sermon — Page 7

Sermon of the Week:
No Insignificant Question-Is Swearing Ok?

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 29, 2021.

Part one of a nine-week sermon series inspired by questions submitted by the Kirk community.

Special Music: He’s Always Been Faithful to Me
Hymn: Praise Ye, the Lord, The Almighty

Keywords: Swearing, Promise, Profanity, Interpretation, the Apostle Paul, A Christmas Story. #pcusa

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Luke 6:39-45
and Philippians 3:4b-14

Thank you, everyone, for submitting a topic or two
For this reprise of our No Insignificant Question sermon series.

We’ll be exploring various topics over the next eight or nine weeks,
And I’ve divided the sermon series into two parts.
For this first part, I’ve selected a handful of topics
from the 20 or so submissions
that we received this time
topics that range from the quite serious to the humorous
depending on how you look at them.
All of them would be worthy of a sermon,
Some of them more than one,
So I regret, in advance, not being able to get to yours
If it wasn’t one of our selections this time.

The second part will have a more unified theme to it.
More on that in September.

The topic for today, I have to admit
Is a heckova doozy.
I promise.

Actually, it was rather complicated to know how to begin,
Because the person sending it to me just asked “Is Swearing ok?”

And that may seem like a simple question,
but it is not.

On the one hand, “swearing” means a couple of different things
Both of which,
over the long history of Christianity,
over the generations of various ethical and cultural norms
that we have found ourselves swimming in,
both meanings have caused many a sermon-listener to squirm
when a preacher climbed up in the pulpit
and began to offer a Word from the Lord.

Swearing could mean declaring an oath, right?
Place your hand on the bible, and repeat after me
…I, Chad Herring, do solemnly swear…

Or it could mean uttering some sort of profanity.
Profanity, swear words, speech that offends,
Or, better, speech which some people might find offensive…
Like all things offensive,
it depends on the context and the people involved.
You know it when you see it, when you hear it, maybe.

So I had a decision to make, because I didn’t know for sure
Which question was being asked:
Is it ok to swear, as in to make an oath,
to make a solemn, a holy promise?
Or
Is it ok to swear, to utter, sometimes,
and maybe more than just sometimes,
Profane speech, dirty words,
I’ll wash your mouth out with soap young man sort of words…?

///
Now, I know some of us
are probably squirming in our seats right now too.
We know full well that we do both of these, maybe all the time,
Maybe without thinking much of it at all.

The Christmas Story,
that lovable film that runs for days
as a movie marathon over on TBS every year,
has this great moment in it,
as the narrator reflects on
memories of his father from childhood,
a father who, quote,
works in profanity
the way other artists might work in oils or clay…
it was his true medium, Ralphie observed,
he was a master.

Ralphie and his father were stopped
by the side of the road, at night,
trying to change a flat tire,
And Ralphie is trying so hard to help his dad.
His dad didn’t need the help. It was his mother’s idea.
And you can see in Ralphie’s eyes
That it is such a big deal to him.
He’s trying so hard to help,
And he’s holding the hubcap like a bowl
And his dad is putting the lug nuts in there for safe keeping
And Dad is rushing,
trying to race, you know,
to beat his average time for changing a spare tire—
it’s a running theme of the movie,
a character flaw so to speak—
and the tire changing all seems to be going so well…
when his father’s arm jerks up suddenly
and knocks the bowl out of Ralphie’s hands
and nine-year-old Ralphie,
curses there, in front of his father…

Oh oh.
What did you say?
That’s what I thought you said.
Go get back in the car, Ralphie…

Later his mom wants to know,
Hey Ralphie, where did you learn that word
And we all know the answer: his dad. The true artist.
But Ralphie can’t say that.
So he lies. He throws his friend under the bus,
And Ralphie’s mom calls his friend’s mom,
and we can all hear his friend’s mom freak out,
and start punishing him, we can hear it….
And all of it is an episode that Ralphie will NEVER forget…

In our bible study this week,
Some felt that cursing, swearing, appears to have become
much more socially accepted these days
And it certainly has, in some ways,
But we all know that it is not just a kids-these-days thing.
A Christmas Story came out in 1983.
We can look to our childhoods, our parent’s childhoods,
And know that there are true artists in every age.
And in our own lives, too.

Or, to put this another way,
there are at least a dozen
fantastic Shakespearian insult generators online,
if you want to go looking for them,
where you can randomly put together
some of the Bard’s great offensive rhetorical daggers
that you can use
the next time you need just the right thing to say
if you’re looking for highbrow, and quite ancient, swearing.

So there’s that.

And many of us don’t really have qualms
about making a solemn promise either,
Whether about significant, weighty things
that we have given a lot of thought to,
like testimony in court,
or assuming an office of public or church responsibility,
or maybe getting married, which sometimes includes this sort of language,
or maybe more haphazardly, more carelessly:
Yes, yes, I’ll get milk on my way home from work, dear, I swear I will.

The sting of failure to uphold these vows,
to break one’s word,
Is more palpable when we use this sort of language to seal it
Which might be why Jesus, in the sermon on the mount,
Was rather clear when it comes to his take on it:
You have heard it was said…
‘You shall not swear falsely,
But carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’
But I say to you, Do not swear at all…
Let your word be ‘yes, yes’ or ‘no, no.’

A sermon about either of these would be interesting, don’t you think? [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week:
Food for Thought–Living Bread

A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 15, 2021.

Part five of a five-week sermon series about Food and the Christian Faith, called Food for Thought.

Special Music: O How He Loves Me
Hymn: Lord Make Us More Holy

Keywords: Willimon, Gospel of John, Living Bread, Incarnation, Food for Thought. #pcusa

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 34:1-8
and John 6:35, 41-51

When we try to wrestle with strange, hard to follow texts,
like this one, with all this talk about eating and drinking Jesus
regular bread compared to living bread,
it helps to step back and try to gauge what the author is trying to do with all this.
Sometimes that context can explain…well, a lot.

We’re only six chapters into the Gospel according to John here.
Many of our sermons in this Food for Thought sermon series
have been rooted here
Because we have five consecutive readings focused on bread,
And four of those five focused on Jesus,
Where he describes himself, one way or another, as the living bread.

It was reading through all these passages
That inspired me to think a bit more broadly about food and the Bible,
Why we dove into this topic in the first place,
And I don’t know about you, but I’m glad we did.

We’ve looked at the importance of self-care,
Looking after our own health,
When Jesus saw his disciples, working hard,
didn’t have any leisure even to eat.

We talked about the miracle of the feeding of the multitude
Five thousand people, and more,
Had all they needed to eat,
When all Jesus started with was some barley loaves and a few fish.

We’ve looked closely at the Sacrament of Communion
This welcome table
And the radical welcome that it represents
Where everyone has a place in the Kingdom of God
Where we are nourished, sated,
By God’s gift of bread and cup
As we partake of our Lord who is here, somehow
in the elements.

And then, last week, we looked at the Parable of the Great Banquet.
We had to leave the Gospel According to John to do that
But it was a worthwhile detour
A reminder that God invites everyone to the banquet
And we should take care
not to let our pride and our vanity and our privilege
Turn down the welcome of our God
But instead we should welcome those whom God welcomes,
With love and with open arms.

This week we conclude with today’s reading,
Jesus wrestling with some Judean leaders
About bread from heaven, living bread, the bread of life,
And the way that this spiritual food, Jesus’ very self,
somehow has the potential to fill something within us forever.

What is John trying to get at here, do you think?

Well, let’s go back to the beginning for a moment,
The beginning of this Gospel,
Where John talks about the beginning:
In the beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God….

And just a few verses later: the word became flesh and lived among us.

Here John is trying to get our heads around the incarnation:
God made flesh,
God in the very person of this Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth.

This is an essential teaching of the Christian Faith:
God isn’t just up there; God came here, in Jesus,
In solidarity and in love,
To help make this world right
To bring about God’s new world, God’s shalom.

But the mystery of the incarnation proves difficult to comprehend.
We see this very early on in John’s telling of the story.
So, in chapter 3, we see someone as smart and as faithful as Nicodemus
Struggle to understand.
Born again? Born from above, you say, Jesus? As he scratches his head.

Nicodemus knows about physical birth,
But the blending of physical and spiritual realities,
Which is at the heart of the incarnation,
Is just too much for Nicodemus to grasp.

And then how about Chapter 4
The woman, by the well, in Samaria.
She has the same problem.
She knows all about the physical realities of water and wells,
But Jesus begins to amaze her
All this talk about “living water.”
This too is incarnational truth,
And, did you notice, it sounded a lot like what we heard today
There, o woman at the well: living water…you’ll never be thirsty
Here: bread from heaven, living bread…you’ll live forever, on this bread,
Which is me, in the flesh, the incarnate one.

And just like that
We have the astute and well credentialed Nicodemus,
The foreigner-outsider Samaritan, not to mention woman, at the well,
And now the masses, the people following Jesus…
All scratching their heads trying to understand.

Trying to figure out just how
“the Word became flesh and lived among us” is not easy,
Nor is it straightforward what that means, for us,
for our well-being, for our lives.

///
Maybe we can look at all this another way.

Will Willimon, the now-retired United Methodist preacher and Bishop
Used to quote the protestant reformer Martin Luther,
Who said “I wish I could get you to pray
The way that my dog goes after his food.”

Now, first, that’s bit rough, isn’t it.
Pun intended.

But what Luther was getting at was an observation
Of how he saw some enthusiasm in his pet
Some dedication, some energy,
That he also hoped for those under his care, as a parish priest
As someone who was looking after the care of souls.

Willimon argues that one of the greatest impediments
to our understanding this section of the Gospel of John
is the widespread, but incorrect, impression, that Christianity is “spiritual.”[i]

True, “Spirituality” has been “in” for some time now.
Many North Americans, Willimon observes,
Apparently want to be lifted up out of the muck and mire of the everyday.
What is here, in this world, isn’t quite enough for us.
We want to rise out of it, to go higher, to ascend.

As moderns, as scientific people, we have learned so much about our world
About everything imaginable, it seems,
What we can taste and touch and feel.
Thank you, science.
God’s good gift of using our minds and our senses
and our powers of observation.
And in the process, this world of ours got demystified somewhat,
Explained, unbearably flattened and figured out.

And this means, therefore, a greater urge to peek beyond the veil
To penetrate the less obvious.
Which explains the urge to figure out the “spiritual” in our day,
Just not the religious.

I mean, we certainly do know so much more about our world, that’s true,
But there is still mystery. So much mystery.
There’s a lot we don’t know, finite creatures as we are,
And so we push, maybe artificially, to the mysterious, the beyond.

Some of this is natural,
An interplay between knowledge and the unknown
And a recognition that, even as knowledge grows, the unknown is still there.

But it can get out of whack.
The ancient Greeks, too, got wrapped up in this,
The philosophers and the people who searched for the good, for the real.
Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Epicurus…looked for truth not just here,
In this world, but sought to escape all of it,
Looking mainly at the realm of ideas, of spirit.
To them, this world was less than, deficient;
It is the world of the spirit that was considered good, ideal, true. [Read more…]

Sermon: No Insignificant Question-Is Swearing Ok?

Sermon: Food for Thought–Living Bread