Sermon of the Week:
Look Them in the Face

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on February 27, 2022.

Hymns: Every Time I Feel the Spirit
and Shine, Jesus Shine

Keywords: Transfiguration, Healing, Look at your Neighbor, Emmanuel Levinas, Moses’s Face. #pcusa​​​​​​

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Exodus 34:29-35
and Luke 9:28-43a

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469.
All rights reserved.

Every week I remind myself that these stories are always new to someone.
That’s a particularly helpful reminder for me
on a day like today,
with a story like this one: the Transfiguration of Jesus.

This is one of those stories
that we read and discuss and ponder and pray about
Every year. Year after year.

The Transfiguration is always the story
That helps us stand on the threshold of Lent,
the way we transition from Epiphany
and its posture of amazed wonder
at the gift and presence of a savior and lord and Christ
And what Jesus might mean for us
As we transition from all that to Lent,
The season of introspection and penitence and brooding
With a slower and more melancholy feel.

So if you’ve been doing this for a while, you might wonder,
Like I sometimes wonder, what is going to be new and fresh in this story.

And I ask that question sometimes
When we approach those well-worn pages of our Bibles.

But the wonderful thing is how each and every time I do that
Something stands out differently
Something clicks with the concerns of the current age
And in that moment, we can open ourselves to a fresh word from God
New movement of the holy spirit among us.
And I find some connection with people for whom this is a new story.
Because there is always something new,
every time we consider these stories afresh.

///
We’re jumping around a bit in the Gospel of Luke.
That’s unfortunate, because we miss some of the context
That can help us situate this story a bit.

A few weeks ago we looked at some earlier stories,
Such as Jesus meeting his first disciples at Lake Gennesaret.
That’s where we first encounter Peter.
Jesus asked to use his boat,
So he could teach the crowds from the water,
And then, later, they went fishing
in the heat of the afternoon – who does that?—
but catching more fish than could be counted,
convincing those first disciples to come and follow him.

They then went up a mountain,
probably not the same one we’re talking about here,
but a high place, set apart.
Mountains were retreat type places
Where you went to get away from the masses
Where you’d go to have a conference of sorts.
So Jesus and a group of early followers went up there
And Jesus set the 12 apostles apart, commissioned them, as it were.
They prayed, got oriented to their task,
Maybe did some ice breakers
Red light green light
or two truths and a lie, who knows,
And then they came back down again.

And when they came down, Jesus kicked into action:
There’s the sermon on the plain.
We spent a few weeks looking at that:
Blessings and woes,
Do unto others as you want them to do to you,
And as for your opponents, your enemies:
Pray for them.
Love your enemies even.

Hard lessons, to be sure
because reconciliation and justice and peace are hard,
But with God’s help we can work on all of it together.

There are two, maybe two and a half chapters worth of narrative
Between that sermon on the plain
and where we find ourselves this morning.
And in those Chapters you see this Jesus
going back and forth across Galilee and the Gerasenes
doing two things:
he’s teaching everyone who would listen
about the Kingdom of God,
and at the same time, everywhere you look
Jesus is healing a lot of people:
There’s the centurion’s servant in Capernaum,
There’s the man raised up in Nain,
And then there’s the one possessed, the one with the name Legion.
The story of the hemorrhaging woman is here, too, in Chapter 8,
The woman who reaches out
and touches the hem of Jesus’ cloak in the crowd,
This woman who had been searching for healing, for wholeness,
For twelve years,
Twelve years!
before she found it the moment she touched his hem.

Four significant healing stories.

So notice: Healing was a significant portion of Jesus’s work here.

It wasn’t just the teaching in parables, which he does, also.
The story about the sower and the seeds, the creditor with two debtors,
You find those here.

And it’s not just Jesus demonstrating
in powerful and unmistakable ways who he is
Like when they’re on the lake, on a boat,
And the storm clouds come and he is asleep in the back
And the disciples, nervous, wake him:
Master, Master, we are perishing!
and he calms the wind and steadies the waves.
All those things are here,
Providing movement and support to the narrative about Jesus
Who he is
What he’s about
Who is behind it all.

And, prominently, at the heart of it all
we have these healing stories.
Is that what you think about, when you think of Jesus:
Jesus the healer?

The people come to him, yearning for health and for wholeness.
Jesus responds with compassion and conviction
And he helps them find it:
Healing the body, and the mind, and the spirit.
The whole person.

///
These days the particulars about Jesus’ healing
Often strike us as bizarre. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week:
Why Reconciliation is Up There with Peace and Justice

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on February 20, 2022.

Hymns: I Sing the Mighty Power of God
and Guide my Feet

Keywords: Cooked Spinach, Sermon on the Plain, Joseph and his Brothers, Genesis 45, kintsugi, Reconciliation. #pcusa​​​​​​

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Luke 6:27-38
and Genesis 45:1-15

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469.
All rights reserved.

I realized about halfway through my sermon prep for today
That some people might accuse me of choosing to focus on the Genesis text
Because, one way you look at it, that’s the easy way out.

In reflecting about that other reading, the one that Erin read for us today,
Vaughn Crowe-Tipton noted, in his words
that people respond to that reading
In the same way that my children respond
to seeing cooked spinach on their plate at dinner.[i]

Now, now, don’t be like my grandmother,
who would have turned and looked at me
And said “come child, I LIKE cooked spinach.”

That’s not the point.

Instead, Crowe-Tipton continues,
No matter how much I explain the nutritional value,
no one around the table really wants to dig in….
Goodness, Jesus, who wants to love an enemy?

There’s more:
Some preachers have been known to fill stadiums
With people who want to hear sermons on “Three Easy Steps to Love”
and “Five Paths to a Better Life.”

If Jesus had preached either of those sermons, Crowe-Tipton says,
[on the Plain or] on the Mount,
Emperor Constantine would have been born into a Christian home
and baptized as a child.
Jesus focuses, however, on the real problem with nutrition;
there is a vast difference between what we want and what we need.

There’s a vast difference between what we want and what we need.
All who dare prepare a sermon with the ingredients Jesus offers
will do well to remember that tension.

///
So there you go.
You and I, we’ve been warned.
But he has a point, doesn’t he.
The life of discipleship has an edge, doesn’t it.
Grace isn’t cheap.
Things we read here are HARD
Forgiveness and Compassion for those who have hurt us and a bigger vision.

One of my friends on Twitter this week said:
I’ve come to realize that being an adult is coming to the understanding
That some people are just going to be mad at you….
and dealing with that reality constructively….

Here: Jesus is asking us to be adults in our faith, yes?
And when we think about it
There are things that God wants us to do that we’d prefer to not deal with.

We get this.
We don’t want to go to the doctor or the dentist
Or have to deal with the chores
Or approach our neighbor,
I mean the actual guy who lives next door neighbor
who doesn’t like you very much,
When his tree is encroaching over your powerline
and you have to do something about it….
Maybe I can just ignore it and it will go away….
Said no adulting person ever.

But. There are some things we really really would rather not do.
And so it is sometimes with these
ultimate values of the Kingdom of God.
Forgive. Lend. Pray. Give.
If it were easier, the Kingdom of God might be
much more obvious by now, I suppose.
But it’s not, and so we’re given the choice of going hungry or eating our spinach
Every now and then.

I think that makes people both admire the Gospels and run from it,
Don’t you?
Maybe in equal measure.

Here Jesus prescribes an ethic of generosity
for the faithful living in a hostile world.
Love your enemies, sure,
But bless and give to those who would curse and take.
Who doesn’t judge that kind of life imprudent, at the very least,
Sowing generosity where nothing is EXPECTED to grow.

Maybe it is that EXPECTATION that is at the heart of it,
It feels like folly,
Though I think God knows that that expectation is borne of experience,
At least much of the time.

We’ve known hurt.
Or we see people hurting others.
Worse, we know powerful people
use these very words of Jesus to oppress or take advantage of others:
hey you, yes you, turn your cheek
and take this backpack another mile…
You … forgive me, right?
our Lord would WANT you to do that.

Or we worry about our vulnerability falling flat on its face
Exposing ourselves to hurt and heartache.

And when you think about it that way,
A three-step sermon on “Easy Steps to Love”
Doesn’t sound all that bad, does it.

But that wasn’t Jesus’ sermon.
This was.

Sure, Jesus’ teachings have been ignored, co-opted, manipulated
But here they stand, nonetheless, still gnawing at us
With the simplicity and the clear-headed logic of our God:
But love your enemies, do good, and lend,
expecting nothing in return. 
Your reward will be great,
and you will be children of the Most High;
for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked (too). 
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Do not judge, and you will not be judged;
do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 
give, and it will be given to you.
A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over,
will be put into your lap;
for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.’

///
The way Luke tells the story, one reason to buy what Jesus is selling
Is because you’ll get something out of it.
Your reward will be great, he says,
even though he says that immediately after saying,
“do these things expecting nothing in return.”

You can see the confusion there.

Sure, some will say, correctly,
that Luke is distinguishing between expecting from your human counterpart
and expecting something from God,
well and good,
but there’s more going on here, of course.

This isn’t a lesson in pragmatism,
In what will get you further in life,
In how to win.

Jesus is talking about what life is like in the Kingdom of God
The world God is building all around us
The World Jesus came to herald,
that world where human is reconciled to human
While the human is reconciled to God.

The Kingdom of God doesn’t work on a transactional basis.
You don’t buy your way in with enough in your bank account
Or a long enough list of the good things you’ve done…

I mean, God wants to build a house
big enough for everyone to have their very own room
A table with a place set and a chair ready for each and for all.

Here in this world
we don’t understand that.
Not in a world of enemies and foes and hurt and heartache
This world where we have terrible things done to us and
Where we do terrible things to others.

We can’t, really.
And moreso:
Why would anyone actually do these things
that are part of the Kingdom of God
if doing it didn’t result in a spot on the nice list?

Well, you can see why Vaughn Crowe-Tipton
recommends preaching on something a wee bit easier
Preacher, if you know what’s good for ya…

///
That’s not fair to him. He doesn’t recommend that,
He just says that many a preacher, and many a sermon listener, are tempted.

And he’s right. I’m tempted sometimes. [Read more…]