Sermon of the Week
A Kirk with Purpose: Peace and Justice

A Meditation preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 25, 2018.
The third of a three-part Stewardship Sermon Series. #pcusa

Keywords: Winter Storm Bruce, Christ the King, God’s Shalom, Peace and Justice, Purpose Statement, a Kirk with Purpose.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Romans 8:18, 26-28
and Ephesians 1:15-23 (also included in the text below)

Preparing for worship today,
it felt like there were more unknowns than most times we get together.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is always a question mark,
particularly if it’s not advent yet.

Advent is the start of the Christian Calendar.
It’s like New Year’s Day, with excitement and wonder at starting afresh.
The greens go up.
We might help put crimsons on the tree.

The theme of the season helps orient us every year
to anticipation, to waiting, to hope
as we begin our walk towards the manger.

I love the start of Advent, and
sometimes that does happen the Sunday after Thanksgiving

But not this year.

And so preachers all over wonder if the tryptophan in the holiday turkey and leftovers
might impact Sunday attendance.

Ok, fair enough.

But add to that the blizzard warning for winter storm Bruce,
(did you know that they named winter storms these days?),
and any storm with a name is bound to give people pause.

And rightly so,
since our rule is always “be safe.”

But I’m here, and you’re here
and so God is here, in the midst of us
on this last day of the Christian year:
The Reign of Christ the King Sunday.

So this might be a good time for me to briefly tell a story
that I can’t remember if I’ve told you before
so forgive me if I have, but I think it’s appropriate, and apropos:

The story is about a guest preacher at a small church in the countryside
and it’s a holiday, like Memorial Day weekend
and so many of the regulars aren’t there.

They’re visiting the big city to see family and take in a Barbeque.
So this preacher is there for 30 people instead of the typical 60 or so.

But the preacher, who knew all of this,
didn’t want to shortchange the good folk
who’d make the effort to get up, put on their Sunday shoes and hats
and make their way to the church, in some instances
fifteen or twenty minutes from their family farmsteads, you know.

So he put a little EXTRA into that sermon.

The illustration was particularly funny and winsome.
The three points were particularly on point.
He added a fourth, just to be sure.
It was linear and understandable and comprehensive.

Who knew a sermon could be like that, right?

And so he got there and he helped the congregation
proceed through its typical order of worship:
Call to Worship;
Prayer of Confession;
Hymn, Scripture, and time to preach.

And preach he did.
A bit longer than normal for him, maybe 25 minutes.

The service ended and he gave the blessing and went to the front door
to greet the congregation as they left.
They said all the typical kind things to him.
Midwestern nice.

Towards the end, he shook the hand of a farmer
who thanked him for being there and leading them in worship
and then the farmer said to him,
You know, pastor,
just one thing, though.

When I’m only feeding a couple of the cows
I don’t make them eat ALL the food in the trough.

///
Ok, fair enough. I’ve been warned.
Consider this more of a meditation then,
to try to beat the looming snowstorm.

But we do have a few things to dig into this morning.
We’re finishing our Stewardship season today
celebrating another year of ministry at The Kirk,
and looking ahead to our future.

For a church where we put God at the center of what we do, because of Jesus,
Christ the King Sunday is a great day for us to dedicate
our annual stewardship pledges.

If we surround ourselves with those holy people in our lives,
everyday saints,
that help us experience God,
and if we are inspired by the opportunity
to take part in this wonderful church
and its ministry of hope and love and welcome,
a church that is community minded, loving and serving,
a church that is warm hearted, even in the middle of a winter storm,
then we are willing to put our gifts of time and money and energy there as well.

Today’s second scripture reading
comes to us from Ephesians,
and is a prayer of thanksgiving for the faithfulness of God’s people,
people who are inspired by just THAT sort of community.

I invite you to open your hearts and your minds
to this reading of God’s word:

15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus
and your love towards all the saints,
and for this reason 
¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you
as I remember you in my prayers. 

¹⁷I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory,
may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation
as you come to know him, 
¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened,
you may know what is the hope
to which he has called you,
what are the riches
of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 
¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness
of his power for us who believe,
according to the working of his great power. 

²⁰God put this power to work in Christ
when he raised him from the dead
and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 
²¹far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,
and above every name that is named,
not only in this age but also in the age to come. 

²²And he has put all things under his feet
and has made him the head over all things for the church,
²³which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in all. [Eph 1:15-23]

May God bless to us
our reading
and our understanding
and our applying of these words
to how we live our lives.
Amen.

///
Maybe the best thing to say,
on a day like today,
is to just let the words of the scripture speak to us
as we try to find ourselves in the arc of the biblical story,
that story of God’s love for God’s people, for creation, for the world.

The first passage that we read talks about how God works things together for good
for those who love God,
those who are called according to God’s purpose.

So our focus has been on God’s purpose for us, a Kirk with Purpose.

The thought is that, if we describe what the Kirk’s purpose is
you will find your own place,
your own purpose,
in what God is doing among us.

To that end, we’ve been talking about our new Kirk purpose statement.

This summer, the session replaced our vision and mission statement
with what we called a purpose statement.

What is particularly great about it is how it fits us as a community
where we’ve been, where we are
even as it gives us aspirations for the future, where we might be going.

We welcome all to experience the love of God as seen in Jesus Christ,
through worship, authentic relationships, and meaningful work,
as we promote peace and justice in the world.

I’ve been asking some of you about your own experiences here at The Kirk
and how this purpose statement fits with your understanding of what we’re all about.

How have you experienced the Love of God because of The Kirk?
How has the practice of regular worship deepened your faith?
How have the people you have met here inspired you to care for others?
How have the activities we’ve undertaken together
given you joy, opened you to compassion, helped you stand up for what is right?

I’ve described this as the why, the how, and the what of our life together:
The why: we are here to welcome people to experience God’s love in Christ.
The how: worship, relate, and work meaningfully.
And the what: promote peace and justice.

That’s our purpose. It’s the reason we are here.

///
We call today Christ the King Sunday,
but there’s always a little note of irony in that statement. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
A Kirk with Purpose: Worship, Relate, Work

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 18, 2018.
The second of a three-part Stewardship Sermon Series. #pcusa

Keywords: Henri Nouwen, Talents, Stewardship, Mentors, Purpose Statement, Meaningful Work.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Joel 2:21-27
and Matthew 7:7-12

Yesterday I was up in Parkville at the fall meeting of Heartland Presbytery.

That’s our denomination’s regional governing body,
and I saw the guy I worked with for eight years
over at Southminster Church,
when I was the associate pastor there.

What I love about Jeff is the way he seeks to
have his best influences shine through him,
the people who have shaped and formed his life and his faith
at the forefront of what he is doing today.
He’s a good example of that phase: every mentor has a mentor.

That’s quite true for Jeff.

Even though I only saw him for a moment yesterday
it reminded me of all the opportunities I had to talk with him
and learn from him.

Good mentors, good bosses are like that, I suppose.

A few weeks ago
we talked in our worship service about everyday saints,
those people in our lives that have loved us and shaped us
and in some cases, continue to do so.
These people are in that category.

One of Jeff’s saints is Henri Nouwen.
Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest and author
who explored in great detail what it means to live our faith
in real ways, in authentic ways
given the challenges of modernity.

Nouwen was interested in psychology and social justice and community.

He wrote a great little book called The Wounded Healer
that tried to get us to understand
how all of us carry baggage, and hurt, and scars,
from a lifetime of things not going the way they should,
and how, when we don’t hide from those wounds
but when we understand them, treat them, surrender them to God,
we can become not only healthier ourselves
but finally capable of helping heal others in true and authentic ways.[1]

That’s the sort of work that Nouwen did:
helping us engage with those parts of our lives
that are tricky, that sometimes we’d rather not expose, or deal with, right.

Everyday saints sometimes help us do that.

Nouwen believed, quite rightly,
that we only become stronger, healthier
when we are honest with ourselves and with each other.

Nouwen has a gift for that sort of insight.

So when I got home from Presbytery
I was thinking about my mentor Jeff and my time with him
and went to my bookshelf and found a little book he gave me to read
that I never read.

It went into that pile of books that was
my I-hope-someday-to-read-you pile of books.

Somehow that pile has a tendency of just growing larger,
so it ended up on the bookshelf for some later date.

The book, which offers a small collection of Henri Nouwen’s
public comments on stewardship,
was called A Spirituality of Fundraising.

Years ago, I think I put it into that read-ya-later pile
because fundraising isn’t quite how we think about stewardship, you know.

Stewardship isn’t just about raising funds.
It’s never about that,
even though there are all these jokes,
about how all pastors ever do is talk about or ask for money,
which really goes to show you, I think
how we don’t really like to talk about or think about our money at all.

Some of how we feel about money
is a lot like how we feel about our wounds:
maybe better out of sight, out of mind. [Read more…]