Sermons & Meditations

Matthew 21:28-32; Philippians 2:1-13
Presented September 28, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

2008 Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Embrace Relationships

Abraham Heschel, rabbi and leading Jewish theologian of the 20th century, once wrote of the distinction between our usual patterns of speech and those of the experience of prayer. “The purpose of speech,” asserted Heschel, “is to inform,” while “the purpose of prayer is to partake.” It’s a helpful distinction—this recognition that the language of faith and prayer takes us well beyond the amassing of information and knowledge, inviting us instead to enter wholeheartedly into a new reality, a new perspective, a new way of perceiving life. The language of faith and prayer is relational, prodding us to partake more deeply of life with God at the center. For those of us who embrace the Christian tradition, it is a matter of entering unreservedly into the story of Jesus, drinking deeply of a new intimacy in relationship with the God who has chosen to be fully immersed in human life in the person of Jesus the Christ. It is a matter of learning to live in Christ, entering into a give-and-take relationship with the One who loves us with a love that will not let us go, the One who invites us to partake of life through the eyes and heart of faith, the One who challenges us to embrace kingdom values. Values that turn our living upside down and inside out. Values that guide us along a journey of compassion and peace, trust and hope, self-giving love and servanthood.

Howard Thurman, first African-American dean of the chapel at Boston University, tells the story of his grandmother, an ex-slave and deeply devout woman who never learned to read. Yet Thurman’s grandmother, while having little book learning, displayed a remarkable “soul” learning, allowing the central message of the Gospel to infuse her very being—permitting this incredible story of God’s love to refresh and renew all her living. Howard Thurman remembers his grandmother asking him to read for her from the Scriptures. She would frequently ask for readings from the Psalms, that ancient prayer book of the Hebrew people, from the prophet Isaiah with its glorious vision of God’s new creation, and from the Gospels, so filled with parables and stories of Jesus. But seldom did Thurman’s grandmother seek readings from the letters of the apostle Paul, unless it was the magnificent love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13: “love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.”

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Matthew 20:1-16
Presented September 21, 2008, by J.D. KlineThe Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Stewardship theme: Celebrate Abundance-Embrace Relationships

Philip Yancey, editor-at-large for Christianity Today magazine, claims—only somewhat tongue-in-cheek—that the gospel of Jesus displays atrocious mathematics. Consider some of Jesus’ most-loved stories, beginning with the parable of the lost sheep. A shepherd, aware that one of his flock has strayed, leaves 99 sheep behind to fend for themselves and plunges into the darkness to find the single sheep that has wandered away (Luke 15:3-7). A merchant in search of fine pearls comes across one pearl of great price, and sells everything that he possesses, in order to purchase that single pearl (Matthew 13:45-46). A woman takes a pint of exotic perfume, worth a whole year’s wages, and pours it on the feet of Jesus, an extravagant—indeed, a wasteful—act that Jesus nevertheless applauds (John 12:1-8). A poor widow drops two small copper coins in the temple treasury, and Jesus, observing her offering, asserts, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (Mark 12:41-43). More than all the other gifts for the temple treasury? What kind of atrocious math is this? One thing’s for sure; it’s no way to fund a growing church budget!

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Matthew 18:21-35
Presented September 14, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Embrace Relationships

Lewis Smedes, seminary professor of theology and ethics, begins his book Forgive and Forget with a fable entitled “The MagicEyes.” It’s the story of a baker named Fouke, a righteous man with a long thin chin and a long thin nose—a man so upright that he seemed to spray righteousness from his thin lips over everyone who came near him. And so the people preferred to keep their distance from him.

But not so with Fouke’s wife, Hilda, a woman whose warm spirit invited others to come close to her, to share the gracious cheer of her heart. Hilda respected her righteous husband, and loved him too, as much as he would allow her. And yet Hilda’s heart ached for something more from him than his worthy righteousness. And there, in the midst of her need, lay the seed of sadness.

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Matthew 18:15-20; Romans 13:8-14
Presented Sept. 7, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

“I’m spiritual, but not religious.” Who among us has not heard someone make that claim? It’s a claim that may well stem from a disdain for much of organized religion, a disdain frequently well founded, for have we not all encountered those faith communities far more likely to communicate harsh judgment and stern regulations than the gracious love found at the heart of Christ’s gospel? Sadly, all too many churches “major in the minors,” focusing energy on peripheral issues and arbitrary standards rather than on the pressing needs of the world around them and on the gospel’s call to embrace and model a new way of living. All too many congregations are content with simplistic and easy answers, rather than willingly grappling with the tough questions of faith, with what it means to be the people of God in our kind of world—with who God is calling us to be and how God is calling us to respond to life’s struggles and needs. And all too many churches display such a rigidity of belief that there is precious little life to be found in their midst.

Given all that, it is not surprising that many are tempted to reject the trappings of religious faith, while nevertheless yearning for a deep and abiding touch of God’s Spirit. Problem is, the claim, “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” all too often leads in the direction of solitary faith—faith that focuses exclusively on one’s own relationship with God. The temptation is to go it alone, to lose sight that we are called to embrace new levels of relationship with God and with one another, that we are called to become part of a new community. As those who seek to walk in the ways of Jesus, we are called to be the body of Christ with and for one another.

Our own spiritual forerunners, the early Brethren, grappled with similar questions about how best to live out their thirst for spiritual vitality. Those first Brethren emerged out of a tradition, Radical Pietism, that was intensely skeptical of organized religion, for the state churches of their day were characterized by theological rigidity and by moral decay. Surely those initial Brethren would have grasped what Dietrich Bonhoeffer had in mind when asserting that the “religious act” is always something partial, while “faith” is something whole, involving the entirety of one’s life. Indeed, Bonhoeffer yearned for what he labeled “a religionless Christianity,” that is, a Christianity that goes well beyond religious rules, regulations, and formulations to a way of living that touches all of one’s being, all of one’s life.

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