A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on April 22, 2018.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 23
and John 10:11-18

These weeks after Easter have a certain rhythm to them.
A familiar cadence.

If you’ve been attending a church like this one for a while you might have felt it too.

There’s the first few weeks of surprise,
Where the disciples are catching their bearings
Trying to reorient themselves to this new world, this radically new world
That has unfolded before them as the realization of the resurrection dawns.

We look at the appearance stories of the risen Jesus to explore all of this:
–Jesus appears in a locked room, with the disciples and then, again, with Thomas,
the persistent patience and love of God
–On the road to Emmaus, breaking bread and unfolding the scripture
–Back in Galilee, commissioning his followers for service and witness
–On the seashore, by the lake of Tiberius, sharing breakfast and planning the future.

Those stories are always particular, concrete:
Jesus is in this room, on that lake shore, going to that town.

And then, as the impact of these encounters begins to collide
With thinking about what God is doing in them,
we begin to expand into bigger, broader concepts.

So it is that the fourth Sunday of Easter is always “Good Shepherd” Sunday.
Jesus the Good Shepherd.

We’ve already heard the beautiful words of the 23^rd Psalm: read and sung.
Now we turn to Jesus’ words as recorded in the Gospel According to John:

Let us open our hearts and our minds to this reading of God’s Word:

11 ‘I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 

¹²The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep,
sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—
and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 
¹³The hired hand runs away
because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 

¹⁴I am the good shepherd.
I know my own and my own know me, 
¹⁵just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

And I lay down my life for the sheep.

¹⁶I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
I must bring them also,
and they will listen to my voice.

So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 

¹⁷For this reason the Father loves me,
because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 
¹⁸No one takes it from me,
but I lay it down of my own accord.

I have power to lay it down,
and I have power to take it up again.
I have received this command from my Father.’

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

///
Something about Good Shepherd Sunday never quite clicked with me.

I’ve been trying to figure out why.

Before we moved to the Saint Louis area
The first twelve years of my life, give or take,
Were spent in the rural communities of western Iowa.
Many of you know my father is also a pastor, and my mom was a school teacher
And those towns of my childhood—Villisca, Iowa and Atlantic, Iowa,
Gave me plenty of rural upbringing.

Mine wasn’t a farming family, but I had friends and knew church members who were.

There were play dates on a farm.
I’ve been in a combine; I’ve picked an ear of corn from its stalk
and I’ve walked through a soybean field.

I’ve been to my share of state and county fairs, too.

There are pictures of me, somewhere,
On one of those little toy tractors that you ride
Kind of like a tricycle or bike, it had pedals
The tractor has a wagon attached to it, on the back
And at the state fair, the kids would ride that toy tractor
From one end of a course to the other
While they’d add weight to that wagon, brick by brick
And you’d see how far you could go.

I don’t think I ever won the tractor pull. But it was so much fun.

Even though we moved when I was twelve,
and have lived in urban or suburban communities ever since,

I remember those days fondly.

I like to think that I have some comfort in both rural and urban settings
But the truth probably is that those early days didn’t stick all that well.
I was there, I did those things, but I couldn’t find my way around a farm today
If I had to. I was just a kid.

But I remember spending quality time with people whose connection to the land
Is so much more intimate than what I’m used to these days.

My kids, by contrast, have really only spent time at Deanna Rose Farmstead
Where, sure, they’ve seen a cow up close
Have gotten into the petting zoo area a few times,
Fed a goat with a bottle.
But their experience is more one of an urban kid experiencing something novel
Rather than as someone where these things are an everyday fact of life.

///
So what do we do with this image of Jesus the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd? [Read more…]

A sermon for Heartland Presbytery:
preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on April 14, 2018.

Good morning, my friends.

I’m glad you’re here today.
All of us at The Kirk are grateful for the ties that bind us together
in Heartland Presbytery, for your friendship and your encouragement in the faith.

Sometimes our work has us so focused on our little piece of the pie
That we forget how God has an entire bakery goin on
With so many good treats in the oven for hungry people to savor.

Not to go overboard with a metaphor:
–But when we worship together,

–when we gather in plenary

–Or around shared mission, as some of us at The Kirk have begun to do at the invitation
Of our friends at Second Presbyterian Church
With our Be The Church Sunday in October,[i]
(I know many of you have your own examples of shared mission)

–Or when we share our resources
for disaster relief through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
For fighting hunger, for helping people develop their own lives well
Through our giving to One Great Hour of Sharing

–Or today, when we will offer gifts to the Heartland Youth Encounter

When we do these things,
we see more clearly how our slice of Chocolate Cream or Apple or
If we’re really on top of it
Maybe its Strawberry Rhubarb pie…
We see how our own particular slice is one of many many goods
Available in God’s wonderful Bakery.

I did go overboard with that metaphor. Wow.

So I am glad you are here today.
And I’m honored for a chance to preach for our worship today.
Humbled, actually.

///
I’ve not preached since Easter.

That’s a strange thing: you go go go through Lent, to Palm Sunday and
Then Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and maybe for some of us
A Holy Saturday or midnight vigil or Sunrise service, and then
The emotions and the energy and the brilliance of the resurrection itself
The empty tomb and the wonder that follows
just the movement of that morning
All of it pushing forward, pushing outward into the world
As the awareness of that amazing gift slowly becomes real.

If you live it, it kind of knocks you over. And you are ready to get moving.
To go out and be part of all that energy and wonder and excitement.

This is Easter, you know. Easter.

I am surprised how hard its been not to be in the pulpit since Easter Sunday.
I had to travel last weekend.
I didn’t really feel that power of Easter walking from terminal to terminal at some airport
Going from Uber to hotel to meeting back to Uber and home again.
I wanted Easter! Give me resurrection excitement. Give me new life!
Instead I dealt with turbulence at 28000 feet. A different kind of excitement, to be sure.

Besides, I love these stories the first few weeks after Easter.
Sure, A friend and colleague filled in quite admirably for me,
And, as more than one of you have told me,
it is a designated “Associate Pastor Preaching” Sunday after all
on some church calendars with more than one pastor on staff.

But these post resurrection stories are so rich,
So full of possibilities, and hope
Both of which I know many of us in this room seek to have more of
In our individual ministries, in our churches,
Possibility and hope.

So last week it was John: the disciples, huddled in a room,[ii]
The door locked, the shutters drawn
Hidden away
And Jesus comes,
And he stands among the ten remaining apostles hidden away there
Peace be with you
And they are astonished and they see and they touch and they
Believe

Ten? you say. I thought there were twelve?
And that’s true. But one was Judas, he’s not there
And other was Thomas, the twin,
who was out running errands or something
stocking up on milk and cereal and bread and fish…who knows [Read more…]