Sermon: Thank God, We Ain’t What We Was
January 18, 2015 ~ “Thank God We Ain’t What We Was” from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.
A sermon preached at John Knox Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on January 18, 2015.
Psalm 139:1-12
and John 1:43-51
Editorial note: I’m working on correcting spacing issues. Thank you for your patience in the meantime.
(Click above link for the Scripture texts upon which this sermon is based)
I do a lot of reading and dreaming for sermons.
Some of it in scripture. Some of it in commentary. Some of it on television.
I enjoy it, usually, but sometimes it wears on me.
I came across some reflections this week about HOPE, you see
and often reflections about hope remind us about why we so badly need it.
For instance,
American author Walker Percy, who died in 1990,
was asked, in the last decade of his life, about HOPE.
Percy, a great writer as both a novelist and essayist,
had survived tuberculosis,
was a physician himself,
and came from a prominent Roman Catholic family
in Birmingham, which claimed a US Senator and a Civil War Hero
among its ranks.
But Percy lived his life seeped in hardship.
Walker Percy’s grandfather, then later his father, killed themselves with a shotgun.
While he was still a young man, not long after his father’s death,
Percy’s mother died in an auto accident that
he later grew suspicious about too.
So well into his sixties, when he was asked about hope, he said:
“For what do I hope?
Short term goal: that any of us can survive ourselves
long enough to explore the infinite potential
of ourselves and the world around us.
If I had another 50 years, I might make it.
My personal goal: to survive my own bad habits.”[i]