Sermons & Meditations

Matthew 10:40-42; Romans 6:12-23
Presented June 26th, 2005, by J.D. Kline
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

During my first pastorate, perhaps as many as twenty-five years ago, a young man called the church early one Friday morning, as I was attempting to finish a number of details so that I could spend the remainder of the day with family. The young man expressed a need to talk about his spiritual life, and I found myself putting family plans on hold in order to travel to a nearby university and bring him back to the church, where we talked for quite some time together. The conversation culminated with his expressing a desire to recommit his life to the way of Christ and his praying for a fresh touch of God’s grace. Only then, after several hours together, did he speak of a financial need and inquire whether I might be able to help. I took a risk, only to discover by the next day that I had been scammed.

I still remember my response, as it became apparent that I had been conned. Rather than anger—not an unexpected response in such a situation—my reaction was closer to shock. I simply could not believe that someone would go to such lengths for a sum of money, and I remember asking myself, What could this fellow accomplish if he were to put as much energy andimagination and initiative into something good as he had invested in achieving selfish ends?

This is the challenge for all persons of faith—is it not?—to use our energy and our gifts, our time and our resources, our imagination and our inventiveness, for good rather than evil, for peace rather than division, for healing rather than brokenness. In this morning’s text from Romans, chapter six, is this not precisely what the apostle Paul has in mind when contrasting two types of “slavery”—slavery to sin and slavery to righteousness?

Consider how Paul is using the term slavery. You and I, with good reason, little consider slavery to be anything but evil. But Paul lived in a day when slavery was rarely questioned; it was a given in life. And so Paul assumes that slavery can be either positive or negative. Some years ago, before I had back problems and had to give it up, I was really into running. And with some frequency among fellow runners, I would hear running spoken of as a positive addiction. The apostle Paul has something similar in mind when he urges us to be slaves to righteousness rather than slaves to sin. In effect Paul is saying, As followers of Jesus, use every bit as much energy in the pursuit of righteousness as, without Christ, you would invest into the pursuit of selfish ambition and self-seeking.

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Matthew 10:34-39
Presented June 19th, 2005, by J.D. Kline
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Do you recall that powerful scene, portrayed in Luke’s Gospel, as Jesus stands ready to enter the city of Jerusalem on that day we have come to know as Palm Sunday? Jesus pauses, pondering the state of the people’s relationship with God and anticipating the troubling events soon to follow. Overcome with tears, Jesus cries out, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:42). Yet today, can you not imagine Jesus weeping over the continuing brokenness and suspicion and fear that characterize so much of life in our world? Can you not envision Jesus sobbing over a world willing to earmark hundreds of billions of dollars for warfare while poverty and hunger and disease abound?

In the fifteenth century Thomas a Kempis made the telling observation, “All men [and women] desire peace, but very few desire the things that make for peace.” Indeed, the biblical vision of peace and shalom runs counter to the images of peace commonly embraced by our society and world. When the world speaks of peace, it is a peace understood as an imposed condition—peace imposed through military might, peace imposed through power over others, peace imposed through the threat of force and destruction. The New Testament, on the other hand, envisions a peace that flows from the very heart of God, a peace beyond all human comprehension, a peace that breaks down barriers of misunderstanding, a peace that will not let us rest content until all hostility and injustice, all enmity and strife are eradicated.

Writing to the Ephesian Christians the apostle Paul asserts that Christ himself is our peace. “In his flesh he has made both groups [Jew and Gentile] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” Continues Paul, it is a matter of creating “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2:14-15). In The Message Eugene Peterson paraphrases this section of Ephesians 2 this way:

[Christ] tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.

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