Sermon of the Week
Be Thou My Vision: Thou My Inheritance.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 17, 2019.
The third of a four part stewardship sermon series.

#pcusa

Keywords: Providence, Budgets, Stewardship, Pledge, Olivet Football, Inheritance.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
2 Corinthians 9: 6-12
and Matthew 6: 19-21, 7:7-12

 

We’re taking our cues for our sermon series this month
from an old favorite hymn,
Be Thou My Vision,
and on this this third week of the sermon series,

we’re looking at the third verse, which goes like this:
Riches I heed not,
nor vain, empty praise;
thou mine inheritance, now and always;
thou and thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art.

Our scripture readings for the morning intersect quite beautifully
with this verse.

The reading from Second Corinthians that Cathy offered
is from the business portion of Paul’s letter,
working out some details about a special offering
that the church in Corinth was collecting
for the poor, the sick, the orphans, the widows, those on the margins.
There’s a chance they might feel pressure to participate,
and that worries him.

Instead, Paul is explaining to them that there is something wonderful
about being able to give something that is meaningful,
to give because you GET to give,
not because someone twists your arm to do so.

For Paul, and for us, giving is always about gratitude and thanksgiving.

The other reading for the day is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
and tries to put into a clearer focus
what it means to look to God as our inheritance,
trusting in God to provide for us.

Here’s what Jesus has to say for us this morning
from the Gospel According to Matthew:
19 ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust consume
and where thieves break in and steal; 
²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust consumes
and where thieves do not break in and steal. 
²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

7 ‘Ask, and it will be given to you;
search, and you will find;
knock, and the door will be opened for you. 

⁸For everyone who asks receives,
and everyone who searches finds,
and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 

⁹Is there anyone among you who,
if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? 
¹⁰Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? 

¹¹If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father in heaven give good things
to those who ask him!
12 ‘In everything do to others
as you would have them do to you;
for this is the law and the prophets.

And may God Bless to us our Reading
and our understanding,
and our applying of these words, to how we live our lives. Amen.

///
I am always amazed what people remember
from our sermons.

A few weeks ago, someone came and told me
that they had a memory of a story I told once about Africa,
because they had a friend who had just traveled and
she was trying to remember just what I said.

I told her that I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about
but I went back and looked, and she was right:
on my fourth sermon, way back when I was new around here,
I included a story about Ben Sparks and his wife Annette
who went to Ghana to visit Christian communities there.

I’m glad to have this reminder, because that story
is quite useful for us this morning.
Ben and Annette visited Ghana,
…but they weren’t prepared to see signs of faith,
well, LITERALLY, as signs.

Apparently it’s the practice in much of Ghana
to give businesses religious names:
the Exodus 13:14 Beauty and Fashion Shop, or,
Our Blessed Lady Savings & Loan Association.

A bit catchier than The Blue Moose Bar and Grill
or EUSTONS Hardware Store, don’t you think??

But it’s not just the businesses.

Ghana’s entire transportation system, as Ben experienced it, is simply
a fleet of passenger vans adorned with religious slogans,
both Muslim and Christian, though mainly Christian.

I love Ben’s description of it:

“Cutting you off in traffic is AMAZING GRACE.
Passing you on the right is BRIGHT and MORNING STAR.
Gaining on you from behind is GOD LOVES YOU.
The crash barely avoided at the intersection two blocks ahead
was when JESUS IS MY FRIEND
barely missed being broadsided by JAHOVAH LIVES.

“The car in which Annette and I drove all over Accra merely said:
Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Central Accra District—
not exactly a name to set your heart on fire.”

Ben admits that, at first, the religious nomenclature OFFENDED him:
he found it at best quaint and at worst: crass and sacrilegious.

What changed his mind, though, was this:
his encountering of a people who have absolutely NOTHING,
yet who rely on God for EVERYTHING.

People who, if they are fortunate, live on a wage of less than a dollar a day;
who, rich or poor, work VERY hard;
people for whom their livelihood is in God’s hands EVERY day.

Context matters: In America, those slogans might simply be a marketing tool.
We’d rightly be suspicious.

But for the people of Ghana, they are a sincere expression of faith…
a sign, Ben says, that they
“cling to the living God for everything”[i]

///
What would it mean for US to live our lives
affirming that EVERYTHING we have comes from God? [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
Be Thou My Vision: I Ever With Thee.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 10, 2019.
The second of a four part stewardship sermon series.

#pcusa

Keywords: Loneliness, Omnipresence, Sue the TRex, O’Hare, You Are Loved, Stewardship.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Romans 8:28-39
and Psalm 139:1-18

Sometimes all we want is to be left alone.

Any teenager has felt that way,
with their parents hounding them to clean their room
or to get their homework done.

Any parent has felt that way,
seeking just a few minutes to collect themselves, please,
after a stressful day at work
and coming home to a mountain of needful things to accomplish
and the dog and kids all have stuff to get done. Right. This. Very. Minute.

Whether you’re happily self-parterned, like Emma Watson,
or you’ve have been married for 60 years,
maybe you have a place where you can go to just get away from things,
an epic man-cave,
or a quiet room with a chair and a throw and a place for your book and your tea,
or a place where you can turn your music way up or play your instrument really loud.

Introverts and extraverts alike
can feel this need to be left alone,
and while often for different reasons
the underlying feeling isn’t all that different.

Sometimes we don’t want to be engaged, or connected, at least not right now.
A little bit of space, please, would help put things into context,
clear out the chaos a little bit,
maybe make engagement again, in a few minutes please, a bit more healthy.

A little bit of privacy, of knowing that this is just between me and me,
helps us retain a good balance between
giving all that energy and emotion and time to others,
and exercising important self-care.

///
Then again, there are times when we are aching for connection, for relationship.

Sometimes the loneliest I have ever felt have been in crowds of people.
Have you felt that way too?

One year, I think I counted walking through Chicago’s O’Hare airport
maybe 15 times.

Once I was there on a super-long layover
probably unintentional,
some plane needed a repair done to a folding tray or something,
and I found myself wandering around in parts of the airport I’d never been before
over in the American Airlines wing
and found that to be quite the same as over by the United flights,
which is to say
thousands upon thousands of people, most of them in a hurry
maybe a bit anxious or stressed,
trying to get to some gate way over there
and not quite happy about the prospects of speed walking for the next 15 minutes
to get there.

O’Hare is a huge airport.
I actually think it is beautiful, in its own way.

The architecture soars.
The public art is quite lovely.
I particularly like the way that they display enlarged versions
of kid-drawings from local Chicago Public Schools
in one of the skyways between terminals.

If you know where to go,
you can even see a four story tall replica of a Brachiosaurus dinosaur
looming large over those rushing by…
an invitation to visitors to go check out the Field Museum
where you can see the even more impressive
Tyrannosaurus Rex they’ve got, lovingly named Sue.

But even in this hustle and bustle airport,
I have sometimes felt so alone.
Everyone rushing by,
only stopping, if at all,
to visit the powder room,
or grab a bite to eat on the go.

There are all these shops at the airport:
you can get a leather coat,
a new blazer,
Oakley sunglasses, a five-gallon tub of popcorn
and some south-west inspired artistic figurine…
without ever really looking up,
making eye contact or sharing a smile or a hello, even once.

The sales transactions at the cash register are often perfunctory,
because the travelers are rushing to their gate,
ready to speed-walk with their new purchase stuffed into their carry-on.

It feels so weird to be at a place like O’Hare and NOT be running all over the place.

I once had a conversation with one of the janitors at the airport:
“Yeah, one of the busiest places in the world,
and I almost never have anyone say a word to me.
You’re the first person that doesn’t work here
to say ‘hello’ to me in more than a month.
It isn’t that I think people are rude or anything.
They just have better things to do.”

It isn’t that hard to feel disconnected in places like that.

There have been moments when I’ve been away from family
and I’ve been really, really ready to get home
to see people I know and love and miss
and to be stuck in the airport for hours
and feel really isolated.

Truth is, though,
if you are lonely,
even if it’s a temporary loneliness,
or something more regular,
it doesn’t matter whether you’re in a large crowd,
or at a more manageable place,
like a coffee shop, or a city park,
you just feel alone.
For some, this is ok.
Suits them just fine most of the time.
But for many of us,
that’s just not a very enjoyable feeling at all.

///
One of the most accurate descriptions of the human being was Aristotle’s:
We are social rational animals. [Read more…]