Sermons & Meditations

Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12
Presented January 30, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany

Not long ago I was asked by someone, not a member of either Second Baptist Church or of Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren, why our two churches continue this tradition of annually worshiping together. I had the sense that the questioner thought it was far too little to be doing, that the racial divide remains far too major a reality in our society—and even more sadly, in the church. The questioner was right: Dr. King’s observation, more than 50 years ago, that the Sunday morning worship hour is the most segregated hour in the week, continues to be all too true in much of the church. And yet I am convinced that this annual act of shared worship, small though it may be, nevertheless has an impact. At the heart of the Christian faith stands the conviction that we have been created for relationship—relationship with our God, and relationship with one another. And a primary question before us is this: What does it mean for us to be the people of God? How do we live out our faith as a community of God’s people, as the church?

My questioner was correct, if we see this annual worship service as little more than a necessary ritual. But if we see it as creating possibilities for deepening relationship, then it becomes a critical part of who we would be as the people of God. This much I know. Nearly five years ago, on the morning when I received word of my first wife, Janice’s, sudden death through an automobile accident, Pastor Edmond was among the first to sit with me as I found myself overcome with shock and grief. And, I trust, he knows that I would do something similar for him. A few years back, a group that I am part of, planning an annual workshop on the faith community’s response to domestic violence, asked your congregation to host the workshop. Not only did you do so, but your creation of a domestic violence ministry is now a model for many churches in the area. Our annual time of shared worship opens opportunities for deeper connections and shared ministry.

I found myself considering my questioner’s dismissal of our annual time of shared worship, as I pondered the significance of today’s scripture lesson from the prophet Micah. Most of us are familiar with the final verse of that lesson, What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? But consider with me what precedes those familiar words.

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Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42
Presented January 23, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Third Sunday after Epiphany

There’s something intriguing—and perhaps even shocking—about this passage from Isaiah, chapter 49. Scholars attribute chapters 40 through 55 as the work of a second Isaiah, one who anticipates the return of the ancient Israelites from their bleak days of forced exile in Babylon to their beloved homeland in Israel. In poetic and visionary language we frequently cite during the Advent season, this second Isaiah foresees a new highway opening through the desert, a road upon which God will lead the people home. Along the way, valleys will be lifted up and mountains brought low, with the very desert itself being fraught with new life, with streams of living water. The prophet envisions an unnamed servant whose task it is to call the people back to their true identity as the people of God. It is an identity that centers not upon withdrawing into a closed group seeking to hold the gift of God’s gracious love tightly to itself, but rather an identity focusing upon the noble calling of serving as light for all the nations. It is a call to live in such a way that others are drawn to God’s compassionate, renewing, redeeming presence.

Perhaps we’ve become so familiar with this call to be a light to the nations that we miss its shock value. Consider that the prophet is speaking to a community of people who have seen the very underpinnings of their life torn away from them. Jerusalem and its temple, seen by the ancient Israelites as home for their God, have been destroyed, and along with it, the dynasty of kings in the line of David is broken. It is to this despondent people, a people on the verge of abandoning the entire enterprise of faith—to such a broken people, the second Isaiah speaks words of hope, asserting that something markedly new is in the works. In today’s text a servant senses the call to lead the people from their despair and crisis into new hope, so deeply is he convinced that “the Lord called me before I was born; while I was in my mother’s womb God named me” (49:1).

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Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-43
Presented January 9, 2011, by Joel Kline
The First Sunday after Epiphany

In her book Holy the Firm Annie Dillard tells of attending the one church on the small island off the coast of Washington state where she was living. “On a big Sunday,” writes Dillard, “there might be twenty of us…The members are of mixed denominations; the minister is a Congregationalist.” Dillard tells of a particular Sunday morning when the pastor, in the midst of a long prayer of intercession for the whole world, “for the gift of wisdom to its leaders, for hope and mercy to the grieving and pained, succor to the oppressed, and God’s grace to all”—in the middle of this litany of prayerfulness the pastor stopped, bursting out unexpectedly, “Lord, we bring you these same petitions every week.” And then, after a shocked pause, the pastor continued with his prayer. Observed Annie Dillard, “Because of this, I like him very much.”

What was it that Dillard found so appealing in this pastor’s unanticipated outburst? I rather suspect it was the honesty, the heart-felt cry in the face of life’s suffering and pain, the sometimes-overwhelming sense that we are caught in tension between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that when we take Scripture seriously, when we grapple with what it means for us to live faithfully in the light of the vision set forth in the pages of Scripture, we may well find ourselves living “haunted lives, filled with yearnings for what is not yet in hand, promises not yet filled, commands not yet obeyed, desires not yet granted, neighbors not yet loved” (Like Fire in the Bones, p. 132).

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Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-14
Presented January 2, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Second Sunday after Christmas

If you’re looking for words to provide inspiration and a lifting of spirits, you likely would not first turn to the prophet Jeremiah, whose writings communicate a great deal of judgment and destruction, gloom and doom. Indeed, Jeremiah’s name has come to be identified with those who see only the dark side of life, so much so that the word jeremiad, stemming from the name Jeremiah, refers to a mournful complaint, a cry of lamentation. Jeremiah the prophet ministered in the days leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in the 6^th century BCE and the subsequent exile of much of the Judean leadership into the enemy land of Babylon. The prophet sensed his burdensome calling to be a matter of announcing an approaching judgment upon the land—and its people—that he loved. No simple mission, to be sure, and Jeremiah frequently found himself debating with God, lamenting this arduous—and often oppressive—task. “O Lord,” cries the prophet on one occasion, “you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, “Violence and destruction!” And yet, laments Jeremiah, “If I say, ‘I will not mention God, or speak any more in God’s name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:7-9).

That fire in Jeremiah’s bones leads him not only to dismiss in judgment much that the people of his day hold as dear; it also enables him to discern possibilities the people little recognize. This becomes particularly clear once Jerusalem has fallen and the people are indeed living in exile, for it is as if the prophet suddenly reverses course and begins to proclaim a new hope for the future. This morning’s lesson from Jeremiah comes at the heart of what scholars label the Book of Comfort or the Book of Consolation—chapters 30 through 33. Instead of saying, “I told you so,’ to the exiles and heaping yet more words of judgment upon them, the prophet seeks to plant a new sense of hope deep in their souls. A reversal of your fortunes is coming, it’s as if Jeremiah now asserts.

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