Sermon of the Week:
All Things Work Together for Good
A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 31, 2022.
Hymns: Give to the Winds Thy Fears
and Live Into Hope
Keywords: The Palace Theatre, Bible and Newspaper, A Future with Hope, Serve the City.
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Romans 8:24-28
and Jeremiah 29:7, 11-14
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469.
All rights reserved.
Editorial Note: This sermon was my last as the Pastor of the Kirk of Kansas City. I’ve been fortunate to work with this wonderful church for the past nine years.
Today we’re turning to a passage in Jeremiah
that has a special meaning for me.
Our friend Landon Whitsitt and I
preached this text together back in 2010
when I was installed as Moderator of Heartland Presbytery for that year.
And I’ve turned to this passage time and time again since then
As I’ve tried to process this weird time that we are in
Both in the church and in our culture,
and look for signs of hope and possibility.
This is Jeremiah 29, verse 7, then verses 11 to 14.
I invite you to join me in listening for God’s word to us today.
7 But seek the welfare of the city
where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the Lord on its behalf,
for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope.
12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me,
I will hear you.
13 When you search for me, you will find me;
if you seek me with all your heart,
14 I will let you find me, says the Lord,
and I will restore your fortunes
and gather you from all the nations
and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord,
and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
And may God bless to us our reading
And our understanding
And our applying of this word
To how we live our lives. Amen.
///
One of practices that preachers often develop
Is that we’re always on the lookout
for things to talk about in our sermons—experiences, stories, examples.
Legend goes that the 20th century theologian Karl Barth urged preachers
To always keep the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
It’s not that we’re desperate for things to talk about
Because, Lord knows,
If you just look around,
there’s always something for people of faith to talk about.
And I’ve never known a preacher
Who doesn’t have a good 20 or 30 minutes in them
About anything you might ask them…
I know some of you factor this in before asking me something…
So I try to restrain myself, most of the time,
Unless I’m up here,
Bible in one hand, newspaper in the other…
But it’s more that this is a habit that preachers cultivate
the practice of trying to pay attention.
We think that if we can look around and notice
And can share that noticing with all of you
Then that might help you nurture your own practice of paying attention.
The faithful life is all about paying attention
Looking, listening, for the movement of God in the world.
Bible in one hand, what’s happening in our world in the other
This is a good way for all of us to go through life
Neither just reading scripture alone and ignoring the real world,
as if that were possible,
Nor assuming that what happens in our day to day lives doesn’t matter
for our faith,
that the real needs of others, concerns of others,
questions that I have, that these don’t matter.
Because all that matters.
So I remembered this
when I first saw a news report back in January
from the ABC affiliate in New York City, WABC,
and I saved the story back then.
And since January, Week after week, I’ve asked myself
If the time was right to talk about it in the sermon that week.[i]
And it never quite was right…
It’s been six whole months now
And this is my last chance, you know,
So I wanted to give this interesting little story a shot.
It’s not life changing or anything,
But it caught my eye, as I was going about my day
Looking, and listening for the movement of God in our midst.
///
There’s apparently this place in New York City called the Palace Theatre.
New York is famous for a lot of things,
And maybe it’s theatres are on the short list of what its best known for.
Every trip I’ve ever taken to New York has included
at least an attempt to get tickets for a Broadway show.
I’ve not always been able to fit them in,
and I’ve not been to New York that often,
But I have seen iconic shows there
Shows like Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera and the Lion King,
And some less well known shows too, like
Mean Girls and Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.
That last one had one of the original Hamilton actors as the lead.
Some people argue
that New York City has the best Theatre in the World.
They’ve not seen Kansas City’s Theatre in the Park, but we’ll go with it.
And I don’t quite know if the Palace Theatre ever hosted any of those superlative shows like Les Mis or School of Rock
You know,
But they held their own.
It opened in 1903 as a vaudeville theatre
And hosted the musicals Oklahoma and La Cage aux Folles
During its heyday.
And maybe more notoriously, it was a favorite place for performers
Like Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and even the Marx Brothers.
“Everyone wanted to perform there,” said David Levinson,
chairman of the company that owns the theatre.
It sounds like a great place to catch a good act.
Now: the Palace Theatre has had its share of ups and downs.
It had a rough patch in the 20s, during the great depression
And again in the 50s before it was converted
into a venue for major productions
by the Nederlander organization in the 1960s.
But as things go,
the economics of what it takes to put on a show
Particularly in an aging theatre
meant its days were numbered.
According to Wikipedia, SpongeBob SquarePants
was the last musical to play there, ending its run in 2018.
All this is somewhat interesting, perhaps,
Particularly if you love theatre or Sinatra or SpongeBob
but the challenges of this particular theatre
aren’t all that different from many others, really.
There are other venues in New York City
that are more than a hundred years old
That had famous acts fill their halls with thunderous applause
And yet which struggled, went under, fought for survival.
I’m not sure any of this would have caught my attention, normally.
I’ve not been to the Palace Theatre myself, though I’ve seen it,
Hard not to, really, being right there at 47th and 7th avenue,
right on the corner of Broadway.
Would have been easy enough to pay it no nevermind.
But here’s what happened:
On a Friday morning in January this year,
Construction crews started lifting the palace theatre
a full thirty feet into the air.
You heard that right: they lifted the palace theatre up to about the third story.
The Palace is becoming part of a new 46 story tower
built on the site where it once stood,
And all 1700 Palace seats,
And the walls, stage, orchestra pit, curtain apparatus, and more
Was hoisted nine or ten meters into the air
Where it will live on… hopefully for another hundred years.
Now, why would they do that?
Well, the answer is pretty obvious:
“This is the most heavily trafficked corner in the western hemisphere”
said Levinson
“and there was no retail space here,
But [had the potential to probably be]
the most valuable commercial retail space in the world.”
The plan is to put retail there on ground level.
But they didn’t have to save the Palace Theatre.
But save it they did, nonetheless.
Just when things looked like the end for that Theatre,
An innovative, different plan was considered, and then pursued.
It took them five years to arrange this whole operation,
Lifting the 14 million pound theatre
Over the course of about eight weeks.
It moved about a quarter of an inch an hour
Through innovative hydraulically controlled steel posts
and a special concrete cushion to protect it from below.
Think of it like a whole bunch of specially built jacks, said ABC news,
Just like you use to lift your car when you get a flat tire
only this time for a significant building
in what is one of the busiest parts
of the busiest city in the world.
When the New York Times wrote about the project in May[ii]
They opened the story this way:
“If you’ve ever lost at Jenga by toppling a tower after removing a block,
You might appreciate what developers
have accomplished at TSX Broadway.
The developer of the 46 story building
has managed to loosen its bottom floors
And lift them 30 feet without sending anything crashing down to earth.
And what has been elevated isn’t any old section.
It’s the Palace Theatre…
[which] had to be moved, from the stage to the balcony,
Without suffering as much as a crack in the delicate plasterwork
adorning ceilings, arches, and box seats.”
The entire project is scheduled to open sometime next year
After those seats and curtains get a facelift
And the rest of the building is finished.
Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance,
Is hopeful about all this,
And sees the project as important for the entire theatre industry
As it seeks a revival following these difficult pandemic years:
It is “symbolic of the resolve of the recovery.”
///
So, yeah, that’s kind of fascinating, don’t you think?
I heard that story and thought about the ingenuity of the human spirit
The way that, sometimes, when people face significant challenges,
Fall on hard times, can’t quite figure out what the future might hold,
Imagination and innovation and determination sometimes offer
such creative ideas,
Solutions and activities that
no one in their right mind would have ever thought of.
It’s a pretty cool story
And I hope one day to be able to see a show there,
If it’s a good show, of course.
Maybe James and KC A Capella Soundproof can perform there one day.
And I actually think this story fits our readings quite well
If we have eyes to look a little bit closer
at what Jeremiah has to offer for us today
this day of transitions, this day of change. [Read more…]
