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