Sermons & Meditations

Mark 10:46-52
Presented October 29th, 2006, by J.D. Kline
The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

The 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard noted that, in his day, many creative people invested a great deal of their life’s energy into making life easier, through the invention of labor-saving devices and technology that relieved some of the harsher burdens of work. Kierkegaard decided, however, that he would dedicate his life differently. Rather than making other people’s lives easier, Kierkegaard determined that he would make other people’s lives more difficult. And so he decided to become a preacher of the gospel!

There are many voices today that would suggest that we embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ in order to make our lives easier. And of course, the Christian faith does carry the conviction that God is able to sustain and encourage and carry us through times of difficulty and struggle. But the faith carries no guarantee of comfort, no promise that our lives will be trouble-free. Indeed, to choose the path of discipleship, to seek to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, can lead us into a host of challenging experiences and encounters along the way. Discipleship involves counting the cost, being willing to take the risk of embracing a new center and a new purpose in our living, a new perspective towards life. To give ourselves to God, to choose to live as followers of Jesus, suggests that we put on a new way of seeing and experiencing life.

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Mark 10:35-45
Presented October 22nd, 2006, by J.D. Kline
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Give Yourself to God

Perhaps you remember the novel by Chaim Potok entitled The Chosen. It’s the story of two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s. One of the boys, Danny, is the son of a Hasidic rabbi, an ultra-conservative Jewish sect; the other, Reuven, is the son of an Orthodox professor who teaches the Torah. The boys first encounter one another on a baseball field, as the teams from their two schools compete against one another. It is quickly apparent that there is tension, even hostility, between the two groups. The Hasidic boys consider the Orthodox group to be unfaithful, having, from their perspective, watered down the true faith.

Danny comes to bat against Reuven, and drills the ball directly at the pitcher’s mound. Reuven attempts to catch the drilled ball, but instead it hits him in the face, his glasses shattering. A shard of glass is lodged in Reuven’s eye, and he must have surgery. Later, as Reuven returns to his home, everything looks different. Many of the things he had long taken for granted now possess a luminous and alive quality, and Reuven later writes of that time, “Somehow everything had changed. I had spent five days in a hospital and the world around seemed sharpened now and pulsing with life…. I felt I had crossed into another world.”

At the heart of faith, I’m becoming convinced more and more, is an experience much like that described by Reuven—the ability to see and experience life in new and fresh ways. Every bit as remarkable in Reuven’s life is that he and Danny, who began as fierce opponents on the baseball field, became fast friends, crossing boundaries that otherwise would have remained in place, learning to know one another’s faith, family life, and culture. Along the way, both Reuven and Danny found their perspectives broadened, their horizons expanded, far beyond anything they had previously imagined. That, too, speaks of the nature of faith.

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Mark 10:17-31
Presented October 15th, 2006, by J.D. Kline
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Give Yourself to God

Sermon titles are seldom long remembered, but quite some years ago I recall a guest preacher entitling his sermon, “Life is Tough and Then You Die.” At first glance it seemed a rather morbid view of life, suggesting that after we get through all the struggles, woes and challenges of life, the only thing left is death. But there is a significant element of truth in the title, for it is only as we face the tough challenges of life head-on that we experience life at its fullest, and reach the point where we no longer fear death.

Perhaps this willingness to confront life’s difficult questions, to grapple with the peculiar mix of grace and challenge in life, is what lies at the heart of this morning’s Gospel lesson. It’s a familiar story to many of us, the story of the encounter between Jesus and the character we have come to label as “the rich young ruler.” Mark begins his account by telling us simply that a man approaches Jesus, and only somewhat later does it become clear that he is a person of great wealth. In Matthew’s account the rich man is further described as young, while in Luke’s version of the story, he is described as a ruler. We put the three stories together, and behold!—we have the rich young ruler who comes before Jesus asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Eternal life. In many people’s minds, eternal life is equated with life after death, with a timeless dimension of life in the realm of heaven. Indeed, when many hear this question, they assume that the rich young ruler is looking for a quick ticket to heaven. But when a first-century Jew conceived of eternal life, he or she envisioned that time when God would make this world into a totally new place. In the age to come, all of life would be transformed and made new, justice and peace would prevail, God would be fully at rule, the entire world would burst forth into a new and endless spring. Tom Wright in his commentary, Mark for Everyone, therefore translates the rich man’s question this way: “Good teacher, what should I do to inherit the life of the Age to Come?”

Jesus responds by pointing to a number of basic commandments. Can you not hear the unspoken question in the rich young ruler’s response? When he asserts, “I have kept all these since my youth,” is it not as if he is asking for something more, perhaps just the right words, the right combination of deeds that will ensure his future. But the rich man is little prepared for what Jesus offers—the conviction that the rich man can begin now to taste life in the age to come, as he takes the risk of living fully for God. Writes Tom Wright in his commentary, “Jesus’ basic demand is not for some logic-chopping extra observance, some tightening of definition here, some sharpening of exact meaning there.” Rather, “it is for idols and covetousness to be thrown to the winds: sell all and give to the poor!”

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James 5:13-20
Presented October 1st, 2006, by J.D. Kline
World Communion Sunday; The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Give Yourself to God

It may seem a bit odd, on World Communion Sunday when we are celebrating the eucharist with Christians around the world, to have as our Scripture lesson one that centers, not on the ordinance of communion at all, but rather on the anointing service, another significant practice within the Church of the Brethren tradition. But because I am completing a number of sermons on the brief letter of James, I have chosen to stay with the text. And I rather suspect that there is more connection than might be assumed at first glance.

Wisdom is a dominant theme in the letter of James. Its powerful reminder that faith that does not lead to compassionate acts of service is no faith at all, its assertion that genuine faith involves care for those who find themselves on the fringes of life, its declaration that the royal law of all scripture is that we love our neighbors as ourselves, its challenge to responsible living, its claim that every generous act of giving, every perfect gift, comes from God—all of this reflects the dominant concern of James that we embrace a wisdom from above. It is the wisdom of God, the wisdom of tenderness.

And James makes its clear that wisdom is not simply a personal pursuit. Much more, embracing and modeling God’s wisdom is at the heart of what it means to be a community of God’s people—what it means to be the body of Christ, to be a congregation of those who take it as their mission to walk in the ways of Jesus, to reflect Christ’s compassion and grace, Christ’s mercy and peace, Christ’s joy and hope. It is a matter of living, with Jesus, lives that are “of God, for God, with God.”

The ordinances of the church—baptism, anointing, eucharist and love feast—are deeply communal acts, expressed in the context of the faith community. While intensely personal as well, they are never merely private affairs, never simply a matter of “me and God.” The anointing represents an opportunity for an individual to take the lead in expressing his or her need, but it involves a reaching out to the faith community. Those of us invited to participate in the service of anointing—the pastors or deacons or elders—act and pray on behalf of the entire congregation. And so it is in the eucharist as well. To receive the break and cup is an intensely personal act of commitment and recommitment, expressing our intention to walk in paths of discipleship as we recall the gift of Christ-in-us. But eucharist is also intensely communal, one of those times when we are mindful, as Martin Luther King, Jr. frequently reminded us, that “all men [and women] are bound together in a single garment of destiny, we are woven together in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

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