sermon

Sermon of the Week:
You Want us to Go Where?

An online sermon preached with The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 13, 2020.

Week seven of a nine part sermon series:
I Feel Seen: Ancient Stories and Modern Wisdom

Keywords: Moses, Parting of the Red Sea, Lord will Make a Way, Big Wave Surfing. #pcusa

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 114
and Exodus 14:19-31

One of the magazines I read regularly is The Atlantic
and there was an article there on Saturday that took my breath away.
Maggie Mertens published a story called “This Woman Surfed the Biggest Wave of the Year”
and it detailed the new world record in what’s called the “Big Wave Awards”
a major surfing competition that draws athletes from all over the world.[i]

Merten’s article described how, this year,
the Brazilian big-wave surfer Maya Gabeira
conquered a 73 and a half foot wave off the cost of Nazaré, Portugal,
far exceeding her own previous record of a 68 foot wave,
and a full 3 and a half feet bigger than the mens’ XXL Biggest Wave award winner,
Kai Lenny, at 70 feet.

These are not “normal” waves.
This isn’t what you imagine people doing in their free time in coastal California,
where they just drop work for the afternoon,
toss on their wetsuit
and drive down to the beach to catch a few waves, dude.

73 feet is more than 7 stories tall,
powerful and fast,
a force of nature you’d instinctively try to avoid, right,
if you weren’t the kind of adventure athlete that these athletes are.

Before I saw the article yesterday,
I didn’t know that big wave surfing was a thing,
but of course it is.
They have different categories,
Ride of the Year,
Biggest Paddle,
even Wipeout of the Year,
but the Biggest Wave Award is the top prize,
and Gabeira took it to new heights this year.

Mertens’ article was primarily about discrepancies in the sport between male and female surfers,
and that’s another sermon for another day,
but what grabbed my attention was the video of Gabiera’s effort.
It was at the top of the article, so you can’t miss it.

It’s mesmerizing.

One minute she is a speck on the seven-story-tall wall of water
and then it comes crashing down around her
and, if you’re like me, you gasp as you watch it.

You get a sense of how powerful the seas are
and how profoundly terrifying they can be
when there is an actual wall of water coming down on you.

It was so timely, actually,
as I’ve been thinking about this story in the Exodus
the culmination of what is really THE story of the Hebrew Bible.

This reading takes place in the darkest hour,
the turning point in the narrative.
With Pharaoh and the army behind them
and the sea in front of them,
the Israelites seem to have come, at last,
to the place of extinction.

What must that have felt like for the Hebrews?

We’ve done what we could to recreate it.
I remember this story, quite vividly, from my childhood,
mainly because I watched cartoons about it
during Sunday School.

They’re kind of seared into my memory.
There’s Moses bravely looking at the water, lifting high his hands
the winds blowing, the water obeying…
The seas part and there’s what looks like a cavernous trench
just wide enough to accommodate everyone.
They rush through, as do the chasing army..
They make it across, Moses does his thing with his arms again
the waters go back to normal…and its done.

The tone, triumphant.
The carnage in the water, minimized…
I mentioned we were kids, right.
Even though some stories of the Hebrew Bible are not really all that kid friendly
how can you avoid learning about the major stories,
particularly the one that has become THE defining event of our religious ancestors…
so they just elided over that part
and instead there was celebration:
that the violence was no more
that they can finally rest, finally have some peace
finally find freedom, as they turn to a new future….
all of that truly a good thing
even if it comes at an unthinkably high cost.

That was the childhood telling of the story,
for me, at least.

As we were talking about this at Bible Study this week
many people recalled the 1956 movie The Ten Commandments,
which might be the most famous version of it on the big screen.
The Ten Commandments was an epic movie,
more than three and a half hours long.

Do you remember the scenes
as the Israelites leave Egypt?
Joshua, riding on a horse
and gathering the people to get them ready…
the movie has such vivid colors and textures.

In the film, as the Israelites are leaving the pyramids behind them,
they don’t get far until they encounter
the sea in front of them and Pharaoh’s army coming quickly behind.

They have fled slavery of Egypt
and find themselves trapped—
by watery chaos
that blocks the way forward
and a vengeful army
violent chaos
closing in behind them.

In the film the confusion and fear are apparent.
There are animals running around;
women and babies crying,
and men planning mutiny against Moses.

You can also see the dark cloud of God beginning to form on the horizon. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week:
What Was Your Name Again?

An online sermon preached with The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 30, 2020.

Week five of a nine part sermon series:
I Feel Seen: Ancient Stories and Modern Wisdom

Keywords: Burning Bush, Notice and Act, Take off your Shoes, The Name of God. #pcusa

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Romans 12:9-21
and Exodus 3:1-15

Someone reminded me this week that
last October we adopted the theme ‘Be Thou My Vision’
for our 2020 Stewardship season.

I had forgotten about that, mainly because last fall feels like 10 years ago these days.

If you’re new to us,
every fall we as a church take stock of where we’ve been over the past year
and we look ahead to the next one
inviting people to pledge financial and volunteer support
as part of our budgeting and ministry planning process. This is what we call Stewardship season.

It is part of how many Presbyterian churches operate,
because it not only allows us to plan for the future
but it invites all of us to think about our individual role that we might play in helping a church thrive
a reminder that church is about the faith we nurture, the friendships we form
the service we undertake, the justice we pursue,
and that, to make it all work, we each are invited to pledge something of ourselves for that future.

We chose that theme, in part, because, come on,
it was going to be 2020, which was about as obvious a nudge
to ‘Be Thou My Vision’ as you can get.

So my friend reminded me of this,
and then asked me how that 2020 vision thing was going… and I had to laugh.
His point, of course, was that this has been a no good, very bad sort of year for all of us
where all our planning has been cast aside out of necessity,
as we are all having to adapt to the new reality of ministry during the time of corona.

I said in reply
that we had no idea, last fall,
that we’d be where we are today,
where everything is new,
having transitioned so quickly to worship services from our homes
learning on the fly about epidemiology and video editing and zoom and all that,
learning how to help a community stay together, and even thrive, in a time like this
over the long haul…

It was a good reminder that you can make all the plans you want
but once you get going on the journey,
who knows what twists and turns and detours and new routes lie ahead of you.
Plans only get you so far.

Once you get started, when you have to call an audible,
when you have to change direction,
you’ve got to be rooted in values
values that help you discern the opportunities and obstacles before you
values that help you make good choices,
and, beyond that,
you have to be open to the movement of God in your midst
so that you can both see God, there, alongside you
as you experience those twists and turns and detours,
and so you can GO where God is leading you to go…

///
There was something in this story about Moses
tending that flock of his father-in-law out at the edges of the wilderness
that caught my eye this week
something I hadn’t noticed before.

It has to do with Moses’ attention,
his seeing something and deciding to focus on it.

Moses is out there with the flock
and he’s just gotten to mount Horeb
and there’s a fire.

Fires get our attention.

Once, more than a decade ago, at the last place we lived,
the house across the street from ours was on fire.
There was smoke shooting out the windows on the second floor
thick and heavy and dark
and the fire department came and put it out.
It was some electrical issue in the bathroom.
It wasn’t, in the end, all that big a deal,
and I remember that the homeowner was able to get it all repaired
not sure they did that, after all that smoke and water and soot
but the main thing I remember is that you could see the smoke wafting into the sky
in such a way that it was the only thing you noticed.
I’m sure people could see it from miles away.
We were so glad no one was hurt.

You notice a fire.

We were driving this past week through central Missouri
and it was beautiful out
a few puffy clouds, blue sky, you could see a long way,
and my wife said something about seeing … something, out in the distance.
It looked like another one of those puffy clouds, but it was a bit different,
hazy, shaped differently than the others,
and after about two minutes it became clear that it wasn’t a cloud at all
it was smoke, from a fire,
and, sure enough, some six miles later when we got to the spot
it was someone burning trash in their back yard.
And I know people do that,
but it did wig me out a little bit.

Maybe we notice fire because it can be so dangerous.
I’m mindful this morning
of my friends in Northern California, who are reeling this week after powerful wildfires
continue to threaten homes and livelihoods there.
It is just one of a handful of significant natural disasters
that has our nation picking up the pieces right now,
including the derecho storms in Iowa and Illinois,
and hurricane Laura, which was the strongest hurricane on record
ever to make landfall in the state of Louisiana.

Moses is out with Jethro’s flock
and he sees a fire
and he looks at it,
and he notices that its…peculiar.

It is burning and burning
and it doesn’t go out.
The bush is not consumed.

That’s not how fires usually work.
So he tells himself that he has to go check this thing out:
I must turn aside and look at this great sight,
and see why the bush is not burned up…

And it was only after that,
after he decides to go pay attention to this spectacle,
Only after Moses took notice and turned his attention and focused on that great sight
that God called out to him
Moses, Moses!
Yes. Here I am…
Don’t come any closer, and take of your shoes
for you are standing on holy ground….

///
Why does the author of this story
decide to point out that little detail
about Moses DECIDING to pay attention to that fire? [Read more…]

Sermon: You Want Us to go Where?

Sermon: What Was Your Name Again?