Sermons & Meditations

Matthew 6:25-34
Presented May 25, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit tradition in the Catholic Church and author of the much-used Spiritual Exercises, once counseled, “Act as if everything depended on you, and trust as if everything depended on God.” This morning’s Gospel lesson, standing at the heart of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, proclaims a similar blending of action and trust. A primary theme of the Sermon on the Mount, the largest single collection of Jesus’ teachings found in the Gospels, is the urgency and distinctive character of life in the kingdom of God, and this morning’s text, with its stark reminder that “no one can serve two masters” and its admonitions not to worry about life but instead to “strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” (Matthew 6:24-25, 33)—this morning’s text carries a powerful call to embrace a markedly new way of living. It is a way of acting in the world around us, a way of living that flows from a life of trust—the kind of trust writer and spiritual retreat leader Brennan Manning describes as ruthless trust. In his book of that title, Manning laments the temptation to reduce faith to a matter of “mindless assent to a dusty pawnshop of doctrinal beliefs,” countering that the very “essence of biblical faith lies in trusting God.” “Trust,” continues Manning, “was not some feature out at the edges of Jesus’ teaching; it was its heart and center. This and only this would bring on speedily the reign of God.”

When we choose the pathway of ruthless or radical trust, we find our lives totally reoriented as we place God at the very center of our thinking, our being, and our doing. Surely that’s why Jesus, when laying out in the Sermon on the Mount a description of life in his upside-down kingdom, speaks of the dangers of material wealth, of the intoxicating allure of wealth and possessions. Money, Jesus understands, is not the only distraction that competes for the loyalty of disciples of Jesus, but it frequently becomes a major roadblock, particularly in a culture such as ours that defines personal value on the basis of how much we accumulate and possess.

(more…)

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Acts 2:1-11
Presented May 11, 2008, by J.D. Kline
Pentecost Sunday

A Vietnamese tale contrasts life in heaven and in hell. In hell, everyone is given an abundance of food, and then given chopsticks that are a yard long. Each person has enough to eat and then some, but because the chopsticks are so long, he or she cannot bring the food to his or her own mouth. As a consequence, all the people remain hungry.

In heaven, according to the tale, the setting is exactly the same. Everyone is given a similar abundance of food, and each person’s chopsticks are also a yard long. But in heaven, the people use their chopsticks to feed one another. Wayne Muller shares this Vietnamese legend in his book Learning to Pray: How We Find Heaven on Earth, and then goes on to assert that “a single act of compassion can transform hell into heaven.”

(more…)

1 Corinthians 12:12-27
Presented May 4, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Seventh Sunday of Easter

The New Testament writers, with some frequency, remind us that we are given a high responsibility when we embrace life with Christ at the center. Indeed, the apostle Paul speaks of us as being “servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Corinthians 4:1), “partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:6 RSV), “children of light” (Ephesians 5:8), “imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1). The writer of the letter to the Hebrews asserts that we become “partners of Christ” (3:14), a phrase Eugene Peterson paraphrases in The Message, “We’re in this with Christ for the long haul.”

Given the fickleness of human nature, it’s really quite remarkable—isn’t it?—just how much trust God places in us, just how vulnerable God becomes in entrusting to us the proclamation of something markedly new unfolding in human life. Indeed, the poet W.H. Auden once questioned, “May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in God, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for God than it is for us?” Nevertheless, this affirmation stands at the heart of the gospel—that you and I have been entrusted with a treasure, that you and I are in fact invited to be co-creators of God’s kingdom. You and I are called to live and proclaim a new reality of life in God’s realm; you and I are challenged to join with God in the ushering in of an age of peace and compassion, mercy and grace, justice and new life.

A little more than 2 months before being tragically assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta entitled “The Drum Major Instinct,” in which he laments the very human tendency to use our gifts selfishly, concerning ourselves more with our own status and position in life than with how we might best serve our fellow human beings. King goes on to remind us that Jesus introduced a new definition of greatness, a new norm for our living based upon servanthood. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” says Jesus, “and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43).

(more…)