Sermons & Meditations

Mark 8:34-37; James 5:13-20
Presented September 27, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Fred Craddock, frequent preacher at the annual Festival of Homiletics, shares the childhood memory of his father taking him out to the backyard on a summer evening, inviting him to lie on the grass and look up into the sky.

“Son, how far can you think?” Fred’s dad asked.

“What?” Fred answered.

“How far can you think?” his dad questioned again.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Just think as far as you can think up toward the stars.”

Fred screwed up his imagination, and then said, “I’m thinking…I’m thinking…I’m thinking.”

Said Fred’s dad again, “Think as far as you can think.”

“I’m thinking as far as I can think.”

“Well, drive down a stake out there now. In your mind, drive down a stake. Have you driven it down? That’s how far you can think.”

“Yes, sir,” responded Fred.

“Now what’s on the other side of your stake?”

“Well, there’s more sky.”

“Move your stake.”

The two spent the evening moving Fred’s stake, again and again. “It was a crazy thing to do,” said Fred, “but I will never thank my father enough for doing it.”

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Jeremiah 11:18-20; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Presented September 20, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

It’s a tough task, proclaiming an unwelcome message. Centuries ago, the prophet Jeremiah felt compelled to proclaim insistent words of judgment against the people of ancient Jerusalem who had lost sight of their calling from God to be a light to the nations. Those Hebrews of old, cried the prophet, had turned their backs on the call to be a peculiar people proclaiming a new way of living, to be a community of God’s faithful people modeling hope in a sea of despair, compassion in a world of injustice and oppression, gracious inclusion in a climate of exclusion, peace in a world of suspicion and fear, in a world ever seeking security through political intrigue and military might rather than trust in God. Indeed, on more than one occasion Jeremiah laments that there are competing voices in his day who “have treated the wounds of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (6:14; 8:11).

It was a message the people of Jeremiah’s day did not want to hear, and what’s more, it was a message the prophet frequently did not want to deliver. This morning’s lesson from Jeremiah, chapter 11, is one of a series of laments or complaints against God. On another occasion Jeremiah cries out to God, “O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived; thou art stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; every one mocks me” (20:7 RSV). And in this morning’s text the prophet laments, “I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter,” so aware was Jeremiah of his opponents’ efforts to isolate him, seeking to render his voice totally silent. The verbs used in the lament are intense; his foes, asserts the prophet, intend to “destroy” him, to “cut him off,” to ensure that “his name will no longer be remembered” (11:19).

I’ve been reading a novel entitled The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, the story of Roseanne McNulty, now nearing her hundredth year, reflecting back on her life, much of it lived in a mental hospital. “I am completely alone,” asserts Roseanne. “No one even knows I have a story. Next year, next week, tomorrow, I will no doubt be gone, and it will be a small size coffin they will need for me.” It’s that tragic line, No one even knows I have a story, that caught my attention. For is that not what Jeremiah’s opponents wanted to have happen to this troubling proclaimer of an alternative vision for life? They wanted Jeremiah silenced; even more, they hoped that his name—his very identity, his life story—would be eradicated.

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Isaiah 50:4-9a
Presented September 13, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

In his novel entitled Life Goes On Quaker author Philip Gulley tells the story of Sam Gardner, pastor of the Friends Church in the fictional town of Harmony, Indiana, recalling his seminary days, particularly a time when it felt to him as if he had lost his faith. Sam confided in one of the professors, lamenting that he no longer knew what to believe; he couldn’t accept much of his childhood faith, yet yearned for the simplicity of that faith he held in his younger years. After listening to Sam pour out one frustration after another, the professor reminded him of some words spoken by Oliver Wendell Holmes, one-time Supreme Court Justice. Said Holmes, “The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.” Sam’s professor recognized that Sam was in the midst of the painful process of letting go of inadequate images and understandings of God, while standing on the verge of embracing a deeper faith, a relationship with a God of far greater proportions, a God able to stretch Sam’s vision and faith well beyond that with which he had been raised. Indeed, the professor reminded Sam, “You’ve been stretched. Now you have to fill your mind with a grand vision. That’s why you’re here.”

It’s tempting—and often far more comfortable—to hold onto a static faith, a faith that provides easy answers. And yet ultimately, when confronted by life’s uncertainties and struggles, such a faith offers precious little to sustain us through those difficult times. In truth, a faith that does not impel us to stretch and to grow is no faith at all. Faith is a verb, a process and not a static reality.

You don’t need to be a seminary student to find yourself dissatisfied with simplistic answers and with an unquestioning faith. Many of us gathered in today’s worshiping community have faced unsolicited events in our lives that have shaken us, sometimes to the core. A crippling illness attacking your life, or that of a loved one; the disillusionment and despair that accompany a broken relationship or divorce; the loss of a job, often accompanied by a sense of having been betrayed by one’s employer, as well as a fear about making ends meet; the challenge of making a difficult decision that may impact the lives of others in both anticipated and unforeseen ways; an accident that forever alters how you see and experience life—these are only some of the experiences and events that can cause us to re-examine long-held beliefs and practices.

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