A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 20, 2018.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Romans 8:22-27
and Acts 2:1-21

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we’re introducing our kids
to some classics of 80s cinema.

This week it was Throw Mama from the Train.
Do you remember that movie?

It stars Billy Crystal as Larry Donner,
a struggling author who teaches a writing class
at a local community college or something
and his ever more and more comically awful relationship with Owen,
played by Danny DeVito.

Owen struggles with his overbearing mother.
Larry struggles with his writing.

The movie starts with Larry fretting over his typewriter

This was before computers and word processors
So you see him trying to start his novel
The night was….
The night was…

He gets up, he paces the room, he makes some tea, he looks at the page.
The night was…
The night was hot. The night was sweltering,
it was very hot and very sweltering…

And he takes page after page out of the typewriter
and crumples it up into a ball
and throws it away in the trash can.

He can’t find the right word…. He just can’t.
And so he’s stuck, right there, on that first sentence
For what seems like eternity. Oh, the perils of writer’s block for an author!

The next day he goes to class, where students are reading their manuscripts
And they’re, well, not all that great

He takes another manuscript off the pile
And he reads the very beginning of the next piece
And it is exactly the sentence he had been struggling over:
“The night was humid”

Larry’s eyes grow big, the camera zooms in on his expression.
He can’t believe it. He’s going to be stuck here forever.
And he ends class for the day.

The movie has its animating force, right there
As Larry is driven by his struggles to find the right words
to have the story he’s trying to tell sound just right.

///
This is one of those weeks where I’ve felt like Larry.

I’ve started this Pentecost sermon three different times, at least.
It’s been a crazy, emotional, roller coaster of a week if there ever was one
And when that happens,
And you’re trying to listen for the word of God in the middle of a cacophony of news
Well, you find yourself starting over more than once.

The first sermon was going to invite you to listen to this: [Read more…]

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 13, 2018.

Scripture reading (which you may wish to read prior):
Luke 24:44-53
and Acts 1:1-14

This sermon has a lot of numbers in it.

If you like that, great!
If you tend to gloss over numbers,
That’s ok too…just listen for the overall point.

The point isn’t in the numbers
It’s in what they are trying to suggest.

Our reading today is from the Acts of the Apostles
And it records one of the most interesting stories about Jesus.

Jesus, after he was found to be alive following his death,
In a closed room, out on a busy road to a neighboring town
On a lakeshore in galilee
Jesus continued to lead and teach and guide his disciples
His friends, you may remember, from last week.

But at some point, Jesus needed to go.
His ministry among them was nearing an end.

The Holy Spirit is going to come, and create the church.

That’s what we call Pentecost. That’s next Sunday.
Jesus needed to go in order for Pentecost to happen.

His return back to God we call the Ascension.

It has an unfortunate vertical connotation to it, I think.
Kind of like watching someone go up an escalator
Or in a glass paneled elevator.

I used to love those elevators, when I was a kid
when we were on vacation at some hotel.
We lived in rural Iowa and we didn’t travel very much.
so it was always an amazement to see those glass elevators.

I remember, at age 5 or 6 or something
Mesmerized, mouth a-gape, watching people go up in those things.

The realm of God, what we call heaven
Isn’t ‘up there’.
Its just a different sort of place, a different realm of being
It’s the domain of God.

But to an ancient people, with a quite literal worldview, or cosmology
Where Heaven is up and Hell is down
and all of the rest: is what we know
This place, the in-between, our home.
Jesus, as he returns to the realm of the divine, appears to ascend there,
Maybe on Jacob’s great ladder. Maybe on a cosmic escalator or glass elevator.

But the ‘up there’ is not really the point for us, today.
We’re looking for the point.

I invite you to listen, today, for God’s word

As it comes to us in the Acts of the Apostles:
In the first book, Theophilus,
I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 
²until the day when he was taken up to heaven,
after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit
to the apostles whom he had chosen. 

³After his suffering
he presented himself alive to them
by many convincing proofs,
appearing to them over the course of forty days
and speaking about the kingdom of God. 

⁴While staying with them,
he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem,
but to wait there for the promise of the Father.

‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me;
⁵for John baptized with water,
but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit
not many days from now.’

6 So when they had come together,
they asked him,
‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ 

⁷Jesus replied,
‘It is not for you to know
the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 
⁸But
you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem,
in all Judea
and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.’ 

⁹When he had said this, as they were watching,
he was lifted up,
and a cloud took him out of their sight.

¹⁰While he was going
and they were gazing up towards heaven,
suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 

¹¹They said,
‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?
This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven,
will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’

12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet,
which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. 
¹³When they had entered the city,
they went to the room upstairs where they were staying,
Peter, and John,
and James, and Andrew,
Philip and Thomas,
Bartholomew and Matthew,
James son of Alphaeus,
and Simon the Zealot,
and Judas son of James. 

¹⁴All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer,
together with certain women,
including Mary the mother of Jesus,
as well as his brothers.

And may God bless to us our Reading,
And our understanding,
And our applying of these words, to how we live our lives

///
So, there’s a lot of symbolism going on beneath the surface here
that we might as well just jump right into.

It has been 40 days since Easter.

This is on purpose, of course.
Many important things in the Bible happen in blocks of 40.

Numbers often convey meaning in scripture.
Groups of three suggest the triune God, God the three in one, one in three
God the creator, sustainer, redeemer.
Our friend Landon ends his worship services here, when he’s preaching
with a blessing in the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God,
Mother of us all.

Three is important. It suggests the amazing reality and community of God.

Then there’s the number 12. That’s how many sons Jacob had.
Its the number of original tribes in Israel, one for each of those sons.

The twelve tribes are why there were twelve close followers of Jesus
The 12 Apostles.

Our reading today mentions them, the Apostles, at least the 11 that remain,
And the very next thing in Acts, if you keep reading
Is that they elect a 12^th apostle
To round out the group, now that Judas Iscariot was no longer one of them.

Numbers are important in the Bible. They convey meaning.
Three persons, the expression of the one God.
Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve apostles, the cohort of Jesus.

And then there’s the number 40: [Read more…]