, but just for the record,
you should know that Tony lied.

What else could he do?

The woman was reaching out for assurance
that SOMEBODY had SOME connection with her husband
and likewise had some concern for her.

What was he to say?

“I’m sorry, I’m at the wrong funeral. Your husband didn’t have any friends.”

She needed to know that there was somebody
to whom her husband meant something.

And so he lied, and he said he knew him,
and that he had always been kind to him.

Tony went through that whole funeral sitting at her side.
Afterward, the two of them went out and got into the lone automobile
that would follow the hearse to the cemetery.

Tony figured that since he had gone THAT far, he might as well go all the way.
[Read more…]

Sermon: Summertime Fruit–The Whole Basket Full

Sermon: Summertime Fruit–Faithful and Reliable