Sermon of the Week
Words to Build a Life On:
Nothing Can Separate You.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 23, 2018.
The Twelfth and final in a Multi-Part Sermon Series

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 139:1-18,
and Romans 8:26-28, 31-39

If you type in the phrase “Australian daredevil”
into your favorite search engine,
Bing or Google might answer back: Felix Baumgartner.[i]

Felix is rather extraordinary.

On Sunday morning, October 14^th, 2012,
exactly 65 years to the day that Chuck Yeager
first broke the sound barrier
in his experimental, rocket-powered airplane
Felix climbed into a helium-filled balloon
and took it up to a height of 128,100 feet.[ii]

Now, to put that into context for you,
128000 feet is several times higher than commercial airliners ordinarily fly.

In fact, the highest that a jet aircraft has ever flown,
according to extremetech.com, is 123,500 feet,
so this was 5000 feet above that.[iii]

By comparison, another daredevil, the film maker James Cameron
went to the so-called lowest point on earth that same year, in 2012
diving seven miles to the bottom of the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean.[iv]
Baumgartner’s balloon climb, when you do the math,
was three times higher.

Extremetech noted that the climb up was the cushy part.

He had a climate-controlled pod that was kind of like a race-car cockpit
made of fiberglass and steel
and a cage of something called chromium-molybdenum
to help protect the occupant from the -70 degree temperatures outside.

Pretty cool.

But on that Sunday morning, October 14^th, 2012
not only did Felix go up that high
but he also climbed out of that cushy climate-controlled pod
and fell back to earth.

How long do you think it takes to fall to earth from 21 miles above it?

It lasted 9 minutes and 9 seconds
with an astonishing 4 minutes and 22 seconds of that in what they call free fall
smashing the speed of sound
the way Chuck Yeager did, but Chuck had a jet engine to help him.

And then, thankfully, Felix pulled the cord on his massive parachute
and safely landed outside of Roswell, New Mexico.

Felix broke all sorts of world records with the stunt.
–Highest free-fall
–Highest manned balloon flight.
–If he had just held out 14 more seconds he would also have set the record for
the longest free-fall time ever,
but really, who can blame him.

You might assume that those records were going to stand forever
But no, just two years later, Google’s then vice-president Alan Eustice
Decided “hey, why don’t I try that”
And went almost a mile higher, 135000 feet,
and made his own incredible free fall.[v]

Now: I don’t really know why Felix Baumgartner or Alan Eustice
would do such a thing.

You’re not getting me near one of those balloons.

But I’m glad that they didn’t pass out,
that their parachutes opened,
that they survived.

I’m not sure it matters whether you’re talking about a zip line,
a paltry 100 feet or so above a cliff face,
or jumping out of your high tech pod 22 miles up there
the possibility of death was apparently not, to them, a deterrent and they jumped.

They had tested their equipment. They did the math and knew the science.
But still: any time you do that, it’s a leap of faith.
They trusted, and they jumped, and they made it.

On the Tuesday after Felix’s incredible jump
One newspaper asked its readers:
“what stunt would you do, if you knew you would survive?”[vi]

///
On the one hand, that’s an interesting question to think about.

What would you do?
Sky dive
Go diving in shark infested waters
Bungee jump
Buy a Harley
Go run off and live in the desert for a while
Wear a Chiefs jersey to Denver’s Mile High Stadium?

I think knowing that I would survive could give me courage, you know
and confidence
a sort of attitude: a different outlook on life.

It’s a helpful question:
What would you do if you knew you’d be ok?
How would you live your life differently?

Great.

And on the other hand:
sometimes I wonder about using such superlative illustrations
of humanity pushing the boundaries.

It is amazing, to be sure,
what some people do:
climbing to great heights
scaling amazing mountains. Such bravery is inspiring to so many of us.

Some people in this very congregation have done similar amazing things.

At the same time,
I’m not sure they’re THAT much more remarkable, in the end,
–than taking a deep breath and
walking through the threshold of your first adult job…
–or letting your kid get wheeled off to her first surgery
and not being able to do anything about it but wait…
–or waking up and getting out of bed
the first day after your spouse has passed away…
–or keeping yourself together, somehow,
after the pain of something horrible done to you resurfaces again.

That’s every much a leap of faith, I’m sure of it. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
Words to Build a Life On:
We Will Not Fear.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 16, 2018.
The Eleventh in a Multi-Part Sermon Series

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
John 14:1-4, 25-27,
and Psalm 46

One of the things I love about people
is how they get animated about the things that they are passionate about.

Walk down the street with someone who fancies themself a baker
and see what happens when you pass the storefront of a bakery…
eyes light up, looking over the éclairs and the macaroons.

Spend some time hanging out with that guy who had a band in college
and see what happens when some amazing song comes on the radio.
He’s tapping out the drum rhythm to Led Zeppelin’s When the Levee Breaks
or doing air guitar to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

Take your philosopher major friend to a used bookstore,
your gardener friend walking through a well maintained urban core and their parks,
that sort of thing.

Every so often, a friend of mine who was once a journalist
will get so animated reading the news
that he’ll exclaim with great passion: Wow, look at that lede!
and no one around him will really quite know what he’s talking about.

I thought about him, yesterday, reading the New York Times
and its coverage of Hurricane Florence.
There’s was a great story that started like this:[1]
“As the flat-bottomed fishing boat crept into the swirling river
that had once been Summer Haven Lane,
Tray Hillman scanned the brown floodwaters
and half-submerged houses
in search for somebody to save.

“Today it’s been women and kids,” Mr. Tillman said.

Now that, as my friend would say, is quite a lede.

A Lede is the opening sentence or paragraph of a news story.
It summarizes the most important aspects of the news being reported.

Back in the day, when they actually printed the news
on real paper, and smudgy ink
every inch was valuable real estate.

So every word was scrutinized
and journalists quickly developed
a style of writing
that put the key details early in the story,
knowing that they might lose anything towards the end
to the wrath of the editor’s pencil.

A well crafted lede is a thing of beauty, to a print journalist and an editor
and probably to us, too, if we stopped to think about it
instead of the story at hand.

But this lede on Saturday opened me up to a beautiful story
about the everyday heroes that worked through fatigue and stress and muck
to try to save lives in the wake of these horrible storms.

The article’s headline is telling too:
Torrents of Water in Towns Across the Carolinas. And a Guy With a Boat.

The story detailed how Tillman, who is a construction foreman,
was part of these makeshift rescue flotillas
that plucked hundreds of people stranded in attics and second-floor bedrooms
and church vestibules and crumbling decks
as the relentless rains flood rivers
and send all that water
through downtowns miles and miles away from the coast.

Inland flooding, it is reported, is maybe the biggest continuing danger
as Florence continues this weekend through the Carolinas,
and an improvised network of volunteers
from all over the world, some, they report, from as far away as Africa
sprung up to rescue those who did not evacuate.
either because they were far enough inland that they weren’t in evacuation zones
or because they were poor or hobbled and unable to get away.

I heard on NPR that some people from the KC area
left on Monday and Tuesday to go help out this week, too.

There are more than 1000 FEMA workers in the area
trained and well equipped.
There are hundreds of sheriffs deputies and firefighters.

And then there are people like Mr. Tillman,
a guy with a boat
and other unofficial groups with amazing names
you might pick for your fantasy sports teams.
That’s how I think about the Cajun Navy, at least.

They use a walkie-talkie app called Zello on their phones
to share information about people and situations they’re concerned about.

“It’s been reported that snakes are in the floodwaters around Crabtree Creek,
so I would not go outside,
we don’t want any of you all to get bit by something”

Or

“I have two elderly people I haven’t heard from since yesterday”
[can you check on them?]
That sort of thing.

And as we watch with amazement
these powerful events and the grand human drama
of suffering and hurt and loss,
we see the incredible spirit
of people working to save each other
from waters that come up to our necks, if not higher
to use a biblical metaphor for our most fearful moments (Psalm 69:1).

And we might utter a little prayer, of hope and of deep yearning
that they all might all be ok.

///
Our sermon series on Words to Build a Life On is wrapping up soon.
Just this Sunday, and next Sunday.

We’ve been exploring essential ideas of our faith
that can be said in just a few words
a phrase here and there to remember. [Read more…]